23 jan 2011
IDF soldier claims wrong information led to Gaza family's deaths
Though two years have passed, 'Uri' still exhibits clear signs of distress. He talks in a near whisper as he begins to relay the story of his most traumatic experience as a soldier.
My meeting with Uri (not his real name) - along with several other soldiers who took part in the Cast Lead military attack on Gaza that ended two years ago this week - was arranged by Breaking the Silence, an organization of army veterans whose mission is to expose Israelis to IDF practices in the occupied territories. Uri's testimony about civilian killings in that attack appears to correspond with one of the testimonies provided by graduates of the Rabin Pre-Military Academy, the published version of which prompted an angry response by the IDF spokesman's office, directed at the soldiers, the academy and the media. Breaking the Silence had chosen not to publicize Uri's testimony, which appears below, in accordance with a rule that requires at least two eyewitnesses to such grave incidents before they are publicized. Uri's responses to Haaretz's questions corroborate testimonies of Palestinians survivors of the onslaught, underscoring their importance and value.
On Sunday morning, January 4, 2009, during the first hours of the Israeli ground invasion of Gaza, Uri's company in the Givati Brigade moved from a house they had taken over in the Zeitun neighborhood (southeast of Gaza City) to a three-storey building that had been taken over earlier by a different company.
Crushing a shoelace between his fingers as he answers questions, Uri looks at his hands rather than at his partner in conversation:
"There was already one family inside this house, herded into one room. The house had already been searched, [the soldiers] had looked for weapons and such, all the closets were emptied, all the drawers were opened and everything was on the floor, and all the soldiers were sleeping on mattresses in the living room. This is the house we took. We were there all of the first week.
"[The army] prepared us for massive resistance, [that it would be] like going back into Lebanon. [That there would be] antitank missiles. They told us there would be massive resistance by entire regiments organized by Hamas . . . they said that it wouldn't be easy and not everyone would return. Until we actually went in, the feeling was that we would be running with bullets flying overhead. In the end, it turned out we were in an area where there was no resistance at all . . . resistance in Zeitun came only from the mosque, one of the first things we bulldozed with D-9s because they shot at us from there. . . On Sunday, a few hours after we arrived, we were fired on [by Palestinians] with an RPG [rocket-propelled grenade]. Suddenly, inside the house, we received intelligence that there was a small group with an RPG downstairs; they missed our house and hit the one next to us. . . Someone spoke over our communications lines and told us there was a small group [of Palestinians] there."
Who told you?
"Someone sitting in the war room [outside the Gaza Strip] who gets information from wiretaps, from informers. And there were a lot of unmanned drones in the air that saw everything. Every area in Gaza is photographed; they see everything. We got [the information] 10 or 20 seconds after we got fired on by the RPG, or to be more exact, [the RPG was fired on] the house next to ours. [The RPG] killed the father and injured an infant girl; that left the brother, the mother and two young children, along with the wounded infant. And they came to the house we were in."
This was Sunday, January 4?
"Yes.[The house we took over had] a reinforced steel door and a soldier sat there with his weapon at the ready to make sure that no one went in. [Then] someone opened the door, an entire family entered, and he didn't shoot at them. His jaw simply dropped. He didn't know what to do with himself. He went into complete shock. In less than a minute, [the soldiers] recovered their composure and stopped [the family], told them to raise their hands in the air, and took the young man and tied him up. We put everyone into the room with the other captives [the members of the household].
"The woman had a bundle in her arms, a baby who had lost half its hand from the [RPG]. Our medic quickly bandaged it. The baby was about a year-and-a-half or 2 years old. There was a lot of blood; it lost three fingers and half a pinky finger. It didn't matter that much because it died later. They were thrown out of the house a few days later, took a wrong turn and an [IDF] marksman shot the whole family down."
Everyone had been sitting together in that room?
"Yes, the men sat with the women, the men with their hands and feet tied and their eyes blindfolded, and the women on mattresses, together with the guard who sat at the door and watched them. The prisoner interrogator took them one by one into the kitchen and asked them questions. I overheard him questioning the brother."
You don't know what he asked them about?
"I didn't understand. I don't speak Arabic. At a certain point we were ordered to take them all outside, and this took time. We sat and asked ourselves whether the baby would remember that Hamas shot off its hand . . . Now that it's dead, it's ironic to think about it."
Did they know they had been hurt by a Palestinian bomb?
"I have no idea."
Did you ask the interrogator what they said or knew?
"I asked, but the amount of information he gave me was minimal. He explained that the man was the woman's brother and not her husband . . . at a certain point they told us to take them out of the house."
Do you remember what day this was?
"In the middle of the first week. It's really hard to tell the difference between day and night because you are guarding, not sleeping."
How is it that the people who were hit by the [Palestinian] RPG are the exact same ones killed by the [IDF] marksman? Are you sure that the mother with the baby was killed?
"That's a very good question. . . I did not see them leaving the house; I saw only this specific family walking in what was apparently the wrong direction. I understood that they were told to go to the right and they went to the left. That's what we were told. Suddenly I see a marksman from another house firing at the family leaving our house."
Why are you convinced that this was the woman with the baby treated by your medic?
"I'm trying to recall. I'm sure it was the same woman, but why am I so sure?"
Immediately after the IDF attack, when I was in Gaza, I interviewed a woman named Maysa Samouni. She had been with her husband and baby daughter at the Samouni home in the Zeitun neighborhood - the house in which Givati soldiers gathered together about a hundred members of the extended Samouni family on January 4, and upon which IDF rockets were fired the next day. Today it is known that the rockets were fired by order of the Givati commander Col. Ilan Malka, who has since been interrogated by the military's criminal investigation unit in connection with the deaths of 21 Palestinian civilians. He had seen, in a drone photo, a group of people standing outside the building holding what he interpreted to be weaponry and gave the order to fire on them. All they had done, in fact, was strip wooden planks from a shed in order to build a fire to bake bread and prepare tea. [The Palestinians] felt safe at a distance of only 80 meters from the soldiers who had gathered them in the house. Maysa's husband was killed in the shelling; her 1-year-old daughter Jumana lost three fingers.
Maysa told me that she, along with her husband's brother Musa and other survivors extricated from among the bodies in the bombed house, sought refuge in the home of her uncle As'ad Samouni. They did not know that you were there. She also told me that a soldier paramedic treated her and her daughter, but not Musa. This must be the same incident.
"You are making me have doubts."
Not RPGs - IDF missiles
A lack of sleep, anxiety, and half-baked information received by the soldiers from their commanders can explain the confused testimony of "Uri," who has mourned the death of the infant with her heartrending wounds for two years. His testimony metamorphosed into a rumor spread by one of the soldiers at the academy, according to which "a commander released the family and told them to go to the right. One of the mothers with two children did not understand and went to the left. They forgot to tell the marksman on the roof to hold his fire and, you can say, he acted the way he was supposed to, according to instructions. The sharpshooter saw a woman and children approaching him, crossing the line beyond which they were not supposed to go. He shot straight at them. In any case, what happened was that in the end he shot them," as reported in Haaretz on March 18, 2009.
When the testimony at the academy was publicized, I had already been in the Gaza Strip for two months, gathering testimony from survivors. Like other journalists, I had been asked to "locate" the mother and children who were killed. Muhammed Subuh, a researcher for B'tselem, and I were having difficulty finding information about the deaths that corresponded to the testimony above - testimony which received prominent media coverage because of the gravity of the incident.
I knew about and began to write about other civilians killed by IDF soldiers at short range in the Zeitun neighborhood, but there was no mother with two children among them. Until I interviewed Uri nearly two years later, I had no way of knowing that the mother was Maysa, excerpts of whose testimony Haaretz published on March 11, 2009, a week before the academy soldiers' testimony was published in the press. (B'tselem published her complete remarks on its Internet site at the height of the military attack).
On March 30, 2009, the IDF released the following statement (based on its interrogation of soldiers at the academy): "A claim [was] made by a different soldier who had supposedly been ordered to open fire at a woman and two children. . . it was found that during this incident, a force had opened fire in a different direction, at two suspicious men who were unrelated to the civilians in question."
Aside from a grave mistake in identification, Uri made other errors: It turns out that what had exploded a few dozen meters from his makeshift army base was not a Palestinian RPG but missiles fired by Israel from the air. The information the soldiers received from the war room had been erroneous from the start. This happened again on the second day of the land attack. The woman and infant treated by the medic did not leave the house "in the middle of the week" but a few hours after they were wounded.
