So what was Congressman Berman’s response?
“Justice Goldstone is correct. The Government of Israel decided not to cooperate with the Mission, based on its biased mandate, as well as the UNHRC’s long history of anti-Israel bias. I find that position, at the least, understandable.”
Understandable or not, Berman’s resolution omits Israel’s refusal to cooperate, while at the same time claiming that Hamas, which did cooperate with the Mission and allowed its members full access to Gaza, was “able to significantly shape the findings of the investigation mission’s report by selecting and prescreening some of the witnesses and intimidating others.” In turn, Goldstone replied, “The allegation that Hamas was able to shape the findings of my report or that it pre-screened the witnesses is devoid of truth. I challenge anyone to produce evidence in support of it.”
Berman’s only “evidence” is his subsequent claim that “the commission conducted some of its proceedings through holding televised open hearings in Gaza. Given its total control of Gaza and its ability to intimidate, Hamas almost certainly would have been able to control the access and message of each witness attending a televised open hearing. What is beyond doubt is that witnesses were keenly aware that Hamas was monitoring the televised proceedings and likely to inflict reprisals for any unwelcome testimony.” The only thing that seems “almost certainly” “beyond doubt” is Berman’s ceaseless proclivity to make baseless assumptions about a place he’s never been and an incredibly stalwart and resilient people he’s never met.
It is doubtful that Berman would also conclude that past testimonies given by Israeli soldiers regarding the gross misconduct and war crimes committed in Gaza were also the result of militaristic intimidation, most likely agreeing with the aborted military probe that, unsurprisingly, found the allegations to be “based in hearsay” and “rumors,” and declared an end to the probe. According to Congressman Berman, the only apparent trustworthy source on what happens in Gaza is the Israeli government. What a relief.
In reality, the Goldstone Report’s findings are unequivocal and unambiguous. Among many other conclusions, it found that Israel’s “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” and that “the destruction of food supply installations, water sanitation systems, concrete factories and residential houses was the result of a deliberate and systematic policy by the Israeli armed forces. It was not carried out because those objects presented a military threat or opportunity, but to make the daily process of living, and dignified living, more difficult for the civilian population.” (A/HRC/12/48, p.407)
The Mission found that Israeli operations, in many cases, constituted “an assault on the dignity of the people” and included not only “the use of human shields and unlawful detentions sometimes in unacceptable conditions, but also in the vandalizing of houses when occupied and the way in which people were treated when their houses were entered. The graffiti on the walls, the obscenities and often racist slogans, all constituted an overall image of humiliation and dehumanization of the Palestinian population.” ( A/HRC/12/48, p.407)
Because the Israeli government has consistently claimed that all phases of “Operation Cast Lead” were thoroughly and extensively planned, that legal opinions and advice were given throughout the planning stages and at certain operational levels during the campaign, and that, according to the Government of Israel, almost no mistakes made during the planning or operation itself, the Goldstone Report 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, radically diminish its local economic capacity both to work and to provide for itself, and to force upon it an ever increasing sense of dependency and vulnerability.” Furthermore, “Whatever violations of international humanitarian and human rights law may have been committed, the systematic and deliberate nature of the activities described in this report leave the Mission in no doubt that responsibility lies in the first place with those who designed, planned, ordered and oversaw the operations.” (A/HRC/12/48, p.408)
Clearly, these revelations are far too damning for the US Congress, which funds the Israeli military apparatus to the tune of $3 billion each year and provides devastating weaponry with which to slaughter Palestinians by the hundreds, to bear and therefore must be buried. With this in mind, it is all too obvious that H.Res.867 is meant to be a distraction from the truth; it is a deliberate and disingenuous deflection of well-documented, substantiated, and widely corroborated evidence of Israeli war crimes that, in its reflexive self-righteousness, reveals itself to be no more than a study in double standards, moral relativism and selective outrage.
As such, the resolution and its uncreative backers in the House, resorted to obvious repetitions of hasbara in a well-coordinated effort to silence all criticism of Israeli actions, cover-up evidence of Israeli war crimes, and condone any and all military aggression, invasion, and occupation – no matter how illegal, inhumane, or truculent – committed by any so-called “democracy” in the name of “self-defense.”
When the resolution made it to the floor of the House on Tuesday afternoon, Congress members from all over the country lined up to lend their vocal support to Reps. Berman and Ros-Lehtinen and the resolution. They all basically said the same thing: that the wicked, blood-lusting terrorists of Hamas used Palestinians as human shields and that a victimized, peace-loving, democratic Israel, via the findings of the Goldstone Report, is being unfairly condemned for merely acting out of self-defense.
Ros-Lehtinen, in her defense of H.Res.867, called the Goldstone Report a “575-page hatchet job” that “persecut[ed] Israel for defending herself,” claiming that the Mission “disregarded evidence that Hamas and other such groups in Gaza used innocents as human shields and deliberately launched attacks from schools, from hospitals, from mosques.” ( Congressional Record H12234 11/3/09)
By the time these statements were made, Judge Goldstone had already addressed them thusly: “It is factually incorrect to state that the Report denied Israel the right of self-defense,” he wrote in his letter to Berman. “The report examined how that right was implemented by the standards of international law.”
The Report itself even addresses Israel’s claim to self-defense. It concluded:
“While the Israeli Government has sought to portray its operations as essentially a response to rocket attacks in the exercise of its right to self-defence, the Mission considers the plan to have been directed, at least in part, at a different target: the people of Gaza as a whole.
In this respect, the operations were in furtherance of an overall policy aimed at punishing the Gaza population for its resilience and for its apparent support for Hamas, and possibly with the intent of forcing a change in such support. The Mission considers this position to be firmly based in fact, bearing in mind what it saw and heard on the ground, what it read in the accounts of soldiers who served in the campaign, and what it heard and read from current and former military officers and political leaders whom the Mission considers to be representative of the thinking that informed the policy and strategy of the military operations.” ( A/HRC/12/48, p.406)
