Goldstone Commission reports on Gaza-war war-crimes

The Goldstone Commission, appointed in April by the UN Human Rights Council to investigate all violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law that were committed during last winter’s Gaza war, has now presented its findings to the Council.
Regarding actions undertaken by the armed forces of the State of Israel, the report states,

    The Mission found that, in the lead up to the Israeli military assault on Gaza, Israel imposed a blockade amounting to collective punishment and carried out a systematic policy of progressive isolation and deprivation of the Gaza Strip. During the Israeli military operation, code-named “Operation Cast Lead,” houses, factories, wells, schools, hospitals, police stations and other public buildings were destroyed. Families are still
    living amid the rubble of their former homes long after the attacks ended, as reconstruction has been impossible due to the continuing blockade. More than 1,400 people were killed during the military operation.
    Significant trauma, both immediate and long-term, has been suffered by the population of Gaza. The Report notes signs of profound depression, insomnia and effects such as bed-wetting among children. The effects on children who witnessed killings and violence, who had thought they were facing death, and who lost family members would be long lasting, the Mission found, noting in its Report that some 30 per cent of children screened at UNRWA schools suffered mental health problems.
    The report concludes that the Israeli military operation was directed at the people of Gaza as a whole, in furtherance of an overall and continuing policy aimed at punishing the Gaza population, and in a deliberate policy of disproportionate force aimed at the civilian population. The destruction of food supply installations, water sanitation systems, concrete factories and residential houses was the result of a deliberate and systematic policy which has made the daily process of living, and dignified living, more difficult for the civilian population.
    The Report states that Israeli acts that deprive Palestinians in the Gaza Strip of their means of subsistence, employment, housing and water, that deny their freedom of movement and their right to leave and enter their own country, that limit their rights to access a court of law and an effective remedy, could lead a competent court to find that the crime of persecution, a crime against humanity, has been committed.
    The report underlines that in most of the incidents investigated by it, and described in the report, loss of life and destruction caused by Israeli forces during the military operation was a result of disrespect for the fundamental principle of “distinction” in international humanitarian law that requires military forces to distinguish between military targets and civilians and civilian objects at all times. The report states that “Taking into account the ability to plan, the means to execute plans with the most developed technology available, and statements by the Israeli military that almost no errors occurred, the Mission finds that the incidents and patterns of events considered in the report are the result of deliberate planning and policy decisions.”

Regarding actions undertaken by Palestinian armed groups, the Commission found,

    [T]he repeated acts of firing rockets and mortars into Southern Israel by Palestinian armed groups “constitute war crimes and may amount to crimes against humanity,” by failing to distinguish between military targets and the civilian population. “The launching of rockets and mortars which cannot be aimed with sufficient precisions at military targets breaches the fundamental principle of distinction,” the report says. “Where there is no intended military target and the rockets and mortars are launched into civilian areas, they constitute a deliberate attack against the civilian population.”
    The Mission concludes that the rocket and mortars attacks “have caused terror in the affected communities of southern Israel,” as well as “loss of life and physical and mental injury to civilians and damage to private houses, religious buildings and property, thereby eroding the economic and cultural life of the affected communities and severely affecting the economic and social rights of the population.”

Three Israeli noncombatants and ten Israeli soldiers were killed during the war. Of the Palestinians killed, more than 1,000 were noncombatants, including more than 300 children.
Here are the Commission’s conclusion and recommendations (reformatted by me for clarity):

    The prolonged situation of impunity has created a justice crisis in the Occupied Palestinian Territory that warrants action, the Report says. The Mission found the Government of Israel had not carried out any credible investigations into alleged violations.
    * It recommended that the UN Security Council require Israel to report to it, within six months, on investigations and prosecutions it should carry out with regard to the violations identified in its Report.
    * The Mission further recommends that the Security Council set up a body of independent experts to report to it on the progress of the Israeli investigations and prosecutions.
    * If the experts’ reports do not indicate within six months that good faith, independent proceedings are taking place, the Security Council should refer the situation in Gaza to the ICC Prosecutor.
    * The Mission recommends that the same independent expert body also report to the Security Council on proceedings undertaken by the relevant Gaza authorities with regard to crimes committed by the Palestinian side.
    * As in the case of Israel, if within six months there are no good faith independent proceedings conforming to international standards in place, the Council should refer the situation to the ICC Prosecutor.

What a fascinating road-map towards accountability.
Longtime JWN readers will know that I have long reflected and written about how the demands of peacemaking and the demands of seeking full accountability for past acts can best be reconciled. This is a very important case-study in this field.
Meantime, of course, if Pres. Obama is serious about his support for the human-rights agenda and for building a new, more constructive relationship with the UN, then he needs t get behind this process of holding both parties acountable.
Including, he should immediately signal to both Israel and Hamas that he will condition all future US aid to both of them on their compliance with these recommendations.

Another blunt No from Netanyahu

Netanyahu just loves to poke his finger in America’s eye… again, and again, and again…
Today, with Pres. Obama’s peace envoy George Mitchell still in Israel, Netanyahu bluntly told a key Knesset committee that “there will not be a complete freeze on settlement building and that building in Jerusalem will proceed as usual.”
The exact words, as reported by Haaretz’s Jonathan Lis, were,

    “The Palestinians expect a complete halt to building; it is now clear that this will not happen… Jerusalem is not a settlement and the building [there] will continue as normal.”

