Gaza Gulag maintained by the Western democracies

"Gaza is the only gulag in the Western hemisphere; maintained by democracies; closed-off from food, water, air" says Colonel Desmond Travers, co-author of the Goldstone report, in an exclusive MEMO interview.

One year after the horrendous Israeli military assault on Gaza during Operation Cast Lead, in which over 1400 men, women and children were viciously and brutally slaughtered by invading Israeli troops, MEMO sat down with Colonel Desmond Travers, one of the four co-authors of the Goldstone Report and the only military expert on the team, and discussed his views on Israel, Hamas and the incredibly mixed reception of his groundbreaking and now iconic report.

The UN appointed fact-finding mission, of which Colonel Travers was an integral part, set out to investigate the claims that war crimes had been committed by both Israel and Hamas during the 22 day attack on the people of Gaza between 27th December 2008 and 18th January 2009.

After the most extensive and rigorous investigation of its kind to ever be carried out on the region, the Goldstone Report concluded that war crimes and possible crimes against humanity had been committed by both sides but by far and away the most blame was apportioned to Israel whose military tactics included, according to Colonel Travers, "hostage taking, felling of houses, destruction of the judicial police infrastructure, destruction of hospitals and the medical infrastructure, destruction of the agricultural, water and sewage infrastructure." The mission investigated 36 separate incidents of alleged Israeli offences, (although there were countless more that Colonel Travers wishes they had time to investigate) and "in all of the 36 cases we found against the perpetrators" (Israel). This included such incidents as the Israeli F-16 missile strike of a home which resulted in the deaths of 22 members of the same family, the al-Daya family; a massacre Israel claims was an "error" but of which Travers says "we didn't accept their explanation." It also included a "horrific" missile attack on al-Maqadmah mosque while people were at prayer, killing 15 civilians and wounding 40.

When asked if there may have been grounds for Israel to target the mosque given claims by people such as Colonel Tim Collins in a recent BBC Newsnight programme that mosques had been used to store weapons, he completely rejected such "spurious" and unfounded allegations. He stands resolutely by the Goldstone Report's findings which stated clearly that there was no evidence of any kind that weapons were stored in the mosque that they investigated. Although the Report's authors made it clear that they could not generalise as they could not investigate all the mosques that were attacked by Israel, and there were many dozens attacked, they chose to investigate the al-Maqadmah Mosque because that was the most serious of all the Israeli attacks on a Muslim place of worship. However, the report concluded that: "The Mission found no evidence that this mosque was used for the storage of weapons or any military activity by Palestinian armed groups. As far as this mosque is concerned, therefore, the Mission found no basis for such an allegation." More