Israel’s “Faux” Golan Border Tuesday, Jun 7 2011 

Arab Awakening and Israel and Lebanon and Middle East and Syria , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Sandboxer 10:06 pm

By Sharmine Narwani

On Sunday, around 1,000 unarmed civilians marched to the ceasefire line between Syria and the Golan Heights to protest Israel’s occupation of Arab lands following the 1967 war. Hours later, in the worst bloodshed since the 1973 war between Israel and Syria, up to 23 civilians were dead and hundreds wounded after Israeli troops opened live fire on the protestors.

In the West Bank, fellow protestors were only injured, as Israeli troops used rubber bullets and tear gas to disperse crowds that were only a few feet away from them.

In Majd al Shams on the occupied Golan Heights, however, the Palestinian and Syrian demonstrators were many yards away – behind barbed wire fences – never having crossed any ceasefire line.

As was the case with the 11 unarmed protestors in Lebanon killed by Israeli forces on May 15 in Maroun al Ras. Those civilians had not crossed any border either.

Israel’s fears are understandable. The notion that Palestinians and Syrians can “just walk home” to their occupied houses and villages could destroy the deterrence barriers that Israel has worked hard to erect since 1948 and 1967. Which is why it was important for the Jewish State to teach these populations a lesson, even if it meant killing a few dozen.

That makes Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu no different than Libya’s Muammar Qaddafi, Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak, Syria’s Bashar al Assad, Bahrain’s Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa, Tunisia’s Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, Yemen’s Ali Abdullah Saleh – and other autocrats still waiting their turn.

All fired live rounds at unarmed civilian populations voicing their grievances and exercising their right to congregate in public.

Justifying Civilian Death
Just three weeks earlier, on May 15, Palestinian and Syrian protestors in the Golan Heights broke through the barbed wire fence, poured over the ceasefire line, met up with friends and relatives, and then went home. One particularly determined fellow – 28-year-old Hassan Hijazi who was galvanized by a Facebook group to join the protests – even decided to visit his parent’s old house in Jaffa and hitched a ride alongside some Israeli soldiers to get there. He later turned himself in to authorities and was duly escorted back to the ceasefire line by security agents.

That very recent incident contrasted sharply on Sunday with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s portrayal of the Golan demonstrators as “extremist elements” who “are trying to break through our borders and threaten our communities and our citizens.”

As the Israeli spin machine went into overdrive, we were subjected to the kinds of drivel we are by now used to hearing from regional dictators on their last legs:

The it-wasn’t-us argument: “A Syrian mine exploded, seemingly because Molotov cocktails thrown at (Israeli) forces started a bush fire which caused the explosion of the mine, a number of mines even,” an Israeli army spokeswoman said – ostensibly blaming the deaths on mines and not IDF bullets.

The deflection argument: “We believe that the Syrian regime is focusing the world’s attention on the border with Israel instead of what is happening there,” said another military spokesperson.

The extremists-are-involved argument: Oops. Netanyahu did that one himself.

Military spokesman Yoav Mordechai called the killings “a measured, focused and proper response.” The only thing that apparently needs “measuring” is his sanity – the videos of the Golan clashes clearly show protestors behind a barbed wire fence being shot at by Israeli sharpshooters. Like target practice. (more…)

 

Israel’s Human Shields and Live Bait Wednesday, Oct 27 2010 

Foreign Affairs and Human Rights and Israel and Middle East and Palestine and peace process and US Foreign Policy , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Sandboxer 4:22 pm

“Sharmoota!” hisses the Jewish settler as she presses up against the bars of a Hebron home where she has forced a Palestinian woman to take cover. “Whore” in Arabic, the shameful word hangs in the air like verbal dynamite – and shocks again and again as rapid-fire “Sharmootas” are spat out at their victim. An Israeli soldier stands by and watches this provocation. He does nothing. Video 1, Video 2

Young teenage settlers hang around outside a Palestinian schoolhouse, waiting for the stream of Arab mothers and their children to make their way home. The settler youths – all girls – shriek abuses at the frightened Palestinian kids, kick the elders and pull headscarves off the heads of pious women – “terror games” to pass time on a Jewish holiday, all under the watch of armed Israeli soldiers who do not intervene. Video

There are 500,000 illegal Jewish settlers in occupied Palestinian territories today – a number that has increased five-fold since the US-sponsored “peace process” began 19 years ago.

  • Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, August 12, 1949, 6 UST 3516, provides, in paragraph 6: “The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.”