But the IDF investigation was also far from precise: One of the so-called "suspicious men" shot was the civilian Iyad Samouni, who had a direct connection to the civilians removed from the house. He had been among the shackled and blindfolded family members found by Uri in the house. He also left the house in shackles.
Jews have hearts of gold
I spoke with Imad Samouni, Ayad's brother, on May 4, 2009, in Gaza, in the home of Salah Samouni. His testimony, albeit only part of it, is published here for the first time. "[On Sunday, January 4], we escaped [because of the bombing] to the home of my uncle As'ad Samouni, a concrete block house . . . and within five minutes the army arrived, demanding that we open the door, and if not, they would blow the house up. I opened the door. and they asked us to lift our shirts. I know Hebrew and I told the family not to worry because Jews have better hearts than we do, I worked with them for 10 years. They tied us up, the men, seven of my brother and cousins. Hands behind our backs. The women were in the same room. There were 46 of us. Together with the children.
"The soldiers passed among us, made our home into their hostel . . . two guarded us. [The shackles] hurt me terribly and my fingers swelled. A soldier tried to open them but couldn't, and only made them tighter. My wife cried that they hurt me. He brought scissors and cut down to the flesh to open them. My wife cried. And I'm a man, I told them not to cry, and he brought new plastic ties. We stayed that way from Sunday to Monday. . .
On Monday the house 200 meters away was bombed. We didn't know then what had happened. Who was coming? Maysa came, the wife of Toufik [my sister's son], and her baby daughter, and Musa and three small sisters came to me, thinking there were no soldiers at our place. The army caught them and they entered. I was tied up, and one of the girls shouted 'Mother is dead.' I asked who was talking. I couldn't see, my eyes were blindfolded, and my wife said, 'It's your niece, your sister Rabab's daughter.' Musa came, Rabab's son, with his sister-in-law Maysa and the children and told me that the whole family was dead. I went crazy, everyone was dead. I didn't know anything. We were tied up. Our girls who had been crying started to scream. The soldiers could not control them. They said: We'll take everyone out of here, except for two. That was at about ten o'clock [in the morning, January 5]."
"A man has been killed. Your brother"
The soldiers held Imad and Musa, despite their pleading to be allowed out with the others, inside the house, still shackled and blindfolded, terrified and isolated, until Wednesday, January 7. Then they were released and asked to march with their hands, still tied, in the air, holding a white rag. On the way, Imad said, "We saw a bulldozer demolishing and destroying, and reached the Salah A Din highway. Musa told me 'A man has been killed. Your brother.' I looked and it was Iyad who had been inside the house with me earlier and taken out. I saw his crushed legs . . . afterward I learned that Iyad went out with everyone [on Monday], he lifted up the white rag with his family, maybe he had a cell phone, and they shot him in the legs. He shouted to his wife and to mine to lift him up, and the soldiers shot at him or aimed their rifles. They told him to crawl, because he was only wounded a little in the leg. And then from a distance they shot at him, and his second leg went . . . he was bleeding . . . he bled for three days and died. Neighbors passed by and weren't allowed to help him."
The Goldstone Report also addresses the killing of Iyad, whose hands, like those of the other men, were still shackled by white plastic ties when Red Crescent paramedics collected his body four days later. An investigation by the Palestinian Center for Human Rights found that while they were still walking, shackled hands in the air, the telephone in Iyad's cousin's pocket began to ring. Iyad tried to take the phone from his cousin's pocket, and then, the sharpshooter on the roof fired at him. Uri, for his part, is glad to hear that baby Jumana and her mother are still alive.
http://bit.ly/f64BaB
IDF soldier claims wrong information led to Gaza family's deaths
Though two years have passed, 'Uri' still exhibits clear signs of distress. He talks in a near whisper as he begins to relay the story of his most traumatic experience as a soldier.
My meeting with Uri (not his real name) - along with several other soldiers who took part in the Cast Lead military attack on Gaza that ended two years ago this week - was arranged by Breaking the Silence, an organization of army veterans whose mission is to expose Israelis to IDF practices in the occupied territories. Uri's testimony about civilian killings in that attack appears to correspond with one of the testimonies provided by graduates of the Rabin Pre-Military Academy, the published version of which prompted an angry response by the IDF spokesman's office, directed at the soldiers, the academy and the media. Breaking the Silence had chosen not to publicize Uri's testimony, which appears below, in accordance with a rule that requires at least two eyewitnesses to such grave incidents before they are publicized. Uri's responses to Haaretz's questions corroborate testimonies of Palestinians survivors of the onslaught, underscoring their importance and value.
On Sunday morning, January 4, 2009, during the first hours of the Israeli ground invasion of Gaza, Uri's company in the Givati Brigade moved from a house they had taken over in the Zeitun neighborhood (southeast of Gaza City) to a three-storey building that had been taken over earlier by a different company.
Crushing a shoelace between his fingers as he answers questions, Uri looks at his hands rather than at his partner in conversation:
"There was already one family inside this house, herded into one room. The house had already been searched, [the soldiers] had looked for weapons and such, all the closets were emptied, all the drawers were opened and everything was on the floor, and all the soldiers were sleeping on mattresses in the living room. This is the house we took. We were there all of the first week.
"[The army] prepared us for massive resistance, [that it would be] like going back into Lebanon. [That there would be] antitank missiles. They told us there would be massive resistance by entire regiments organized by Hamas . . . they said that it wouldn't be easy and not everyone would return. Until we actually went in, the feeling was that we would be running with bullets flying overhead. In the end, it turned out we were in an area where there was no resistance at all . . . resistance in Zeitun came only from the mosque, one of the first things we bulldozed with D-9s because they shot at us from there. . . On Sunday, a few hours after we arrived, we were fired on [by Palestinians] with an RPG [rocket-propelled grenade]. Suddenly, inside the house, we received intelligence that there was a small group with an RPG downstairs; they missed our house and hit the one next to us. . . Someone spoke over our communications lines and told us there was a small group [of Palestinians] there."
Who told you?
"Someone sitting in the war room [outside the Gaza Strip] who gets information from wiretaps, from informers. And there were a lot of unmanned drones in the air that saw everything. Every area in Gaza is photographed; they see everything. We got [the information] 10 or 20 seconds after we got fired on by the RPG, or to be more exact, [the RPG was fired on] the house next to ours. [The RPG] killed the father and injured an infant girl; that left the brother, the mother and two young children, along with the wounded infant. And they came to the house we were in."
This was Sunday, January 4?
"Yes.[The house we took over had] a reinforced steel door and a soldier sat there with his weapon at the ready to make sure that no one went in. [Then] someone opened the door, an entire family entered, and he didn't shoot at them. His jaw simply dropped. He didn't know what to do with himself. He went into complete shock. In less than a minute, [the soldiers] recovered their composure and stopped [the family], told them to raise their hands in the air, and took the young man and tied him up. We put everyone into the room with the other captives [the members of the household].
"The woman had a bundle in her arms, a baby who had lost half its hand from the [RPG]. Our medic quickly bandaged it. The baby was about a year-and-a-half or 2 years old. There was a lot of blood; it lost three fingers and half a pinky finger. It didn't matter that much because it died later. They were thrown out of the house a few days later, took a wrong turn and an [IDF] marksman shot the whole family down."
Everyone had been sitting together in that room?
"Yes, the men sat with the women, the men with their hands and feet tied and their eyes blindfolded, and the women on mattresses, together with the guard who sat at the door and watched them. The prisoner interrogator took them one by one into the kitchen and asked them questions. I overheard him questioning the brother."
You don't know what he asked them about?
"I didn't understand. I don't speak Arabic. At a certain point we were ordered to take them all outside, and this took time. We sat and asked ourselves whether the baby would remember that Hamas shot off its hand . . . Now that it's dead, it's ironic to think about it."
Did they know they had been hurt by a Palestinian bomb?
"I have no idea."
Did you ask the interrogator what they said or knew?
"I asked, but the amount of information he gave me was minimal. He explained that the man was the woman's brother and not her husband . . . at a certain point they told us to take them out of the house."
Do you remember what day this was?
"In the middle of the first week. It's really hard to tell the difference between day and night because you are guarding, not sleeping."
How is it that the people who were hit by the [Palestinian] RPG are the exact same ones killed by the [IDF] marksman? Are you sure that the mother with the baby was killed?
