Almost a week after the UN General Assembly speeches by various heads of state, where one statement after another was dissected and laid bare by the thousands of reporters and analysts covering the annual plenary session, one speech has almost universally been ignored. And something rankles.
"Have you no shame," thundered Benjamin Netanyahu to the throngs of senior diplomats, heads of state and assorted dignitaries watching the Israeli prime minister admonish those who remained in the room when Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad delivered his speech a day earlier.
Shame, indeed. This, from the leader of a nation that has a pitiful human rights record, standing accused by a United Nations body for War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity. A country that has an illicit stash of weapons of mass destruction which it refuses to subject to international scrutiny of any sort. A state whose very existence seems possible only through the systemic persecution of the non-Jewish population under its protection.
Break down Netanyahu's speech and you have more fiction than fact, albeit fiction that has very adeptly been spun by successive Israeli governments into the lexicon of our political language.
"For eight long years, Hamas fired from Gaza thousands of missiles, mortars and rockets on nearby Israeli cities. Year after year, as these missiles were deliberately hurled at our civilians, not a single UN resolution was passed condemning those criminal attacks," accused Netanyahu, before the very audience he scorned in his speech.
Fact: Between 2005 and 2007, Palestinian groups in Gaza fired about 2,700 rockets into Israel. Israel fired more than 14,600 artillery shells into Gaza during this same period, a statistic Israeli government officials always seem to omit.
But the essence of Netanyahu's fiction remains that Palestinians, and specifically the resistance group Hamas, are the ones who initiate armed conflict.
In a far-reaching and exhaustive study of the issue, MIT Scientist Nancy Kanwisher tracked the entire timeline of killings of Palestinians and Israelis by the other between September 2000 and October 2008. In an article right here on the Huffington Post, she draws some telling conclusions about ceasefires, lulls in conflict, and resumption of hostilities between the two sides:
"It is overwhelmingly Israel that kills first after a pause in the conflict: 79% of all conflict pauses were interrupted when Israel killed a Palestinian, while only 8% were interrupted by Palestinian attacks (the remaining 13% were interrupted by both sides on the same day). In addition, we found that this pattern -- in which Israel is more likely than Palestine to kill first after a conflict pause -- becomes more pronounced for longer conflict pauses. Indeed, of the 25 periods of nonviolence lasting longer than a week, Israel unilaterally interrupted 24, or 96%, and it unilaterally interrupted 100% of the 14 periods of nonviolence lasting longer than 9 days."
Kanwisher's data goes on to contest the assumption popular with American and Israeli politicians that Hamas broke the ceasefire leading up to Israel's brutal December 2008 Gaza onslaught:
"The ceasefire was remarkably effective: after it began in June 2008, the rate of rocket and mortar fire from Gaza dropped to almost zero, and stayed there for four straight months...what happened to end this striking period of peace? On November 4th, Israel killed a Palestinian, an event that was followed by a volley of mortars fired from Gaza. Immediately after that, an Israeli air strike killed six more Palestinians. Then a massive barrage of rockets was unleashed, leading to the end of the ceasefire."
But Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu was just getting started, and with all the righteous indignation he could muster, proclaimed: "In 2005, hoping to advance peace, Israel unilaterally withdrew from every inch of Gaza."
Oh. The withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza had nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that the Gaza Strip, one of the most densely populated territories in the world, had become an impoverished hell-hole that nobody wanted to deal with - or that daily confrontations with Palestinian resistance groups and, well, school kids hurling rocks, had taken a toll on the battered Israeli Defense Forces. "Disengagement" from Gaza achieved several other objectives too. It reduced the growing non-Jewish demographic problem for Israel, and freed up resources to focus on carving up the West Bank and significantly increasing the population of Jewish settlers there.
But again, the devil is in the details. Lost in the media euphoria over Israeli troops rolling out of occupied Palestinian territory, a vital fact was overlooked: the occupation of Gaza never actually ended. According to the United Nations, the US State Department, Amnesty International and a whole slew of other NGOs, Israel is the occupying power in the Gaza Strip. It "retains sole control of Gaza's airspace and territorial waters and does not allow any movement of people or goods in or out of Gaza via air or sea," says Amnesty International. And we have seen how often and easily the IDF tanks roll in and out at will.
Back at the General Assembly podium, Netanyahu's fiction-spinning tirade was reaching a fevered pitch - the crux of his message, the thing that Israel most fears. Understand now, that the Jewish state's raison d'etre has always been based on the mass persecution and genocide of Jews by Nazi Germany - the nation was a gift, so to speak, to the victims who deserved a break. So what would happen if, even for an instant, the entire international community catches a view of Israel outside the parameters of victimhood, an image, if shattered, that could undermine its very premise as a safe haven for the persecuted?
Never say. Netanyahu's two-fold mission at the UN last Thursday was firstly to whip up animosity against Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his alleged nuclear weaponization program, and secondly, to neutralize the damaging effects of the Goldstone Report on Israel's three-week military adventure into the Gaza Strip earlier this year.
