Humiliation of Goldstone reaches US Congress again

From Ha'aretz but with links added by me:

The controversy over Richard Goldstone's Washington Post opinion piece has reached the floor of the United States Congress, with new legislation calling on the United Nations to rescind the Goldstone Report on the 2009 Gaza war....

Goldstone's report on Israel's 2009 war with Gaza angered many with its accusation that Israel had committed war crimes and intentionally targeted civilians. In a recent op-ed piece for the Washington Post, the judge wrote that Israel had investigated many of the allegations brought forth by the report, while Hamas had not done the same.

"If I had known then what I know now, the Goldstone Report would have been a different document," Goldstone wrote.

This is not the first time the Goldstone report has come up in the U.S. congress. In 2009, the House passed a resolution calling on the president and secretary of state to ignore the report.

Did they ignore it? If so, have they read it now that Goldstone has jumped through hoops to distance himself from it? If not, how can they call for the rescission of something they haven't read? Only in America....

The more I think about Goldstone, and I think about it/him a lot, the more it all reminds me of the Dreyfus case.  Dreyfus was falsely accused of treason, apparently because he was Jewish.  Goldstone too has been accused of treason because he is Jewish.  The fact that it was antisemites accusing Dreyfus and zionists accusing Goldstone is yet another example of the close relationship between antisemitism and zionism.

Canadian BDS group SAIA Carleton shows how it's done

A thousand Bravos to SAIA Carleton!

From the press release:

However, the university administration’s attempts to muzzle the long list of divestment campaign endorsers – including over 2,000 letter and petition signatories, both the undergraduate and graduate students associations, and more than 25 student clubs, academic workers’ unions and university service centres – deeply backfired.   During one of the busiest academic weeks of the year, more than 400 divestment supporters rallied at every entrance of the building to challenge the illegitimate decision-making process, and to voice a united message: “Board of Governors, we won’t rest, we won’t rest til you divest!” In an inspiring show of solidarity, students and their allies engaged in a diversity of creative protest tactics, ranging from sit-ins to salsa and dabke dance-offs for divestment, successfully blocking several BOG members from entering the meeting. Eventually, the highly mobilized and energetic crowd became too much for the BOG to ignore, and they announced to the crowd that they had cancelled the meeting.  The BOG members who had literally walked over students to go upstairs to the meeting then exited the building through a ‘walk of shame’ created by the crowd of cheerful protestors.  (Students Against Israeli Apartheid, Carleton)

Report on the Libyan turn to NATO fron TRNN

In Memoriam Juliano Mer Khamis

Woops, I meant human rights ABUSES

Darn it. I've had a letter published in today's Guardian but I, not they, made a balls of it and by the time I sent an erratum they'd already gone to print.  The letter was a response to Jonathan Freedland's why-oh-why pick on Israel piece from yesterday.  Here's my letter, fairly hot off the presses:

While Arab regimes are oppressive to maintain the governments in power, Israel's oppression goes to the heart of its existence as a state to which Jews from around the world have more right to live than the native non-Jewish population. This involves the ethnic cleansing of the native Arab population in order to secure and maintain a Jewish majority.

Other states have carried out ethnic cleansing in the past. But Israel owes its ethno-religious majority to a recent, current and ongoing campaign of displacement of the indigenous population. That was true of the US, it was true of Australia. It has been true of many states. But Israel's crimes are more recent and, therefore, its continued existence is predicated on its human rights.

Even hotter off the presses (and more complete) is the correction I sent them:

There are major differences between the State of Israel and other serial human rights abusers that Jonathan Freedland names. Whilst Arab regimes are oppressive to maintain the governments in power, Israel's oppression goes to the heart of its existence as a state to which Jews from around the world have more right to live than the native non-Jewish population.  Freedland must know that this involves the ethnic cleansing of the native Arab population in order to secure and maintain a Jewish majority.  Other states have carried out ethnic cleansing in the past and others will attempt it in the future.  But Israel owes its ethno-religious majority to a recent, current and on-going campaign of displacement of the indigenous population.  That was true of the US, it was true of Australia.  It has been true of many states.  But Israel's crimes are more recent and, therefore, its continued existence is predicated on its human rights abuses.

Ok, they ditched all the stuff about Jonathan Freedland's sad lament for all those victims of human rights abuses outside of Palestine and therefore not Israel's responsibility, but it was me that dropped the word "abuses" from the end.  It was rushed of course, I didn't even separate the paragraphs.  But only the most ludicrous of hasbaranikim would posit that Israel's continued existence is predicated on its human rights.

Sorry about that.