"That's a very good question. . . I did not see them leaving the house; I saw only this specific family walking in what was apparently the wrong direction. I understood that they were told to go to the right and they went to the left. That's what we were told. Suddenly I see a marksman from another house firing at the family leaving our house."
Why are you convinced that this was the woman with the baby treated by your medic?
"I'm trying to recall. I'm sure it was the same woman, but why am I so sure?"
Immediately after the IDF attack, when I was in Gaza, I interviewed a woman named Maysa Samouni. She had been with her husband and baby daughter at the Samouni home in the Zeitun neighborhood - the house in which Givati soldiers gathered together about a hundred members of the extended Samouni family on January 4, and upon which IDF rockets were fired the next day. Today it is known that the rockets were fired by order of the Givati commander Col. Ilan Malka, who has since been interrogated by the military's criminal investigation unit in connection with the deaths of 21 Palestinian civilians. He had seen, in a drone photo, a group of people standing outside the building holding what he interpreted to be weaponry and gave the order to fire on them. All they had done, in fact, was strip wooden planks from a shed in order to build a fire to bake bread and prepare tea. [The Palestinians] felt safe at a distance of only 80 meters from the soldiers who had gathered them in the house. Maysa's husband was killed in the shelling; her 1-year-old daughter Jumana lost three fingers.
Maysa told me that she, along with her husband's brother Musa and other survivors extricated from among the bodies in the bombed house, sought refuge in the home of her uncle As'ad Samouni. They did not know that you were there. She also told me that a soldier paramedic treated her and her daughter, but not Musa. This must be the same incident.
"You are making me have doubts."
Not RPGs - IDF missiles
A lack of sleep, anxiety, and half-baked information received by the soldiers from their commanders can explain the confused testimony of "Uri," who has mourned the death of the infant with her heartrending wounds for two years. His testimony metamorphosed into a rumor spread by one of the soldiers at the academy, according to which "a commander released the family and told them to go to the right. One of the mothers with two children did not understand and went to the left. They forgot to tell the marksman on the roof to hold his fire and, you can say, he acted the way he was supposed to, according to instructions. The sharpshooter saw a woman and children approaching him, crossing the line beyond which they were not supposed to go. He shot straight at them. In any case, what happened was that in the end he shot them," as reported in Haaretz on March 18, 2009.
When the testimony at the academy was publicized, I had already been in the Gaza Strip for two months, gathering testimony from survivors. Like other journalists, I had been asked to "locate" the mother and children who were killed. Muhammed Subuh, a researcher for B'tselem, and I were having difficulty finding information about the deaths that corresponded to the testimony above - testimony which received prominent media coverage because of the gravity of the incident.
I knew about and began to write about other civilians killed by IDF soldiers at short range in the Zeitun neighborhood, but there was no mother with two children among them. Until I interviewed Uri nearly two years later, I had no way of knowing that the mother was Maysa, excerpts of whose testimony Haaretz published on March 11, 2009, a week before the academy soldiers' testimony was published in the press. (B'tselem published her complete remarks on its Internet site at the height of the military attack).
On March 30, 2009, the IDF released the following statement (based on its interrogation of soldiers at the academy): "A claim [was] made by a different soldier who had supposedly been ordered to open fire at a woman and two children. . . it was found that during this incident, a force had opened fire in a different direction, at two suspicious men who were unrelated to the civilians in question."
Aside from a grave mistake in identification, Uri made other errors: It turns out that what had exploded a few dozen meters from his makeshift army base was not a Palestinian RPG but missiles fired by Israel from the air. The information the soldiers received from the war room had been erroneous from the start. This happened again on the second day of the land attack. The woman and infant treated by the medic did not leave the house "in the middle of the week" but a few hours after they were wounded.
But the IDF investigation was also far from precise: One of the so-called "suspicious men" shot was the civilian Iyad Samouni, who had a direct connection to the civilians removed from the house. He had been among the shackled and blindfolded family members found by Uri in the house. He also left the house in shackles.
Jews have hearts of gold
I spoke with Imad Samouni, Ayad's brother, on May 4, 2009, in Gaza, in the home of Salah Samouni. His testimony, albeit only part of it, is published here for the first time. "[On Sunday, January 4], we escaped [because of the bombing] to the home of my uncle As'ad Samouni, a concrete block house . . . and within five minutes the army arrived, demanding that we open the door, and if not, they would blow the house up. I opened the door. and they asked us to lift our shirts. I know Hebrew and I told the family not to worry because Jews have better hearts than we do, I worked with them for 10 years. They tied us up, the men, seven of my brother and cousins. Hands behind our backs. The women were in the same room. There were 46 of us. Together with the children.
"The soldiers passed among us, made our home into their hostel . . . two guarded us. [The shackles] hurt me terribly and my fingers swelled. A soldier tried to open them but couldn't, and only made them tighter. My wife cried that they hurt me. He brought scissors and cut down to the flesh to open them. My wife cried. And I'm a man, I told them not to cry, and he brought new plastic ties. We stayed that way from Sunday to Monday. . .
On Monday the house 200 meters away was bombed. We didn't know then what had happened. Who was coming? Maysa came, the wife of Toufik [my sister's son], and her baby daughter, and Musa and three small sisters came to me, thinking there were no soldiers at our place. The army caught them and they entered. I was tied up, and one of the girls shouted 'Mother is dead.' I asked who was talking. I couldn't see, my eyes were blindfolded, and my wife said, 'It's your niece, your sister Rabab's daughter.' Musa came, Rabab's son, with his sister-in-law Maysa and the children and told me that the whole family was dead. I went crazy, everyone was dead. I didn't know anything. We were tied up. Our girls who had been crying started to scream. The soldiers could not control them. They said: We'll take everyone out of here, except for two. That was at about ten o'clock [in the morning, January 5]."
"A man has been killed. Your brother"
The soldiers held Imad and Musa, despite their pleading to be allowed out with the others, inside the house, still shackled and blindfolded, terrified and isolated, until Wednesday, January 7. Then they were released and asked to march with their hands, still tied, in the air, holding a white rag. On the way, Imad said, "We saw a bulldozer demolishing and destroying, and reached the Salah A Din highway. Musa told me 'A man has been killed. Your brother.' I looked and it was Iyad who had been inside the house with me earlier and taken out. I saw his crushed legs . . . afterward I learned that Iyad went out with everyone [on Monday], he lifted up the white rag with his family, maybe he had a cell phone, and they shot him in the legs. He shouted to his wife and to mine to lift him up, and the soldiers shot at him or aimed their rifles. They told him to crawl, because he was only wounded a little in the leg. And then from a distance they shot at him, and his second leg went . . . he was bleeding . . . he bled for three days and died. Neighbors passed by and weren't allowed to help him."
The Goldstone Report also addresses the killing of Iyad, whose hands, like those of the other men, were still shackled by white plastic ties when Red Crescent paramedics collected his body four days later. An investigation by the Palestinian Center for Human Rights found that while they were still walking, shackled hands in the air, the telephone in Iyad's cousin's pocket began to ring. Iyad tried to take the phone from his cousin's pocket, and then, the sharpshooter on the roof fired at him. Uri, for his part, is glad to hear that baby Jumana and her mother are still alive.
http://bit.ly/f64BaB
18 jan 2011
Goldstone becomes a punchline on the Israeli Supreme Court
It’s finally happened. After being pummeled and bashed, defamed and defiled for nearly 18 months, the name “Richard Goldstone” has finally been demoted to joke status in Israel. And the joker was none other than a Supreme Court justice, one of the 14 people most responsible for guarding the sanctity of law in Israel.
Here’s the set up. Yesterday, Yesh Gvul, Israel’s most prominent conscientious objector group, petitioned the country’s Supreme Court to declare General Yoav Galant “unworthy” of his appointment as the IDF’s new chief of staff. Their argument: the good general is suspected of committing war crimes during Operation Cast Lead.
Galant, for those who don’t remember the name, was the architect of Israel’s 22-day invasion of Gaza. As head of the Southern Command, he was the one who planned and directed Cast Lead and argued for even more aggressive action – a role that should, by many accounts, among them the Goldstone Report, have opened him up to prosecution for war crimes. In Israel, however, it earned him a promotion to the post of chief of staff of the Israeli military.
All this might be cruel joke enough, but yesterday Justice Asher Grunis took the laughs even farther when he offered this quip after refusing to entertain Yesh Gvul’s petition against Galant: ”Perhaps we should appoint Judge Goldstone as the next IDF Chief of Staff?”