 

Peace advocates contend that this Israeli push to “settle” Jews in the occupied territories reflects the determination of an increasingly right-wing government to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Logic dictates that the physical presence of half a million Jews in illegal settlements and outposts – connected through a maze of Jewish-only roads – has stealthily destroyed the possibility of a land-for-peace compromise. And Israel’s government has spent $17 billion on settlements since occupation began.

But here’s something we don’t talk about readily. Why would consecutive Israeli governments heavily subsidize and incentivize the relocation of young families – women and children – into hostile environments? Why would Israel – which claims security dangers wherever there are Palestinian populations – deliberately and systematically place its Jewish civilian population in “harm’s way?”

The settlers are Israel’s human shields and live bait.

“Naatzi! Naaaatzi!” This word, amazingly enough, is a settler favorite. “Nazis!” they screech at foreign TV crews, while waving their infants around. “Nazi, Nazi, Nazi,” they chant as they provocatively try to stop Palestinians from harvesting their olive crops. And the IDF soldiers wait and watch – occasionally intervening to push a frustrated and humiliated Palestinian objector away from a taunting, threatening Jewish settler.

Eventually, a half-crazed Palestinian will fight back, even kill some settlers. Israeli authorities immediately step in and claim the “Security Risk” has increased and more Palestinian land has to be confiscated to ensure Israel’s security. More Palestinians are detained, harassed, punished. More Palestinian homes are occupied or demolished. See how that works? Unleash your craziest Jews onto a Palestinian civilian population until someone blows a fuse and hits back. Then use that as the pretext to encroach further into the lives and onto the land of Palestinians.

Jewish settlers. Half a million of them in 121 illegal settlements and 102 illegal outposts. Human shields and live bait for Israel. The Jewish state’s frontline army for depopulating Palestinian land.  (more…)

 

Khaled Meshaal Interview: Hamas Chief Weighs In on Eve of Peace Talks Wednesday, Oct 27 2010 

Hamas and Israel and Middle East and Palestine and peace process , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Sandboxer 4:03 pm

With pundits in most capitals already predicting failure for the US-brokered Palestinian-Israeli peace talks to begin on Thursday, it seems only natural to start asking the question: “What’s next?”

To get a jumpstart on what surely will be an onslaught of new, competing narratives vying for prominence in the post-peace process era, I headed to Damascus to talk to a man who has predicted the failure of this process from the start. And yet who — against all logic — has never been invited to sit at the negotiating table.

Khaled Meshaal, head of Hamas’ political bureau, is an unassuming man who sauntered into our interview room unattended and chatted with me in English while we awaited his staff.

The young father of seven — three daughters and four sons, in that order — is grounded, smart and energetic. We met at 1:00 a.m. when I was fading fast, and he was just getting started. There was a lot of ground to cover, but more than anything I wanted to leave the interview knowing what Hamas stood for. The resistance group, I felt, had left people confused in recent years. By moderating their stances and altering their language to accommodate changing realities in the Middle East, Hamas had become a bit blurry at the edges.

Do they recognize a two-state solution? Do they reject the peace process outright? What do they think about the role and imperatives of the international community in resolving the longstanding conflict between Palestinians and Israelis?

And most importantly for me — how does one today define an organization that has evolved so much since its inception?

  • Firstly, Hamas is clearly a national liberation movement that has at it roots a “resistance” outlook. It’s focus is the liberation of Palestine from Israeli occupation, and the group’s Islamist character complements rather than competes with Hamas’ political objectives.
  • Secondly, Hamas’ resistance of occupation is at the heart of its strategies — be they efforts to reach out and engage, or to take up arms. The strategy may change with evolving regional and global realities, but the group’s objectives stand firm.

In a nutshell: While the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority enables Israel to enjoy a pressure-free occupation, Hamas ensures that Israel’s occupation remains always under pressure.

And so we come to this last leg of the US-brokered peace process. Ostensibly, under the internationally-sanctioned land-for-peace formula, a major goal of negotiations is to end Israel’s occupation of Palestinian lands. So why then would Hamas not stand fully behind a peace process that sought to accomplish some of its very own goals? And why too would US mediators not invite the participation of a group that won the Palestinian popular vote in their last elections?

Here is what Khaled Meshaal had to say about the prospects and challenges of peace, and where we find ourselves at this moment, on the eve of direct peace talks:

SN: The peace process has been going on for 19 years — what in your view has been the major reason for its failure thus far?

