Bipartisanship at last: U.S. politicians line up to castigate Palestinian unity deal

In stark contrast to partisan wrangling over the budget and women’s rights, Democrats and Republicans are lining up to demand the cut-off of U.S. aid to the Palestinian Authority as a response to the reported unity deal between Hamas and Fatah.  Expect the Obama administration to take heed and agree with Congress–especially with the 2012 elections approaching.

The rhetoric from both sides of the aisle is uniform.  It’s the Israel lobby’s line.  It’s telling, for example, that a staunch Republican and neoconservative pro-Israel hawk like Jennifer Rubin would approvingly quote an otherwise reliable liberal like Representative Gary Ackerman, a Democrat from New York:

The purported deal, which does not require Hamas to accept Israel’s right to exist, or the binding nature of prior Palestinian commitments, or even to require Hamas to temporarily forgo violence against Israel (as if it were some kind barbaric of addiction, or compulsion), is a recipe for failure, mixed with violence, leading to disaster. It is a ghastly mistake that I fear will be paid for in the lives of innocent Israelis.

Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the Republican chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs committee, similarly said:

The reported agreement between Fatah and Hamas means that a Foreign Terrorist Organization which has called for the destruction of Israel will be part of the Palestinian Authority government. U.S. taxpayer funds should not and must not be used to support those who threaten U.S. security, our interests, and our vital ally, Israel.

Interestingly, though, there are some, if not many, analysts and activists in solidarity with the Palestinian cause that will be happy with a cut off of U.S. aid to the Palestinian Authority (for different reasons than Congress).  U.S. aid, which has gone to train the Palestinian Authority’s security forces, has contributed deeply to the split between Hamas and Fatah.

As Ali Abunimah noted for the Electronic Intifada, “in The Palestine Papers, the main concern of Ramallah officials was always to maintain Western financial aid to the PA, and not to make any agreement with Hamas that would jeopardize American and European financing for the PA.”  The Western financial aid has been used to crack down on Hamas.  But if U.S. and European aid is cut off, perhaps the Palestinian Authority would no longer imprison Hamas members and quash dissent.  That would go a long away towards true Palestinian unity.

How Your Tax Dollars Fuel the Hatred of Muslims

This article appeared in AlterNet today, where you can read the whole piece.  Here’s an excerpt:

The decade after the 9/11 attacks has seen the creation of a profitable cottage industry of self-styled “experts” on Islam. As Sarah Posner recently noted in an article on Religion Dispatches, anti-Muslim fear-mongers, ranging from politicians to national security experts, have “cultivated awide-ranging conspiracy theory that totalitarian Islamic radicals are bent on infiltrating America, displacing the Constitution, and subverting Western-style democracy in the U.S. and around the globe.”

What hasn’t gotten a comprehensive look, at least until now, is how public tax dollars have been funding parts of this industry under the guise of counter-terrorism trainings for city and state law enforcement across the country, which after 9/11 has gotten heavily involved in fighting terrorism.

A recently released report by the Political Research Associates, a group that monitors the right in America, puts the spotlight on how “public servants are regularly presented with misleading, inflammatory, and dangerous information about the nature of the terror threat.” The report, titled, “Manufacturing the Muslim Menace:  Private Firms, Public Servants, and the Threat to Rights and Security,” examines frames—like “Islam is a terrorist religion,” or “mainstream Muslim-Americans have terrorist ties”—and how they are propagated to law enforcement officers.

These trainings have caught the eye of Senator Joe Lieberman, the chairman of the Senate’s Homeland Security committee, and Senator Susan Collins, a ranking member. A March 29 letter to Attorney General Eric Holder and Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano from the senators reads, in part:  “We are concerned with recent reports that state and local law enforcement agencies are being trained by individuals who not only do not understand the ideology of violent Islamist extremism but also cast aspersions on a wide swath of ordinary Americans merely because of their religious affiliation.”

The letter asks the attorney general to provide a list of grant programs being used to fund counter-terrorism trainings and asks about “improved oversight” of these trainings—demands that mirror the recommendations made in the Political Research Associates’ publication.

AlterNet recently caught up with Thom Cincotta, the author of the report and a Political Research Associates’ staff member, to delve into more detail on this subset of the anti-Muslim cottage industry.

Alex Kane: How did this project come to be?

