Haaretz is quoting a report by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs that states that a co-author of the Goldstone Gaza report, which accuses both Hamas and Israel of war crimes has claimed that Hamas fired only two rockets at Israel prior to Israel’s operations against Hamas, which is simply not true. The article states:
The report quoted statements in interviews made by Col. Desmond Travers, formerly a senior officer in the Irish army and the only military expert among the four members of the Goldstone Commission, and the statements included one to a Middle East affairs journal.
In an interview last week with the Middle East Monitor, Travers leveled harsh accusations at the Israel Defense Forces that do no appear in the Goldstone report. He said the IDF had used drones that could detect people inside of buildings by their body heat and did so in attacking houses in which dozens of Palestinian civilians had taken shelter. According to Travers, Israel had attacked the Gaza Strip although Hamas supposedly only fired two rockets at Israel in the month before the operation, and that Hamas had wanted to continue the cease-fire.
The institute's report notes that Travers ignored the fact that in three days alone during the month before the IDF campaign, Hamas had fired 32 rockets at Israel and that according to Hamas spokesmen, among them the organization's leader in Damascus, Khaled Meshal, Hamas had resolved to end the cease-fire.
Travers may be motivated by the deaths of Irish peacekeepers in Lebanon:
The report by the Jerusalem think tank also includes quotes from an interview Travers gave in which he accused Israel of murdering many Irish soldiers who where members of the UNIFIL contingent in South Lebanon. When asked about the fact that there had been official disagreement in Britain with the findings of the Goldstone report, Travers said that "Britain's foreign policy interests in the Middle East seem to be influenced strongly by Jewish lobbyists."