He even seemed to want to underline and mock the notable non-reaction of the Americans to all his earlier acts of defiance of their months-long campaign for a complete settlement freeze.
His taunting and his non-compliance are both outrageous. The best response from Obama is to move directly and speedily to securing the agreed delineation of final borders between Israel and the independent Palestinian state. In the West Bank, that border-line will, of course, also include one that runs through Jerusalem.
Deal with it, Netanyahu. Jerusalem does not belong only to Israel.

Ramadan t.v. offerings, 2009

Another Ramadan, another set of soap operas in the Arab world (along with new seasons of old-established favorites like “Bab al-Hara.”)
From Beirut, the “Land and People” blog’s Zayd gives us a quick critique of this year’s crop of soap operas, that he gathered in that center of Lebanese urban life, the local greengrocer:

    Much discussion is given to the current crop of soap operas; Beit ij-Jidde and Bab al-Harra are watched by most; Nabi Yusuf not by anyone. Many complain about the portrayal of Yusuf by an actor. Imm S. adamantly sticks by her Turkish soaps. When I joke with her that on the Turkish soap operas everyone is always crying, she replies, “ay, bass kwayyess ktiir” [Yes, but that’s very good.]
    The difference between Turkish and Syrian soap operas comes down to food. There is no food in Turkish soap operas; whereas no matter what is going on in a Syrian soap opera–siege of the town by the French; fights in the street; death, mayhem, amshakal–there is always food being bought, sold, prepared, cooked, or eaten. Always. The theory in the mahal [the greengrocer] is this is the real reason everyone in Turkey is crying; they’ve given up their alphabet as well as their food culture…

In supplementary research, I learned that in Lebanon, at least, and perhaps elsewhere,

    The most popular musalsal [Ramadan soap opera] of 2009 is the Syrian-produced “Bab al-Hara.”
    The soap opera, whose name means “The Neighborhood’s Gate,” has seen almost unprecedented success since its debut run in 2006. Set in Damascus during the inter-war period of French colonial occupation, the program depicts the last moments of a society yearning for independence.
    … In East Jerusalem, giant screens have been erected for fans and it even has a Syrian restaurant in Nottingham, England named after it. Syrian President Bashar Assad is reported to be a huge fan and the program has – perhaps inevitably in the 21st century – already spawned a video game.
    … There are 157 original series being aired during Ramadan, representing three quarters of the Arab world’s annual televisual output. All this extra programming means Ramadan is now big business for advertisers.

Maan News gives us this account of an amusing episode on a new Palestinian-produced soap-opera called “Homeland on a Thread”:

    Secretary of the PLO Executive Committee Yasser Abed Rabbo made a guest appearance on the satirical Ramadan soap opera … Saturday night.
    The show, which receives increasing local and international acclaim, is critical of both Palestinian society and its governments, tacking myriad issues in each 15-minute episode. Despite its regular criticism of the government, source say the show is supported by Abed Rabbo.
    The official played himself the episode “Obama in Ramallah,” which saw him excuse US President Barack Obama who apologized for being 60 minutes late for a meeting “because of the checkpoints,” an often heard excuse from the tardy.
    Replying to Obama, Abed Rabbo says, “Sir, you are 60 years late in understanding our suffering under these checkpoints.”
    “But [PLO Chief Negotiator] Dr Sa’eb Erekat did not tell us about the suffering of these barriers,” Obama explained.
    Trying to console the US president’s ignorance, Abed Rabbo replied “[Don’t worry] Erekat doesn’t tell us what happens with him in the negotiations.”

Rollicking stuff (especially if you know some of the personalities involved.)
Qatar seems to have produced at least one soap opera with a biting social edge.
In Kuwait, the Ministry of Information felt that at least one soap opera, “Sotik Wasal” [“Your voice carried”; maybe “I already heard you”] had gone too far in its political commentary, and banned it.
The birthplace of the Arabic t.v. soap opera was originally Egypt. But Amira Howeidy tells us that now, the biggest productions there during Ramadan are not soap operas, but talk shows; and numerous talk show hosts have gained sizeable mass followings.
She writes this,

    Al-Qahira Al-Yom ‘s [Amr] Adib… spoke about the role he plays and the price he pays for it. “If it wasn’t for the protection of President Hosni Mubarak I would be in trouble,” he said, alluding to his own political influence and the “enemies” he has made as a result of expressing his views on air. Adib does not shy away from making grand political statements: “This is a country that has been silent for too long and now is the time to speak up,” is typical of his utterances. When Khalifa suggested during the course of the interview that influential presenters “mobilise and toy with the masses” Adib’s response was: “On the contrary, the masses are impacting me.”
    Adib may well come across as an independent, influential voice, but there are critics who take issue with his agenda. Ayman El-Sayyad, editor of the monthly cultural magazine Weghat Nazar, argues that the Adib-Khalifa episode covertly promoted Hosni Mubarak’s son, Gamal. “The message was clear, all that talk about change and the talk about how the president protected Adib,” El-Sayyad told Al-Ahram Weekly. A segment of the episode, where Adib predicts that Gamal Mubarak will succeed his father, was censored.
    Al-Qahira Al-Yom has aired live 250 days a year for a decade now. Until 2004 — the year the anti- Mubarak dissent movement Kifaya took to the streets triggering a wave of protests across Egypt — it was mainly a celebrity gossip show. Then came the shift, and for a while at least Adib was the only Egyptian discussing political developments as millions watched. Other talk shows… soon followed. Presenters vied for the loyalty of the audiences. Once they succeeded in securing it they enjoyed an influence that, arguably, no politician or official has ever enjoyed.
    In a country where political groups are denied the right to form parties (the government has denied over a dozen requests to form political parties in the last two years), and where political stagnation leaves no room for change, talk shows and their presenters have unwittingly filled the gap.
    Advertising companies were quick to notice the popularity of such shows among viewers…

