Listening to Justice Goldstone
By Bill Fletcher, Jr., Executive Editor
Black Commentator: October 29. 2009
On Friday night I was completely engrossed in an interview conducted by Bill
Moyers of Justice Richard Goldstone. [http://tinyurl.com/yllft94]
Justice Goldstone, a Jewish South African with impeccable credentials as an
international human rights advocate and investigator, was charged by the
United Nations with the task of conducting an investigation into allegations
of human rights abuses and war crimes which took place at the time of the
Israeli invasion of Gaza in December 2008. The result, a report adopted by
the United Nations Human Rights Council this past week, while finding war
crimes committed by both sides, represented a stinging indictment of the
activities of the Israeli military in its attack on Gaza.
Moyers, an outstanding interviewer, posed tough questions to Goldstone, many
of which were derived from criticisms of Justice Goldstone by
anti-Palestinian forces for alleged bias. In fact, a clip of Israeli Prime
Minister Netanyahu addressing the United Nations (played during the show),
made such charges quite explicit. Justice Goldstone never wavered. A
committed Zionist and long-time friend of Israel, Goldstone described the
Israeli behavior in no uncertain terms as an act of collective punishment
against the people of Gaza for having elected Hamas (the Islamic resistance
movement) in the first place.
The executive summary of the report (the report itself is more than 500
pages) is extremely compelling. Drawn from interviews conducted by Justice
Goldstone's committee, the report paints a picture of what one can only be
described as barbaric vengeance on the part of the Israelis. The supposed
reason behind the attacks lay in the firing of rockets at Israeli
communities by Palestinians from Gaza. While the firing of rockets against
civilian targets is understood internationally to be a war crime, the
Israeli government had been manipulating the situation against the Gaza for
some time, conducting a blockade and, in fact, breaking the truce that had
been agreed to with Hamas. In that sense, the Gaza invasion seemed to be a
logical extension of the behavior of the Israeli government to neutralize
Hamas. It was also consistent with the sort of behavior one observed when
Israel conducted its aggressive war against Lebanon in 2006, destroying
civilian targets, e.g., airports, and using cluster bombs.
On Friday night Justice Goldstone was absolutely steadfast in his commitment
to the conclusions of his report. This has been striking not just in his
responses to Moyers' questions on Friday night, but also in terms of his
responses to criticisms in the immediate aftermath of the release of his
report. While many people with less courage would have retracted their
report or, at least, segments of their report, Goldstone stood firm and
absolutely unapologetic.
The issuing of the Goldstone report, and its adoption by the UN Human Rights
Council, is another signal that something is changing with regard to
attitudes towards Israeli aggression and the Israeli occupation of the
Palestinian territories. Try as anti-Palestinian pundits might, it has been
very difficult to debunk the report. Had the chair of the investigating
committee been someone more closely identified with the Palestinian struggle
for self-determination, the Israeli allegations of bias might have had
greater international weight. In the case of Goldstone's report, such
charges simply did not/do not pass the straight face test. Even the United
States, with the shameful criticism of the Goldstone report by Ambassador
Susan Rice, could not identify one factual error in the report or one
concrete reason that would support a notion of alleged bias.
The Goldstone report needs to be popularized. While most people will not
read its 500+ page analysis, the gist of the report needs to be broadly
circulated. It is a condemnation of the horrific approach that the Israeli
government has taken, not only towards Gaza, but towards the entirety of the
Occupied Territories. As such, it must be used as another argument as to
why economic, political and military support for the Israeli government and
its Occupation needs to be halted.
BlackCommentator.com Executive Editor, Bill Fletcher, Jr., is a Senior
Scholar with the Institute for Policy Studies, the immediate past president
of TransAfrica Forum and co-author of, Solidarity Divided: The Crisis in
Organized Labor and a New Path toward Social Justice (University of
California Press), which examines the crisis of organized labor in the USA.
***
From: Sid Shniad
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1124839.html
Turkey PM: If you don't want Iran to have nukes, give yours up
By Reuters
Haaretz: 31/10/2009
Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan said on Saturday that countries
opposed to Iran's atomic program should give up their own nuclear weapons,
and attacked as "arrogant" the sanctions imposed on Ankara's neighbor.
He also said he wanted the Middle East, and then the whole world, to rid
itself of nuclear weapons.
During a trip to Iran this week, Erdogan said he backed Tehran's "right to
peaceful nuclear energy" and called its approach in nuclear talks with
Western powers "positive."
The trip added to Western concern that NATO's only Muslim member may be
shifting its foreign-policy focus towards the Islamic world and turning its
back on Western allies.
Iran says the sole aim of its nuclear program is to generate electricity,
but Western powers suspect it of secretly planning to produce nuclear
weapons and are trying to persuade it to stop enriching uranium.
"... those who criticize Iran's nuclear program continue to possess the same
weapons," said Erdogan, according to an advance copy, carried by state-run
Anatolian news agency, of a televised address he was scheduled to make at 8
p.m.
"I think that those who take this stance, who want these arrogant sanctions,
need to first give these [weapons] up. We shared this opinion with our
Iranian friends, our brothers."
United Nations and U.S. sanctions have already been imposed on Iran over its
nuclear program, and if current talks fail to produce agreement, Western
powers may push for a further round of sanctions on the Islamic Republic.
Israel is assumed to have the Middle East's only nuclear arsenal. Turkey, a
European Union candidate, has been Israel's closest Muslim ally, but
relations have soured since Israel's December-January offensive in the Gaza
Strip.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad this week praised Erdogan for his
"clear stance against" Israel.
Erdogan also said Turkey wants the Middle East, and in time the world, to be
free of nuclear weapons. "We want to live in a region completely purged of
nuclear weapons. We want to live in a world in which nuclear weapons no
longer exist," he said.
Erdogan has tried to expand Turkey's influence in the Middle East and make
it a regional power since his party, which traces it roots to an Islamist
movement, took office in 2002.
Erdogan also reiterated previous remarks that Turkey and Iran have set
themselves a target of more than tripling annual bilateral trade by 2011 to
$30 billion.
No comments:
Post a Comment