You Say Potato, I Say War Crimes

A UN report on last winter's Israeli attacks into Gaza holds nothing back, suggesting Tel Aviv has committed war crimes against the Palestinians.

Israeli officials condemned Tuesday a scathing United Nations report that accused the nation of war crimes in its military offensive into Gaza.

Palestinian officials applauded the report, which was presented at a U.N. meeting, and urged U.N. members to address the alleged crimes documented in the report.

In the report, released earlier this month, a U.N. group accused Israel of committing "actions amounting to war crimes, possibly crimes against humanity" during its military incursion into Gaza from December 27 to January 18.

The group, called the U.N. Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict, is headed by South African judge Richard Goldstone.

Goldstone presented the 500-plus page report the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva Tuesday.

"The lack of accountability for war crimes and possible crimes against humanity has reached a crisis point," Goldstone said Tuesday. "This is the time of action."

Naturally, the Obama administration isn't happy, but they stopped short of full condemnation of the report.

The U.S. representative, Assistant Secretary of State Michael Posner, said some of the recommendations in the report were "deeply flawed" and called for Israel and Palestinian authorities to be allowed to finish conducting their own investigations before passing judgment.

Translation: the White House needs some time in order to talk down Russia and China, who are both satisfied with the report. Any serious action against Israel is inconceivable, even Obama will assure any sanctions will be vetoed by the United States.

But accusations of war crimes by the UN is a deadly serious thing, and the report pulls no punches:

The report claims that the Israeli Defense Forces "failed to take feasible precautions required by international law to avoid or minimize loss of civilian life, injury to civilians and damage to civilian objects."

The U.N. report also said Israel fired the chemical agent white phosphorous in civilian areas, intentionally fired upon hospitals using high-explosive artillery shells, and failed to provide effective warnings to civilians or U.N. workers before attacks. It also claims that Israel used Palestinian civilians as human shields and deliberately attacked Palestinian food supplies in Gaza.

The report recommends that the U.N. Security Council require the government of Israel to launch appropriate independent investigations into the findings of the report within three months. The findings also recommend that the alleged Israeli war crimes be explored by the International Criminal Court's prosecutor.

The findings also call on Palestinian leadership to investigate alleged war crimes, for militants to respect humanitarian law, and for the release of the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit on humanitarian grounds.

A spokeswoman for U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has said that a resolution on the issue could be drafted by the human rights council by Friday.

In other words, this is a serious problem for Obama, and an even more serious problem for Israel. How Tel Aviv reacts to this will be anyone's guess, but reaction of the Wingers I can tell you will include cries of "pervasive anti-Semitism throughout the UN" for daring to say that using Willy Pete on Palestinians is a bad thing.