Never mind that Goldstone’s legal judgment was respected enough to earn him the position of chief prosecutor of the international criminal tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia. And never mind that the whole purpose of his report on the Gaza Conflict was to try to assert the rule of law over the brutality of war, to say that war (and those who inflict it on others) is not above the law. When the very people charged with protecting our laws become the first to deride them, there’s really not much left to do, but cry.
Lizzy Ratner is the co-editor of The Goldstone Report: The Legacy of the Landmark Investigation of the Gaza Conflict.
http://bit.ly/fm9cX8
Goldstone becomes a punchline on the Israeli Supreme Court
It’s finally happened. After being pummeled and bashed, defamed and defiled for nearly 18 months, the name “Richard Goldstone” has finally been demoted to joke status in Israel. And the joker was none other than a Supreme Court justice, one of the 14 people most responsible for guarding the sanctity of law in Israel.
Here’s the set up. Yesterday, Yesh Gvul, Israel’s most prominent conscientious objector group, petitioned the country’s Supreme Court to declare General Yoav Galant “unworthy” of his appointment as the IDF’s new chief of staff. Their argument: the good general is suspected of committing war crimes during Operation Cast Lead.
Galant, for those who don’t remember the name, was the architect of Israel’s 22-day invasion of Gaza. As head of the Southern Command, he was the one who planned and directed Cast Lead and argued for even more aggressive action – a role that should, by many accounts, among them the Goldstone Report, have opened him up to prosecution for war crimes. In Israel, however, it earned him a promotion to the post of chief of staff of the Israeli military.
All this might be cruel joke enough, but yesterday Justice Asher Grunis took the laughs even farther when he offered this quip after refusing to entertain Yesh Gvul’s petition against Galant: ”Perhaps we should appoint Judge Goldstone as the next IDF Chief of Staff?”
Never mind that Goldstone’s legal judgment was respected enough to earn him the position of chief prosecutor of the international criminal tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia. And never mind that the whole purpose of his report on the Gaza Conflict was to try to assert the rule of law over the brutality of war, to say that war (and those who inflict it on others) is not above the law. When the very people charged with protecting our laws become the first to deride them, there’s really not much left to do, but cry.
Lizzy Ratner is the co-editor of The Goldstone Report: The Legacy of the Landmark Investigation of the Gaza Conflict.
http://bit.ly/fm9cX8
17 jan 2011
Justice for victims of the conflict in Gaza and southern Israel
Until now we don't understand why. We want an investigation; we want to know why me and my sisters have been orphaned. Why did they kill our parents, our family? (Fathiya Mousa, whose parents and siblings, aged between 14 and 28 years, were killed on 14 January 2009 in an Israeli air strike, while in their yard in the Sabra district of Gaza City.)
Between 27 December 2008 and 18 January 2009, Israel's major military offensive on the Gaza Strip, codenamed Operation Cast Lead, caused massive destruction and suffering.
Approximately 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis were killed during the Gaza conflict. Three of the Israelis and the majority of the Palestinian fatalities were civilians. Much of Gaza was razed to the ground.
Both sides violated international humanitarian law. Israeli forces attacked civilian buildings and launched indiscriminate attacks which failed to distinguish between legitimate military targets and civilians.
Another violation was their repeated use of white phosphorus, a highly incendiary substance, in an indiscriminate manner over densely populated residential areas. Hamas' military wing and other Palestinian armed groups launched indiscriminate rocket and mortar attacks on southern Israel.
In a report published in September 2009, the UN Fact-Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict established by the UN Human Rights Council concluded that both sides had committed war crimes and possibly crimes against humanity. It made detailed recommendations to ensure justice and reparations for the victims.
Two years after the conflict, the authorities in Israel and Gaza are still denying victims justice by their continuing failure to conduct comprehensive and effective investigations. The Hamas authorities have failed to seriously investigate violations by Palestinian armed groups and no one in Gaza has been brought to justice for abuses during the conflict.
Israeli investigations have been undertaken and overseen by the military, including branches which were actually involved in Operation Cast Lead, and there are serious concerns that they lack independence, relevant expertise and transparency. Of those investigations already completed, only three people have been convicted for violations, including two low-ranking soldiers who were given three-month suspended sentences for forcing a nine-year-old Palestinian boy to open bags they suspected were booby-trapped.
With the national authorities unwilling to take credible action, Amnesty International is now calling for an international justice solution.
In March 2011, the Human Rights Council will meet again to consider the implementation of the recommendations of its Fact-Finding Mission, including the status of the domestic investigations. Disturbingly, at its last session in September 2010, it avoided taking any meaningful measures to respond to the obvious impunity that continues to exist. It is vital that the Human Rights Council now supports effective action to further international justice.
War crimes, crimes against humanity and other serious human rights violations are crimes against each and every one of us. Demand justice for all victims of the conflict by signing the petition below and circulating it to your family, friends and networks.
Petition:
I call on the UN Human Rights Council to take action to ensure international justice for all Palestinian and Israeli victims of the 2008-9 conflict in Gaza and southern Israel by adopting a strong resolution at its March 2011 session that:
* condemns the inadequacies of the investigations conducted by Israel and the Hamas de facto administration;
* calls on the International Criminal Court Prosecutor to urgently seek a determination from the judges of the Court on whether his office can investigate crimes committed during the Gaza conflict;
* calls on other governments to fulfil their duty to investigate and prosecute crimes committed during the conflict before their national courts by exercising universal jurisdiction; and
* refers the situation of impunity to the UN General Assembly for action.
http://www.amnesty.org/en/appeals-for-action/justice-victims-gaza-conflict
Justice for victims of the conflict in Gaza and southern Israel
Until now we don't understand why. We want an investigation; we want to know why me and my sisters have been orphaned. Why did they kill our parents, our family? (Fathiya Mousa, whose parents and siblings, aged between 14 and 28 years, were killed on 14 January 2009 in an Israeli air strike, while in their yard in the Sabra district of Gaza City.)
Between 27 December 2008 and 18 January 2009, Israel's major military offensive on the Gaza Strip, codenamed Operation Cast Lead, caused massive destruction and suffering.
Approximately 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis were killed during the Gaza conflict. Three of the Israelis and the majority of the Palestinian fatalities were civilians. Much of Gaza was razed to the ground.
Both sides violated international humanitarian law. Israeli forces attacked civilian buildings and launched indiscriminate attacks which failed to distinguish between legitimate military targets and civilians.
Another violation was their repeated use of white phosphorus, a highly incendiary substance, in an indiscriminate manner over densely populated residential areas. Hamas' military wing and other Palestinian armed groups launched indiscriminate rocket and mortar attacks on southern Israel.
In a report published in September 2009, the UN Fact-Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict established by the UN Human Rights Council concluded that both sides had committed war crimes and possibly crimes against humanity. It made detailed recommendations to ensure justice and reparations for the victims.
Two years after the conflict, the authorities in Israel and Gaza are still denying victims justice by their continuing failure to conduct comprehensive and effective investigations. The Hamas authorities have failed to seriously investigate violations by Palestinian armed groups and no one in Gaza has been brought to justice for abuses during the conflict.
Israeli investigations have been undertaken and overseen by the military, including branches which were actually involved in Operation Cast Lead, and there are serious concerns that they lack independence, relevant expertise and transparency. Of those investigations already completed, only three people have been convicted for violations, including two low-ranking soldiers who were given three-month suspended sentences for forcing a nine-year-old Palestinian boy to open bags they suspected were booby-trapped.
With the national authorities unwilling to take credible action, Amnesty International is now calling for an international justice solution.
In March 2011, the Human Rights Council will meet again to consider the implementation of the recommendations of its Fact-Finding Mission, including the status of the domestic investigations. Disturbingly, at its last session in September 2010, it avoided taking any meaningful measures to respond to the obvious impunity that continues to exist. It is vital that the Human Rights Council now supports effective action to further international justice.
War crimes, crimes against humanity and other serious human rights violations are crimes against each and every one of us. Demand justice for all victims of the conflict by signing the petition below and circulating it to your family, friends and networks.
