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Always good when popular pressure forces a politician to do the right thing. In this case, the right thing is to discuss and act on the Goldstone report, which detailed possible Israeli and Hamas war crimes during Israel’s invasion of Gaza last December and January. West Bank president Mahmoud Abbas reversed an earlier stance (purchased by the U.S.) to delay action, and now supports getting the report discussed on Wednesday by the Security Council and then referred to the UN Human Rights Council:
Criticism forces Abbas to harden stance
October 12, 2009
Michael Jansensus. . . Many Palestinians were outraged when [Abbas] shook hands with Mr Netanyahu at an encounter arranged by US president Barack Obama on the sidelines of opening of the UN General Assembly.
Mr Abbas had said that he would not meet or negotiate with Mr Netanyahu until he agreed to freeze all Israeli settlement activity in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Under US political and financial pressure, Mr Abbas capitulated to what a Palestinian observer called a “$200 million handshake,”referring to the amount the US pledged for PA budgetary support by the end of the year.
Outrage became fury when the PA agreed to postpone endorsement by the UN Human Rights Council of a report on crimes committed during Israel’s war on Gaza earlier this year.
Palestinian economy minister Bassem Khoury resigned in protest, other PA figures called the decision a mistake, and Palestinians staged a rally in Ramallah. . . .
. . . In an attempt to limit damage over the Goldstone report, Mr Abbas instructed the PA delegation in Geneva and the Palestinian observer at UN to press for an early discussion in either the Human Rights Council or the Security Council of the 575-page document, which provides evidence of Israeli and, to a lesser extent, Hamas war crimes.
Fearing involvement of the International Criminal Court, Israel has threatened to pull out of US-brokered talks if the Goldstone report is endorsed and its recommendations are adopted.
Though it won’t be as effective as human rights activists wish, especially not in the U.S., displaying Israeli immorality and criminality to the world is still the most promising path for international resistance to take. At least it gets real results (a series of diplomatic and popular blows against Israel are listed in “Israel-Turkey relations hit new low“), and the real results would mount if Israel continues on its present path. In addition, campaigning for basic human rights in Palestine and against war criminality on both sides is so obviously right and fair-minded that even members of the Israeli home team are swayed (see British UN ambassador in article below). Maybe even more so when the main argument against justice is ‘you/they did it too’:
Israeli officials warn against support for UN report
October 11, 2009
Ben LynfieldA jittery Israeli government reacted furiously yesterday after a top British diplomat voiced support for aspects of a UN report that could lead to prosecution of Israeli army officers for alleged war crimes.
The UK ambassador to the UN, John Sawers, told Israel Army radio that the report on last winter’s Gaza war contains “some very serious details which need to be investigated by both the Palestinian authorities and the Israeli authorities.”
He added that “serious information” in the document gives rise to the suspicion that violations of the laws of war were committed.
The remarks, three days before the report is expected to be raised in the security council at Libya’s behest, highlighted a British position that is rhetorically distinct from that of Washington, which has been strongly backing an Israeli campaign to scuttle the report on the grounds it is biased.
Mr. Sawers took issue with the prevalent Israeli idea that the commission headed by South African judge Richard Goldstone had reached its conclusions in advance of its research. “This investigation was led by a serious figure, Richard Goldstone, a South African Jew with long experience in justice. It’s not as if he was in any way biased,” he said.
Israeli officials warned in response that any British support for the report would boomerang. If a precedent is set of Israelis being prosecuted for acts during the Gaza war, Britons could also be placed in the dock for actions in Iraq and Afghanistan, they said. “London, which is also in the midst of a war against terror, could find itself in handcuffs if it supports the document,” they said.
The report issued last month said that both Israel and Hamas were guilty of war crimes during the conflict in which nearly 1400 Palestinians and thirteen Israelis died. It said the Israeli military had proven unable to investigate itself and recommended the war crimes allegations be referred to the International Criminal Court if “good faith investigations” were not underway within six months.