Thom Cincotta: At the Political Research Associates, we have been, for the past two years, looking at the growth of the domestic security apparatus, particularly how local police have been mobilized to fight terrorism—specifically in new forms of collaborative bodies like intelligence fusion centers and Joint Terrorism Task Forces. This mobilization represents a tremendous, unprecedented growth of our domestic intelligence apparatus, and with the new powers, capabilities and resources at the hands of that bureaucracy, there are risks for our civil liberties.

In examining that infrastructure, we have had an eye out for opportunities for the politicization of intelligence-type policing, and during the course of our investigation into fusion centers, we noticed some courses being offered at the local level. Specifically, in Massachusetts, we noticed that one company called Security Solutions International in May 2009 was offering a seminar on the “radical jihadist threat” that was hosted by the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority. The description of that course included things like the “legal wing of jihad in America,” and that right away set off red flags that this course content might not simply be looking at detecting valid terrorism.

Read the whole piece here.

‘The Palestine Cables’: Obama administration killed off independent U.N. investigation into Israeli war crimes in Gaza

This post, part of the “Palestine Cables” feature I write, originally appeared in Mondoweiss:

It was a shocking event in a twenty-two day assault filled with them:  the Israeli military shelled a United Nations compound in Gaza City January 15, where humanitarian aid like fuel and water pumping stations were stationed as well as hundreds of Palestinians displaced by the Israeli bombardment.  John Ging, the Gaza Director of Operations of the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) described the scene on Democracy Now!

This morning, there were three rounds of white phosphorus which landed in our compound in Gaza. That set ablaze the main warehouse and the big workshop we have there for vehicles. At the time, there were 700, also, people displaced from the fighting. There were full fuel tankers there. The Israeli army have been given all the coordinates of all our facilities, including this one. They also knew that there were fuel tankers laden with fuel in the compound, and they would have known that there were hundreds of people who had taken refuge.

It was one of a number of incidents during “Operation Cast Lead” where the Israeli military attacked United Nations facilities.  But the possibility of an further inquiry that would investigate violations of international law during these attacks was killed following intense U.S. lobbying, according to newly published State Department cables released by WikiLeaks and reported on by Foreign Policy‘s Colum Lynch.  The efforts by the Obama administration to scuttle any investigation is similar to their efforts on the Goldstone report, and shows in detail how the U.S. uses its muscle in international forums to protect Israel.

A report was published in May 2009 on nine incidents where U.N. facilities were attacked by Israel.  The full report was never published, although a summary of the U.N. report stated that the “Government of Israel is responsible for the deaths and injuries that occurred within the United Nations premises” in seven of the nine incidents investigated.

A number of recommendations were made for further follow-up, which included seeking compensation from Israel and seeking public statements from Israel that allegations of Palestinian fighters firing from within UNRWA facilities were unfounded.  The most controversial recommendation included in the report was the call for an “impartial inquiry” into violations of international humanitarian law.  But the possibility of that inquiry was quashed in the cover letter to the summary of the report, written by Ki-Moon.  “As for the Board’s recommendations numbers 10 and 11 [which called for further inquiries], which relate to matters that did not largely fall within the Board of Inquiry’s Terms of Reference, I do not plan any further Inquiry,” Ki-Moon wrote.

And despite Moon’s insistence at a press conference that the work of the board of inquiry was “completely independent,” State Department cables tell a much different story of U.S. pressure on Moon to kill off the possibility of an independent investigation.

Lynch reports:

The most controversial part of the probe involved recommendations by Martin that the U.N. conduct a far-reaching investigation into violations of international humanitarian law by Israeli forces, Hamas, and other Palestinian militants. On May 4, 2009, the day before Martin’s findings were presented to the media, Rice caught wind of the recommendations and phoned Ban to complain that the inquiry had gone beyond the scope of its mandate by recommending a sweeping investigation.

“Given that those recommendations were outside the scope of the Board’s terms of reference, she asked that those two recommendations not be included in the summary of the report that would be transmitted to the membership,” according to an account contained in the May 4 cable. Ban initially resisted. “The Secretary-General said he was constrained in what he could do since the Board of Inquiry is independent; it was their report and recommendations and he could not alter them, he said,” according to the cable.

But Rice persisted, insisting in a subsequent call that Ban should at least “make clear in his cover letter when he transmits the summary to the Security Council that those recommendations exceeded the scope of the terms of reference and no further action is needed.” Ban offered no initial promise. She subsequently drove the point home again, underlining the “importance of having a strong cover letter that made clear that no further action was needed and would close out this issue.”

