This is really nothing all that new, but that doesn’t make it right. A report on war crimes during the “war” (more accurately a slaughter) in Gaza last December up until nearly the day Obama took office, is being angrily denounced into obscurity by none other than democracy-loving Congressmen. Late last year, Israel relentless pounded Gaza with bombs, white phosphorous, new shock weapons, depleted uranium, and more. They gave it all they had, maximizing the killings of women, children, and everyone in their path with everything in their arsenal. In the end, this very under-emphasized war (in U.S. media) left over 1,400 people in Gaza, defenseless and weaponless, dead. Why?
Well, a report tried to determine what happened, and it was written by South African Judge Richard Goldstone, a very highly respected judge and reportedly very fair-minded and hard working. Not some ideologically-driven man. The report was instantly demonized and degraded in the Israeli press, and soon after, in the American press and in the American Congress. And worse, they got the UN to nearly denounce the whole report and nearly rescind it. The report, by the way, was quite fair and accused both sides of war crimes but of course, Israel’s part in that was much more enormous, given all the people they succeded in wounding and killing. Palestinians spent most of that war running for their lives or hiding and hoping the weapons woulodn’t find them. Schools and UN facilities were even destroyed by Israel, apparently deliberately. By all accounts, it was a massacre. The report, though, did not use my harsh language. What I read was quite diplomatic.
This brings us to the question: Why Is Congress Demonizing an Investigation of Israel’s War Crimes in Gaza? Because there is surely a reason. This article highlights the Bill Moyers interview of Judge Goldstone in late October.
By Bill Moyers and republished by Alternet
Editor’s Note: The following is a transcript of Bill Moyers’ must-read interview with Richard Goldstone, who accused both the Israel Defense Forces and Hamas of war crimes and possibly crimes against humanity during Israel’s invasion of Gaza in the winter of 2008-2009 in his report submitted to the UN’s Human Rights Council. The Council offically endorsed the findings of the report. Early this November the House of Representatives voted 344 to 36, to condemn Goldstone’s report. As Human Rights Watch researcher Fred Abrahams writes, “The 179 Democrats and 165 Republicans who voted yea are helping to shield those responsible on both sides.”
Bill Moyers: There could not have been a more thankless job in the world this year than investigating allegations of war crimes between Israelis and Palestinians. You’re about to meet the man who shouldered that task after others had turned it down. And sure enough, he is at the center now of a raging controversy.
Judge Richard Goldstone was born and raised in South Africa, where he came to prominence investigating the vicious behavior of white security forces during apartheid. . . . . . . “
Richard Goldstone: These attacks amounted to reprisals and collective punishment, and constitute war crimes. The government of Israel obviously has a duty to protect its own citizens. That in no way justifies a policy of collective punishment of a people under effective occupation, destroying their means to live a dignified life and the trauma caused by the kind of military intervention the Israeli government called Operation Cast Lead.
The report and the angry debate surrounding it have exposed Goldstone to strident and bitter criticism. Nonetheless, late last week, the UN’s Human Rights Council officially endorsed his findings. Richard Goldstone joins me now. Currently a visiting professor at Fordham Law School in New York, last spring he received the prestigious MacArthur Foundation Award for International Justice. His books include “For Humanity: Reflections of a War Crimes Investigator.”
. . . .
Moyers: I mean, there are allegations in here, some very tough allegations of Israeli soldiers shooting unarmed civilians who pose no threat, of shooting people whose hands were shackled behind them, of shooting two teenagers who’d been ordered off a tractor that they were driving, apparently carrying wounded civilians to a hospital, of homes, hundreds, maybe thousands of homes destroyed, left in rubble, of hospitals bombed. I mean there are some questions about one or two of your examples here, but it’s a damning indictment of Israel’s conduct in Gaza, right?
Goldstone: Well, it is outrageous, and there should have been an outrage. You know, the response has not been to deal with the substance of those allegations. I’ve really seen or read no detailed response in respect of the incidents on which we report.
Moyers: Why is that?
Goldstone: Well, you know, I don’t know. I suppose people hate being attacked. There’s a knee-jerk reaction to attack the messenger rather than the message. And I think this is typical of that. And of course, a lot of the allegations, I certainly don’t claim anything like infallibility. But I would like to see a response to the substance, particularly the attack on the infrastructure of Gaza, which seems to me to be absolutely unjustifiable.
Moyers: What did you see with your own eyes when you went there?
Goldstone: Well, I saw the destruction of the only flour-producing factory in Gaza. I saw fields plowed up by Israeli tank bulldozers. I saw chicken farms, for egg production, completely destroyed. Tens of thousands of chickens killed. I met with families who lost their loved ones in homes in which they were seeking shelter from the Israeli ground forces. I had to have the very emotional and difficult interviews with fathers whose little daughters were killed, whose family were killed. One family, over 21 members, killed by Israeli mortars. So, it was a very difficult investigation, which will give me nightmares for the rest of my life.
Moyers: Those particular incidents, what makes actions like that a crime in war? I mean, war is such a horrendous mess-
Goldstone: Absolutely.
Moyers: What makes those acts war crimes, as you say?
Goldstone: Well, humanitarian law, really fundamentally is what’s known as the “principle of distinction.” It requires all people involved, commanders, troops, all people involved in making war, it requires them to distinguish between civilians and combatants. And then there’s a question-
Moyers: Combatants, right?
Goldstone: -and combatants. And then there’s a question of proportionality. One can, in war, target a military target. And there can be what’s euphemistically referred to as acollateral damage,’ but the acollateral damage’ must be proportionate to the military aim. If you can take out a munitions factory in an urban area with a loss of 100 lives, or you can use a bomb twice as large and take out the same factory and kill 2000 people, the latter would be a war crime, the former wouldn’t.”
. . . . . .
Everyone should look into this report and reasons why our government would want it squashed. Maybe because it might show that this war was conducted with American-made weapons, American-made chemicals such as white phosphorous, or at least American funded? We need to cut off all aide to Israel until they make reparations to the citizens of Gaza. There are now orphans and widows and missing family members that may never be found — all because of useless, misguided sense of revenge and worse.
Watch and listen to the video here, and the transcript is here and the original version is here.
Editor’s Note: The following is a transcript of Bill Moyers’ must-read interview with Richard Goldstone, who accused both the Israel Defense Forces and Hamas of war crimes and possibly crimes against humanity during Israel’s invasion of Gaza in the winter of 2008-2009 in his report submitted to the UN’s Human Rights Council. The Council offically endorsed the findings of the report. Early this November the House of Representatives voted 344 to 36, to condemn Goldstone’s report. As Human Rights Watch researcher Fred Abrahams writes, “The 179 Democrats and 165 Republicans who voted yea are helping to shield those responsible on both sides.”
Bill Moyers: There could not have been a more thankless job in the world this year than investigating allegations of war crimes between Israelis and Palestinians. You’re about to meet the man who shouldered that task after others had turned it down. And sure enough, he is at the center now of a raging controversy.
Judge Richard Goldstone was born and raised in South Africa, where he came to prominence investigating the vicious behavior of white security forces during apartheid.
In 1994, the UN named him to lead its investigation of war crimes in what was once Yugoslavia, including ethnic cleansing, the deadliest violence in Europe since the Second World War. That same year he was asked to prosecute genocide in Rwanda, where almost a million people were slaughtered. Goldstone went on to uncover Nazi war criminals hiding in Argentina, and to lead an independent inquiry into war crimes in Kosovo.
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