Yaniv Reich: New Israeli report on Operation Cast Lead confirms Goldstone report’s main findings: Hybrid States
By Yaniv Reich, Hybrid States – 22 July 2010
Defense Minister Ehud Barak described it as “false, distorted, and irresponsible“. Information Minister Yuli Edelstein called it “anti-Semitic“. Israeli Ambassador to the US Michael Oren said it “insidiously… portrayed the Jews as the deliberate murderers of innocents“. Foreign Minister Lieberman argued that its true purpose “was to destroy Israel’s image, in service of countries where the terms ‘human rights’ and ‘combat ethics’ do not even appear in their dictionaries“. And the US House of Representatives banded together in bipartisan harmony to pass a resolution (344–36) that called “on the President and the Secretary of State to oppose unequivocally any endorsement or further consideration” of it.
For nearly a year now, vicious attacks on the Goldstone report and on Judge Goldstone himself have been the thing for Israel’s numerous apologists to do.
There is just one not-so-minor problem with this knee-jerk criticism of the report and infinite stream of ad hominem libel against its main author. A majority of the most damning—and damaging—war crimes that are alleged to have taken place have now been confirmed by the IDF’s own investigations into the matter, themselves only conducted in an effort to derail the Goldstone report’s referral to the International Criminal Court.
IDF confirms over 20 gravest findings of the Goldstone Report
Several of the most dramatic instances of war crimes, which previously stirred Israel’s defenders into fits, are now publicly admitted by the IDF in the recent update to its official response (which can be found here).
Some examples of war crimes include:
White phosphorous in urban areas: This one is probably the most famous admission that emerged after a series of easily disproved lies. Israel’s initial response was one of absolute denial, indeed indignation, that people would suggest it had used banned chemical weapons in densely populated areas. But the steady stream of photos and videos depicting phosphorous burns on children and buildings eventually forced Israel to admit it had used these prohibited weapons.
The murder of two unarmed Palestinians carrying white flags of surrender.
The Al-Fakhura Street incident: Israeli mortar fire at a site adjacent to a UN Relief Works Agency compound resulted in multiple civilian deaths.
The use of innocent Palestinians as human shields: The Goldstone report explains that in order “to carry out house searches as human shields the Israeli soldiers took off AD/03’s blindfold but he remained handcuffed. He was forced to walk in front of the soldiers and told that, if he saw someone in the house but failed to tell them, he would be killed. He was instructed to search each room in each house cupboard by cupboard. After one house was completed he was taken to another house with a gun pressed against his head and told to carry out the same procedure there. He was punched, slapped and insulted throughout the process.” The new Israeli report identifies this anonymous human shield AD/03 and confirms this episode. Other cases of human shield use, e.g. Abbas Ahmad Ibrahim Halawa and Mahmoud Abd Rabbo al-Ajrami, were also confirmed.
Al-Samouni family massacre: The Israelis attacked two houses of the Samouni family, killing 23 people in total. Subsequently, they prevented the Red Cross and PRCS from providing care to the wounded and dying for three days. Confirmed by Israel and the subject of a military investigation.
Firing on Al Maqadmah and other mosques during prayer time.
In total, a quick scan through the IDF’s new report provides direct confirmation of more than 20 of Goldstone’s findings. A number of these are the subject of internal IDF investigations, which are infuriating large swaths of the military. Of course, decent people everywhere should hope that those investigations are conducted in the most unbiased and professional manner possible, and that justice is served appropriately to all those who have committed war crimes. I am not holding my breath, but it’s good to throw this wish out there.
Israel admits it did not minimize civilian casualties
The IDF report states: “IDF orders include the obligation to take all feasible precautions in order to minimize the incidental loss of civilian life or property” [emphasis added]. Israelis accept this statement as an article of faith and become unglued at the suggestion that “everything possible” wasn’t done to ensure the safety of innocent people. This expression of faith is often followed by the questions: “What? Do you think Israel wants to kill civilians?” These questions are of course answered far more accurately with data on casualties than with ideological blindness.
They are also answered, however, through inadvertent slips in the public relations machine that shapes international media coverage of Israel/Palestine. Today, we are treated to a spate of articles across the English and Hebrew-language press (e.g. here and here) about how Israel “promises” to do a better job of not killing innocent human beings next time around.
“The IDF has … implemented operational changes in its orders and combat doctrine designed to further minimise civilian casualties and damage to civilian property in the future,” it said.