Ban began to relent, assuring Rice that “his staff was working with an Israeli delegation on the text of the cover letter.”

After completing the cover letter, Ban phoned back Rice to report that he believed “they had arrived at a satisfactory cover letter. Rice thanked the Secretary-General for his exceptional efforts on such a sensitive issue.”

At the following day’s news conference, Ban flat-out rejected Martin’s recommendation for an investigation. While underscoring the board’s independent nature, he made it clear that “it is not my intention to establish any further inquiry.” Although he acknowledged publicly that he had consulted with Israel on the findings, he did not say it had been involved in the preparation of the cover letter killing off the call for an investigation. Instead, he only made a request to the Israelis to pay the U.N. more than $11 million in financial compensation for the damage done to U.N. facilities.

U.S. Treasury: Nothing to see on tax-exempt support for illegal settlements

Investigative journalist and author Grant Smith‘s “Israel Lobby Archive” project gets a response from a Freedom of Information Act request filed in 2007, which asked for access to internal Treasury Department records on programs to stop or investigate charitable funds going to illegal Israeli settlements.  (Read the Institute for Research:  Middle East Policy statement on the response here.)

The department responded, in so many words, that they don’t do anything about it:

Unfortunately, we were unable to locate or identify any responsive records pertaining to:  Internal reports about Treasury Department investigations triggered by public revelations that U.S. charitable funds flows used are used to illegally confiscate Palestinian lands and commit crimes overseas; Meeting minutes of key Treasury Department 0fficials charged with combating money laundering conducted in Israel and the U.S. dealing with the Sasson report money laundering issues especially those with a focus on U.S. divisions of Hadassah, B’nai B’rith and other U.S. organizations managing WZO money laundering.

While the Treasury Department says it has “responsive information pertaining to Treasury Department programs designed to combat U.S. charitable money laundering to the West Bank,” the documents don’t say anything substantive on that topic.  The documents attached to the request consist of already online presidential orders, like the prohibition on transactions with organizations designated by the U.S. as “terrorist” organizations.

But the Treasury Department is doing nothing about the (at least) hundreds of millions of tax-exempt dollars that flow to illegal settlements on occupied land.  It is doing nothing about the New York-based Hebron Fund, which openly raises money for racist, extremist Israeli settlers who make the lives of Palestinians in Hebron hell.  It is doing nothing about Friends of the Ateret Cohanim and Friends of Ir David, who are actively engaged in the colonization of Palestinian land in occupied Jerusalem.

Nothing to see here.

NBC News’ Chief Foreign Correspondent: Arab uprisings worrisome because ‘Arab street is ferociously anti-Israel’

The U.S. establishment, including the corporate media, have been worried about the people’s uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa because, in part, of what it might mean for Israel, as Phil Weiss pointed out last January.  Brian Williams interviewed Richard Engel, NBC News’ chief foreign correspondent, last night to talk about the Arab revolts, and it’s one more example of the Israeli filter that the establishment views the Middle East through.  (Hat tip to As’ad AbuKhalil at his indispensable Angry Arab blog.)

Williams asked:  “Where does this all end?”  Engel’s response speaks volumes:

This whole movement in the Middle East–I’m worried about it, because while people in the region deserve more rights, and they want more rights, and they’re embracing more of the will of the Arab street, well, the will of the Arab street is also ferociously anti-Israel, against Israel.  And there’s many people who believe that if you empower the Arab street, and the Arab street wants to see a war or more justice for the Palestinians, that down the road, three to five years, this could lead to a major war with Israel.  It could also force a negotiated settlement.  But I think over time, this thing ends in Jerusalem

Human Rights Watch: Israel and Palestinian armed groups committed war crimes in latest fighting

Judge Richard Goldstone’s article in the Washington Post continues to attract attention from many different quarters, and has put the question of war crimes committed in Gaza in late 2008 and early 2009 back in the spotlight.  But what hasn’t received nearly enough attention is that the latest round of fighting in the Gaza Strip has resulted in more war crimes, according to a report from Human Rights Watch.

Hamas’ attack on an Israeli school bus “appeared to have deliberately fired at the school bus, a protected civilian object under the laws of war, in an act that amounts to a war crime,” the report reads.

