In the most comprehensive investigation of Israel's controversial winter offensive in the Gaza Strip, a special United Nations committee has concluded that the Israeli military and Palestinian militants committed war crimes during the three-week confrontation.

While the 575-page report accuses both Hamas and the Israeli military of war crimes and possible crimes against humanity, the bulk of the investigation focuses on Israel

"The Mission concludes that what occurred in just over three weeks at the end of 2008 and the beginning of 2009 was a deliberately disproportionate attack designed to punish, humiliate and terrorize a civilian population, radically diminish its local economic capacity both to work and to provide for itself, and to force upon it an ever increasing sense of dependency and vulnerability," the UN concluded.

In incident after incident, the UN investigators concluded that the Israeli military took questionable steps by using Palestinians as human shields, killing civilians waving white flags, deliberately targeting Palestinian civilians, unnecessarily demolishing Palestinian homes, recklessly using white phosphorus in densely populated areas, and more.

The report will be presented to the UN Human Rights Council on Sept. 29, which will decide whether to refer it to the Security Council.

If Israel does not conduct a serious and independent investigation within the next six months, the UN report stated, the UN should consider pursuing the war crimes in the International Criminal Court.

The findings have touched off a firestorm of controversy in Israel.

“The report is nothing less than a declaration of war upon Israel,” high-ranking Foreign Ministry officials reportedly told Israel's Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper. “It requires the most complicated diplomatic and legal battles in the country’s history. We never expected such a harsh report. It has caused a stir and begun to create a very negative effect.”

In Israel Today, Dan Margalit called the report, prepared by a team led by the Jewish, South African jurist Richard Goldstone, "classic anti-Semitism."

"The liberal anti-Semitism strides delicately, appoints a hostile commission and finds an obsequious Jew, to dance to the tune of the Gentile landowner," Margalit wrote. "The role was assigned to Richard Goldstone, and he met the expectations fully."

In Yedioth, commentaor Eitan Haber said it would be a mistake for Israel to dismiss the UN report.

"We did not need Goldstone and his friends to know that in Operation Cast Lead there were severe cases unbefitting the Israeli army," Haber wrote. "In [the world's] eyes, we are war criminals, contemptible people, killers of small children. This, at the moment, is the image that is being created for us throughout the world—villains, evil, cruel, murderers."

"We can propose that the UN, its institutions and the commission 'kiss our behind' and move on as if nothing had happened," Haber wrote. "What do we care, actually? We should care very much. Slowly but surely, this terrible image will close in on us in the international arena, and then it will not only be Doron Almog who will not be able to travel to London. We will no longer be able to fly to Antalya and the casino at Varna as well. And this will already be a decree that the Israeli public will not be able to withstand. It would be very unwise to mock, downplay or disregard the report. It would be very wise to come out of this trouble safe and sound. The State of Israel would do well to launch a worldwide campaign already this morning, a diplomatic and PR campaign. We should mobilize all of the State of Israel’s best forces, because, as people once used to write in the Israeli press: It is a matter of the utmost importance."

The Israeli government is already taking up the cause.

Today, Israeli President Shimon Peres said the UN report made a "mockery of history."

Many Israeli commentators are assessing the impact of the report on Israel's image.

"The Goldstone report reinforces the most serious strategic threat Israel brought upon itself with the Gaza offensive, in that it saps international legitimacy for a similar operation in the future," Aluf Benn wrote in Haaretz. "A country considering attacking the nuclear reactor in Iran, and then endangering itself to rocket fire from Lebanon and Gaza in response, will have to take into account whether the world will give Israel another opportunity for a severe, crushing response.