“In particular, the IDF has adopted important new procedures designed to enhance the protection of civilians in urban warfare, for instance by further emphasising that the protection of civilians is an integral part of an IDF commander’s mission.”
Perhaps in a future “update” the IDF can enlighten the world as to how it was previously taking “all feasible precautions” and yet finds only now new tactics to protect civilians. Perhaps the IDF spokesperson can further explain how emphasizing to its soldiers that “protection of civilians is an integral part” of the mission is considered an “operational change” from earlier practice. One must presume that protection of civilians has not been given sufficient attention until now, and only Goldstone’s courageous and now confirmed report has forced Israel to reconsider the meaning of “all feasible precautions” and “minimize civilian casualties”. As Magnes Zionist has pointed out, Israel seems to think it can get away with a “I didn’t do it but will try harder next time” approach.
Or perhaps the IDF’s commanders and soldiers got a bit confused by all this talk of “protecting civilians” and that talk of the “Dahiya Doctrine.”
But all of this gives the IDF a bit too much credit, too much benefit of the doubt. This new report is nothing more than a desperate tactic to try and avoid criminal prosecution for war crimes and possible crimes against humanity in the ICC. Most of the IDF’s “investigations” have already been dismissed as part of this whitewash, notwithstanding all the irate IDF officers unaccustomed to the pretense of accountability.
All it teaches us is four concrete things: (1) the Goldstone report did a stunningly good job in identifying possible war crimes despite Israel’s concerted non-cooperation with the commission, (2) Israel has by its own admission failed to adequately protect civilians in war, (3) many people owe Judge Goldstone a sincere, begging apology for the disgraceful manner in which he has been treated, and (4) justice for the Palestinian victims of Israeli terrorism is still far away.
Gaza militants may be firing a new type of rocket into Israel, police says: Haaretz
Police officials investigate the possibility that a rocket fired into Israel over the weekend is of a new, and more precise type.
The rocket which was fired into Israel early Saturday morning was not a Qassam, but may be a more advanced type of projectile which had been smuggled into the Gaza Strip, police officials told Haaretz.
The officials were referring to a rocket, which was initially reported to be a Qassam, that had failed to explode after being launched by Gaza militants into the western Negev earlier in the day.
The rocket, police said, may have been a new, more perceive standard issue rocket, as opposed to the local home-made Qassams, one which would have to have been smuggled into the Strip.
The projectile was transferred to a police laboratory in order to see if indeed it is of a different type than those fired into Israel until now.
Israel has long been claiming that Hamas has been continually arming itself with new types of weapons in anticipation for another round of violence in the wake of last years Gaza war.
In April of last year, Israeli sources said that Hamas had managed to smuggle new arsenal into the Gaza Strip that would upset the balance of power, with the Palestinian Authority saying that that Iran has smuggled a large number of weapons into Gaza by sea.
The PA had also claimed that Iranian technology has been used to increase the range of Qassam rockets Hamas is producing in the Gaza Strip to more than 20 kilometers, they said.
Earlier this year, a confident of Hamas strongman Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, who was assassinated in his Dubai hotel, said that Mabhouh had supplied money and arms to “the resistance,” saying that he played a key role in the arms smuggling chain, running from Iran into the Hamas-ruled Strip.
The aide, Mohammed Nassar, had been quoted at the time as saying that Mabhouh never stopped thinking about how to fight the occupation by supplying the Palestinian fighters with quality weapons.
“He participated with me in searching for weapons,” Nassar said, according to an interview he had given to Al-Aqsa radio in Gaza.
Haneen Zoabi: The largest threat to Zionism is democracy: The Electronic Intifada
Max Blumenthal, 22 July 2010
On 13 July, the Israeli Knesset voted by a large margin to strip the parliamentary privileges of Haneen Zoabi, a member of the Palestinian Israeli party Balad. The measure was a punishment for Zoabi’s participation in the Gaza Freedom Flotilla. As described in the Israeli daily Haaretz, during the raging debate, Member of Knesset (MK) Anasatassia Michaeli rushed toward Zoabi and handed her a mock Iranian passport with Zoabi’s photo on it. “Ms. Zoabi, I take your loyalty to Iran seriously and I suggest you contact Ahmadinejad and ask him to give you an Iranian diplomatic passport that will assist you with all your diplomatic incitement tours, because your Israeli passport will be revoked this evening,” said Michaeli, who is a member of Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman’s explicitly anti-Arab Yisrael Beiteinu party (“Knesset revokes Arab MK Zuabi’s privileges over Gaza flotilla,” 13 July 2010).