The release from Human Rights Watch also includes details of four investigations they carried out into Israeli violations of the laws of war.  Here’s an excerpt dealing with one investigation:

In the first incident, on April 7, an apparent Israeli missile attack injured an ambulance crew member and damaged an ambulance marked as such while the crew was evacuating two men who had been wounded in an Israeli strike. The attacks occurred near the non-operational Gaza Airport, in the southeastern corner of Gaza, east of the city of Rafah and close to the Egyptian border. Reliable independent security reports said that an Israeli tank had previously fired at the area, wounding two men, and that a helicopter later fired missiles at the area.

The ambulance driver, Musa Obayyed, 35, told Human Rights Watch that the crew received a call at around 5:45 p.m. to evacuate several wounded men from the area. Obayyed said that the area was not in the “buffer zone” near the perimeter fence, where medical crews need to coordinate access in advance by contacting the International Committee of the Red Cross, which then coordinates with the Israeli military.

“The sky was full of different kinds of military aircraft at the time, but we didn’t hesitate, and the area was full of civilians when we arrived,” he said. “We were several meters from an injured man and were just about to get out of the ambulance when an explosion hit next to us.”

The attack injured Hassan al-Hela, 41, a member of the medical crew, in his right forearm, and blew out two of the ambulance’s windows. The crew did not observe what fired at them, but the only Israeli fire reported in the area that afternoon and evening was from tanks and aircraft. There were no reports of Palestinian rocket or mortar fire in the area at the time. Human Rights Watch observed numerous small holes of between three and five millimeters in diameter in the side of the ambulance at the Red Crescent Center in Khirbat al-Adas, where the crew had taken it. The damage appeared consistent with shrapnel from a small missile. Human Rights Watch was not able to examine shrapnel from the strike, but the damage was consistent with small, cubic shrapnel from the aerial drone-launched missiles that Human Rights Watch examined during the 2008-09 Gaza conflict.

Customary laws of war provide that medical units, including paramedics and ambulances, must be respected and protected in all circumstances. Medical workers engaging exclusively in medical work in the presence of combatants do not forfeit their protected status, and only lose their protection if they commit, outside their humanitarian function, acts harmful to the enemy. A deliberate attack on a medical crew or an ambulance being used solely for medical transport would constitute a serious violation of the laws of war, amounting to a war crime.

“The laws of war have protected medical personnel from attack for nearly 150 years,” Whitson said. “Israeli responses to Palestinian attacks cannot show reckless indifference to civilians.”

Read the full release here.

U.S. Congress gets the facts wrong on Goldstone (the sequel)

A Congressional resolution being circulated in response to Judge Richard Goldstone’s Op-Ed in the Washington Post distorts the reality of the report and Goldstone’s article.  That’s no surprise, considering the resolution the House of Representatives passed in 2009 in response to publication of the report.

The Jewish Telegraphic Agency has the story:

A Senate resolution, introduced April 8 by Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) and James Risch (R-Idaho), calls on the U.N. Human Rights Council to “reflect the author’s repudiation of the Goldstone report’s central findings, rescind the report, and reconsider further Council actions with respect to the report’s findings…”

In the U.S. House of Representatives, Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), the chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, is circulating a letter asking colleagues to join her in sponsoring a U.N. accountability act to include language demanding the revocation of the Goldstone report, and withhold the U.S. portion of funds spent on Goldstone’s investigation and its follow-on consequences.

Goldstone’s article did not “repudiate” the report’s “central findings.”  The only change was Goldstone’s claim that, after reviewing “investigations published by the Israeli military,” Israel did not intentionally target civilians, which was only one finding of many made in the U.N. report.  As Goldstone himself told the Associated Press recently, besides the change enunciated in the Post Op-Ed, he has “no reason to believe any part of the report needs to be reconsidered at this time.”  The other authors of the report have also insisted that the report still stands.

There were similar half-truths propagated in response to the publication of the report in November 2009.  In response to the numerous factual errors in the resolution, Judge Goldstone rightly denounced the legislation as “sweeping,” “unfair” and “devoid of truth.”  Congress, though, will only listen to Goldstone when his words confirm their Israel lobby dictated worldview.  The facts matter little.