Messenger shoots himself

Another article on Goldstone, this time The Guardian editorial titled, Goldstone: the unanswered questions:

It is difficult, in this digital world of instant claim and rebuttal, to say that you were wrong. But Richard Goldstone's retraction of one of the claims of the report that he chaired – that Israel targeted civilians in the war onGaza as a matter of policy – is one such instance. Mr Goldstone deserves credit for honesty.

I doubt if there'll be a whole lot of credit for his "honesty" from hasbara quarters. But has he been honest?

The retracted allegation refers to the attack which killed 22 members of the Samouni family, who, following instructions from Israeli soldiers, were sheltering in a house in Zeitoun. But there are 35 other incidents that Goldstone's team investigated. It found seven cases where civilians were shot leaving their homes waving white flags; a direct and intentional attack on a hospital which may amount to a war crime; numerous incidents where ambulances were prevented from attending to the severely injured; nine attacks on civilian infrastructure with no military significance, such as flour mills, chickens farms, sewage works and water wells – all part of a campaign to deprive civilians of basic necessities. The key paragraph of the report states: "The Mission finds that the conduct of the Israeli armed forces constitute grave breaches of the Fourth Geneva Convention in respect of wilful killings and wilfully causing great suffering to protected persons and as such give rise to individual criminal responsibility." On the Samouni killings it states that even if it amounted to an operational error and the mission concludes that a mistake was made, "state responsibility of Israel for an internationally wrongful act" would remain. 

It seems that Goldstone, given his professed zionism, which in his case is unambiguously expressed as a love of the State of Israel, was a bad choice for the task at hand.  See the Magnes Zionist blog for how he openly sought to distance himself from the report that his panel produced.

At appearances following the report, Judge Goldstone showed his discomfort and displeasure with those who wanted to use the Goldstone Report to "delegitimize Israel." He was deeply offended by those who questioned his love of Israel. One incident is particularly telling. At Yale, a banner was unfolded with listed the Dreyfuss Affair, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and the Goldstone Report. Now imagine if that had happened to Norm Finkelstein. Finkelstein would have known how to react and what to say; he would be eminently non-plussed. But the act not only flustered Judge Goldstone; he virtually lost his composure. After that speech, the judge was accosted by the Chabad rabbi, Rabbi Shmuely Hecht, who asked him, "What are you going to do when the facts are unraveled and the evidence is clear that Goldstone report was a sham and not credible based on video and audio coverage of the war?" The judge replied, much to the puzzlement of the rabbi, "Should that occur, I will rejoice." (Read about ithere.) 

Poor guy.  It's put a terrible strain on his family.  But then look what happened to far bigger and poorer families in Gaza.  But Goldstone does appear to have tried to undermine the report of the panel he chaired.  Magnes Zionist gets into answering why but this Guardian editorial deals with the if.

Clear to one side the superheated flak of the debate today. It arises from Israel's current international isolation, of which the Gaza operation formed only a part. It is now said that the Goldstone report became the cornerstone of a campaign to delegitimise Israel. None of this is relevant to what happened in Gaza between 27 December 2008 and 18 January 2009, events which led to the deaths of 1,396 Palestinians, 763 of whom, according to the Israeli human rights group B'Tselem, were not taking part in hostilities when they were killed. The report did not in fact claim that Israel set out deliberately to murder civilians. It said that Operation Cast Lead was "deliberately disproportionate" and intended to "punish, humiliate and terrorise". That charge stands unanswered. Indiscriminate warfare, as opposed to deliberate killing, was undoubtedly state policy. Shooting the messenger is always easier than dealing with the message itself. This time, the messenger had the grace to shoot himself. It does not change what happened in Gaza, nor what will happen the next time war breaks out.

So The Guardian is claiming that Goldstone's disclaiming doesn't change anything but that it does amount to shooting himself. Again I say, poor guy. Of course the toll taken on his family has been immense but it is nothing up against what the Palestinians have been suffering, certainly considering cast lead but look what his zionist sympathies and fellow zionists have made him do to his own credibility.

And still the hasbaraniks aren't happy. On the subject of "delegitimisation" of Israel, Engage has the Washington Post article tagged with "anti-zionism". Bizarre!

Finally, I was going to note how Goldstone had hawked his op-ed around the American media. Well, that he had offered the piece to the New York Times anyway but got rejected.  Ernie Halfdram made a comment to this effect linking to Angry Arab News Service which in turn linked to YNET.  Well the YNET link is now broken and the report is now denied by the NYT, on YNET thus:

In an official response to the claims, NYT's Elaine Murphy said that Goldstone had indeed submitted an opinion piece to the newspaper on March 22, which was rejected. Nevertheless, she stressed, the piece did not resemble the one published by the Washington Post.