The debate over revoking Zoabi’s parliamentary privileges was nearly as rancorous as her appearance at the Knesset speaker’s podium in the immediate wake of the Flotilla massacre. While Zoabi attempted to relate her experience on the Mavi Marmara, where she coaxed Israeli commandoes to stop shooting and beating passengers, Knesset members from a broad array of parties leapt from their chairs to shout her down. “Go to Gaza, traitor!” shouted MK Miri Regev of Likud. “One week in Gaza as a 38-year-old single woman and we’ll see how they treat you!” barked Yohanan Plesner of the supposedly centrist Kadima party. Finally, Moshe Mutz Matalon of Yisrael Beiteinu lamented that the Israeli commandoes “left only nine floating voters” (“MK Regev tells Zoabi: Go to Gaza, traitor!,” YNet, 2 June 2010).
I met Zoabi at her office in the bustling center of Lower Nazareth on 12 June. While preparing a spread of biscuits and chocolates for me, she told me that a reporter from Nablus who met her earlier in the day had been detained at a checkpoint and had her laptop seized. Zoabi was convinced that the Shin Bet (Israel’s General Security Service) was monitoring her communications and movements as it does with many Balad Party leaders. Despite the tense climate and violent threats against her, she spoke without restraint about her experience on the Mavi Marmara, the predicament of Palestinian members of the Knesset, and what she considered the fascist direction of Israeli society.
Max Blumenthal: Were you surprised to be greeted with such hostility when you returned to the Knesset after the flotilla incident?
Hanin Zoabi: I was not so surprised. I expected to be called traitor, to be asked, “Where are your knives?” Or to be told, “You are the one who killed them!” But they shouted at me without any political argument and such shallowness. I thought, this couldn’t be a parliament, these are just gangsters. If I gave them guns, they would shoot me. I said the soldiers on the flotilla treated me more respectfully than them. At least after the soldiers killed nine people they tried to ask me for help.
MB: What does the attack on you in Knesset say about Israeli democracy?
HZ: Israel has a general atmosphere of a fascist state that has no critical sense even of its image in the world. It used to be sensitive to its image of democracy. [Knesset Speaker Reuven] Rivlin wants a liberal state and wants others to believe Israel is a democracy. But listen to what they are saying in the Knesset: that we should only pay attention to what we want to; it’s not important to pay attention to the goyim. We must believe we are the victim as if victimhood is an ideology.
MB: Are you concerned about threats to your physical safety?
HZ: This is a dangerous time and it is dangerous for Jamal [Zehalka] and others in Balad. I am worried but what worries me more is not the personal threats but the long term political effect of this campaign because it represents a delegitimization of our party and our political platform.
MB: What about the planned measure in the Knesset to strip you of parliamentary privileges?
HZ: The three parliamentary sanctions are nothing — I mean nothing — because I can still use my civic passport.
MB: When you were attacked in the Knesset, I was reminded of an incident in 1949, when the first Arab member of Knesset, Tawfiq Toubi, took to the floor to denounce Israeli army brutality against Palestinian villagers living under military rule. Jewish members of the Knesset went crazy just as they did against you, but Toubi was defended by one of Israel’s most prominent cultural figures, the socialist poet Nathan Alterman. Did any prominent Israelis speak up in your defense, and if not, why not?
HZ: Hardly anyone spoke up for me. Jamal [Zehalka] said the Knesset is the worst we’ve ever had. The guards and the workers who’ve been around the Knesset for 30 years said it’s never been this racist before. I think when you have a government led by the likes of [Foreign Minister] Avigdor Lieberman it means that the extremists are not the margins of the Knesset, they are the mainstream. Those who shouted at me were from Kadima, not from the extreme right. Even [the traditionally left-wing party] Meretz is becoming very center. And because of this it has lost power.
[Knesset Speaker] Rivlin was more afraid of hurting the image of the Knesset than of my rights being violated. There are no limits and the famous slogan of Lieberman is now the slogan of everyone: “Citizenship depends on loyalty.” He of course means loyalty in a fascist sense. Even when [Interior Minister] Eli Yishai asked to revoke my citizenship there was only one article in the Israeli media saying that this was crazy. What kind of state is this? I read just one article about this!
[Yedioth Aharanot columnist] Amnon Levy was the only one who defended me. He said what’s happening is so absurd, you should thank Haneen that she is serving in this Zionist Knesset. You should thank the Palestinians for participating in our game.
