By Jimmy Leas and Noura Erakat
The 344-36 House vote last week condemning the Goldstone Report, which encourages Israel and Hamas to conduct "credible" independent investigations of war crimes committed in Gaza, may help Israeli leaders avoid prosecution in the short-term. However, the House vote and the negative US votes at the UN will have long-term detrimental effects both on Israel and on the U.S.'s moral authority.
Consider that within the General Assembly, 110 nations endorsed the Report, while the U.S. was among the minority of 18 nations that voted against the endorsement. The Congressional vote will increase the likelihood of a worldwide campaign to push the UN General Assembly, the International Criminal Court, or other countries, under universal jurisdiction, to hold Israel to account for war crimes committed in Gaza.
Self-defense is of utmost concern because self-defense was a central element of Israel's ongoing argument for the war and is the heart of the U.S.'s rejection of Goldstone. Israeli officials have featured that claim in every forum leading up to Operation Cast Lead's pummeling strikes. It was Israel's justification in its letter to the UN Secretary General when Israeli State officials announced the war on December 27, 2008. It was the main theme of Netanyahu's recent speeches to the General Assembly and to the Knesset. It was the main theme of the most recent House Resolution. It will be the U.S.'s main reason to veto the forthcoming Security Council vote. The self-defense claim is not just a matter of public relations; it is essential. Absent self-defense, political and military officials in Israel are subject to charges that go beyond those in the Goldstone Report, including, but not limited to, the crime of war of aggression.
However, the self-defense claim propagated by Israeli and U.S. politicians since the initiation of Operation Cast Lead is inconsistent with both the facts and the law. Within weeks of entering into the Egyptian-brokered ceasefire agreement, Hamas rocket fire had come to a halt. According to the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the ceasefire was so successful that it brought "normal life and "calm" back to Israeli towns near Gaza. In an article posted on July 27, 2008, the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs even lauds Hamas, stating:
Publicly, Hamas leaders have stated time and again that the lull is a Palestinian national interest. On several occasions, Hamas members have arrested Fatah operatives who were involved in firing at Israel and confiscated their arms.
Calm prevailed for four months until Israeli forces broke the ceasefire agreement on November 4, 2008. While the world's gaze turned to one of the U.S.'s most historic elections that day, Israel launched an armed incursion into Gaza, accompanied by aerial bombing, killing six Hamas members and catapulting the region into a renewed wave of violent hostilities. Hamas rocket fire immediately followed the Israeli attack. Two weeks later Israel's largest circulation paper quoted Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak admitting that "the recent waves of rocket attacks are a result of our operations, which have resulted in the killing of twenty Hamas gunmen." Barak's admission, consistent with the fact that Israel broke the ceasefire, makes Israel's self-defense claim baseless.
Still, Hamas offered to reinstate and extend the ceasefire a month later on December 23, 2008. Israel refused, ducking the chance to reach a diplomatic agreement that would have again ended rocket fire and brought the security desired by Israel. Instead, Israel chose massive escalation and four days later launched a gruesome aerial offensive against Gaza.
On the Offensive's 17th day, Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Livni boasted that Israel was "going wild-and this is a good thing." The targeting of civilians described in the Goldstone Report seems to corroborate this Israeli attitude as Israeli forces attacked targets in Gaza that had nothing to do with Israel's stated military objective of stopping rocket fire. Israeli forces targeted schools, hospitals, factories, agricultural land, the only flour mill in Gaza, an egg farm, thousands of private homes, government buildings, and Palestinian civilians.
The Goldstone Report concluded:
While the Israeli Government has sought to portray its operations as essentially a response to rocket attacks in the exercise of its right to self-defence, the Mission considers the plan to have been directed, at least in part, at a different target: the people of Gaza as a whole.(Goldstone par. 1883)
A central element of the law of self-defense, as well as the laws regarding the conduct of war once started, is one unequivocal standard around which no controversy exists: the prohibition on targeting civilians and civilian infrastructure. As demonstrated not only by the Goldstone Report, but also in reports by Israeli soldiers who participated in Operation Cast Lead and reports by Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, Physicians for Human Rights-Israel, and the National Lawyers Guild, Israeli forces directly targeted civilians and civilian infrastructure during its 22-day offensive. Even if Israel had not itself broken the ceasefire, its legal argument for self-defense would therefore be ineffective. Israel's only rebuttal to these charges was a military investigation conducted by the Israeli Army itself. But that self-serving investigation was nearly unanimously condemned as lacking independence and impartiality (see PDF).
Thus, neither the facts nor the law support an Israeli self-defense claim. Rather than condemn Israel's act of aggression and its ongoing occupation and blockade of the Gaza Strip, Congress added its name to a pungent piece of manipulative delusion: that Israel's onslaught of Gaza constituted an act of self-defense. The House is now on record disavowing international law and international accountability mechanisms. People around the world will be persuaded that protests, boycotts, and divestment campaigns are all the more necessary, and they will look to places outside the US political establishment for justice.