KM: Three reasons. First of all, Israel does not want peace. They talk about peace but they are not ready to pay the price of peace. The second reason is that the Palestinian negotiator does not have strong cards in his hand to push the peace process forward. The third reason is that the international community does not have the capability or the desire to push Israel towards peace.

2010-08-31-sharmine1.jpg

(more…)

 

A Candid Conversation With The Arab League’s Amr Moussa – Peace Talks, One-State, Hezbollah, Iran and…”Foreign Fingers” Wednesday, Oct 27 2010 

Foreign Affairs and Middle East and peace process , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Sandboxer 3:53 pm

I met with Arab League Secretary General Amr Moussa at his elegant quarters in the heart of Cairo last week — on the eve of the League’s crucial meeting with Palestinian Authority Chief Mahmoud Abbas to decide on direct talks with Israel.

Moussa’s career has gone from strength to strength since I first briefly met him as Egypt’s ambassador to the United Nations in the early 1990s. He was named Egypt’s foreign minister not too long after, and then moved on to head the Arab League. Some say he had become too popular on the Egyptian street, and this was President Hosni Mubarak’s way of sidelining a potential competitor.

There have been whispers about Moussa running for Egypt’s highest political office in elections next year, particularly as rumors swirl about Mubarak’s losing battle with cancer. But the Arab League chief is firmly focused on the most contentious issue in the Middle East right now – the troubled, never-ending “peace process” between Palestinians and Israelis.

In a candid conversation with Moussa just hours before the first Arab foreign minister arrived, he addressed a broad array of hot issues in the region – carefully, but passionately too. A decade in this prestigious – though some may argue, largely impotent – post, Moussa, still has fire in his belly and the determination to do something about it.

What was clear from our discussions was that the Arab “world” is reaching the end of its patience with the regional status quo and the 19-year-long US-sponsored peace process. If genuine and well-intentioned negotiations do not emerge in the very near future, the direction of the region is up for grabs. And Moussa has some ideas as to where it should go.

First though, some thoughts on the Arab League itself – its accomplishments, and even its relevance in the face of decades-long regional stagnation and the difficulties in gaining consensus among 22 different nations:  (more…)

 

The U.S. Military ‘Mainstreams’ Hezbollah and Hamas Wednesday, Oct 27 2010 

Hamas and Hezbollah and Middle East and US Foreign Policy , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Sandboxer 2:54 pm

Petraeus was CENTCOM chief when the report emerged

Hezbollah and Hamas just went mainstream. According to Foreign Policy magazine’s Mark Perry, in a recent US military report “senior CENTCOM intelligence officers question the current U.S. policy of isolating and marginalizing the two movements” and encourage a “mix of strategies that would integrate the two organizations into their respective political mainstreams.”

The groundbreaking report is a product of CENTCOM’s “Red Team,” a group formed in 2006 to “think outside of the box and offer contrarian thinking” on critical issues for the benefit of senior military officials. The whole point of the Red Team, according to CENTCOM spokesman Major John Redfield, is that “it is meant to sharpen the reasoning and force intellectual rigor on these issues so that we can ultimately produce more informed decision making.”

The extraordinary five-page report entitled “Managing Hezbollah and Hamas” produces some critical conclusions and recommendations — Perry highlights some of these key points in his article:

- The report recognizes Hezbollah and Hamas as “pragmatic and opportunistic,” a nuanced distinction that is a world away from the current one-dimensional U.S. position that simplistically characterizes these groups as “terrorists.”

- The report recommends the integration of Hezbollah and Hamas into their national security forces and governing entities, recognizing that the existing political bodies “represent only a part of the Lebanese and Palestinian populace respectively.”

- The report downplays the view relentlessly promoted by Israel that Hezbollah is merely a proxy for Iran, instead claiming that the Lebanese resistance group’s “activities increasingly reflect the movement’s needs and aspirations in Lebanon.” Tellingly, Foreign Policy magazine also published an interview this week with Israeli Ambassador to Washington Michael Oren, in which he warns that Iran may use Hezbollah and Hamas to start a new Middle East war.

- The report draws parallels between the IRA’s gradual participation in peace talks and the possibility of taking a similar tack to integrate Hezbollah into the Lebanese Armed Forces. Citing a meeting between British Ambassador to Lebanon Frances Guy and Hezbollah in 2009, the report urges the British to pursue further talks with “vigor.”

In a twist I couldn’t possibly make up, an hour before reading Perry’s article, I was meeting with the very same Ambassador Guy, a universally-respected senior diplomat who speaks fluent Arabic and knows her terrain well. In a conversation about the peace process deadlock, I asked about her views on engaging Hamas, which is currently excluded from the talks.