MB: Is the anti-Arab atmosphere inside Israel a new phenomenon or the acceleration of a process than began some time ago?
HZ: This is not a new process, and it didn’t begin after the flotilla. It really began after the second intifada, when hundreds of thousands of Palestinian Israelis went to demonstrations not to rally about internal issues but to support the intifada. This was a clear message for Israelis that the state had failed to create the model of the new “Israeli Arab.” This is what the state was trying to do, trying to create us an Israeli Arab, someone who was not 100 percent Israeli because we were not Jews but of course not 100 percent Arab either. We were told we could preserve our language and our culture but not our historical memory, our culture, or our identity except on an emotional, romantic level. Essentially we couldn’t be Palestinian.
The second intifada was the turning point. It told Israel that it might control the schools, our history and the media but they couldn’t stop us from asserting our identity. This led directly to the declaration of Yuval Diskin, the Shin Bet director, who said in 2007, we will fight against any political activity that doesn’t recognize Israel as a Jewish state even if the activities are conducted openly and democratically. He clearly was referring to Balad when he said this. By the way, no Israeli paper was shocked by his statement.
MB: The founder of the Balad Party, Azmi Bishara, was forced into exile after being accused of spying for Hizballah. Ameer Makhoul, the Palestinian civil society leader in Israel, has been placed under administrative detention and is facing similar accusations. Omer Said and many other activists are under investigation by the Shin Bet. What is the government trying to accomplish by its crackdown?
HZ: They are trying to establish borders on our political identity and say that we cannot have relations with the broader Arab world. They want to redefine the margins of democracy to exclude any political program that calls for full equality. We are calling for equality without Zionism. This is what the Balad Party says. The fact is, to demand full civic and national equality is actually to demand the end of Zionism. So we don’t hate Zionism. Zionism hates democracy.
If the state continues in the direction it is going it will actually change the rules of the game. Balad says there are clear margins of democracy. We believe in democratic values and the system and we will utilize these margins of democracy in order to suggest our vision of full equality. If Israel wants to delete these margins so my vision can no longer be legitimate in the Israeli scene I think a totally different game will develop between us and the state. In this way, the state is pushing us to a crisis. If they disqualify Balad then no Arab party would enter the Knesset and this would provoke a huge crisis. Arabs without a parliamentary role would result in a different kind of relationship between us and the state. This would be the end of democracy. But we know this is what a Jewish state will lead to — the end of democracy is an inevitable outcome.
MB: How did your prominence after the flotilla impact the situation of Palestinians in Israel?
HZ: It is possible that the flotilla was the beginning of a new historical moment. Israel enjoys keeping us [Palestinians in Israel] out of the agenda of the world. They oppressed us behind the scenes just as they conducted the Nakba behind the scenes. They continued to limit our identity and the world didn’t treat us as part of the Palestinian issue because it believed that Israel was a democracy and we were only part of it. The world only looked at the siege of Gaza. So what the Knesset did by attacking me was they showed the world who they really are. And if the world starts to pay attention, especially the part of the world that doesn’t traditionally support the Palestinians and believes Israel should be a real democracy, I hope they see from the flotilla and its implications that Israel has a deep structural problem, not a problem of policies. The problem is not an extremist government. The problem is that the largest threat to Zionism is democracy. This is the issue.
Max Blumenthal is an award-winning journalist and bestselling author working in Israel-Palestine. His articles and video documentaries have appeared in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Daily Beast, The Nation, The Huffington Post, Salon.com, Al-Jazeera English and many other publications. He is a writing fellow for the Nation Institute. His book, Republican Gomorrah: Inside The Movement That Shattered The Party, is a New York Times and Los Angeles Times bestseller.
Human Rights Watch flotilla stance mirrors that of US, Israel: The Electronic Intifada
Michael Corcoran, Stephen Maher, 23 July 2010
Supporters of Israel often accuse Human Rights Watch (HRW), one of the most prominent human rights organizations in the world, of having an anti-Israel bias or even being anti-Semitic. For instance, a recent lengthy article in The New Republic accused the group of paying “disproportionate attention to Israeli misdeeds.” Similarly, Harvard Law School Professor Alan Dershowitz has said that HRW exhibits a “willful blindness when it comes to Israel, and its enemies have completely undermined the credibility of a once important human rights organization.” Indeed, there is no shortage of other similar critiques of the organization by supporters of Israel.