Selected by the UN High Commission for Human Rights to conduct an investigation into "Operation Cast Lead," Israel's code name for the Gaza War, Richard Goldstone was ideal for the role in part because he is a Jew, an acknowledged Zionist, and importantly, the well-respected former chief prosecutor of the United Nations International Criminal Tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia. In other words, beyond reproach.
In a September 15 press release introducing his 574-page report, Justice Goldstone concluded that "Israel committed actions amounting to war crimes, and possibly crimes against humanity."
Netanyahu at the UN: "Faced with such a clear case of aggressor and victim, who did the UN Human Rights Council decide to condemn? Israel."
He fails to mention that given ample opportunity to participate in the investigation, his government not only refused, but also denied the Mission access to both Israel and the West Bank for interviews related to the inquiry. Palestinian authorities in both the West Bank and Gaza cooperated.
The damning parts of the report undermine entirely Israel's assertions to the international community about its conflict with Gaza, Palestinians and Hamas. It states that "in the lead up to Israel's assault on Gaza, Israel imposed a blockade amounting to collective punishment and carried out a systematic policy of progressive isolation and deprivation of the Gaza Strip." So much for disengagement.
"Never has a country gone to such extraordinary lengths to remove the enemy's civilian population from harm's way," claims Netanyahu.
But Goldstone's Mission found instead "that the following grave breaches of the
Fourth Geneva Convention were committed by Israeli forces in Gaza: willful killing, torture or inhuman treatment, willfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health, and extensive destruction of property, not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly."
The Report continues: "The repeated failure to distinguish between combatants and civilians appears to the Mission to have been the result of deliberate guidance issued to soldiers, as described by some of them, and not the result of occasional lapses." Furthermore, "There were almost no mistakes made according to the Government of Israel. It is in these circumstances that 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."
Yet with no hint of embarrassment whatsoever, Netanyahu insisted, ""Faced with an enemy committing a double war crime of firing on civilians while hiding behind civilians - Israel sought to conduct surgical strikes against the rocket launchers."
Ah, yes. Human shields. During the carnage, our media and our politicians belted out the Israeli propaganda line that "barbaric" Hamas was using its own population as human shields. Instead, it turns out "the Mission investigated several incidents in which Israeli armed forces used local Palestinian residents to enter houses which might be booby trapped or harbour enemy combatants (this practice, known in the West Bank as "neighbour procedure", was called "Johnnie procedure" during the military operations in Gaza)."
And so on and so forth.
Netanyahu, prime minister of Israel once before - from 1996 to 1999 - has had a history of scandal plague him in office, even an indictment for which he was later acquitted. Former Clinton White House Spokesman Joe Lockhart, in his book "The Truth About Camp David" calls the Israeli prime minister, "one of the most obnoxious individuals you're going to come into - just a liar and a cheat. He could open his mouth and you could have no confidence that anything that came out of it was the truth."
Netanyahu replaced former PM Ehud Olmert, who was brought down by corruption allegations, and indicted on three charges this past August. And that, just a month before former Israeli President Moshe Katsav's trial for rape and other sex crimes got underway.
The apple is rotten at its core. The international community must turn the cries of "shame" back on Israel and its human rights record. And the US administration, which stands so staunchly behind Israel at every turn, must play fair with the Goldstone Report if it is to maintain any credibility in the Middle East as it attempts to launch yet another round of peace talks.
Follow Sharmine Narwani on Twitter: www.twitter.com/snarwani
Ahmadinejad left New York with no more questions about his legitimacy, the American hikers in jail in Iran, or rape, torture and forced confessions in Tehran's prisons. No, from now on it's going to be all nukes, all the time.
pervasive influence of a certain group of apologists. Please continue to strive for truth.
In my country, the US, one out of 10 people are from elsewhere, in Britain, one out of 12. What kind of people are the Arabs that they lock these poor people up in the Gaza strip and won't resettle them? Instead of your highly distorted restatement of Arab propaganda (you can't really believe that Hamas never used a human shield, 60 years of Arab terrorism goes against that idea), you should ask your Arab patrons to fix the problem they started 60 years ago when they rejected the UN mandate and tried to destroy nascent Israel, thus creating the refugee problem that continues to this day.
Finally, Menachem Begin offered Gaza to Egypt when he and Sadat made peace, Sadat wasn't interested. You should ask your Arab friends why not.
The Palestinians will not accept resettlement, because that would negate their right to return to their homes in Palestine. The Right of Return is a fundamental value held by Palestinains and their leadership. Jordan is a rare Arab country that has given Pals a flexible citizenship, i.e. when a Palestinian state is finally established, the Pal-Jordanians can pick.
In Lebanon, international NGOs will not build proper electricity and water facilities in the refugees camps because they view this as an indication of permanence. Even non-Arab entities like these NGOs understand the importance of this right of return. Unfortunately international law is unkind to refugees - they can't have it both ways, i.e. having the right to return and enjoying full citizenship elsewhere.
So while I understand what you are suggesting, I suggest you actually do some work and read something about this subject. Sixty years in a refugee camp - that is three generations in Pal time - is not something to mock and propagandize.