The Jerusalem Post, probably accurately, explains why Sawers is standing against war criminality:
. . . The feeling in Jerusalem was that Sawers’s remarks were not random off-the cuff comments, but were actually reflective of British government thinking. There was a sense that the British, themselves involved in a nasty war against terrorism, realize that supporting this document could handcuff them down the road, but they also realize that the US would almost certainly veto any Security Council resolution on the matter. In other words, London could curry favor with the Arab and Muslim countries by supporting the report, knowing full well that in the final analysis the US would step in, do their “dirty work,” and veto the resolution before it could harm British interests.
Sawers will become head of Britain’s MI6 intelligence agency next month.
Finally, and maybe it’s wishful thinking, but it would be nice, in honor of his Nobel Prize, if Obama would not veto referring the Goldstone report to the UN Human Rights Council. If it really was given to him prospectively, it’s time to start earning it. Haroon Siddiqui writes:
Nobel Prize puts pressure on Barack Obama and Israel
By Haroon Siddiqui
Sunday, Oct 11 2009The Nobel Peace Prize was always political, in the positive sense. The awards to Desmond Tutu, Yitzhak Rabin/Yasser Arafat, José Ramos-Horta of East Timor, Shirin Ebadi of Iran, etc. were meant to advance peace and other causes.
Barack Obama’s efforts at dragging America back into multilateralism, rebuilding bridges to the Arab/Muslim world, looking for a light at the end of the Afghan tunnel, trying for peace in the Middle East, etc. can use the Nobel to overcome his detractors. No wonder they are being so bilious.
Being honoured for defending the rule of law should also help him ease the U.S. from protecting Israel despite its flouting of international norms.
Take the recent Richard Goldstone report that said Israel and Hamas committed war crimes in Gaza. Instead of heeding his findings, Israel and the U.S. have been slinging mud at the highly respected South African jurist and former prosecutor of war crimes in Yugoslavia and Rwanda, who also happens to be a committed Zionist.
The smear job was followed by American strong-arm tactics to derail his report from the UN Human Rights Council, the Geneva-based body that had commissioned it. Mahmoud Abbas was pressured into spearheading a postponement until March.
But the report won’t go away. It has been forced onto the agenda of the Security Council for Wednesday by Libya, the only Arab state currently on the 15-member body. Even if the initiative had come from a respectable member, the outcome probably would still be the same: a U.S. veto against any meaningful action.
But post-Nobel, such a vote would be embarrassing for Obama (he has already backed off his earlier call for Israel to freeze illegal Jewish settlements). And his grand declarations of building bridges to the Muslim world would begin to sound hollow.
_Beginning_ to sound hollow? In a year that began with Obama approving of Israel’s invasion and crippling embargo of Gaza, Siddiqui is bending over backward trying to sound ‘mainstream’.
23 Comments
Why do you say that Obama approved the Gaza invasion? Didn’t it begin and end before Obama took office?
I said he “approved of” the invasion, not that he approved the invasion. The silence of the incoming U.S. President meant that he approved of the invasion, and his continued silence on the severe economic embargo is continuing complicity.
Did Obama give a reason for approval of the invasion or do you find his alleged approval entirely in his failure to speak out against it?
The argument that silence equals consent isn’t really a good one.
In this context, I think it is an excellent argument. It wasn’t as if the invasion could be easily missed or ignored. It was the major world event in the last week of 2008 and the first two weeks of 2009. Obama and the U.S. have great (but latent) power over Israel. A word or two of disapproval could’ve saved quite a few lives, and the incoming President had a responsibility to be and probably was clued into that fact.
In this context, I think it (silence equals consent) is an excellent argument.
Not really: It’s also possible that he deplored the whole thing but didn’t want to antagonize Israel (and a big chunk of America) by saying so, so he kept quiet. Did anyone ever ask him directly? Mind reading is for carnival sideshows.
Mahmoud Abbas reversed an earlier stance (purchased by the U.S.) to delay action
Cancel the $200 million.
“The argument that silence equals consent isn’t really a good one.”; guess you think the Nuremberg defense is valid huh?
In Germany they first came for the Communists,
and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew.
Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn’t speak up because I was a Protestant.
Then they came for me —
and by that time no one was left to speak up.
Nuts to that, fairleft. Explain why it was that the Israelis felt the need to pull out before Jan 20.
Name one person in Nuremberg who was tried for remaining silent. They were tried for actions.
