Congress, Accountability, and the Goldstone Report

I have been to the Gaza Strip twice and southern Israel once since the 2008-09 war, where I had the opportunity to listen to accounts from both people about what had happened to them during that time. Israelis showed me thickly walled rooms that act as bomb shelters and explained air raid siren systems in Sderot and Ashqelon. As difficult as their situation was, nothing could have prepared me for the level of destruction I found in Gaza. I walked through bombed-out buildings like the United Nation's food and aid storage facility and the children's ward of al-Quds hospital and heard stories from people who had lost families and homes. The entire territory seemed to have been razed to the ground.

I imagine that Judge Goldstone had a similar experience in Gaza where he and his team visited with survivors while conducting the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict. "It was a very difficult investigation which will give me nightmares for the rest of my life," he said in a television interview last week.

The human rights framework is critical for all parties involved to move forward in the wake of operation "Cast Lead"--and that's precisely what Goldstone's report provided to the United Nation's Human Rights Council. The council overwhelmingly voted to endorse the mission's recommendations. Now members of the U.S. House of Representatives have pushed to bury that report for good in a fast-track vote that passed 344 to 36.

Many of its critics have called the report "unbalanced" (the House Resolution uses the term "irredeemably biased"). Actually, the report was far more "balanced" than the war--it found Palestinian groups had violated international law as well as Israel. The war itself was terribly unbalanced in terms of disproportionate loss of life and livelihood. Palestinian militants killed nine Israelis, including three civilians, during the three-week conflict. While these actions should be condemned roundly, so should the actions of the Israeli military that cost at least 1,300 Palestinians in Gaza--the majority of whom were civilians--their lives. Despite all the attacks on the messenger, no one has claimed that any allegation in the report is actually false.

Congress--and all Americans for that matter--should welcome each and every investigation of human rights violations, wherever and by whomever they may have been committed. In this particular case, we provide $3 billion annually for weapons and military equipment to one of the two parties (Israel) alleged to have used those weapons illegally. We have more responsibility than any other country to ensure that serious investigations are undertaken.

Upholding the Goldstone Report in no way prevents the Israeli government from conducting an internal investigation--and they should do just that. Knesset member Yuli Tamir expressed the necessity of accountable reporting after events such as the last war with Gaza while speaking on a panel in Washington last week. "We should have had an inquiry," she said, "we will, but it will be too little, too late, and not trusted because it is coming after international pressure." Israeli human rights groups such as B'Tselem and international organizations like Human Rights Watch have already published their reports on the war.

There is obviously a lot at stake for both Israel and the Palestinians in the wake of the most violent actions against the occupied territories since the occupation itself in 1967. Another round of peace talks is about to take place, with the U.S. again taking up the part of the "honest broker". Dismissing much of what happened in Gaza will do little to earn us any respect in that role and has the potential to seriously upset that process.

 

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Comments

[Tasies]

Ultimately, the Palestinians have the trump card, that's why they should only negotiate under the terms of a return to the 1967 borders. Israel is displaying a very very dumb approach that ultimately undermines its very existence. The Palestinian population will engulf Israel. Israel will turn into "Eretz" Palestine. Not even Israel's veil attempt at Palestinian population control and annexation will prevent this.

[Rubiconski]

This is heinous.

Every single individual in the house that voted to condemn this report should be immediately thrown out of congress.

I guess congress thinks it's ok to burn the flesh of children.

[Inoku]

This resolution has nothing to do with burning the flesh of children, and everything to do with treating a libelous, factually and methodologically faulty "report" like the waste of paper it is.

I am personally ashamed that my Congressman only voted "Present" and refused to put his name on this resolution. I'm writing and calling his office today to express my anger at his spinelessness.

[GalenL]

So if there was a factually accurate report that said that both IDF and Hamas should be investigated for war crimes you would support it... ?

[Ergon]

THE BOMBS THAT BOMBED THE FLESH OF CHILDREN WERE AUTHORISED BY THIS SPINELESS CONGRESS.

[Mypatrushka]

Snapshot U.S. 2009: who owns our government?
What are we, the people going to do about it?

I was in Gaza in March. I saw the destruction, the desperation in the lives of the Palestinians, their need, their honor, their empty houses where once children lived and played, now dead. My heart broke. I could not speak about it for two weeks after while at home. To deny the atrocities that the Zionists in Israel committed, has committed since 1948, in the occupied territories of Palestine is inhumane. Victimhood seems to be very profitable for those who profess that they all died between 1938 and 1945. The denial of the Goldstone report by our House of Reps. is incredible! How can they look at themselves in the mirror? I will personally write them a hand written letter telling them of their sellout. I wonder how much each of them charge.

[StCuthbert]

"Despite all the attacks on the messenger, no one has claimed that any allegation in the report is actually false."

Actually, they have. Many of the Palestinian eyewitnesses have proven in the past to be unreliable, but the Goldstone report takes them at their word. One of them was the originator of the "sex gum" story a few months ago.

"Upholding the Goldstone Report in no way prevents the Israeli government from conducting an internal investigation--and they should do just that."

Israel has. Several times. But no one believes them because Israel has already determined to be guilty in the court of public opinion so nothing their investigations come up with could possibly be the truth.

[Ergon]

Israelis on the other hand are always truthful and filled with the milk of human kindness.