First, i think Sharmine did a good job exposing Netanyaho's lies
Second, i think Israel human rights record is non comparable to that of the criminal Arab regimes which are by the most puppets to the American government. Israel's human rights record is worse well maybe comparable to Saddam's record. Ethnic cleansing in 1948. Sabra and Chatila1982, The invasion of Lebanon 1982, 1996, and the lost war of 2006 where thousands were killled, killing kids on the streets of the west bank just for throwing rocks on occupation forces in the first intifada.
As for the last conflict in Gaza i think the whole UN report in a sham, as you can't just write a report on one batlle in the whole war. Any credible UN report should investigate all of Israel's crimes since 1948
You do know that Armenian-Americans have been trying to get a US Congressional resolution passed for decades to condemn the Turkish genocide of Armenians, right? WHO do you think works hand in hand with the Turks every year to get this defeated? AIPAC - the Israel lobby - that's who. Ironic, eh? Apparently, genocide is not okay when the victims are Jewish, but ethnic cleansing by Jews or anyone else is okay?
Come on!
When Arabs fought against Palestinians in Lebanon and Jordan, this was because the PLO was taking up arms and taking over territory, so these nations defended their sovereign right. In the case of Israel, the Jewish state is the occupier - THAT I know you cannot disagree with - and the goal is to make the indiginous population SMALLER, hence the ethnic cleansing under the guise of "terrorist attacks."
Wake up and smell the coffee.
Face it, both sides have reason to lie and conceal what happened in Gaza. To believe one side completely while ignoring the other side's narrative is dangerous.
Israel has thumbed their noses at the will of virtually every single other nation on earth for decades. Why are you so sure they woud not go ahead and willfully violate the Geneva convention on THESE counts as well?
civilians and groups like Hamas who have every right to resist occupation under international law.
Don't mean to offend you but you are beautiful and smart!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JY50cktUKbA&feature=player_embedded
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=45c_1231682078
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=45c_1231682078
There are literally hundreds of video examples of Hamas using human shields. If Israel actually did the same perhaps she might have linked to them rather than quoting the findings of a disreputable UN council that is boycotted by all civilized countries and is instead headed by dictators and despots.
Your video clips lack credibilty, an important measure of the value of information being disseminated - one of them is allegedly an al-Arabiya video clip that shows...nothing - not a company logo, not a location, not an iota of action - nothing. The other two are clearly from a propaganda website using footage and photos that, again, do not identify the subjects, their location, their political affiliations - nothing.
In a world deluged with information, one has to weed through the muck and identify credible sources. For me, those are sources that are recognized by the international community as such - and have a history of producing consistent and reasoned resources.
Israel, through its aggressive promotion of "Hasbara" or propaganda, lacks a great deal of credibiltiy these days. Though they are pooh-poohing the Goldstone report as insignificant, this is what is going on behind the scenes: http://www.counterpunch.org/cook07212009.html
If Hamas was the instigator of this conflict, Israel should have opened Gaza's borders to foreign journalists who could document this - instead they prevented any media coverage of the war. Look around this page - refresh it a few times if necessary - you will see the black banner ads linked to an Israeli propaganda site trying to spin even more fabrications.
We need more writers like.
I'm forwarding this link to everyone I know.
Thank you, Sharmine, for an excellent article. You've definitely got a new fan. Your stats concerning the percentages of violence after a lull lasting a week or more are telling. The stats also on the number of rockets vs. shelling by the Israelis say even more.
Please continue to publish this information as far & wide as you can. I am going to keep this research. Every member of Congress needs to read it as well as the Obama people. They are so busy repudiating the Goldstone Report I wonder if any of them have actually reflected on exactly what you say in the above quote. How can they hope to have any credibility whatsoever if they continue to slam the report & (worse still, if rumor is true) that they have pressured the PLO also to repudiate it? Is this going to be just another round of the USA acting as the very partisan peacebroker? Deja vu.
I don't dispute that it may well be much better than other states in the Middle East, but that is to sidestep the issue.
Human Rights are a basic, and it is pointless to try to justify one particular country's poor record by saying that others are worse.
It is up to each state to implement practices that encompass every citizen's Human Rights, without prejudice, irrespective of the practices of any other country.
Israel. demonstrably and repeatedly, allows violations of basic Human Rights.
It imprisons people without trial or access to due processes of law.
It uses torture in interrogations of alleged criminals and alleged enemies of the state.
It expropriates land belonging to others.
It restricts access to essential supplies to its neighbours in Gaza.
It violates all the above, and many more Human Rights, on a daily basis.
Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International are but 2 NGOs that regularly condemn Israel's Human Rights record.
What was this "deliberate guidance"?
There is no evidence to lead Goldstone to this conclusion, yet he reaches it anyways. You make so many claims of intent but prove none of them.
You may also want to look at this BBC piece that was drawn from other articles appearing in the Israeli media about the dangers of religious Jewish fundamentalists entering combat units in the IDF. Commanders ordering soldiers to blow the ram's horn as they proceed into battle - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/8232340.stm - "Like (biblical) Joshua when he conquered the land of Israel. It makes the war holier."
I don't think Goldstone detailed enough in his report, frankly, but not in the way you mean. He needs to flesh out this narrative further.