Still, the New York Times refused to subject the original pieces sent by Goldstone to any comparison with the one published by the Washington Post; claiming they had no right to forward an unpublished submission to a third party. [typos corrected]

What to make of it all?

Allegra Pacheco on Palestinian rules of Engagement

...Indeed, all the Palestinian people I have spoken with here in the West Bank who heard of the murders [in Itamar] shake their heads and say how terrible they were ‏(and none saw the pictures‏). And in the next breath they add, “and I’m sure it wasn’t a Palestinian who did this.” The murders were condemned by Palestinian militant groups, the political leadership and civil society.

And yet the Israeli government has had a field day, accusing the Palestinian collective of incitement to murder and using the incident as a pretext to expand settlements – and to hold hostage the entire village of Awarta ‏(over 5,000 people‏), adjacent to Itamar, which has been under total lockdown for days. A close Palestinian colleague remarks: “After 45 years of occupying us, and 60-plus years of fighting us, the Israelis still don’t know us – it’s amazing.”

In denying involvement, the military wing of the Fatah party, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, said they “oppose the targeting of civilians and killing of children no matter what the pretext may be.” A leaflet from the Imad Mughniyeh Group, loosely affiliated with Hezbollah and Fatah, added that in the past, it had “abandoned many attacks” due to the presence of children. More than one Palestinian reminds me of the No. 300 bus hijacking in 1984, which was “botched” because the Palestinian hijackers let a pregnant Israeli woman off the bus.

The information she then gave to the Israeli security services enabled them to locate the bus and ultimately kill all the militants.

“We don’t deliberately target women and children,” several Palestinians who served time in Israeli prisons for activities against the occupation tell me unhesitatingly. Is this Palestinian cultural patriarchy at work or is it respect for international law that guides these accused militants? “But you put bombs inside civilian buses years ago. What’s the difference?” I ask.

I am struck by the answer: “This was a stabbing of children inside their homes – that’s not resistance. No bomber boarded a bus to kill children.”

International humanitarian law does not recognize the distinctions that these militants make: Indiscriminate attacks that are likely to kill civilians are plainly illegal. But, by the logic I was hearing, the distinction boils down to a matter of intent. Like the different degrees of murder recognized by the American criminal system.

“You know,” continues one of the former prisoners, “it took years for the resistance to agree to include Israeli settlers as targets. Only when [Rabbi Moshe] Levinger and his bandits grew in numbers and began driving through our streets and shooting at us, did we reach agreement on this.”( Haaretz, April 1, 2011)

The investigation, by the way, is under a gag order. We wouldn't want published facts to interfere with the statewide racist incitement that can be milked from this story in Israel, would we?

Why is Goldstone now covering for Israel?

I'm revisiting this Goldstone affair because it's so troubling:

If you see Goldstone's op-ed piece in the Washington Post about his report and how it would be different if only the Israelis had co-operated and if he knew then what he knows now, the immediate issue is that he wrote the op-ed on his own and without any reference to his colleagues on the original report team.  Why was that?  Who authorised him to do this?  If he simply woke up one morning and phoned the Post and asked if he could jot down a quick and implausible mea culpa that would be weird in itself.  But how did it happen that the Washington Post was prepared to allow an eminent judge, Goldstone, to write such a ludicrous article and hammer a nail into the coffin of his career or at least his credibility as a judge of international conduct?

So the mere fact that he has written the article, no matter what it was saying, is both bizarre and plain morally, and possibly legally wrong.  But his logic is bizarre too. In my previous post on this I took issue with his focus on one case to the exclusion of others. But let's look again at how Goldstone tries to exonerate Israel this time around:

the most serious attack the Goldstone Report focused on was the killing of some 29 members of the al-Simouni family in their home. The shelling of the home was apparently the consequence of an Israeli commander’s erroneous interpretation of a drone image, and an Israeli officer is under investigation for having ordered the attack. While the length of this investigation is frustrating, it appears that an appropriate process is underway, and I am confident that if the officer is found to have been negligent, Israel will respond accordingly. The purpose of these investigations, as I have always said, is to ensure accountability for improper actions, not to second-guess, with the benefit of hindsight, commanders making difficult battlefield decisions.