Pointing to Russia’s recent statements advocating for Hamas’ inclusion in direct talks, Ambassador Guy volunteered an increasingly familiar refrain heard in Western policy circles: “You are not going to have peace without Hamas, obviously. They are going to have to be involved eventually.”  (more…)

 

Washington Just Lost the Middle East in a Big Way Wednesday, Oct 27 2010 

Middle East and Nuclear and peace process and Turkey and US Foreign Policy , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Sandboxer 1:17 pm

The end of American influence?

It’s official. There is no longer any serious “cost” for defying the United States in the global arena. Unable to win wars or deliver diplomatic coups – and struggling to maintain our economic equilibrium – Washington has lost the fundamental tools for global leadership. And no place does this impotence manifest more vividly than the modern Middle East.

Our pointless and protracted wars in Afghanistan and Iraq will be the last time we will launch a major battle in the region. That massive show of flexing brawn over brain burst a global perception bubble about our intentions, capabilities and reason.

This credibility was compromised further with our irrational support of Israel’s attacks on Lebanon and Gaza in 2006 and 2008/9 respectively. And by the double standards employed over Israel’s violations of international law and its illegal nuclear weapons stash – particularly when viewed against the backdrop of our startling rhetoric over Iran’s nuclear program.

But nothing highlights our irrelevance more than two recent developments:

1) The US’s inability today to convene even perfunctory peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians, let alone push through a negotiated solution – and this after 19 years of a “US-sponsored” peace process.

2) The US’s inability to achieve a resolution with Iran over its nuclear program. The only breakthrough in this long-winded effort to tame Iran’s nuclear aspirations was struck by Turkey and Brazil last week.

In short, the US seems incapable of resolving even a traffic dispute in the Middle East. It is Qatar that stepped in to broker a deal between Hezbollah and the Lebanese government in 2008, and is knee deep in negotiating a solution to the conflict in Darfur. Syria helped gain the release of prisoners in Iran and Gaza. And now Turkey and Brazil have cajoled Iran into accepting an agreement that the US, France, England, Germany, Russia and China could not.

We have been rendered irrelevant, despite our insistence on involving ourselves with every peep heard in the Mideast.  (more…)

 

Being Anti-Israel and Anti-Zionist Is the “New Anti-Semitism” Monday, Jan 4 2010 

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A Jewish woman, deriding protesters at a UK rally on Sunday in support of charging former Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni with war crimes, declared loudly into a TV camera that being anti-Israel and anti-Zionist is the “new anti-Semitism.”

Such licentious language. Meant primarily, I might add, to inflame passions and mislead public opinion by invoking a word – anti-Semitism – that we have been well-conditioned to condemn above all other forms of racism or prejudice.

I am sorry the woman fears anti-Semitism, pogroms and hatred around every corner. It’s not my problem, frankly. Let her get therapy. Does that sound harsh? Sorry, again. But I for one get pretty irritated hearing false cries of anti-Semitism against anyone who criticizes Israel, its human rights crimes, its crazy settler movement, its unique brand of crypto-racism against non-Jews living within the state and its occupied territories.

These targets include Jews as well. Like Richard Goldstone – a man who served the international community honestly and fairly by rooting out the perpetrators of real evil and putting them on trial for the most despicable of human rights violations in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia. A Jewish man, a Zionist too. “Anti-Semite,” they roared when he charged Israel with war crimes in his UN report on the 2009 Gaza War.

Or Harvard scholar Stephen Walt and the University of Chicago’s John Mearsheimer, whose paper The Israel Lobby And US Foreign Policy was skewered in a Washington Post column as anti-Semitic. Writer Eliot Cohen says:

If by anti-Semitism one means obsessive and irrationally hostile beliefs about Jews; if one accuses them of disloyalty, subversion or treachery, of having occult powers and of participating in secret combinations that manipulate institutions and governments; if one systematically selects everything unfair, ugly or wrong about Jews as individuals or a group and equally systematically suppresses any exculpatory information — why, yes, this paper is anti-Semitic.

I read this paper, and it is well researched, fair and thought-provoking. Cohen’s claim is far and away the most emotionally muddled interpretation by an academic I have yet to encounter.