And finally, Sumayyah Meehan of Muslim Media News struck a more moralistic note about the Ramadan soap operas:

    Before, most Muslims in the Middle East would gather in the nights of Ramadan to worship or to discuss matters related to the deen [religion]. After all, the region is the cradle of Islam and the birthplace of the Prophet Muhammad (s). However, these days many Muslims gather to watch soap operas together, gossip about what happened in the current installment or speculate what will happen in the one to come.
    It is encouraging to note that not all Middle Eastern countries streamline a barrage of juicy soap operas during the Holy Month. In Turkey, the television programming is geared towards Islamic history, living the deen of Islam and Q&A shows where callers can call in to have their questions about Islam answered live on air by a reputable sheikh. Locally produced and aired music channels in Turkey also pull their programming during Ramadan in favor of airing Islamic nasheeds [devotional songs].
    Storytelling is an age-old tradition. However, Ramadan is a golden gift that should be seized by every Muslim that is willing and able to receive the blessings that come with it. Being glued to the TV and rapturously eating up all the human folly portrayed there definitely tarnishes the reality of what Ramadan is all about.

Ramadan Kareem, everyone.

I-P: Borders first– and fast?

The usually well-informed Akiva Eldar has an important piece in today’s Haaretz, reporting this:

    Negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians will resume next month on the basis of an understanding that the establishment of a Palestinian state will be officially announced in two years.
    Palestinian and European Union sources told Haaretz that talks will initially focus on determining the permanent border between Israel and the West Bank.
    … It is understood that this will be accompanied by a public American and European declaration that the permanent border will be based on the border of June 4, 1967. Both sides may agree to alter the border based on territorial exchanges.
    Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s refusal to discuss Jerusalem and the Palestinian refugees in the initial negotiation stages will not be allowed to delay the announcement of an independent Palestinian state.
    Likewise, Netanyahu’s demand that the Palestinians recognize Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people, and that the Arab world embark on normalizing ties with Israel, will not constitute preconditions to an “early recognition” of Palestine.

Eldar is also reporting that Netanyahu has expressed confidence that he’ll reach an “agreement” on some limited curbs on settlement construction with the Americans, very soon.
If Eldar’s report is accurate, which I assume to be the case, then I think this says some moderately good things about where Obama’s policy is heading.
I understand that Obama’s failure to win– or even, really to fight for– a complete settlement freeze has been very frustrating for the Palestinians But as I noted in this recent IPS piece,

    some seasoned analysts of Israeli-Arab negotiations argue that the main focus for Obama and all others who seek a fair and durable peace in the region should now be not the settlement-building issue, but to start – and win speedy completion of – the negotiation for a final peace agreement (FPA).
    From that perspective, any further prolongation of the fruitless tussle over the settlements can be seen both as a huge time-waster and as a growing drain on Obama’s political capital domestically and internationally.
    These analysts point out that any FPA will necessarily include a demarcation of the final borders between Israel and the future Palestinian state.
    Once those lines are demarcated, the issue of whether and where Israel can build new housing for its people is instantly transformed. After border demarcation Israel can presumably build freely within its own final borders, consistent with international law.
    But outside those borders not only will it be unable to continue its building programmes, but Israeli citizens already living there will rapidly come under Palestinian law.
    And as the FPA goes into effect there will be no more Israeli military occupation of either or the West Bank, and thus no remaining problem, under international law, regarding Israeli settlers in those areas.
    Demarcating a final border for Israel in the West Bank is something that Netanyahu and many of his allies in Israeli’s rightwing government have long been opposed to. Netanyahu’s Likud party traditionally considered the whole terrain between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean – and even a stretch of land east of the Jordan – to be part of the Biblical “Land of Israel”.

If Eldar’s account is accurate, here are the good aspects of what Obama seems to be planning:

    1. Going for an agreement on those final-status borders first, and hopefully also fast.
    2. Not getting sidetracked by either endless nickel-and-diming over an interim settlement freeze, or the terrible dead-end of a “Palestinian state with a provisional border,” or Israel’s demands that it needs to receive the Palestinians’ prior agreement to “recognize Israel as a Jewish state”, or whatever.
    3. With regard to the interim settlement freeze idea– which seems as though it’ll go onto operation in only a very limited way– making no mention of any kind of mandatory Arab-state quid pro quos for that. (I see that Saudi Arabia’s very influential Prince Turki al-Faisal today reiterated in the NYT that the Kingdom is not prepared to engage in any normalization or or other peacebuilding measures until “after [the Israelis] have released their grip on Arab lands.” Absolutely no surprise there.)
    4. Having the US and EU declare that the final border will be “based on the line of June 4, 1967”, though with mutually agreeable exchanges.