 

‘The Palestine Cables’: Head of Egypt’s military council was seen as ‘obstacle’ to Israeli blockade of Gaza

This article originally appeared in Mondoweiss:

WikiLeaks has partnered up with the Israeli newspapers Haaretz and Yedioth Ahronoth and the Lebanese outlet Al Akhbar to release over 6,000 State Department cables on Israel. A series of posts on the new cables will be published in Mondoweiss in the coming days as part of the “Palestine Cables” feature.  Read the whole series here.

Israel knows who it likes in Egypt–Omar Suleiman, the former intelligence chief–and who it doesn’t, like the current head of the ruling Egyptian Higher Military Council Mohamad Hussain Tantawi.

Haaretz publishes a report on a cable detailing Israel’s complaints about Tantawi:

IDF officers complained to their American counterparts in November 2009 that Gen. Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, Egypt’s defense minister at the time and the current leader of the ruling military council, was “an obstacle” to the efforts to counter arms smuggling to Gaza through Sinai. The comments came during a meeting held as part of U.S.-Israel strategic dialogue.

The significance of the cable lies in what it may portend for the future of Egyptian-Israeli relations in the post-Mubarak era.  Publication of the cable comes in the midst of the most heavy Israeli attack on the Gaza Strip since “Operation Cast Lead,” and a large Palestine solidarity demonstration in response at the Israeli embassy in Giza, Cairo.

The ongoing demonstration at the embassy reflects the Egyptian populace’s overwhelming opposition to the Israeli occupation and the siege of Gaza.  But under Hosni Mubarak, Egypt has been Israel’s chief regional partner in enforcing the crippling four-year-long blockade of the Gaza Strip.

Since Mubarak’s overthrow in February, a looming question has been to what extent the Egyptian government and military would continue to enforce a blockade that the vast majority of their population detests.  The cable makes clear that there is some tension between the Egyptian and Israeli militaries.

What that may mean for the blockade of Gaza remains to be seen, but there have been mixed signals so far from Egypt’s military.  While a delegation calling itself “Tahrir 4 Gaza” managed to bring in a symbolic bag of cement–the “first bag of cement not approved by Israel” and that hadn’t come through smuggling tunnels, according to a press release–the delegation had to contend with a recalcitrant Egyptian military.  Posts by activists on tahrir4gaza.net claimed that the military, beforehand, pressured them to “reschedule the event,” and that authorities warned bus companies against transporting delegation members to the border.

Currently, only 300 Palestinians are allowed to leave Gaza daily through the Rafah crossing, and the Palestinian Ma’an News Agency reported March 6 that “getting out of Gaza is harder than ever.” The agency stated that the “blacklist” — Palestinians who are banned from entering Egypt — “has got longer since the Egyptian revolution, quashing hopes that the new regime would lift the siege.”

I recently spoke with Nadia Hijab, senior fellow at the Institute for Palestine Studies, to get her take:

Israel has been hoping to rid itself of responsibility for Gaza for “a long time now, and I would think that the military would be very aware of that,” said Hijab. “The military will probably walk a fine line between loosening up the blockade without inheriting Gaza.”

Noura Erakat, a Palestinian attorney and analyst, had this to say on the future of the blockade:

“Given the considersations that this new regime will have, and the threats that it will face, it can’t [decide to lift the blockade] in a vacuum.” Those threats include Israel’s powerful military as well as the possibilities of strict conditions on or cuts to U.S. military aid. The worst-case scenario, according to Erekat, could be Israeli forces threatening to police the border themselves on the Egytian side.

The cable on Tantawi isn’t conclusive at all.  But if things weren’t smooth sailing between Israel and Egypt’s respective military commands in 2009, what will happen now if a truly democratic Egypt asserts itself in the region and charts a somewhat more independent course?

Jewish left continues to take on the Simon Wiesenthal Center

This article originally appeared in Mondoweiss:

Protesters outside the Simon Wiesenthal Center in New York City. (Photo: Bud Korotzer)

A coalition of progressive Jewish organizations on both coasts yesterday slammed the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s honoring of the civil rights-era Freedom Riders while “engaging in anti-Muslim bigotry that is no less destructive than that against which the Freedom Riders protested,” as Alan Levine, a New York activist and civil rights lawyer who worked in Mississippi in 1964 and 1965, put it in a press statement.

Simultaneously, Jewish peace groups, Palestine solidarity groups and the Islamic Shura Council of Southern California held a protest against the Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles. The central demand of the protests was for the center, which runs the Museum of Tolerance, to be “a voice for justice on behalf of the Muslim community,” instead of a voice disrespecting Muslims.