Yet other targets of this convoluted connection between criticism of Israel and anti-Semitism are – well – entire countries. Like Norway, Sweden, Finland and Denmark, for instance. Yup, anti-Semites, one and all. “Norway is the most anti-Semitic country in Scandinavia,” said Dr. Manfred Gerstenfeld, a scholar of Western European anti-Semitism from the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, who spoke last year at a gathering of Israeli scholars highlighting anti-Semitism in Scandanavia. Read full article

 

Netanyahu’s ‘Shame’ And The Fiction He Weaves Monday, Jan 4 2010 

Gaza War and Human Rights and Israel and Politics and United Nations , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Sandboxer 5:32 pm

Almost a week after the UN General Assembly speeches by various heads of state, where one statement after another was dissected and laid bare by the thousands of reporters and analysts covering the annual plenary session, one speech has almost universally been ignored. And something rankles.

“Have you no shame,” thundered Benjamin Netanyahu to the throngs of senior diplomats, heads of state and assorted dignitaries watching the Israeli prime minister admonish those who remained in the room when Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad delivered his speech a day earlier.

Shame, indeed. This, from the leader of a nation that has a pitiful human rights record, standing accused by a United Nations body for War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity. A country that has an illicit stash of weapons of mass destruction which it refuses to subject to international scrutiny of any sort. A state whose very existence seems possible only through the systemic persecution of the non-Jewish population under its protection.

Break down Netanyahu’s speech and you have more fiction than fact, albeit fiction that has very adeptly been spun by successive Israeli governments into the lexicon of our political language.

“For eight long years, Hamas fired from Gaza thousands of missiles, mortars and rockets on nearby Israeli cities. Year after year, as these missiles were deliberately hurled at our civilians, not a single UN resolution was passed condemning those criminal attacks,” accused Netanyahu, before the very audience he scorned in his speech.

Fact: Between 2005 and 2007, Palestinian groups in Gaza fired about 2,700 rockets into Israel. Israel fired more than 14,600 artillery shells into Gaza during this same period, a statistic Israeli government officials always seem to omit.

But the essence of Netanyahu’s fiction remains that Palestinians, and specifically the resistance group Hamas, are the ones who initiate armed conflict.

In a far-reaching and exhaustive study of the issue, MIT Scientist Nancy Kanwisher tracked the entire timeline of killings of Palestinians and Israelis by the other between September 2000 and October 2008. In an article right here on the Huffington Post, she draws some telling conclusions about ceasefires, lulls in conflict, and resumption of hostilities between the two sides:

“It is overwhelmingly Israel that kills first after a pause in the conflict: 79% of all conflict pauses were interrupted when Israel killed a Palestinian, while only 8% were interrupted by Palestinian attacks (the remaining 13% were interrupted by both sides on the same day). In addition, we found that this pattern — in which Israel is more likely than Palestine to kill first after a conflict pause — becomes more pronounced for longer conflict pauses. Indeed, of the 25 periods of nonviolence lasting longer than a week, Israel unilaterally interrupted 24, or 96%, and it unilaterally interrupted 100% of the 14 periods of nonviolence lasting longer than 9 days.”

Kanwisher’s data goes on to contest the assumption popular with American and Israeli politicians that Hamas broke the ceasefire leading up to Israel’s brutal December 2008 Gaza onslaught:

“The ceasefire was remarkably effective: after it began in June 2008, the rate of rocket and mortar fire from Gaza dropped to almost zero, and stayed there for four straight months…what happened to end this striking period of peace? On November 4th, Israel killed a Palestinian, an event that was followed by a volley of mortars fired from Gaza. Immediately after that, an Israeli air strike killed six more Palestinians. Then a massive barrage of rockets was unleashed, leading to the end of the ceasefire.”

But Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu was just getting started, and with all the righteous indignation he could muster, proclaimed: “In 2005, hoping to advance peace, Israel unilaterally withdrew from every inch of Gaza.”

Oh. The withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza had nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that the Gaza Strip, one of the most densely populated territories in the world, had become an impoverished hell-hole that nobody wanted to deal with – or that daily confrontations with Palestinian resistance groups and, well, school kids hurling rocks, had taken a toll on the battered Israeli Defense Forces. “Disengagement” from Gaza achieved several other objectives too. It reduced the growing non-Jewish demographic problem for Israel, and freed up resources to focus on carving up the West Bank and significantly increasing the population of Jewish settlers there.

But again, the devil is in the details. Lost in the media euphoria over Israeli troops rolling out of occupied Palestinian territory, a vital fact was overlooked: the occupation of Gaza never actually ended. According to the United Nations, the US State Department, Amnesty International and a whole slew of other NGOs, Israel is the occupying power in the Gaza Strip. It “retains sole control of Gaza’s airspace and territorial waters and does not allow any movement of people or goods in or out of Gaza via air or sea,” says Amnesty International. And we have seen how often and easily the IDF tanks roll in and out at will.