So, there seem to be much that is laudable and realistic in the plan as reported. Here, though, are one big thing and a number of slightly smaller things that we need to have spelled out before we express any enthusiasm for it:

    One big thing:
    The “borders first” approach will not work unless the border-line and any other necessary arrangements regarding all of Jerusalem are also spelled out in the broader border delineation exercise. This is the case, for two reasons: Firstly because “Metropolitan Jerusalem” now constitutes such a large and such a pivotally placed portion of the West Bank that you literally cannot know what Palestinian-administered area you’re talking about in the West Bank unless you know where the line is and what the supplementary arrangement are for Jerusalem. Secondly, Jerusalem is of crucial political importance to all Palestinians as well as to 1.3 billion Muslims and 13 million Jews around the world.
    My view on what might work in Jerusalem, fwiw, is that the Israelis would get the Jewish Quarter of the Old City and some but not all of the settlement blocs in occupied East Jerusalem, and the Palestinians would get the rest of the Old City and much but not all of the rest of occupied East Jerusalem, with the Palestinian concessions there being compensated with good chunks of land from elsewhere in 1948 Israel… Plus perhaps some kind of special international regime for some Holy Places.
    Anyway, there needs to be a line through Jerusalem. We’re talking about two separate states with separate economies and different trading partners, etc. Over time, perhaps, the two states will want to cooperate, and Jerusalem will be a great locus for that. But for now, a clean divorce is so much better– in Jerusalem, as in the land of Israel/Palestine as a whole– than continuing in any form with the highly coercive and extremely damaging regime that has existed, including at the economic level, since 1967, and also, of course, since Oslo.

And here are the main other things that need to happen to make this path look good:

    1. Obama still needs to spell out, repeatedly, that it is in the United States’ interest to see a sustainable peace agreement secured in a very speedy way… Enough with always trying to justify his diplomatic involvement on the basis that “it’s in Israel’s interest”, or “it’ll help make Israel more secure”, or whatever. Yes, those things will happen. But they will be by-products of him pursuing this final peace agreement for the two even more important reasons that (a) it’s the right and moral thing to do, and (b) it’s in the deeper interests of the US citizenry as a whole… And therefore, that even if the PM of Israel should disagree (shock! horror!) with what Obama plans to do, nonetheless he will proceed, undeterred by that opposition.
    2. He needs to spell out that this whole approach is based on international law and international resolutions… And by the way, he needs to bring other countries/groupings into the “leadership process”, in addition to the US and the EU. This is not, and should not be seen as, a western/NATO project! It should derive its strength, clarity, and legitimacy from the United Nations, including from the resolutions of the UN Security Council.
    3. Based on the preceding two points, he needs to make sure that the “model” of the negotiations is not just one in which “the Israelis and Palestinians get left in a room together to work things out between them.” That can never work. One side is, on the ground, a fearsome military and economic power that is occupying the land of the other. The other is a weak and oppressed (though numerous) group of people who’ve been living under the Israeli fist for many years. That is why both the US’s interest and the principles of international law need to be added into the equation to even things up. So that, for example, the negotiations “land swaps”, the refugee issue, or whatever don’t end up being completely– and over the medium haul, quite unsistainaby– resolved in Israel’s interest.
    4. He needs, obviously, to find a way to include in the diplomacy in some way those parties that were not only excluded but also actively combated and opposed by GWB administration. That includes both Hamas and the five-million-plus Palestinian refugees. On Hamas, there is some modestly good news, in that the Speaker of the PLO’s ‘parliament’, Selim Zaanoun, is supposed to be in Gaza right about now, discussing formulas for bringing Hamas into the PLO… And of course, it is the PLO, not the Determinedly Interim Palestinian Authority, that under the Oslo formula is responsible for negotiating the final peace with Israel. (Even if Saeb Erakat does like to double- or triple-hat himself on occasion); and
    5. Finally, this peace diplomacy on the Palestinian-Israeli track will be a lot more successful if it is seen as part of an intentionally synergizing push for a comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace, that is, one that involves progress on the Syrian-Israeli track in tandem with– rather than, as in the past, in a considerably degree of competition with– the Palestinian-Israeli track.

Well, there’s my input into this. Let’s hope more than a few of the relevant power-that-be here in Washington listen to me, eh?

A testimony the world needs to hear

Amira Hass had a searing report in Thursday’s Haaretz. It’s about the killing and slow death during last winter’s Gaza war of Ahmed Samouni, age 4, and his father Atiyeh.
Amira, a secular saint from Israel, interviewed Ahmed’s mother Zeinat in May in a Gaza City neighborhood.
Here’s what Hass wrote that Zeinat Samouni told her about the events of Sunday, January 4:

    “We didn’t sleep all night, not even the children. There were 18 of us in one room, we and our children [from 15 days up to 12 years], as well my husband’s first wife, Zahwa, and her seven children [the oldest is 23]. They had come the previous evening because they were afraid to stay in their tin hut. We heard my sister-in-law shouting outside when a fire broke out in her home after a shell hit it. That was around 6 A.M. I was afraid from her shouts alone.”
    Samouni continued: “The soldiers began moving between the houses and shooting. We heard them speaking Hebrew. We all started screaming and crying. My husband only said that we shouldn’t be afraid and that we should read the Koran. We left the front door open so they wouldn’t break it down with explosives and so they would see that there are children here. They came straight into the living room; we were in the children’s room, across the way. [The soldiers] looked frightening. Their faces were blackened with charcoal and they had big helmets with branches in them. We were so afraid we shouted.”
    Mahmoud Samouni, 12: “They were from Givati” – an infantry battalion.
    Zeinat Samouni: “We all shouted. Atiyeh stood up to approach the soldiers and talk to them. He knows Hebrew. Ahmed followed him, crying: Daddy, Daddy. Atiyeh told him, Don’t be afraid.
    “My husband walked toward the soldiers with his hands up. ‘Here I am, Khawaja [term for a non-Muslim]. He barely said a word and they shot him. It wasn’t just one who fired. Atiyeh was at the door of the children’s room, [the soldiers] were maybe a meter away. They kept shooting into the room where we were. Ahmed was hit in the head and the chest, Zahwa in the back. Her sons Faraj and Qanan were also hurt, and my Abdallah [10] was hit in the head and the hip, also Amal [his twin sister].
    “We all lay down on the floor. After maybe a quarter of an hour I shouted to the soldiers, ‘Ktanim, Khawajam, ktanim’ [“little ones,” in Hebrew], and they stopped shooting. I saw one soldier spit twice on my husband. Then they came into the children’s room and in my bedroom they began destroying the furniture and threw something [probably a stun grenade], so the room filled up with smoke and a fire started and everything in the room – clothes, documents, money – was lost.
    “Because of all the smoke and fire we started shouting again, and again said ‘Ktanim, ktanim,’ and we prayed and read the Koran and coughed. I couldn’t see the children because of all the smoke. The soldiers put on gas masks and lit up the place with the lights on their rifles, and spoke Hebrew. We’re crying and the children are peeing their pants and the soldiers are laughing. In the end, they said, ‘Come on, come on,’ and took us out. They spat on my husband again. I look at the pool of blood under his head and a soldier aims his rifle at me. Outside there were soldiers who fired. My children and I went out barefoot, our arms raised. Fahed, Zahwa’s son, carried Ahmed. I told a soldier I wanted to take my husband. He said no. Outside I saw many soldiers.
    “Amal ran to the house of [Uncle] Talal, but the soldiers wouldn’t let us follow her. We walked on the paved road [eastward, toward Salah al-Din Street]. I didn’t notice anything, and suddenly everyone stopped. It turned out that there was a snipers’ post in Sawafiri’s house. They ordered my husband’s [older] sons to pull up their shirts and turn around, and then they ordered them to go to Rafah [south]. We continued and entered the home of Majed [Samouni, another relative]. I looked at Ahmed; his clothes were covered with blood and I saw the two big holes in his head. I gave him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, I screamed, I asked for an ambulance. His mouth was dry. I moistened his lips with saliva, and then with water that Majed brought me.
    “We tore a sheet for white flags, so we could go out. Majed’s wife was pregnant and began going into labor. His mother and I helped her give birth. There were about 40 or 50 of us. The children were hungry. Majed brought pita and olives and tomatoes that were in the house. I asked Ahmed if he wanted to eat and he whispered, ‘Yeah . . . Mommy,’ and I gave him a little bread in water. I fed him like a baby bird. All the time blood was running, everything was covered in it. In the evening he told me, ‘I want to take you and Dad to Paradise.’ I kept bringing towels to absorb the blood and I thought about Amal and about my husband’s dead body.
    “Ahmed died at about or 4:30 or 5 A.M. [on January 5]. I screamed and I closed his eyes. Salah’s girl came and said a shell landed on the home of Wa’el [a relative] and that the roof fell in and everyone was screaming and covered in blood. She said everyone had fled to the city. I said that in that case we’d all leave the neighborhood.
    “We left, the big ones holding the little ones, Fahed carrying Ahmed’s body, all of us holding white flags. The soldiers on the roof of Sawafiri’s house started shooting just as we went out, and there was also shooting from a helicopter and from a tank [on Salah al-Din Street]. We were screaming and crying. We kept walking, barefoot, until the Star Cola factory. An ambulance came a little later. They asked if there were wounded. I said there were some behind us, who could barely walk.
    “We were about 300 people, everyone with white flags and some with plastic bags because they couldn’t find white cloth. The ambulance people apologized for not being able to come, because the soldiers shot at the ambulances. They took us to Shifa Hospital. They put Ahmed next to the others who were killed, and there I saw Talal’s family, all of them crying. Then I noticed the dead and I started to recognize them. I wandered around Shifa like a madwoman, looking for Amal. They told me, ‘We were all in Talal’s house and the soldiers took us to Wa’el’s and a shell hit and we were all wounded and killed.’
    I couldn’t find Amal. My aunt came and started crying and said, ‘Rashad is dead and Talal is dead and Rahma is dead and Safa is dead and Mohammed is dead and Hilmi is dead and Leila is dead and Tawfiq is dead, and Walid and Rebab – and I hugged her and we screamed together. Men and women gathered around, crying with us.
    “They took my son Ahmed from the bed and put him into the refrigerator, and I’m behind them, screaming. The young people are holding me and I’m saying that I want to go into the refrigerator with him. The refrigerator was full. There were so many dead that they didn’t even put Ahmed in a separate compartment, but on the floor. With Mu’athazam and Mohammed. Then a relative came and took us in his car. I didn’t yet know that I had no home to go back to [the IDF demolished it before pulling out]. I didn’t yet know where Amal was and what had happened to her.”

