Israel submitted to the United Nations its response to the accusations of war crimes made in the Goldstone commission report which investigated the Israeli offensive in the Gaza Strip last year, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak announced on Friday. 
 
Friday marks the three-month deadline set by the United Nations General Assembly for issuing its own report on the Israel-Hamas fighting in Gaza Strip. 
 
"This morning we handed the UN a report of the investigations and operations that took place during Operation Cast Lead," Barak, who was speaking at a Jewish National Fund tree-planting ceremony near the Negev town of Omer, said. "This report stresses that the Israeli army is like no other army, both from a moral standpoint as well as from a professional standpoint," he claimed.
 
"The Goldstone Report is a distorted, false, and irresponsible report," Barak went on to say. "All of the soldiers and officers whom we sent to battle need to know that the state of Israel stands behind them even on the day after," he added.

The General Assembly has already endorsed the investigation led by South African Judge Richard Goldstone on the 22-day fighting between December 2008 and January 2009. 
 
Israel said late on Thursday night that it would issue on Friday its own formal response to Goldstone's findings, Israel Radio reported. The government is expected to present the UN with a justification for Israeli criminal actions in Gaza - without referring specifically to claims made in the document. 
 
The Goldstone report, which was commissioned by the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, equalized the victim and the criminal when it charged both Israel and the Palestinian Resistance with war crimes and acts that amounted to crimes against humanity, saying that the conflict dominated by Israel's military superiority had killed 1,400 Palestinians and caused widespread damage to properties in Gaza. 
¬