Your analogy isn’t good.
No need for just one person; any of them whose defense was ‘following orders’ was guilty of ‘silence’. When injustice reigns, and inaction is blamed on ‘authority’, then ‘silence’ has occurred.
Think of Lieutenant Ehren Watada.
People pressed his staff for anything and they got nothing:
No, ubet. You miss the point, legally and morally.
All of the people put on trial, acted illegally.
Their defense of following orders was offered as excuse for their own actions.
There are several layers of fallacy in attempting to place responsibility for other nations actions upon Obama and doing so for nothing more than a lack of a public statement of opposition.
Because they feared Obama’s reaction to continued destruction and massacre after he came into office. Which makes my point, that he had power which he failed to use: if he had said something, even unofficially through a leak or a friend, it might have had significant effect and stopped the hell a little or a lot early.
You’re not consistent in your thinking. Take a second.
If they stopped because they thought that Obama would react against them, how can you be saying that his feelings were unknown or somehow approving?
No, your thoughts are inconsistent. They surmised that he would be upset if a continuing conflagration were taking attention away from what Obama wanted on his agenda in his first 100 days. It is something that doesn’t need to be said, incoming Presidents want control of the spotlight and agenda on days 1 to a 100.
My point is that Obama had the power to probably make the conflict stop a little or a lot sooner. You don’t question that, in fact your evidence supports it. He didn’t use that power, and that inaction, actually complete silence despite news reporter prodding, was morally wrong complicity in Israel’s actions.
(At the time that non-use of power was surprising for some — those who hadn’t figured out that Obama is a normal ‘whimpish’ Democrat — but now it has become a hallmark of the Obama administration.)
Which makes my point, that he had power which he failed to use: if he had said something, even unofficially through a leak or a friend, it might have had significant effect and stopped the hell a little or a lot early.
How do you know he didn’t say something unofficially through a friend or other back channel methods?
why bother? fairleft hasn’t yet given up on the idea that Israel had to withdraw prior to Obama having actual power for fear of consequences he would then be able to impose without reaching the very necessarily entailed idea that the Israelis must have had a firm grasp of Obama not approving.
There’s no evidence of it, and there would be something if he had done so. Something like: “Administration sources said Obama was unhappy . . .” or “Informal Obama advisor said Israel should. . .” That kind of thing happens frequently under Obama or any President, it’s s.o.p. But even that, of course, would’ve exposed Obama to some angry Israel Lobby criticism.
It was and is widely conjectured (you missed out on it?) that Israel chose to begin its invasion in late December because they intended to finish it before Obama’s inaugural. I imagine they communicated this to the incoming Obama administration or its proxies. The distinction is simple: Obama wasn’t bothered by and didn’t lift a finger against the war, but would’ve been upset if Israel’s war of choice rained on his inaugural and the early honeymoon days of his administration, when he wanted the world’s attention to himself. So Israel likely “had a firm grasp of Obama not approving” of a continuing war distracting from his inaugural and early days, but Israel likely had an equally firm grasp of Obama not caring what bloody massacre it carried out as long as it finished up a decent few days before he took power.
So you admit that the Israelis knew that Obama wouldn’t want them to continue, but you are now deciding, without any evidence, what his reasons were.
You win the Nobel Prize for assumptions, fairleft.
Because it wasn’t leaked to the press, it didn’t happen.
Because he didn’t condemn it, he must approve it.
In one case silence means No, in the other case silence means Yes (to you).
Some people listen to silence and realize that it is… nothing. Others listen to silence and hear whatever they want. Silence contains no information and while you can sometimes deduce something from that remember that deductions are not evidence, let alone proof.
You seem convinced that Obama approved of the invasion, that the Israelis knew he disapproved of the invasion, and that he did nothing to stop or end it, and these are all deductions based on — literally — nothing. You make assumptions based on the absence of evidence and present them as facts.
On a more interesting note, what do you think the UN Human Rights Council will make of Hamas’ indiscriminate rocket fire (still going on, btw)?
aaaaa
My assumption is that if Obama had disapproved of the invasion he would’ve said so. Instead he said nothing or made general noises about Israel having the right to defend itself.