Given such strong condemnations, one might have anticipated that HRW would have been especially vocal in its criticism of Israel’s 31 May attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla that was attempting to deliver aid to Palestinians in Gaza and break Israel’s three-year old siege of the territory.
Yet despite the alarms sounded by its most staunch critics, HRW has been mostly silent on the horrific attack. When they have spoken out, they have been notably timid, essentially sharing the same positions as the US government, Israel’s closest ally. According to a search of the group’s website, the flotilla attack has only been addressed four times. By contrast, Amnesty International (the organization’s closest peer) has tackled the issue 17 times, issuing much stronger statements of condemnation than those released by HRW. The jarring difference in how these two human rights organizations have responded to the flotilla attack raises important questions about the functioning of the largest and most reputed human rights organization in the United States.
During the course of the raid on the civilian convoy, the Israeli military killed nine activists, many of whom were shot in the head from close range, according to subsequent autopsies. In response, with millions taking to the streets worldwide, one government after the next, the UN and other nongovernmental organizations, human rights groups and activists condemned the raid and called for an immediate international investigation and an end to the blockade of Gaza. Even Turkey, a close ally of both the US and Israel, responded furiously to the attack, calling it an act of “state terrorism” that threatened to damage relations between the two states. Ankara also demanded that Israel lift the siege on Gaza. Indeed, in previous statements HRW said that the siege “constitutes a form of collective punishment” (“Letter to Olmert: Stop the Blockade of Gaza, 20 November 2008 ).
In the face of this international pressure, the US and Israel stood virtually alone in rejecting an international investigation. Israel not only objected to an independent investigation, but also refused to release all of the footage and photographs it confiscated from activists and journalists onboard the ship, only releasing small fragments that were heavily edited and otherwise tampered with. Instead, Washington urged Israel to conduct an investigation of its own, in the hopes that such a probe would assuage the rising chorus of international outrage without subjecting Israeli actions to independent scrutiny. Shockingly, HRW — an organization which claims to stand up to state violence and protect human rights — essentially supported the US-Israeli position by calling for an Israeli investigation.
HRW’s support for an Israeli investigation contradicted previous findings by the organization on the likelihood that such an inquiry would be successful. “Given Israel’s poor track record of investigating unlawful killings by its armed forces,” the group acknowledges in its 31 May statement on the flotilla, “the international community should closely monitor any inquiry to ensure it meets basic international standards and that any wrongdoers are brought to justice” (“Israel: Full, Impartial Investigation of Flotilla Killings Essential”). This statement again stands in stark contrast to the position of Amnesty International, which insisted on an international investigation, along with the rest of the world, demanding in a 1 June statement “an international inquiry into the deaths caused by the raid on the aid flotilla in international waters outside Gaza” (“Israeli Authorities Urged To Commission International Inquiry,” 1 June 2010).
In a further attempt to limit the damage caused to its image in the wake of its nighttime commando assault on the unarmed civilian convoy, Israel announced an “easing” of the blockade. However, in reality these cosmetic changes were intended not to end the siege but to make it more palatable to the so-called international community. The most significant difference was the shift from a positive list of what is allowed to a negative list of what is not. Though the changes might allow a few more kinds of goods in, the new measures would hardly be enough to lift Palestinians in Gaza out of the desperate poverty into which they have been thrust by Israeli cruelty, let alone develop a viable and independent economy.
Since the attack, the Israeli military spokesperson has proudly declaring the number of trucks entering Gaza each day over the social networking site Twitter. Yet these tweets only serve to prove how inadequate the “easing” of the blockade is, as the announced number of trucks permitted to enter Gaza is well below the 400 that the UN says is needed to provide residents of Gaza with even a minimal standard of living.
Amnesty International responded to the shift in policy by stating that Israel “must now comply with its obligations as the occupying power under international law and immediately lift the blockade,” adding that as “the occupying power, Israel bears the foremost responsibility for ensuring the welfare of the inhabitants of Gaza” (“Israel Gaza Blockade Must Be Completely Lifted,” 17 June 2010). By contrast, HRW offered a statement that tepidly praised Israel, calling it a productive “first step” in a 21 June release (Israel/Gaza: Easing Blockade of Imports a First Step”). This response was also dramatically different from that of the International Committee of the Red Cross, which in the wake of the flotilla massacre called the siege “a collective punishment imposed in clear violation of Israel’s obligations under international humanitarian law,” and demanded Israel to “put an end to this closure” (“Gaza closure: not another year,” 14 June 2010). Likewise, Oxfam International called the flotilla incident “a direct result of the Israeli blockade on Gaza” (“Monday’s tragedy is a direct result of the Israeli blockade on Gaza,” 2 June 2010).