Petition:
I call on the UN Human Rights Council to take action to ensure international justice for all Palestinian and Israeli victims of the 2008-9 conflict in Gaza and southern Israel by adopting a strong resolution at its March 2011 session that:
* condemns the inadequacies of the investigations conducted by Israel and the Hamas de facto administration;
* calls on the International Criminal Court Prosecutor to urgently seek a determination from the judges of the Court on whether his office can investigate crimes committed during the Gaza conflict;
* calls on other governments to fulfil their duty to investigate and prosecute crimes committed during the conflict before their national courts by exercising universal jurisdiction; and
* refers the situation of impunity to the UN General Assembly for action.
http://www.amnesty.org/en/appeals-for-action/justice-victims-gaza-conflict
12 jan 2011
New Yorkers pray for Gaza victims.
New Yorkers pray for Gaza victims.
|
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For the first time ever, the largest church in New York had a special prayer for the people of Palestine.
Saint Patrick's Cathedral is a historical landmark, drawing tourists from all over the world. Today it was for the Gazans killed and wounded during the Israeli war on the strip two years ago. Pastor Khader El-Yateem is a Palestinian-American from Bethlehem and is urging everyone to pray for the people of Gaza and the rest of Palestine With large numbers of Christians leaving the Middle East, the Clergy today had another message for the ones that are left: stay put and be Patient. The prayer service had a somber feel to it as worshippers prayed for |
peace and justice for Palestinians of all faiths.
The Gaza strip remains besieged with little food and medical supplies allowed in, and almost no access to the outside world.
Bethlehem is the city Jesus was born in, but remains under Israeli occupation and divided from Jerusalem by an apartheid wall.
The Gaza strip remains besieged with little food and medical supplies allowed in, and almost no access to the outside world.
Bethlehem is the city Jesus was born in, but remains under Israeli occupation and divided from Jerusalem by an apartheid wall.
11 jan 2011
On Sale Today: The Goldstone Report: The Legacy of the Landmark Investigation of the Gaza Conflict
This is a big day for us: Nation Books is publishing our new book -- The Goldstone : The Legacy of the Landmark Investigation of the Gaza Conflict, which is an abridged copy of the UN report accompanied by a dozen essays, exploring the political, legal and social legacy of the report and the Israeli attack on Gaza in the winter of 2008-2009.
The book comes out at an important new moment in the history of the conflict, with the collapse of talks between the two sides, and growing international calls for accountability for Israel's conduct in the occupied territories.
A diverse group of leading commentators on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is assembled here. Our forward Is from Justice Goldstone's longtime friend, Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Our introduction, which says that the report has revived the principles of universal human rights and international law, is by bestselling author Naomi Klein. Human rights leader Raji Sourani describes the situation in Gaza today, legal scholar Jules Lobel explains the post-World War II standards on which the report is based, Jerome Slater takes apart the many criticisms of the report, Rashid Khalidi describes the rapidly-shifting western view of Israel that has given the report such an extended life.
Among other essayists, Noam Sheizaf explains the siege mentality inside Israel that the report has helped to generate, Letty Cottin Pogrebin says that the personal attacks on Goldstone have been a blot on the Jewish community, Henry Siegman says Israel's indifference to the loss of innocent life has undermined its legitimacy, and Ali Abunimah lays out the manner in which Israel's crucial support in the west, from liberal and progressive communities, is beginning to crumble in part due to the Goldstone Report.
We include a leading critical piece on the report, from Moshe Halbertal, a professor of philosophy at Hebrew University, while former Washington State congressman Brian Baird relates that when the Report came to the House, many of my colleagues, several of them prominent, literally did not understand either that collective punishment is a war crime, or why it is a war crime.
The book concludes with a wrenching piece by Laila El-Haddad, about how her family survived the onslaught.
Our book can be read by newcomers to the issue and by old hands. It anchors the historic report with a range of insights on what is happening to Israeli and Palestinian politics. It will be widely read, and we ask for your help in getting out the word.
Find out where you can buy the book below and follow the book on Facebook and Twitter to get the latest news about the book. Thanks!
http://bit.ly/hrrsmz
The Goldstone Report
In the spring of 2009, South African judge Richard Goldstone set out on a mission to the Gaza Strip on assignment from the United Nations Human Rights Council to investigate possible war crimes committed by both Israel and Hamas during "Operation Cast Lead", Israel's invasion of Gaza a few months earlier. Many other reports on the Israel-Palestinian conflict had come and gone, but the account Goldstone's mission produced later that year was different it became the report heard round the world.
Formally known as The United Nations Fact-Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict, the report is one of the most controversial and historic documents published in the century-long conflict in Israel and Palestine.
Alternating between clinical analysis and contained bursts of moral outrage, it offers a devastating catalogue of the events of "Operation Cast Lead" capped by a stark conclusion: that both Israeli and Hamas forces committed war crimes and possible crimes against humanity during the twenty-two-day conflict. For the first time, a U.N. report accused the Palestinian side of grave breaches of international law, but it was the mission's emphasis on Israeli atrocities in particular its conclusion that Israel had engaged in a "deliberately disproportionate attack designed to punish, humiliate, and terrorize a civilian population" that made it a political bombshell.
This new volume is an edited version of the original along with essays from a wide range of leading experts, activists, and journalists. They include Archbishop Desmond Tutu; human rights activist Raji Sourani; legal expert Jules Lobel; Israeli philosopher Moshe Halbertal; historians Rashid Khalidi and Jerome Slater; congressman Brian Baird; policy analyst Henry Siegman; authors Ali Abunimah, Naomi Klein, and Letty Cottin Pogrebin; and journalists Noam Sheizaf and Leila El-Haddad.
The Goldstone Report is a corrective to the relentless attacks the original received and a strenuous and informed effort to put that report in its proper context.
About the Authors
Philip Weiss is an investigative journalist who has written for the New York Observer, The Nation, The American Conservative, National Review, Washington Monthly, New York Times Magazine, Esquire, Harper's and Jewish World Review. He is the author of American Taboo: A Murder In The Peace Corps, and founder of Mondoweiss, a news website devoted to covering American foreign policy in the Middle East, chiefly from a progressive Jewish perspective.
Adam Horowitz lives in New York City, where he is co-editor of Mondoweiss, a news website devoted to covering American foreign policy in the Middle East, chiefly from a progressive Jewish perspective. He holds a master's degree in Near Eastern Studies from New York University.
A former reporter for the New York Observer, journalist Lizzy Ratner has written for the New York Times, The Nation, The Christian Science Monitor and other publications. She lives in New York City.
http://bit.ly/hUwBdI
On Sale Today: The Goldstone Report: The Legacy of the Landmark Investigation of the Gaza Conflict
This is a big day for us: Nation Books is publishing our new book -- The Goldstone : The Legacy of the Landmark Investigation of the Gaza Conflict, which is an abridged copy of the UN report accompanied by a dozen essays, exploring the political, legal and social legacy of the report and the Israeli attack on Gaza in the winter of 2008-2009.
The book comes out at an important new moment in the history of the conflict, with the collapse of talks between the two sides, and growing international calls for accountability for Israel's conduct in the occupied territories.
A diverse group of leading commentators on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is assembled here. Our forward Is from Justice Goldstone's longtime friend, Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Our introduction, which says that the report has revived the principles of universal human rights and international law, is by bestselling author Naomi Klein. Human rights leader Raji Sourani describes the situation in Gaza today, legal scholar Jules Lobel explains the post-World War II standards on which the report is based, Jerome Slater takes apart the many criticisms of the report, Rashid Khalidi describes the rapidly-shifting western view of Israel that has given the report such an extended life.
Among other essayists, Noam Sheizaf explains the siege mentality inside Israel that the report has helped to generate, Letty Cottin Pogrebin says that the personal attacks on Goldstone have been a blot on the Jewish community, Henry Siegman says Israel's indifference to the loss of innocent life has undermined its legitimacy, and Ali Abunimah lays out the manner in which Israel's crucial support in the west, from liberal and progressive communities, is beginning to crumble in part due to the Goldstone Report.
We include a leading critical piece on the report, from Moshe Halbertal, a professor of philosophy at Hebrew University, while former Washington State congressman Brian Baird relates that when the Report came to the House, many of my colleagues, several of them prominent, literally did not understand either that collective punishment is a war crime, or why it is a war crime.
The book concludes with a wrenching piece by Laila El-Haddad, about how her family survived the onslaught.
Our book can be read by newcomers to the issue and by old hands. It anchors the historic report with a range of insights on what is happening to Israeli and Palestinian politics. It will be widely read, and we ask for your help in getting out the word.
