April 3, 2011 | 8:40 pm

Second thoughts from Richard Goldstone

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

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Richard Goldstone had a surprising column in the Washington Post Friday. The gist was that the Goldstone Report was based on incomplete information, and it would have looked a lot different if Goldstone knew then what he knew now.

He wrote:

The final report by the U.N. committee of independent experts — chaired by former New York judge Mary McGowan Davis — that followed up on the recommendations of the Goldstone Report has found that “Israel has dedicated significant resources to investigate over 400 allegations of operational misconduct in Gaza” while “the de facto authorities (i.e., Hamas) have not conducted any investigations into the launching of rocket and mortar attacks against Israel.”

Our report found evidence of potential war crimes and “possibly crimes against humanity” by both Israel and Hamas. That the crimes allegedly committed by Hamas were intentional goes without saying — its rockets were purposefully and indiscriminately aimed at civilian targets.

The allegations of intentionality by Israel were based on the deaths of and injuries to civilians in situations where our fact-finding mission had no evidence on which to draw any other reasonable conclusion. While the investigations published by the Israeli military and recognized in the U.N. committee’s report have established the validity of some incidents that we investigated in cases involving individual soldiers, they also indicate that civilians were not intentionally targeted as a matter of policy.

Goldstone goes on. Now Israel is saying they expect the U.N. to rescind the report.

I’m sure plenty of Israel’s critics will just see this as part of the Zionist conspiracy.