Mr. Regev, the Israeli government spokesman, said he found the whole equation between Israel and Hamas in the United Nations report’s recommendations “bordering on the bizarre.”

Among the Israeli public, the report elicited, for the most part, a furious reaction. Most Israelis strongly supported the offensive in Gaza as the only way to stop the rocket fire. The international condemnation did little to crack that unity, nor have the highly critical reports issued since the war by international organizations and human rights groups. Instead, the reports have prompted a sense that Israel’s very legitimacy is under attack.

The Goldstone report fell into the same pattern. Some Israelis said they were shocked by the breadth of topics it addressed  its description of life in the West Bank and the separation barrier, for example, and Israel’s internal politics  seeing many issues as outside the commission’s mandate. Instead, they said, the report appeared to embrace years of United Nations complaints.

Many Israelis also criticized the report for what they called its failure to understand the difficulties of asymmetrical warfare.

“The whole body of international law is based on army against army,” said Gerald M. Steinberg, a political scientist at Bar-Ilan University and a leading force in Israel against what some here consider the politicized nature of human rights discourse. “What is a civilian? They used to be people who don’t wear uniforms and are outside the military. But if you have Gaza or Southern Lebanese guerrilla forces who don’t wear uniforms, who are illegal combatants, when is it a legitimate target?”

Yaron Ezrahi, a political scientist at Hebrew University who has been highly critical of the Gaza operation, said: “Goldstone should have acknowledged that this asymmetry creates a disadvantage for the state. It places a great strain on our political system. Israel has an extremely difficult time staying democratic in the ruthlessly hostile environment of the Middle East. Comfortable governments in the West cannot begin to understand the plight of a country that went through nine wars.”

During the years when Hamas sent thousands of rockets at Israeli civilians, the United Nations human rights bodies did not put together an investigation or issue a condemnation, Professors Steinberg and Ezrahi, and other experts, said, doing so only after Israel retaliated. In addition, officials here said, Israel’s attack on Gaza was part of its need to deter Iran and its proxies and could not be looked at in isolation.

Amid the furor, some in Israel concurred with the panel’s call for further investigation. A group of nine rights organizations said in a statement that they had written to Israel’s attorney general to demand that he establish an independent body to investigate the military’s activities in Gaza, but that he rejected their request.