It was the latest action to try and turn the heat up on the Simon Wiesenthal Center, which came out against the Park 51 Muslim community center and is building a Jerusalem branch of its Museum of Tolerance on top of a historic Muslim cemetery.

Jews Against Islamophobia, a coalition consisting of Jews Say No!, Jewish Voice for Peace, Jews for Racial and Economic Justice and American Jews for a Just Peace, has targeted the Simon Wiesenthal Center since mid-September. The coalition has conducted frequent demonstrations outside the Museum of Tolerance, holding up signs calling out the center’s “hypocrisy” and passing out flyers to passer-bys and those going into the museum.

Rabbi Marvin Hier, the founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, appeared on Fox News last August to say that the location of the proposed center, known as Park 51, was “insensitive.” The executive director of the center, which describes itself as a Jewish organization that “promotes human rights and dignity,” expressed similar sentiments to Crain’s New York Business.

The protests highlight the split within the American Jewish community over Park 51 and Islamophobia. For instance, Marc Tracy of Tablet pointed out last August that “out of the [Marist] pool of registered New York City voters, only 20 percent of Jews approve of the center, while 71 percent oppose it.”

In interviews, members of the coalition say their aim is to highlight alternative Jewish voices against Islamophobia and in support of the Park 51 project as well as attempt to pressure the center to reverse what they say is a hypocritical position. “As much as [mainstream Jewish organizations] want to marginalize others in the Jewish community, I think there are lots and lots of Jews who stand for the principles of justice together with other communities,” said Donna Nevel, a member of Jews Say No!

The coalition’s actions are meant to “let institutions such as the Wiesenthal Center know that they can’t get away with Islamophobic and anti-Arab racist comments and just assume that there’s not going to be any pushback,” said Jon Moscow, a leading member of Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, a New York City-based social justice organization. Jewish groups’ opposition to Park 51 shows a “real misunderstanding of Jewish history in America, and to use the old phrase, ‘what’s good for the Jews,’” Moscow said.

In an emailed statement, the Simon Wiesenthal Center said that “the issue is not the right to build the Islamic Center, but one of sensitivity by religious leaders to the suffering of innocents. The Simon Wiesenthal Center believes that the feelings of the families of the victims of the 9/11 attacks are paramount.” The statement went on, saying, “if the families agree to the Islamic Center’s proposed location, fine; if they ask that it be moved, we would hope that the organizers would be sensitive to those feelings and move the location elsewhere in Manhattan.”

Those involved with Jews Against Islamophobia are also highlighting the connection between Islamophobia here and abroad by denouncing the Simon Wiesenthal Center for the building of a Museum of Tolerance on top of the Islamic Mamilla cemetery in Jerusalem. The Center for Constitutional Rights, which has filed a petition with several international bodies to halt construction of the museum, says the project has resulted in the “disinterment of hundreds of graves.”

A three-part investigation by the Israeli daily Haaretz documented the building of the museum, reporting that “hundreds of skeletons that were buried in Jerusalem’s central Muslim cemetery over a period of some 1,000 years” were “cleared away from the site swiftly and clandestinely during five grueling months of nonstop work.”

Rebecca Vilkomerson, the executive director of Jewish Voice for Peace, says that the Wiesenthal Center is using the word “tolerance as a fig leave, to engage in behavior that is anything but tolerant. There is a sort of fetishization of Jewish victim hood, but it doesn’t translate into identifying other forms of oppression, such as Islamophobia. In fact, by opposing Park 51, they are engaging in Islamophobia themselves.”

Vilkomerson says that given the history of discrimination against Jews in the U.S. and Jewish struggles in solidarity with other marginalized groups, the Jewish community should be standing firm against Islamophobia.

“It’s ‘never again’ for everyone, not just ‘never again’ for us. Therefore, its our responsibility to speak out when other groups are being targeted.”

Israeli spin on Goldstone Op-Ed doesn’t hold up

It is dizzying to watch the Israeli government and its supporters spin the substance of Judge Richard Goldstone’s column in the Washington Post yesterday.  A closer look at the column, and the Goldstone report itself, shows that the propaganda being churned out by the Netanyahu government is self-serving, misleading and patently false.