Find out where you can buy the book below and follow the book on Facebook and Twitter to get the latest news about the book. Thanks!
http://bit.ly/hrrsmz
The Goldstone Report
In the spring of 2009, South African judge Richard Goldstone set out on a mission to the Gaza Strip on assignment from the United Nations Human Rights Council to investigate possible war crimes committed by both Israel and Hamas during "Operation Cast Lead", Israel's invasion of Gaza a few months earlier. Many other reports on the Israel-Palestinian conflict had come and gone, but the account Goldstone's mission produced later that year was different it became the report heard round the world.
Formally known as The United Nations Fact-Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict, the report is one of the most controversial and historic documents published in the century-long conflict in Israel and Palestine.
Alternating between clinical analysis and contained bursts of moral outrage, it offers a devastating catalogue of the events of "Operation Cast Lead" capped by a stark conclusion: that both Israeli and Hamas forces committed war crimes and possible crimes against humanity during the twenty-two-day conflict. For the first time, a U.N. report accused the Palestinian side of grave breaches of international law, but it was the mission's emphasis on Israeli atrocities in particular its conclusion that Israel had engaged in a "deliberately disproportionate attack designed to punish, humiliate, and terrorize a civilian population" that made it a political bombshell.
This new volume is an edited version of the original along with essays from a wide range of leading experts, activists, and journalists. They include Archbishop Desmond Tutu; human rights activist Raji Sourani; legal expert Jules Lobel; Israeli philosopher Moshe Halbertal; historians Rashid Khalidi and Jerome Slater; congressman Brian Baird; policy analyst Henry Siegman; authors Ali Abunimah, Naomi Klein, and Letty Cottin Pogrebin; and journalists Noam Sheizaf and Leila El-Haddad.
The Goldstone Report is a corrective to the relentless attacks the original received and a strenuous and informed effort to put that report in its proper context.
About the Authors
Philip Weiss is an investigative journalist who has written for the New York Observer, The Nation, The American Conservative, National Review, Washington Monthly, New York Times Magazine, Esquire, Harper's and Jewish World Review. He is the author of American Taboo: A Murder In The Peace Corps, and founder of Mondoweiss, a news website devoted to covering American foreign policy in the Middle East, chiefly from a progressive Jewish perspective.
Adam Horowitz lives in New York City, where he is co-editor of Mondoweiss, a news website devoted to covering American foreign policy in the Middle East, chiefly from a progressive Jewish perspective. He holds a master's degree in Near Eastern Studies from New York University.
A former reporter for the New York Observer, journalist Lizzy Ratner has written for the New York Times, The Nation, The Christian Science Monitor and other publications. She lives in New York City.
http://bit.ly/hUwBdI
4 jan 2011
Askool: IOF troops killed 176 students, teachers in Gaza war
Dr. Mohammed Askool, the minister of education in Gaza Strip, said that the Israeli occupation forces (IOF) killed 164 students during their bloody war on the Strip two years ago.
He told the PIC in an interview on Tuesday that 454 students were wounded in the war most of whom had their hands or legs amputated or had their bodies and faces mutilated.
The minister said that 12 teachers were killed and 5 were injured in that war while around 166 schools were targeted by the IOF war machine.
Askool said that the ministry managed over the past couple of years to rehabilitate all targeted schools and modernized their installations with local potentials and with the support of local, Arab, and Islamic institutions.
The ministry still needs to build 25 schools each year to compensate for the shortage in school buildings as a result of the stoppage in construction due to the four-year Israeli siege on the Strip, the minister pointed out.
http://bit.ly/eTCvv6
Askool: IOF troops killed 176 students, teachers in Gaza war
Dr. Mohammed Askool, the minister of education in Gaza Strip, said that the Israeli occupation forces (IOF) killed 164 students during their bloody war on the Strip two years ago.
He told the PIC in an interview on Tuesday that 454 students were wounded in the war most of whom had their hands or legs amputated or had their bodies and faces mutilated.
The minister said that 12 teachers were killed and 5 were injured in that war while around 166 schools were targeted by the IOF war machine.
Askool said that the ministry managed over the past couple of years to rehabilitate all targeted schools and modernized their installations with local potentials and with the support of local, Arab, and Islamic institutions.
The ministry still needs to build 25 schools each year to compensate for the shortage in school buildings as a result of the stoppage in construction due to the four-year Israeli siege on the Strip, the minister pointed out.
http://bit.ly/eTCvv6
3 jan 2011
The un-Jewish assault on Richard Goldstone
It would have been 'good for the Jews' and for Israel had Goldstone's report been frankly confronted and debated, but Israel was too busy 'trashing the messenger.'
Two years after Operation Cast Lead, Israel's three-week assault against Hamas in Gaza, we are still grappling with the fallout. Much of the public reckoning has been channeled into an acrimonious debate over the report of a four-person investigative commission appointed by the United Nations Human Rights Council and headed by Judge Richard Goldstone. Regrettably, the conduct of many of Israel's supporters in this dispute has been both indecent and profoundly un-Jewish.
From the moment the Goldstone Report was released in September 2009, its lead author has been subjected to fierce, well-orchestrated attacks by Israeli and American Jews who purport to be defending the legitimacy of the Jewish state and the safety of the Jewish people. Rather than discuss the contents of the report which concluded that during the 2008-2009 Gaza war, Israel (as well as Hamas) may have committed war crimes Israel's defenders launched an all-points campaign to bury it. But their strategy was complicated from the start by an inconvenient truth: Goldstone was one of them a Jew, and not just any Jew, an exemplary one.
Until 2003, Goldstone served on South Africa's highest court. Before that, he had distinguished himself as chair of a commission of inquiry into violence during the final years of apartheid, as chief prosecutor of war crimes in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, and as part of the team that investigated the U.N. oil-for-food scandal in Iraq.
Goldstone's Jewish credentials were equally stellar. A proud, self-identified Zionist, he served on the board of governors of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem; as chair of the advisory board of Brandeis University's International Center for Ethics, Justice, and Public Life; and as president of World ORT, the international Jewish educational organization. He also was a dogged investigator of Nazi war criminals in Argentina.
Obviously, it wasn't easy to destroy Richard Goldstone. But for his report to be permanently deep-sixed, the man himself had to be thor-oughly discredited, recast not just as a naïve dupe of the human rights community but as an enemy of Israel, a Nazi in Zionist clothing, a perpetrator of blood libel, a self-hating Jew.
There are three primary threats facing us today, said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the nuclear threat, the missile threat, and what I call the Goldstone threat. President Shimon Peres called Goldstone a small man, devoid of any sense of justice. Others in the government and media piled on, as did the so-called leaders of the organized American Jewish community. Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz said Goldstone was an evil, evil man, a traitor to the Jewish people, the U.N.'s token court Jew and a despicable human being.
There's a Hebrew word for what these people did to Richard Goldstone: They put him in cherem, meaning he was not just persona non grata in the eyes of our religious arbiters, he was totally cut off from the Jewish community. From the moment the report was released, he was treated like a leper shunned, defamed, disowned and the worst was yet to come.
In April 2010, the South African Zionist Federation reportedly threatened demonstrations outside the Sandton Synagogue if he showed up at his grandson's bar mitzvah. Given the volatile political context, that was tantamount to banning the grandfather from the ceremony. No less an authority than Rabbi Moshe Kurtstag, head of the local rabbinic court, endorsed the idea that Goldstone should simply stay away, calling it quite a sensible thing to avert all this unpleasantness.
After an international outcry, Goldstone was able to attend the bar mitzvah. However, that hardly absolves Jews worldwide for the smear campaign against him. Appalling enough in human terms, I believe it should be condemned on specifically Jewish grounds. The most Jewishly observant and educated of Goldstone's attackers surely knew that speaking ill of another human being (hate speech in current parlance) violates one of Judaism's most sacrosanct laws, the prohibition against lashon hara (the Evil Tongue i.e., gossip), which Maimonides defined as any utterance (true or not!) that might cause a person physical or monetary damage, or shame, humiliation, an-guish or fear.
The Talmud's famous story of the Oven of Achnai goes even further. It establishes that onaat devarim verbal torment or abusive speech is a more heinous infraction than physical assault. The story opens with a dispute among the sages of the Sanhedrin over the ritual purity of a clay oven. Most of the decisors agree that the oven is unclean, but Eliezer, a respected voice, though in this instance a minority of one, insists it is clean and summons four astounding miracles to prove his position. The sages dismiss these divine signs, proclaiming the Torah is not in heaven meaning, the law is to be interpreted by human thinkers on earth so the majority rules. God apparently agrees since the heavenly voice laughs and, disarmed by the sages logic, says, My sons have defeated Me. To underscore their victory, the sages set fire to the disputed oven and everything else Eliezer had declared clean, then they vote to excommunicate him.