Noura Erakat is a Palestinian-American attorney and James Marc Leas is a Jewish-American attorney, and both participated in the National Lawyers Guild delegation to Gaza in February.
If the reason was not self defense, what was the reason?
Things happened that were criminal even if one assumes for the sake of argument.
Rabbi Manis Friedman, a member of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement which is well represented in the West Bank, had this to say:
“I don’t believe in western morality, i.e. don’t kill civilians or children, don’t destroy holy sites, don’t fight during holiday seasons, don’t bomb cemeteries, don’t shoot until they shoot first because it is immoral.
“The only way to fight a moral war is the Jewish way: Destroy their holy sites. Kill men, women and children (and cattle).”
Rabbi Yitzhak Shapiro, who heads the Od Yosef Chai Yeshiva in the Yitzhar settlement, wrote in his book "The King's Torah" that even babies and children can be killed if they pose a threat to the nation.
Shapiro based the majority of his teachings on passages quoted from the Bible, to which he adds his opinions and beliefs.
"It is permissable to kill the Righteous among Nations even if they are not responsible for the threatening situation," he wrote, adding: "If we kill a Gentile who has sinned or has violated one of the seven commandments - because we care about the commandments - there is nothing wrong with the murder."
NONE
Do you believe that ALL Israelis or all Jews think alike?
How many times am I permitted to shoot unsuccessfully at members of your family before you'll take action to stop me?
Somehow I suspect the number is lower than that of the number of missiles fired into Israel by Hamas
2. Are you aware of the collective punishment inflicted on Gaza's 1.5 million residents subject to a humanitarian blockade since June 2007?
3. Israel achieved cessation of rocket fire by diplomatic means--a more successful measure than any military operation?
4. Even if it fired back Rand--no Army has the right to deliberately target civilians as the Israeli Army did, see http://www.lawrecord.com/files/36-rutgers-l.-rec.-164.pdf
2) I am. And I think it's disgraceful (I am NOT part of the "Israel is always right" crowd)
3) Lessening is NOT cessation: I'll only shoot at your child once this week, instead of every day. Are you alright with that?
4) Anyone who deliberately targeted civilians ON EITHER SIDE should be treated as a war criminal. One problem, though, is determining just what constitutes a civilian target: According to the UN report Israel targeted civilians when it fired on a home from which Hamas had been firing rockets from the roof. I'd have to count instances such as that as firing on a legitimate military target
2. Are you aware that the Gazan population voted Hamas into power? That democracy has consequences? If the American populace votes a president into power and he starts a war, that war is our war, not his alone.
3. Israel achieved a lessening of rocket fire, not a cessation. That's a big difference for people in Sderot.
4. No army has the right to hide among civilians either, and this is exactly what Hamas did. It hid among civilians, so Israel was forced to attack among civilians. Civilian casualties are the fault of Hamas, for cowardly hiding among noncombatants, not the fault of Israel, who cannot put their soldiers in constant mortal peril when they have the technology to safely attack military targets while minimizing civilian casualties. Or have you never heard of the Israeli policy of re-aiming missiles in mid-flight if it becomes obvious that too many civilians will be harmed?
You could make a case for targetting the IDF, which would be an act of guerilla warfare, but there is no excuse for willful murder
"If one needs to reduce my point to a single sentence, one can try this: "if you constantly cheer on one war after the next that results in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent human beings and the extreme suffering of millions more (as Brooks has done -- beyond Iraq and Afghanistan -- and continues to do), then you can't coherently claim that the targets of your wars have a unique disregard for human life; that they -- but not you -- "don’t see others as fully human"; that they -- but not you -- "cause incredible amounts of suffering"; and that they -- but not you -- "come to believe others can be blamelessly murdered and that, in fact, it is admirable to do so.""
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2009/11/10/brooks/index.html
six months ago there were very few reports on afghanistan in huffpo and the few there only had a few comments.
not so today.
a few months from now after the only arguments that are levied against the goldstone report are that it is "biased" and "flawed" without giving any substantive complaints people will get wind of what is actually in the report . They will be outraged by the brutality and wanton attacks aimed at civilian populations. or they will continue to buy what they have been spoon fed.
They exhibit two tendencies: One, is that they are completely uniformed on world affairs.
The other, is they fear becoming hamstrung by the Zionist power machine that will work to destroy them.
Congress needs to recognize that the moral authority of the US is badly damaged with support like this.
110 countries endorse the report, 18 oppose.
In which group would you like to live?
I live in the United States and am very content to live here and voice my support against the continued Israel occupation, which does not help this country in any way.
Israel is losing credibility with the US public at this point, so they need to be worried about their government leaders as they continue to destroy Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem, continue to oppress & kill Palestinians, disrespect the rule of law, and disrespect the United States intentions for a practical peace plan.
