Barely four days after his stay in the hospital following a collapse Saturday night during a speaking engagement in Tel Aviv, President Shimon Peres is back at work -- and has issued an unusually biting response to the United Nations' Goldstone Report on last January's IDF counterterrorist Operation Cast Lead in Gaza.
The U.N. commission led by retired Judge Richard Goldstone investigated Palestinian Authority claims against the IDF during the operation and charged that Israel was guilty of "war crimes" and "possibly crimes against humanity."
Pro-Israel Jews around the world have stood as one against the report, insisting the commission from its inception was biased against the Jewish State and its mission was fated to become a "kangaroo court."
Peres issued a scathing statement against the report on Wednesday afternoon, calling it "a mockery of history" and charging that it "fails to distinguish between the aggressor and a state exercising its right for self defense."
War itself is a crime, pointed out the president, adding that the aggressor is the criminal. "The side exercising self-defense has no other alternative," he said.
"The Hamas terror organization has opened war and perpetrated other horrible crimes. For years, Hamas carried out attacks against the children of Israel, sending suicide bombers into city centers, injuring and killing civilians. They fired over 12,000 rockets and mortar shells at towns and villages with one clear aim -- to kill innocent civilians.
"The report legitimizes terrorist activity, the pursuit of murder and death. The report disregards the duty and right of self defense, held by every sovereign state as enshrined in the UN Charter," he added..
Israel removed all of its troops and every resident in the 2005 Disengagement from Gaza, he noted, including some who had lived in the area for decades. Israel opened the border crossings and also actively supported the region's reconstruction at the time.
"The Israeli presence in Gaza was terminated," he observed, "But after Israel completed its redeployment from Gaza, a murderous and illegitimate terror group violently revolted against the legitimate Fatah leadership, overthrowing it by force. Hamas operatives murdered Fatah leaders, at times throwing them from rooftops in broad daylight."
"While Hamas continued firing, Israel employed, time and time again, the diplomatic channels, including many appeals to the U.N. – in an attempt to bring about a cessation of rocket fire," he said.
Those attempts were ineffective, as was the IDF's redeployment and re-termination of its presence in the region.
"Hamas responded with incessant rocket fire aimed at killing children, women and innocent civilians. Instead of building Gaza and caring for the welfare of its citizens, Hamas built tunnels to attack Israel, cruelly using children and innocent Palestinians to hide terrorists and ammunition. Hamas terrorists built rocket launchpads and storages near schools, in mosques and kindergartens. They have booby-trapped urban neighborhoods and used Palestinian children as human-shields in order to hide terrorists and means of warfare," Peres pointed out.
"The State of Israel was forced to defend itself. It acted out of obligation to its citizens, like any sister state in the family of nations would. Israel has been criticized for its actions against Hizbullah attacks from Lebanon and Hamas attacks from the Gaza Strip," as well as for building the security barrier in Judea and Samaria to prevent suicide bombers from entering the country.
"This criticism did not stop the rockets from hitting the South and the North, nor did it stop terrorists from blowing themselves up in our central cities," he said.
"Those in pursuit of peace have justice on their side. Those who monger war will forever be criminals."
With an uncharacteristic shade of bitterness, Peres predicted, "Members of the commission would have never compiled such a report should their children have resided in Sderot and have suffered the terror of daily rocket fire."