When Eliezer weeps and grieves, God, despite having ruled for the sages, responds to their mistreatment of him by withering harvests across the land, spoiling dough and incinerating every object Eliezer looks upon. The president of the Sanhedrin meets an untimely death, taking the hit for his minions sin of onaat devarim. The gravity of this forbidden activity becomes crystal clear: God nearly destroyed the world because of the wounded feelings of Eliezer, an honorable man.
Surely the rabbis who made Richard Goldstone's life miserable were aware of that famous story as well as the tradition that similar be-havior caused the calamity of calamities, that the Second Temple was demolished for only one reason, sinat chinam (baseless hatred), Jew hating Jew, an infraction so severe that it merited an exile of almost 2,000 years.
The truth is, many holier-than-thou Jews violated several Jewish laws and traditions by politicizing Goldstone's grandson's sacred rite of passage, by causing pain to a man and his family, and by dumping verbal sludge on a fellow Jew whose only crime was to pursue justice and demand that Israel live up to its founding principles. Yet Israel's fanatical defenders won't let up on Goldstone until he is irreparably destroyed.
His foes mounted a fresh offensive last spring based on a front-page story in Yediot Aharonot, Israel's mass circulation daily, that charged that during his years as a South African judge, Goldstone sided through and through with the racist policies of the Apartheid regime and should do some soul-searching before he rushes to criticize others.
Goldstone responded that though it was the most difficult decision of his career, he had accepted the judicial appointment in the belief that he could accomplish more by defending the rule of law from within the judicial system. His critics fell over each other exploiting the story and ratcheting up the rhetoric. Danny Ayalon, Israel's deputy foreign minister, said, I don't want to exaggerate but these are the same explanations we heard in Nazi Germany after World War II. Alan Dershowitz sank to a new low. That's what Mengele said, too, he told an Israeli TV program. Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman reportedly ordered Yediot's story distributed to his diplomatic missions abroad.
Yet Goldstone had garnered respect investigating state-sponsored violence against blacks during apartheid, and it was Nelson Mandela himself who subsequently appointed Goldstone to South Africa's highest court post-apartheid. Thus, one can safely assume that he was considered a fair and honest judge.
Anyone claiming to espouse Jewish values ought to be outraged by the avalanche of attacks on Richard Goldstone. But they should be deeply conscience-stricken by the possibility, just the possibility, that the Israeli army committed atrocities in Gaza. Yet many in our community are still vilifying the judge, and almost no one is talking about his findings: Thousands of Palestinian homes reduced to rubble. Gaza's infrastructure in ruins. Women and children burned by white phosphorus bombs. A man shot while his arms were shackled and left to die. Civilians shot and killed while carrying white flags. Twenty-two members of one family killed in Gaza City.
It would have been good for the Jews and for Israel had the report's substance been frankly confronted and debated, however the only game in town is Kill the message, trash the messenger. In that sense, Goldstone is the Eliezer of our age a judge pledged to defend the law in the face of arrogant opposition, excoriated for holding Jews to their principles, excommunicated for speaking truth to power. One can only hope the contemporary story doesn't end as badly as the one in the Talmud.
http://bit.ly/g7thIw
The un-Jewish assault on Richard Goldstone
It would have been 'good for the Jews' and for Israel had Goldstone's report been frankly confronted and debated, but Israel was too busy 'trashing the messenger.'
Two years after Operation Cast Lead, Israel's three-week assault against Hamas in Gaza, we are still grappling with the fallout. Much of the public reckoning has been channeled into an acrimonious debate over the report of a four-person investigative commission appointed by the United Nations Human Rights Council and headed by Judge Richard Goldstone. Regrettably, the conduct of many of Israel's supporters in this dispute has been both indecent and profoundly un-Jewish.
From the moment the Goldstone Report was released in September 2009, its lead author has been subjected to fierce, well-orchestrated attacks by Israeli and American Jews who purport to be defending the legitimacy of the Jewish state and the safety of the Jewish people. Rather than discuss the contents of the report which concluded that during the 2008-2009 Gaza war, Israel (as well as Hamas) may have committed war crimes Israel's defenders launched an all-points campaign to bury it. But their strategy was complicated from the start by an inconvenient truth: Goldstone was one of them a Jew, and not just any Jew, an exemplary one.
Until 2003, Goldstone served on South Africa's highest court. Before that, he had distinguished himself as chair of a commission of inquiry into violence during the final years of apartheid, as chief prosecutor of war crimes in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, and as part of the team that investigated the U.N. oil-for-food scandal in Iraq.
Goldstone's Jewish credentials were equally stellar. A proud, self-identified Zionist, he served on the board of governors of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem; as chair of the advisory board of Brandeis University's International Center for Ethics, Justice, and Public Life; and as president of World ORT, the international Jewish educational organization. He also was a dogged investigator of Nazi war criminals in Argentina.
Obviously, it wasn't easy to destroy Richard Goldstone. But for his report to be permanently deep-sixed, the man himself had to be thor-oughly discredited, recast not just as a naïve dupe of the human rights community but as an enemy of Israel, a Nazi in Zionist clothing, a perpetrator of blood libel, a self-hating Jew.
There are three primary threats facing us today, said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the nuclear threat, the missile threat, and what I call the Goldstone threat. President Shimon Peres called Goldstone a small man, devoid of any sense of justice. Others in the government and media piled on, as did the so-called leaders of the organized American Jewish community. Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz said Goldstone was an evil, evil man, a traitor to the Jewish people, the U.N.'s token court Jew and a despicable human being.
There's a Hebrew word for what these people did to Richard Goldstone: They put him in cherem, meaning he was not just persona non grata in the eyes of our religious arbiters, he was totally cut off from the Jewish community. From the moment the report was released, he was treated like a leper shunned, defamed, disowned and the worst was yet to come.
In April 2010, the South African Zionist Federation reportedly threatened demonstrations outside the Sandton Synagogue if he showed up at his grandson's bar mitzvah. Given the volatile political context, that was tantamount to banning the grandfather from the ceremony. No less an authority than Rabbi Moshe Kurtstag, head of the local rabbinic court, endorsed the idea that Goldstone should simply stay away, calling it quite a sensible thing to avert all this unpleasantness.
After an international outcry, Goldstone was able to attend the bar mitzvah. However, that hardly absolves Jews worldwide for the smear campaign against him. Appalling enough in human terms, I believe it should be condemned on specifically Jewish grounds. The most Jewishly observant and educated of Goldstone's attackers surely knew that speaking ill of another human being (hate speech in current parlance) violates one of Judaism's most sacrosanct laws, the prohibition against lashon hara (the Evil Tongue i.e., gossip), which Maimonides defined as any utterance (true or not!) that might cause a person physical or monetary damage, or shame, humiliation, an-guish or fear.
The Talmud's famous story of the Oven of Achnai goes even further. It establishes that onaat devarim verbal torment or abusive speech is a more heinous infraction than physical assault. The story opens with a dispute among the sages of the Sanhedrin over the ritual purity of a clay oven. Most of the decisors agree that the oven is unclean, but Eliezer, a respected voice, though in this instance a minority of one, insists it is clean and summons four astounding miracles to prove his position. The sages dismiss these divine signs, proclaiming the Torah is not in heaven meaning, the law is to be interpreted by human thinkers on earth so the majority rules. God apparently agrees since the heavenly voice laughs and, disarmed by the sages logic, says, My sons have defeated Me. To underscore their victory, the sages set fire to the disputed oven and everything else Eliezer had declared clean, then they vote to excommunicate him.
When Eliezer weeps and grieves, God, despite having ruled for the sages, responds to their mistreatment of him by withering harvests across the land, spoiling dough and incinerating every object Eliezer looks upon. The president of the Sanhedrin meets an untimely death, taking the hit for his minions sin of onaat devarim. The gravity of this forbidden activity becomes crystal clear: God nearly destroyed the world because of the wounded feelings of Eliezer, an honorable man.