Back at the General Assembly podium, Netanyahu’s fiction-spinning tirade was reaching a fevered pitch – the crux of his message, the thing that Israel most fears. Understand now, that the Jewish state’s raison d’etre has always been based on the mass persecution and genocide of Jews by Nazi Germany – the nation was a gift, so to speak, to the victims who deserved a break. So what would happen if, even for an instant, the entire international community catches a view of Israel outside the parameters of victimhood, an image, if shattered, that could undermine its very premise as a safe haven for the persecuted?

Never say. Netanyahu’s two-fold mission at the UN last Thursday was firstly to whip up animosity against Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his alleged nuclear weaponization program, and secondly, to neutralize the damaging effects of the Goldstone Report on Israel’s three-week military adventure into the Gaza Strip earlier this year.

Selected by the UN High Commission for Human Rights to conduct an investigation into “Operation Cast Lead,” Israel’s code name for the Gaza War, Richard Goldstone was ideal for the role in part because he is a Jew, an acknowledged Zionist, and importantly, the well-respected former chief prosecutor of the United Nations International Criminal Tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia. In other words, beyond reproach.

In a September 15 press release introducing his 574-page report, Justice Goldstone concluded that “Israel committed actions amounting to war crimes, and possibly crimes against humanity.”

Netanyahu at the UN: “Faced with such a clear case of aggressor and victim, who did the UN Human Rights Council decide to condemn? Israel.“

He fails to mention that given ample opportunity to participate in the investigation, his government not only refused, but also denied the Mission access to both Israel and the West Bank for interviews related to the inquiry. Palestinian authorities in both the West Bank and Gaza cooperated.

The damning parts of the report undermine entirely Israel’s assertions to the international community about its conflict with Gaza, Palestinians and Hamas. It states that “in the lead up to Israel’s assault on Gaza, Israel imposed a blockade amounting to collective punishment and carried out a systematic policy of progressive isolation and deprivation of the Gaza Strip.” So much for disengagement.

“Never has a country gone to such extraordinary lengths to remove the enemy’s civilian population from harm’s way,” claims Netanyahu.

But Goldstone’s Mission found instead “that the following grave breaches of the
Fourth Geneva Convention were committed by Israeli forces in Gaza: willful killing, torture or inhuman treatment, willfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health, and extensive destruction of property, not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly.”

The Report continues: “The repeated failure to distinguish between combatants and civilians appears to the Mission to have been the result of deliberate guidance issued to soldiers, as described by some of them, and not the result of occasional lapses.” Furthermore, “There were almost no mistakes made according to the Government of Israel. It is in these circumstances that the Mission concludes that what occurred in just over three weeks at the end of 2008 and the beginning of 2009 was a deliberately disproportionate attack designed to punish, humiliate and terrorize a civilian population.”

Yet with no hint of embarrassment whatsoever, Netanyahu insisted, “”Faced with an enemy committing a double war crime of firing on civilians while hiding behind civilians – Israel sought to conduct surgical strikes against the rocket launchers.”

Ah, yes. Human shields. During the carnage, our media and our politicians belted out the Israeli propaganda line that “barbaric” Hamas was using its own population as human shields. Instead, it turns out “the Mission investigated several incidents in which Israeli armed forces used local Palestinian residents to enter houses which might be booby trapped or harbour enemy combatants (this practice, known in the West Bank as “neighbour procedure”, was called “Johnnie procedure” during the military operations in Gaza).”

And so on and so forth.

Netanyahu, prime minister of Israel once before – from 1996 to 1999 – has had a history of scandal plague him in office, even an indictment for which he was later acquitted. Former Clinton White House Spokesman Joe Lockhart, in his book “The Truth About Camp David” calls the Israeli prime minister, “one of the most obnoxious individuals you’re going to come into – just a liar and a cheat. He could open his mouth and you could have no confidence that anything that came out of it was the truth.”

Netanyahu replaced former PM Ehud Olmert, who was brought down by corruption allegations, and indicted on three charges this past August. And that, just a month before former Israeli President Moshe Katsav’s trial for rape and other sex crimes got underway.

The apple is rotten at its core. The international community must turn the cries of “shame” back on Israel and its human rights record. And the US administration, which stands so staunchly behind Israel at every turn, must play fair with the Goldstone Report if it is to maintain any credibility in the Middle East as it attempts to launch yet another round of peace talks.

First published: October 1, 2009

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