Though HRW rightly pointed out that there was little chance of Palestinians in Gaza developing an independent, sustainable economy with the continued total blockade of exports, and amorphously called on Israel to end any “unnecessary restrictions” on the movement of people and goods in and out of Gaza, it failed to clearly and unequivocally call for a full lifting of the illegal siege. As with its failure to call for an international investigation, HRW was once again essentially echoing the position taken by Tony Blair, the current envoy of the Quartet (the US, UK, Russia and UN), who said in a 5 July statement that the move was a “big first step.”
In its 21 June release, HRW states that some restrictions are permitted under international law provided that they are “limited to what is necessary.” In the same release, the organization balanced its criticism of Israel by vigorously calling on Hamas to release its Israeli prisoner — virtually echoing the Israeli government’s justification for the siege of Gaza.
Similarly, on 27 June, Bill Van Esveld, a Middle East researcher for [[HRW]], penned an editorial in the Los Angeles Times which attempts to shift the blame for Gaza’s suffering from the merciless siege to the strip’s elected Hamas government. “The people of Gaza are now prisoners twice over,” he writes, “from the outside, Israel and Egypt have locked down Gaza’s borders,” while “within Gaza, Hamas is forcing people to live within the confines of a harsh moral code, and punishing those who try to exercise their few remaining rights and liberties” (“Danger of an Islamized Gaza”).
Though the offenses against personal freedoms committed by Hamas are well-documented and certainly noteworthy, Van Esveld ignores that it is the desperation created by far more serious Israeli violence and suffocation, and the collaborationist nature of the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority, that is the ultimate source of Hamas’ empowerment. Thus, he is essentially employing the classic tactic of blaming the victims, and echoing Israeli justifications for maintaining the siege by waving the spectre of “the danger of an Islamized Gaza.” “The world is rightly focused on Gaza’s Israeli prison guards,” he concludes, “but it shouldn’t forget the confinement imposed by Gaza’s own Hamas.” Such assertions closely mirror the disingenuous claims of Israeli officials, particularly Israel’s ambassador to the US, Michael Oren, who declared in a 2 June New York Times op-ed, that “We, too, want a free Gaza — a Gaza liberated from brutal Hamas rule” (“An Assault, Cloaked in Peace”).
Thus, on two major issues related to the siege of Gaza and the raid on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, HRW has largely taken the same position as Israel and its supporters. In the aftermath of the flotilla attack, Israel, Tony Blair, the United States and HRW stood on one side, and virtually the entire rest of the world stood on the other.
Not all of HRW’s reports are so flawed, and the organization has produced some valuable material. However, they serve as a sharp contrast to its statements on the flotilla raid. In a 2006 report on Israel’s invasion of Lebanon, HRW calls on the UN Secretary General to create an “an International Commission of Inquiry to investigate reports of violations of international humanitarian law, including possible war crimes” (“Why They Died,” 5 September 2007). Similarly, in a 13 August 2009 statement on Israel’s 2008-09 winter invasion of Gaza HRW calls for “an international investigation into alleged laws-of-war violations by both sides,” citing “the past failure of Israel, as well as Hamas, to investigate their own forces ” (“Israel: Investigate ‘White Flag’ Shootings of Gaza Civilians,” 12 August 2009).
The organization’s pathetic display in the wake of the flotilla attack, however, does a great disservice to the cause of human rights. Unfortunately, HRW’s failures reflect a disturbing and well-documented pattern, especially regarding its work on the Middle East and the United States (the chief enabler of Israeli aggression). In 2006, journalist Jonathan Cook noticed a “shameful imbalance” in Human Rights Watch’s reportage on Israeli and Palestinian violations, “both in the number of reports being issued against each party and in terms of the failure to hold accountable the side committing the far greater abuses of human rights.” Cook concluded that such an “imbalance” had “become the HRW’s standard procedure in Israel-Palestine” (“Human Rights Watch denying Palestinians the right to nonviolent resistance,” The Electronic Intifada, 30 November 2006).
