Dear President Obama,
The Jewish Telegraph Agency is reporting that your UN ambassador, Susan Rice, has slammed the United Nations’ Goldstone Report, which investigated claims of war crimes during Operation Cast Lead by both Israel and Hamas. She is quoted as saying: > “We have long expressed our very serious concern with the mandate that was given” to the Goldstone commission by the U.N. Human Right Council “prior to our joining the Council, which we viewed as unbalanced, one-sided and basically unacceptable.”
I had hoped when I voted for you that your administration would be the first in some time to uphold international law and not simply the law of the jungle. If the JTA’s report is true, this is a disappointing development. The United Nations and the ICC most certainly do have a mandate to investigate these alleged crimes. I expect the United States to respect, not dismiss, international law.
Judge Goldstone, himself a South African Jew, led a commission that accuses both Israel and Hamas of war crimes and potential crimes against humanity. The commission will forward its recommendations to the International Criminal Court in the Hague if independent investigations by Israel and Hamas do not occur within 6 months. This face-saving opportunity provides a way for Israel to deal with these crimes itself. Your administration should encourage Israel to proceed with a serious investigation of its own, not simply torpedo the commission’s findings.
The Goldstone report follows two others by Human Rights Watch, one issued on September 13th on the killing of unarmed civilians, another on the 6th concerning Qassam rocket attacks on Israelis. Both the UN and HRW findings are similar.
B’Tselem, an Israeli human rights organization, carefully documented cases of IDF killings of unarmed civilians, the bombing of ambulances, of the IDF preventing medical personnel from helping the wounded, the use of white phosphorus on civilians, and called on Israel to permit the UN to investigate these allegations. Israel consistently refused, choosing to impede investigations. It is interesting that this is precisely the approach Iran has taken with investigations of its nuclear program.
Israeli Defense Forces soldiers who participated in the Gaza operation recounted the use of the “Johnny procedure” (using Palestinians as human shields) and the shooting of unarmed civilians, 70 cases of which were documented by B’Tselem. Similar findings were released by a group of soldiers called “Breaking the Silence,” whom the government attempted to intimidate in the months after Cast Lead. On September 9th B’Tselem released its report analyzing the number of civilian casualties which again were consistent with the UN results.
Another joint report by Israel Physicians for Human Rights and the Palestinian Medical Relief Society documented cases of shooting unarmed civilians and widespread attacks on hospitals and ambulances by the IDF. Employees of the World Health Organization, the World Food Program, and the UN numbered among IDF victims – again corroborating the others.
All of these reports, and several others, have been remarkably consistent. I have followed these events for the last nine months and have read the Goldstone report myself. For your administration to summarily swat these finding down is an affront to reality, to human rights, and to the obligations of civilized nations.
The day after the Goldstone report was issued, Israel immediately went on the offensive. It flew Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon to New York to kick off a number of meetings with Jewish and pro-Israel organizations. Ayalon reportedly told the American Jewish Congress they had to commit to “removing … and torpedoing” the report. The AJC dutifully condemned the findings as “grotesquely distorted” and attacked Human Rights Watch as well. Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League labeled the investigation an “initiative born of bigotry.” NGO Monitor, CAMERA, UN Watch, and other pro-Zionist “watch” groups all ratcheted up their attacks on the United Nations and most of the established human rights organizations. And then there is AIPAC.
I hope you are not buying into this public relations campaign at a time when Israel is thumbing its nose at your own administration’s call for an end of settlements and has added racial and religious profiling to Americans’ travel visas within Israel and the West Bank. I ask you: what do you intend to do about this latter issue? I expect your administration to defend my rights as a citizen a bit more zealously than a military ally.
Given what has happened at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and with illegal “renditions,” the United States is not in a position to take the moral high road and condemn Israel. But the US also does not need to summarily exonerate Israel either. Such an act would simply be regarded as a mutual defense pact between violators of international law. It would be better that both countries investigate their own actions. Here in the US, Attorney General Eric Holder has work to do in investigating violations of the Constitution and civil and human rights abuses here and abroad. Frankly, he needs much more support from your administration. In Israel the Knesset should convene a special investigator to examine the IDF’s excesses or crimes during Operation Cast Lead. For either nation to try to sweep its misdeeds under the rug would simply constitute criminal behavior followed by criminal neglect.
I look forward to a reply to these concerns.
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