The tainted Goldstone mission

In a JPost article, Irwin Cotler explains why the Goldstone mission is tainted to the core.
"...THE PARADIGM of false moral equivalence not only wrongly puts Israel and Hamas on the same level, but it also undermines the importance of intentionality in international law.
For this reason, we should be looking for the Goldstone report not merely to observe that Hamas fired rockets at Israeli civilians while imperilling Palestinian civilians - a double war crime - but to look at this practice as the reason behind innocent Palestinian deaths. We should be looking for the Goldstone report not merely to mention Gilad Schalit in passing, but to look at his situation as a case study in Hamas terror and impunity.
In brief: We should be looking for the Goldstone report not just to mention Hamas's violations of international law, but to identify them as the root cause of the Gaza conflict. Simply put, if there had been no Hamas war crimes, there would have been no need for an Israeli response.
As the Goldstone inquiry is currently set up, however, expecting such an analysis to emerge clearly from its final report is likely unduly optimistic. The tarnish of the UN Human Rights Council, the enabling resolution it drafted, the personnel it grouped together, and the legal asymmetry cannot be so easily redressed. Indeed, between Goldstone - a renowned Jewish jurist who played right into the hands of a partial process - and Christine Chinkin - a law professor willing to sign off on an indictment before the evidence is in - the UN Human Rights Council no doubt found its ideal inquisitors."
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