In fact, Cook’s conclusion applies more broadly to US policy and allies elsewhere around the world as well. Edward Herman, David Peterson and George Szamuely observed in a well-researched report on HRW in 2007 that “at critical times and in critical theaters [the group has] thrown its support behind the US government’s agenda, sometimes even serving as a virtual public relations arm of the foreign policy establishment.” The authors note that HRW exhibits “crude apologetics,” maintaining a steadfast “denial that the United States commits war crimes” (“Human Rights Watch in Service to the War Party …,” Zmag, 25 February 2007).
Properly educating the public about Israeli crimes, and American culpability in them, is essential if Israeli policy is to be changed and a just peace established. As the only large, international human rights organization based in the United States, HRW’s weak response to these attacks, for which the US has lent strong support in the face of massive criticism from around the world, is even more outrageous. It is time for advocates for human rights to push HRW to be a more consistent and responsible voice on behalf of Palestinian human rights.
Michael Corcoran is a journalist who has written for the Boston Globe, The Nation, The Christian Science Monitor and elsewhere. He is also a master’s candidate at the John McCormack Graduate School of Policy Studies at the University of Massachusetts in Boston, where he majors in international relations.
Stephen Maher is an MA candidate at American University School of International Service. His work has appeared in Extra!, Truthout, ZNet and other publications. His blog is http://rationalmanifesto.blogspot.com.
Israelis embrace one-state solution from unexpected direction: The Electronic Intifada,
Ali Abunimah, 21 July 2010
There has been a strong revival in recent years of support among Palestinians for a one-state solution guaranteeing equal rights to Palestinians and Israeli Jews throughout historic Palestine.
One might expect that any support for a single state among Israeli Jews would come from the far left, and in fact this is where the most prominent Israeli Jewish champions of the idea are found, though in small numbers.
Recently, proposals to grant Israeli citizenship to Palestinians in the West Bank, including the right to vote for the Knesset, have emerged from a surprising direction: right-wing stalwarts such as Knesset speaker Reuven Rivlin, and former defense minister Moshe Arens, both from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party. Even more surprising, the idea has been pushed by prominent activists among Israel’s West Bank settler movement, who were the subject of a must-read profile by Noam Sheizaf in Haaretz (“Endgame,” 15 July 2010).
Their visions still fall far short of what any Palestinian advocate of a single state would consider to be just: the Israeli proposals insist on maintaining the state’s character — at least symbolically — as a “Jewish state,” exclude the Gaza Strip, and do not address the rights of Palestinian refugees. And, settlers on land often violently expropriated from Palestinians would hardly seem like obvious advocates for Palestinian human and political rights.
Although the details vary, and in some cases are anathema to Palestinians, what is more revealing is that this debate is occurring openly and in the least likely circles.
The Likudnik and settler advocates of a one-state solution with citizenship for Palestinians realize that Israel has lost the argument that Jewish sovereignty can be maintained forever at any price. A status quo where millions of Palestinians live without rights, subject to control by escalating Israeli violence is untenable even for them. At the same time repartition of historic Palestine — what they call Eretz Yisrael — into two states is unacceptable, and has proven unattainable — not least because of the settler movement itself.
Some on the Israeli right now recognize what Israeli geographer Meron Benvenisti has said for years: historic Palestine is already a “de facto binational state,” unpartionable except at a cost neither Israelis nor Palestinians are willing to pay. The relationship between Palestinians and Israelis is not that of equals however, but that “between horse and rider” as one settler vividly put it in Haaretz.
From the settlers’ perspective, repartition would mean an uprooting of at least tens of thousands of the 500,000 settlers now in the West Bank, and it would not even solve the national question. Would the settlers remaining behind in the West Bank (the vast majority under all current two-state proposals) be under Palestinian sovereignty or would Israel continue to exercise control over a network of settlements criss-crossing the putative Palestinian state? How could a truly independent Palestinian state exist under such circumstances?
The graver danger is that the West Bank would turn into a dozen Gaza Strips with large Israeli civilian populations wedged between miserable, overcrowded walled Palestinian ghettos. The patchwork Palestinian state would be free only to administer its own poverty, visited by regular bouts of bloodshed.
Even a full Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank — something that is not remotely on the peace process agenda — would leave Israel with 1.5 million Palestinian citizens inside its borders. This population already faces escalating discrimination, incitement and loyalty tests. In an angry, ultra-nationalist Israel shrunken by the upheaval of abandoning West Bank settlements, these non-Jewish citizens could suffer much worse, including outright ethnic cleansing.
With no progress toward a two-state solution despite decades of efforts, the only Zionist alternative on offer has been outright expulsion of the Palestinians — a program long-championed by Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman’s Yisrael Beitenu party, which has seen its support increase steadily.