Ehud Barak, the Israeli defense minister, thinks that Goldstone should retract the entire report.  Likewise, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has pledged to launch an “international campaign to persuade the United Nations to retract the Goldstone Commission’s damning report,” according to Haaretz. Noah Pollak, the executive director of the neoconservative Emergency Committee for Israel, writes on Twitter that Goldstone has “retracted much of his report.”  Jonathan Tobin at Commentary comments that “the former judge admitted that his report was wrong.”

These claims don’t come anywhere close to what Judge Goldstone actually wrote in his column.  The main point of recantation occurs when Goldstone writes (my emphasis):

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.

The Israeli military investigations have led Goldstone to say that “if I had known then what I know now, the Goldstone Report would have been a different document.”

So yes, Goldstone’s Op-Ed in the Post recants a central, and damning, claim that his report made:  that “Israeli armed forces had carried out direct intentional strikes against civilians” in incidents examined in detail by his team.  But nowhere in his column does he imply that his entire report should be refuted–exactly the claim Israel’s propagandists are now making.

The full scope of his report is no less damning then the “intentionality” allegation Goldstone is now backtracking on.  Here are some of the most important findings in the U.N. report that Goldstone did not recant:

-The aim of the destruction of the el-Bader flour mill was to “destroy the local capacity to produce flour…From the facts ascertained by it, the Mission finds that the destruction of the mill was carried out for the purpose of denying sustenance to the civilian population, which is a violation of customary international law as reflected in article 54 (2) of Additional Protocol I and may constitute a war crime” (page 199).

-The “Israeli armed forces launched direct attacks against residential houses, destroying them,” and “the conduct of the Israeli armed forces in these cases amounted to the grave breach of ‘extensive destruction… of property, not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly’ under article 147 of the Fourth Geneva Convention” (pages 212, 214).

-”The systematic destruction of food production, water services and construction industries was related to the overall policy of disproportionate destruction of a significant part of Gaza’s infrastructure” (page 218).

-”The Mission finds that Messrs. Majdi Abd Rabbo, Abbas Ahmad Ibrahim Halawa, Mahmoud Abd Rabbo al-Ajrami and AD/03 were captured by the Israeli armed forces while they were in their homes, in some cases together with their families, and were then forced at gunpoint to search houses together with the Israeli armed forces. The Mission also finds on the basis of those facts that they were all subject to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment during their captivity…The Mission also finds that the intentional use as human shields of those whose accounts are presented above qualifies as inhuman treatment of and wilfully causing great suffering to protected persons under the Fourth Geneva Convention. As such, the Mission considers the conduct of the Israeli armed forces in relation to such persons to amount to grave breaches of the
said Convention. The use of human shields is also a war crime under article 8 (2) (b) (xxiii) of the Rome Statute” (pages 229, 232).

-”The Mission considers that the severe beatings, constant humiliating and degrading treatment and detention in foul conditions allegedly suffered by individuals in the Gaza Strip under the control of the Israelis and in detention in Israel, would constitute torture, and a grave breach under article 147 of the Fourth Geneva Convention and a violation of the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. Such violations also constitute war crimes” (page 249).

-”The restrictions imposed by Israel on the imports to and exports from the Gaza Strip through the border crossings as well as the naval and airspace blockade have had a severe impact on the availability and accessibility of a whole range of goods and services necessary for the people of Gaza to enjoy their human rights. Their already eroded ability to access and buy basic goods was compounded by the effects of the four-week Israeli military campaign, which further restricted access to those essential items and destroyed goods, land, facilities and infrastructure vital for the enjoyment of their fundamental rights. In conjunction, the blockade and the military hostilities have created a situation in which most people are destitute. Women and children have been particularly affected. The current situation has been described as a crisis of human dignity…

The facts ascertained by the Mission, the conditions resulting from the deliberate actions of the Israeli armed forces and the declared policies of the Israeli Government – as they were presented by its authorized representatives – with regard to the Gaza Strip before, during and after the military operation, cumulatively indicate the intention to inflict collective punishment on the people of the Gaza Strip. The Mission, therefore, finds a violation of the provisions of article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention” (pages 259, 283).

Goldstone’s entire report matters deeply, and represents a thorough documentation of Israeli, and Palestinian, war crimes and the context in which they occurred.  That is why there is a desperate attempt to use Goldstone’s article as an full exoneration of the Israeli military’s conduct during the war.

For those crowing about a “refutation” of the entire report and the need for the judge to retract it, a full reading of the document is in order.