This is one of the many episodes that the Goldstone Commission will be reporting on.

Garlasco, part 3

His own defense of his actions is here.
He writes,

    Now I’ve achieved some blogosphere fame, not for the hours I’ve spent sifting through the detritus of war, visiting hospitals, interviewing victims and witnesses and soldiers, but for my hobby (unusual and disturbing to some, I realize) of collecting Second World War memorabilia associated with my German grandfather and my American great-uncle. I’m a military geek, with an abiding interest not only in the medals I collect but in the weapons that I study and the shrapnel I analyze. I think this makes me a better investigator and analyst. And to suggest it shows Nazi tendencies is defamatory nonsense, spread maliciously by people with an interest in trying to undermine Human Rights Watch’s reporting.
    I work to expose war crimes and the Nazis were the worst war criminals of all time. But I’m now in the bizarre and painful situation of having to deny accusations that I’m a Nazi.

It is complete garbage highly misleading for Garlasco to suggest that his obsessively pursuit of the “hobby” of collecting– and lovingly displaying with almost pornographic attention to detail– various swastika-adorned military memorabilia from the Nazi era in any way makes him a better investigator of current military events.
He claims that, “I’ve never hidden my hobby.” But when I spoke with Iain Levine, who’s the head of all HRW’s programs and thus Garlasco’s supervisor’s supervisor, he said he had no inkling that Garlasco had such a hobby “until Tuesday morning.”
Garlasco writes,

    I deeply regret causing pain and offense with a handful of juvenile and tasteless postings I made on two websites that study Second World War artifacts (including American, British, German, Japanese and Russian items).

The websites in question are titled German Combat Awards and Wehrmacht-awards. From a quick scan through them they don’t, actually, seem to cover many non-German items at all.
Also, one of those allegedly “juvenile” postings was presumably this one, made in 2005: “The leather SS jacket makes my blood go cold it is so COOL!” Garlasco was 34 or 35 years old at the time. He’d been working for HRW for two years by then. It was only four years ago.
Hard to make a claim of “youthful indiscretion”, based on such facts.
… I would like to have the opportunity to discuss these issues with Garlasco, in person. I asked Levine if I could have access to him. Hasn’t happened yet.
I’d like to make a few last points here:
1. I do not claim to know what Garlasco’s attitude is toward the Nazi-era military memorabilia that he so obsessively collects. He clearly seems to have a collector’s zeal, or obsession, and to spend a lot of time pursuing this hobby. 7,734 posts on Wehrmacht Awards since March 2004, and compiling a 450-page guide to one small sub-branch of Nazi-era badges are not the signs of a casual collector. The comment shown above, made on Wehrmacht Awards in 2005, indicates some open-ness, at the very least, to the idea that one could entertain and express fondness for specifically SS memorabilia.
Also, using ‘Flak88′ seems like a signal of possible pro-Hitler proclivities to others in that part of the collecting world, who would be quite aware that ’88’ is their insiders’ code for Heil Hitler.
To my mind, this does not prove that Garlasco’s a “Nazi sympathizer”, or an anti-Semite. But his participation on these sites– including interactions there with people who clearly do seem to be Nazi sympathizers– is extremely disturbing in itself.
2. I have had my affiliation as an Advisory Committee member with HRW for some 17 years. In that time I’ve interacted with scores of HRW staff members and advisers (though never, personally, with Garlasco.) I have never had any reason at all to suspect that any of the ones I interacted with were motivated at all in their work by anti-Semitism, or that they harbored any anti-Semitism. Indeed, it is common knowledge that a high proportion of people in the upper levels of the organization are now, and have always been, Jewish.
To suggest that Garlasco is just “the tip of the iceberg” of a whole coterie of anti-Semites working at HRW is a malicious and completely unfounded accusation.
It is probably no surprise to readers here to learn that I am a little disturbed by the degree to which the HRW powers-that-be have thus far circled their wagons round Garlasco and attempted to defend him. I have been having some communications with people in HRW, which are necessarily private, to suggest better ways forward.
3. As always, the big issue here is not Marc Garlasco and his distasteful “hobby”. It is not even Human Rights Watch, tragic though the current episode is for all of us. The big issue is the need to keep everyone’s attention focused on the effort to improve the human rights situation of the extremely vulnerable and still hard-pressed population of Gaza, while also improving the rights situation of all the peoples of the Middle East.
As I wrote in my IPS piece yesterday, the revelations about Garlasco’s “hobby” come at a pivotal point in the campaign to get some real accountability for the gross rights abuses perpetrated during last winter’s Israeli assault on Gaza.
This coming week, Judge Richard Goldstone is due to present his commission’s official report on those abuses to the UN Human Rights Council.
I do not know to what extent his report builds on investigative work done by Marc Garlasco for HRW. But certainly, HRW and Garlasco are very far from the only organizations that have done extensive work documenting the nature and extent of the violations of IHL committed during the Gaza war. So regardless of the latest revelations about Garlasco’s bizarre and troubling out-of-hours activities, Goldstone will still have plenty of good documentation to build on.
If Garlasco, through his actions, had not put his employer into the position of feeling so vulnerable at this point, we might have expected HRW to be a strong voice within the US body politic, advocating for strong support of whatever Goldstone’s recommendations might be. Now, I am sure they (we) will do what we can. But I can’t disguise the fact that I am extremely upset that Garlasco’s actions led to this.
What was he thinking? Did he think no-one would ever make the connection between “Flak88” and Marc Garlasco?
He must have known the connection would likely be made, at some point. He knew there were many staunch defenders of Israel out gunning for HRW; and if he had sat back and thought for one moment about the tracks he was leaving all over those Nazi-memorabilia websites, he must have known that he’d be “outed” one day… And surely, despite his protestations about the “innocence” of his hobby, any half-way intelligent American could have predicted the deep disgust and questioning with which such revelations would be greeted by many or most other Americans.
To his buddies on those websites, meanwhile, he made little or no attempt to hide his actual name, or even his afiliation with HRW. It was only his supervisors at HRW who were nearly all, despite his somewhat general protestation that “I’ve never hidden my hobby”, kept in the dark…
Tragic.