Imagine if Iranian bulldozers began to steamroll into Tel Aviv and crush everything in it's path, but they had a grand mission from the Ayatollah that this was their promised land. Would you stop and think, the death of the Jews, bulldozed from their homes, was reasonable, since the Iranian leaders said it to be so?
The question is often asked, is it good for the Jews? But, you should consider what has happened to Jews sincerity for justice and humanity, and the basic principles of international law and human rights of civilians.
It must be nice to be a Palestinian, and not be responsible for anything, ever. But the truth remains that Israel left the Gaza strip 100% in 2005 and instead of building a model society, or even a functioning one, the Palestinians built Hamastan and re-dedicated themselves to killing Israelis. The rockets have pretty much stopped since the operation Cast Lead, so I would call this operation a success. The authors are not helping the Palestinians by being their apologists, but are instead are perpetuating their misery by telling them that they are not responsible for their own bad judgment, that they will never have to compromise on anything.
It is time to end this drama by reattaching Gaza to Egypt. The Palestinians have proven that they can't run their own affairs. Its over.
Name ONE Israeli who would be willing to trade places with the Palestinians.
Would YOU be willing to live the way Palestinians (guilty OR innocent) are forced to? With no freedom of movement, no rights in an Israeli courtroom, with the possibility hanging over your head that you could be evicted from your own house and have all your belongings flung out into the streets, or having your house bulldozed to the ground.
or having your land confiscated, your trees burned down, being threatened by settlers while the police look on and do nothing, havin your wells poisoned, having your children have to walk through a gauntlet of hatred and taunts from a mob going to and from school -- if they can get there at all.
Having to deal with food rationing, and water rationing, while you watch settlers with lush lawns and swimming pools. (It sounds like a Survivor show from hell.)
I saw one Palestinian child -- no more than 11or 12, who had seen his friends, who had taken cover from an IDF tank in a mosque, killed when the tank opened fire on the mosque. He would have died also had he not gone out to see if the coast was clear.
This boy was so 'thrilled' to be a Palestinian that he wanted to die-- to go to a better world. That's how "nice" it was for this young boy to be a
But, thanks to brave souls such as Noura Erakat and others, the truth will be heard! There is no easy solution, but we MUST not accept the abuse of human rights such as access to water, healthcare, education, work and life which is happening right now thanks to the illegal occupation by Israel.
Here's a question for the critics: Please avoid the name calling and tag lines when answering:
What do you have to say when Israelies, rabbis and organizations such as Jewish Voices for Peace and the Israeli Coalition Against Housing Demolitions and many others all agree that Israel must be held accountable for abusive human rights violations.
Salaam, Shalom and Peace,
The fact that many Israelis are willing to be self critical and address their problems with dealing with the death of many palestinian civilians validates the Israel peoples strong moral compass. On the other hand, you don't seem to find too many Palestinians and/or their supporters who advocate holding Palestinian's accountable for their abuses.
But how is it that this Israeli government got elected, then, and why is there not more pressure on the government to freeze settlements and start REAL negotiations -- you know, the kind that lead to agreements?
This government, as far as I can make out, is not willing to compromise on the settlements, East Jerusalem, the Right of Return, resources (particularly water) -- they want concessions from the Palestinians on ALL these issues, and are basically saying-- take it or leave it.
That's not a negotiation, it's an ultimatum.
thank you . . you are so right . . .
"Thus, neither the facts nor the law support an Israeli self-defense claim. Rather than condemn Israel's act of aggression and its ongoing occupation and blockade of the Gaza Strip, Congress added its name to a pungent piece of manipulative delusion: that Israel's onslaught of Gaza constituted an act of self-defense. The House is now on record disavowing international law and international accountability mechanisms. People around the world will be persuaded that protests, boycotts, and divestment campaigns are all the more necessary, and they will look to places outside the US political establishment for justice."
protests, boycotts, divestment all have to begin in earnest . . . the US political establishment is a disgrace . . .
What moral authority. The near total destruction of Iraq for no particular reason and the collective punishment of Lebanon and Gaza clearly demonstrate that neither the U.S. nor Israel has any moral authority.
Hamas legislators marked the 2008 Christmas season by passing a Shari'a criminal code for the Palestinian Authority. Among other things, it legalizes crucifixion of christians and other non-islamic believers...
Now tell us again why our Congress should support Hamas?
That's the baloney the anti-Palestinian media echo chamber puts out. If Hamas is so gung-ho for Sharia law, why did they kill the radical Salafi cleric promoting it?
It's a sad day for the US Congress's negating themselves of any moral, decent or humane response to the atrocities committed by the IDF upon the Palestinian families in Gaza. Noura, you are surely correct that the vacuum left by the Congress & (I think) the Obama adm as well will be filled by others in worldwide protests, the BDS movement & further examination by the international media of Israeli violence. Even in the USA at universities & other public forums, Israeli figures like Olmert are finding their reception less than welcoming. Gaza, the attack, its aftermath & the seige have created a momentum in the world that the US Congress won't be able to hold back no matter how many resolutions are passed.