Israel is at the point where it has to look in the mirror and even some cold, hard Likudniks like Arens apparently don’t like what they see. Yisrael Beitenu’s platform is “nonsensical,” Arens told Haaretz, and simply not “doable.” If Israel feels it is a pariah now, what would happen after another mass expulsion of Palestinians?
Given these realities, “The worst solution … is apparently the right one: a binational state, full annexation, full citizenship” in the words of settler activist and former Netanyahu aide Uri Elitzur.
This awakening can be likened to what happened among South African whites in the 1980s. By that time it had become clear that the white minority government’s effort to “solve” the problem of black disenfranchisement by creating nominally independent homelands — bantustans — had failed. Pressure was mounting from internal resistance and the international campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions.
By the mid-1980s, whites overwhelmingly understood that the apartheid status quo was untenable and they began to consider “reform” proposals that fell very far short of the African National Congress’ demands for a universal franchise — one-person, one-vote in a nonracial South Africa. The reforms began with the 1984 introduction of a tricameral parliament with separate chambers for whites, coloreds and Indians (none for blacks), with whites retaining overall control.
Until almost the end of the apartheid system, polls showed the vast majority of whites rejected a universal franchise, but were prepared to concede some form of power-sharing with the black majority as long as whites retained a veto over key decisions. The important point, as I have argued previously, is that one could not predict the final outcome of the negotiations that eventually brought about a fully democratic South Africa in 1994, based on what the white public and elites said they were prepared to accept (“Israeli Jews and the one-state solution,” The Electronic Intifada, 10 November 2009).
Once Israeli Jews concede that Palestinians must have equal rights, they will not be able to unilaterally impose any system that maintains undue privilege. A joint state should accommodate Israeli Jews’ legitimate collective interests, but it would have to do so equally for everyone else.
The very appearance of the right-wing one-state solution suggests Israel is feeling the pressure and experiencing a relative loss of power. If its proponents thought Israel could “win” in the long-term there would be no need to find ways to accommodate Palestinian rights. But Israeli Jews see their moral currency and legitimacy drastically devalued worldwide, while demographically Palestinians are on the verge of becoming a majority once again in historic Palestine.
Of course Israeli Jews still retain an enormous power advantage over Palestinians which, while eroding, is likely to last for some time. Israel’s main advantage is a near monopoly on the means of violence, guaranteed by the United States. But legitimacy and stability cannot be gained by reliance on brute force — this is the lesson that is starting to sink in among some Israelis as the country is increasingly isolated after its attacks on Gaza and the Gaza Freedom Flotilla. Legitimacy can only come from a just and equitable political settlement.
Perhaps the right-wing proponents of a single state recognize that the best time to negotiate a transition which provides safeguards for Israeli Jews’ legitimate collective interests is while they are still relatively strong.
That proposals for a single state are coming from the Israeli right should not be so surprising in light of experiences in comparable situations. In South Africa, it was not the traditional white liberal critics of apartheid who oversaw the system’s dismantling, but the National Party which had built apartheid in the first place. In Northern Ireland, it was not “moderate” unionists and nationalists like David Trimble and John Hume who finally made power-sharing under the 1998 Belfast Agreement function, but the long-time rejectionists of Ian Paisley’s Democratic Unionist Party, and the nationalist Sinn Fein, whose leaders had close ties the IRA.
The experiences in South Africa and Northern Ireland show that transforming the relationship between settler and native, master and slave, or “horse and rider,” to one between equal citizens is a very difficult, uncertain and lengthy process. There are many setbacks and detours along the way and success is not guaranteed. It requires much more than a new constitution; economic redistribution, restitution and restorative justice are essential and meet significant resistance. But such a transformation is not, as many of the critics of a one-state solution in Palestine/Israel insist, “impossible.” Indeed, hope now resides in the space between what is “very difficult” and what is considered “impossible.”
The proposals from the Israeli right-wing, however inadequate and indeed offensive they seem in many respects, add a little bit to that hope. They suggest that even those whom Palestinians understandably consider their most implacable foes can stare into the abyss and decide there has to be a radically different way forward.
We should watch how this debate develops and engage and encourage it carefully. In the end it is not what the solution is called that matters, but whether it fulfills the fundamental and inalienable rights of all Palestinians.
Ali Abunimah is co-founder of The Electronic Intifada and author of One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse. This article first appeared on Al-Jazeera English and is republished with permission.