Malley on refugees, settlers, etc

I realize I promised to put something on the blog about the presentation that Rob Malley made during Thursday’s discussion of Hussein Ibish’s latest anti-one-state screed. Let me convey just the main points here.
Rob started off by noting that all the attempts to get a two-state outcome that have been undertaken since the conclusion of the Oslo Accord in 1993 have failed. (He later referred to “serial failures.”)
He was, of course, part of the diplomatic team, based in the Clinton White House, that was responsible for many of those failures. (But only a junior member.)
He asserted that, “The one-state solution doesn’t meet even the basic needs of Israeli Jews.”
If I’d had more time, I’d have loved to ask Rob to be a lot more specific. Which basic needs, precisely, of Israeli Jews does he see it as not meeting?
He said, “I haven’t given up on the two-state solution. Rather, I’ve soured on the methods used until now to attain it.”
He (like, I think, both the other people leading the discussion– Hussein Ibish and Aaron Miller) made one or more references to the need to attain a conflict-ending two-state solution.
But he said the US needs to do two main things different in the methodology it pursues, than what it did in the past. (And he, like the others, was still talking very definitely about a diplomacy that would continue to be led by the US.)
The main ideas in what he said were familiar, actually, from the NYRB article he co-authored with Hussein Agha back in June.
His first suggestion for a change in methodology was to ask, “Have we left out some vital actors: on the Palestinian side, the refugees and the Islamists, and on the Israeli side the religious and the settlers?”
He argued that in all the rounds of diplomacy carried out since 1993, members of all those groups were excluded and “treated like lepers.”
“We need to stop doing that,” he said, “Because we will need as much endorsement as we can get from all those groups for any eventual peace deal, because they are so present and so well-mobilized.”
His second methodological suggestion was that the people running the diplomacy should realize that, to be conflict-ending, the final peace agreement “has to deal with the issues of 1948, as well as 1967.”
He defined “the issues of 1948” as consisting, on the Israeli side, of a continuing demand for recognition of Israel as a Jewish state, and on the Palestinian side, a “demand that they get acknowledgment and some form of reparation for what happened in 1948.”
These two “methodological changes” are, of course, linked to each other– particularly in their recognition that, to be sustainable, any peace deal has to address the concerns and at least some of the claims of the Palestinian refugees.
It does strike me that the first of his two suggestions– focusing on being more “inclusive” towards the religio-nationalists on both sides and also towards both the Palestinian refugees and Israeli settlers– is a little “unbalanced” in the diagnosis on which it is based: All the peace efforts carried out between 1993 and now have been very attentive indeed to the concerns of Israel’s settlers and religio-nationalists… To the point that all US presidents have endorsed final border lines that would annex huge chunks of settler-populated occupied Palestinian territory to Israel, while the Israeli governments they have negotiated with have always included representatives of Israel’s religio-nationalists; and indeed, Israel’s religio-nationalists, like its settlers, are all fully enfranchised within the Israeli political system…
Whereas on the Palestinian side– ?
The Clinton White House, just like the GWB White House, tried to completely downplay and minimize the concerns and claims of the Palestinian refugees. They worked hard to keep the Palestinians living in their Diaspora– all of whom, of course, are refugees– disenfranchized within the Palestinian system, by pursuing the idea that the Interim PA in Ramallah somehow represented “all” the Palestinian people. And they either encouraged (Clinton) or actively instigated (GWB) extremely brutal crackdowns on the leaders and members of the Palestinians’ principal religio-nationalist movement.
Also, it is a little misleading to claim that the interests of the settlers should in any way correlate with, or should be “balanced off” against, those of the refugees.
The settlers, who now number around 500,000, are people who for varying numbers of years now have been– usually quite wittingly– the beneficiaries of Israel’s highly illegal project to implant, and provide generous subsidies to, settlements that use land and other natural resources stolen from its rightful Palestinian owners.
So it hard to see why the claims of these people “deserve”, in any moral sense, much attention from anyone. Of course, as a matter of common humanity they should be addressed as human equals who need a place to live, preferably inside their own country. And as a matter of political expedience, it is probably wise to do a few things to try to reach out to them.
However, they have been illegally living off the fat of someone else’s land for varying numbers of years now. So let’s not go overboard in efforts to accommodate them, maybe?
The Palestinian refugees, meanwhile, consist of around 6.8 million people— 1.8 million registered refugees currently residing in the West Bank or Gaza, and around five million Palestinian people living in the Diaspora, only about 2.9 million of whom are “registered” with UNRWA.
These are fellow-humans who have been living– the vast majority of them for all their lives at this point– while stripped of the most basic right of residing in their family’s homes.
Many of them– especially, today, those in Gaza, those in Lebanon, and those in Iraq– live in extremely tough situations, in great poverty and subject to continuing threats to their physical wellbeing.
So are all human persons equal? Do we consider that the legitimate claims and concerns of one Palestinian refugee should have the same priority as the legitimate claims and concerns one Israeli settler?
How should we weigh the legitimate claims and concerns of 6.8 million refugees against those of 500,000 settlers?
Why would we ever think it is acceptable to fail to address the legitimate claims and concerns of Palestinian refugees? Why would we think it acceptable to allow any further delay in addressing their concerns, thereby continuing to consign them to the situation of insecurity and impoverishment that so many of them have lived in for 62 years now?
… In the Q&A period of Thursday’s discussion, both my friend George Hishmeh (a longtime refugee from Palestine) and I asked questions about the need to include the refugees in the peacemaking, rather than continuing to exclude them from it. In Malley’s response to me, he referred to the the formula Hamas has proposed, whereby it would allow some non-Hamas negotiator to proceed with negotiating the peace, but any peace agreement conclided should thereafter be submitted to a referendum of all Palestinian people– and Hamas would abide by the results of that referendum..
Malley agreed with my assessment that the Diaspora Palestinians would need to be included in that referendum.
That was good.
However, at some point in the Q&A he also rephrased the point he’d made earlier about Israel “needing” to get some recognition of its status as “a Jewish state”, by talking about “Israel’s need to get recognition as the homeland of the Jewish people.”
That sounded like a serious change. The “homeland of the Jewish people”? All of them? When a Jewish American like Rob Malley is talking like that, is he implying he sees Israel as his homeland, too? I found that reference mystifying, and disturbing.
At the end of his main presentation, he summarized his current expectations thus: “I am not optimistic. Maybe we have to lower our sights for the next few years.” Later, he talked about the possibility of “a longterm interim.”
Very depressing– as if we didn’t have reason enough to be depressed before he spoke…