Surely the rabbis who made Richard Goldstone's life miserable were aware of that famous story as well as the tradition that similar be-havior caused the calamity of calamities, that the Second Temple was demolished for only one reason, sinat chinam (baseless hatred), Jew hating Jew, an infraction so severe that it merited an exile of almost 2,000 years.
The truth is, many holier-than-thou Jews violated several Jewish laws and traditions by politicizing Goldstone's grandson's sacred rite of passage, by causing pain to a man and his family, and by dumping verbal sludge on a fellow Jew whose only crime was to pursue justice and demand that Israel live up to its founding principles. Yet Israel's fanatical defenders won't let up on Goldstone until he is irreparably destroyed.
His foes mounted a fresh offensive last spring based on a front-page story in Yediot Aharonot, Israel's mass circulation daily, that charged that during his years as a South African judge, Goldstone sided through and through with the racist policies of the Apartheid regime and should do some soul-searching before he rushes to criticize others.
Goldstone responded that though it was the most difficult decision of his career, he had accepted the judicial appointment in the belief that he could accomplish more by defending the rule of law from within the judicial system. His critics fell over each other exploiting the story and ratcheting up the rhetoric. Danny Ayalon, Israel's deputy foreign minister, said, I don't want to exaggerate but these are the same explanations we heard in Nazi Germany after World War II. Alan Dershowitz sank to a new low. That's what Mengele said, too, he told an Israeli TV program. Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman reportedly ordered Yediot's story distributed to his diplomatic missions abroad.
Yet Goldstone had garnered respect investigating state-sponsored violence against blacks during apartheid, and it was Nelson Mandela himself who subsequently appointed Goldstone to South Africa's highest court post-apartheid. Thus, one can safely assume that he was considered a fair and honest judge.
Anyone claiming to espouse Jewish values ought to be outraged by the avalanche of attacks on Richard Goldstone. But they should be deeply conscience-stricken by the possibility, just the possibility, that the Israeli army committed atrocities in Gaza. Yet many in our community are still vilifying the judge, and almost no one is talking about his findings: Thousands of Palestinian homes reduced to rubble. Gaza's infrastructure in ruins. Women and children burned by white phosphorus bombs. A man shot while his arms were shackled and left to die. Civilians shot and killed while carrying white flags. Twenty-two members of one family killed in Gaza City.
It would have been good for the Jews and for Israel had the report's substance been frankly confronted and debated, however the only game in town is Kill the message, trash the messenger. In that sense, Goldstone is the Eliezer of our age a judge pledged to defend the law in the face of arrogant opposition, excoriated for holding Jews to their principles, excommunicated for speaking truth to power. One can only hope the contemporary story doesn't end as badly as the one in the Talmud.
http://bit.ly/g7thIw
1 jan 2011
Gaza war victims live in sorrow and silence
A victim of Israel's war of 2008, Mohammad Al Haddad is just not returning to complete his studies in the university. His relatives visit him and his aunt brings him home-cooked meals.
The only sound that is heard in the Al Haddad house is that of a canary chirping in one of the rooms.
Gaza: It has become clear that not even two whole years after the war on Gaza are enough to either heal the pain or reduce the sorrow of those residing in this afflicted strip. One of such families is that of Al Haddad.
In southern Tel Al Hawa, 26-year-old Mohammad Al Haddad lives in a four-storey building along with his 18-year-old brother, Salam. In the 2008 Israeli offensive in Gaza, the rest of his family members were killed.
There is complete silence in the normally chaotic house, with the only sound of a chirping canary coming from one of the rooms.
"We were mistaken to believe we were safe here," Al Haddad told Gulf News.
Tel Al Hawa, in south eastern Gaza City, had always been a relatively affluent residential area with wide streets and multi-storey apartment buildings when the Israeli army resolved on advancing into this neighbourhood with troops and tanks on the January 14, 2009.
During the war, the Israeli army used to announce three hours of a temporary ceasefire so that Gazans could buy their basic needs.
"On January 15, my younger brother Salam did not mind waiting for the announcement of the Israeli army concerning the temporary ceasefire at 1:00 pm, but rather set off to my grandfather's house early in the morning. Just as we got into our car and drove no more than 100 meters from our home to the intersection at the end of the street, when we were hit," Al Haddad recounted.
"The power of the explosion flung me far from the car where I lost consciousness and later found myself in the hospital," he said.
"Our neighbours later told us that he was struggling to reach the car but was prevented and taken to the hospital instead while others tried to put out the fire with no success," Al Haddad's uncle Sami said.
In hospital
Al Haddad lost his left eye, fractured his jaw, and suffered from third degree burns on his legs, hands and forehead. He remained in the hospital for four months after the incident.
After two years of recovery, Al Haddad is just not returning to complete his studies in the university. His relatives visit him and his aunt brings him homecooked meals.
Since the beginning of the second Intifada in 1999, Israeli troops have injured more than 12,000 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. Almost half of this number was a result of the Israeli offensive at the end of 2008.
Most Palestinians had to seek treatment abroad through charitable offers, but most injured people living in Gaza cannot afford proper treatments and rehabilitation services.
"The Israeli army shoots with the intention to either kill or handicap. In fact, the majority of the Palestinians wounded either become handicapped or disfigured; a lot of them can't afford the costs of medical treatments while others can't find it in Gaza,"
Thareef Abdo Al Fatah from Assalama society explained.
"International support helps during major conflicts but it tends to dwindle down during periods of relative calm," he said.
"After the war, several Arab officials took photos with me with the promise of supporting me in both my medical treatments as well as education. However, it's clear that they haven't lived up to their word as much as their benefits," Al Hadded said.
http://bit.ly/g5c4qT
Gaza war victims live in sorrow and silence
A victim of Israel's war of 2008, Mohammad Al Haddad is just not returning to complete his studies in the university. His relatives visit him and his aunt brings him home-cooked meals.
The only sound that is heard in the Al Haddad house is that of a canary chirping in one of the rooms.
Gaza: It has become clear that not even two whole years after the war on Gaza are enough to either heal the pain or reduce the sorrow of those residing in this afflicted strip. One of such families is that of Al Haddad.
In southern Tel Al Hawa, 26-year-old Mohammad Al Haddad lives in a four-storey building along with his 18-year-old brother, Salam. In the 2008 Israeli offensive in Gaza, the rest of his family members were killed.
There is complete silence in the normally chaotic house, with the only sound of a chirping canary coming from one of the rooms.
"We were mistaken to believe we were safe here," Al Haddad told Gulf News.
Tel Al Hawa, in south eastern Gaza City, had always been a relatively affluent residential area with wide streets and multi-storey apartment buildings when the Israeli army resolved on advancing into this neighbourhood with troops and tanks on the January 14, 2009.
During the war, the Israeli army used to announce three hours of a temporary ceasefire so that Gazans could buy their basic needs.
"On January 15, my younger brother Salam did not mind waiting for the announcement of the Israeli army concerning the temporary ceasefire at 1:00 pm, but rather set off to my grandfather's house early in the morning. Just as we got into our car and drove no more than 100 meters from our home to the intersection at the end of the street, when we were hit," Al Haddad recounted.
"The power of the explosion flung me far from the car where I lost consciousness and later found myself in the hospital," he said.
"Our neighbours later told us that he was struggling to reach the car but was prevented and taken to the hospital instead while others tried to put out the fire with no success," Al Haddad's uncle Sami said.
In hospital
Al Haddad lost his left eye, fractured his jaw, and suffered from third degree burns on his legs, hands and forehead. He remained in the hospital for four months after the incident.
After two years of recovery, Al Haddad is just not returning to complete his studies in the university. His relatives visit him and his aunt brings him homecooked meals.
Since the beginning of the second Intifada in 1999, Israeli troops have injured more than 12,000 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. Almost half of this number was a result of the Israeli offensive at the end of 2008.
Most Palestinians had to seek treatment abroad through charitable offers, but most injured people living in Gaza cannot afford proper treatments and rehabilitation services.
"The Israeli army shoots with the intention to either kill or handicap. In fact, the majority of the Palestinians wounded either become handicapped or disfigured; a lot of them can't afford the costs of medical treatments while others can't find it in Gaza,"
Thareef Abdo Al Fatah from Assalama society explained.
"International support helps during major conflicts but it tends to dwindle down during periods of relative calm," he said.
"After the war, several Arab officials took photos with me with the promise of supporting me in both my medical treatments as well as education. However, it's clear that they haven't lived up to their word as much as their benefits," Al Hadded said.
http://bit.ly/g5c4qT