In 2009, as 2001: US needs Iran, Russia

On September 12, 2001, as US military planners started examining the options they had t counter-attach against Al-Qaeda and its hosts in Afghanistan, they and their colleagues in the State Department rapidly realized that if they wanted to actually topple the Taliban regime in Afghanistan they’d need the help of two key nearby powers: Iran and Russia– and to a lesser extent, India.
They got the help they needed from those regional actors, and went ahead with the invasion operation.
Now, eight years later, the US/NATO forces are still in Afghanistan. And those forces are in deep trouble there. (Osama Bin Laden, btw, is still at large.)
The 95,000 US/NATO forces in Afghanistan are already significantly dependent on Russia and Iran, to be able to maintain their presence in that craggy and distant land. If their commanders are to avert the many worse catastrophes that loom there, they will need even more help from both Russia and Iran.
That is part of the essential background to the decision the State Department announced yesterday, that the US will be participating in the meeting that the Tehran government proposed Wednesday, between Iran and the P5+1 group.
Dafna Linzer of ProPublica notes at that link,

    Iran reiterated many of its previous ideas for talks while scaling back specific requests made in previous proposals [2] (PDF). Among other things, Tehran called for an end to hostilities and for talks on issues of specific concern to Iran, such as drug trafficking and security in the Middle East. Unlike previous Iranian proposals, this one does not contain a litany of past grievances with the United States and does not assert an Iranian commitment to advancing its nuclear efforts.

On Friday, Russian PM Vladimir Putin expressed his country’s clear opposition to any further escalation of outside pressure (whether sanctions or military force) against Iran.
There is now confirmation from Tel Aviv that Israeli PM Netanyahu made a secret visit to Moscow shortly before Putin announced this decision. If, as we can assume, he discussed the Iran file while there, then evidently he failed to prevent Putin from making that clear decision against escalation.
The Israeli government and its many powerful and well-organized supporters inside the US have been vigorously campaigning for all non-Iranian powers– especially the western governments– to ratchet up the level of pressure they place on Iran.
Today in Israel, Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Dan Meridor, who is also Minister of Intelligence and Atomic Energy, gave an interview to Reuters in which he seemed somewhat seriously behind the curve, still arguing that Russia and China might get on board the anti-Israel campaign.
I doubt it. Maybe it’s time for Israel and its supporters in western countries to grow up and take a realistic look at the fact that within the world community that needs to make the decision on this matter they are in a very small minority.
And quite evidently, very few people– even in the strongly pro-Israeli United States– will be in a mood to forgive Israel if its actions towards Iran put at risk the lives of 60,000 US service members in Afghanistan.