But if Goldstone is telling the truth now, then second guessing is precisely what he was doing then. Poor old Israel thought that there was some kind of weaponry in a house that happened to have 29 civilians inside. Poor old Israel responded in the only way a responsible state could respond. Of course, it could have been negligent in which case, Goldstone is confident it will "respond accordingly". But when a suspect exercises their right to silence, judges usually direct juries to refrain from presumptions of guilt, don't they? If what Goldstone is saying now is true, then he presumed Israel guilty. But let's take a look at how the 29 members of the al-Samouni family died. Here's the Washington Post from the time:

Just before dawn on Jan. 4, a sledgehammer crashed through the living-room wall of the home of Almaz al-Samuni in this southern enclave of Gaza City, pounding a hole wide enough for someone to poke a rifle through while shouting in a language she didn't understand.

"Get out of the house now," an Israeli soldier ordered, this time in accented Arabic, she recalled. Almaz, small for her age of 13, and her family quickly did as they were told, heading for her uncle Wael's house nearby, where by daybreak 92 family members had packed in thigh-to-thigh. It was a week into Israel's 22-day war with Hamas.

So some al-Samouni's were ordered into the house of another al-Samouni. I mention that because Goldstone didn't.

At least 29 members of the Samuni family died over the next two weeks -- including Almaz's mother and two brothers. Sixteen or more were killed Jan. 5 when at least two Israeli shells smashed Wael al-Samuni's crowded house. 

So it took two weeks for Israel's possible negligence, over which it will "respond accordingly", to result in the killing of 29 members of the same family. Again, I mention this because from reading the Goldstone re-report you would never know that. And there's more:

At least six others wounded in that attack died more slowly, over more than three days when the Israeli army kept emergency vehicles from entering the neighborhood, according to another teenager who had been stranded and later rescued from the house.

So Israel "kept emergency vehicles from entering the neighborhood". Negligence? Is Goldstone calling the witnesses liars? Just a little caveat here:

This account of the Zaytoun attack and its aftermath was taken primarily from interviews with a dozen members of the Samuni family who survived the assault, as well as statements and patient logs from Gaza City's Shifa and al-Quds hospitals. The information largely parallels an earlier account given by the International Committee of the Red Cross, which concluded that by thwarting rescue efforts for four days Israel had "failed to meet its obligation under international humanitarian law."

It's that absence of Israeli testimony again but Goldstone has severely glossed over the case of 29 members of the same family as if they were killed in one erroneous shelling when it took two weeks for them all to be killed and many appear to have died specifically because the Israeli army denied them emergency medical attention.

Well, in fairness, Judge Goldstone was only writing an op-ed for the Washington Post. He wasn't rewriting his entire report. Otherwise he might have mentioned the complaints of Israel using blindfolded civilians as human shields.  But somehow he managed to mention the recent murders at Itamar. He doesn't mention Itamar by name but see this:

the Human Rights Council should condemn the inexcusable and cold-blooded recent slaughter of a young Israeli couple and three of their small children in their beds.

Now why should the Human Rights Council condemn a straightfoward, admittedly heinous, case of murder? Is Judge Goldstone accusing a political or state actor of these murders? If so, he has one up on the Israeli authorities who appear to be as clueless now about the atrocity that took place under their own jurisdiction in a very secure settlement from which Palestinians are barred as they were at the time.  Is he doing again what he is basically accusing himself of doing in his original report? Assuming guilt by accusation? And who is he accusing? Will he now involve himself in unsolved murders the world over? I'm guessing not.

So where does this leave us? Goldstone has pretty much shredded his credibility which means he has in many ways shredded the original report. We can speculate as to why he wrote such a ludicrous article but the result is to undermine his credibility on just about anything, certainly anything involving Israel or any other pet project of the west.

I should point out that there is a certain amount of hedging in the op-ed.  There are ifs and buts blaming Israel for not co-operating and little hints that there were individual cases if wrong-doing but the negation of a general policy of war criminality  whilst hurling tabloid style abuse at Hamas does shows the general thrust of the op-ed to be an apology to Israel and an apologetic for Israel.

The best zionist approach to this would be to simply leave well alone now but many want a feed frenzy as  Conal Urquhart reports on the op-ed in The Guardian.

Israeli media responded to Goldstone's article with jubilation. The columnists of the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper offered a conciliatory tone to the judge for having the courage to question his initial findings, while Ma'ariv writers were unforgiving.

One wrote: "He is undeserving of either forgiveness or mercy" and had perpetrated "a despicable and shameful act".

Urquhart picks up, uncritically, the story of the 29 members of the al-Samouni family. I think that says as much about Urquhart as it does about the harm that Goldstone has now done whatever the latter's motive.

We can speculate as to why so eminent a judge has made himself look so ludicrous and in so widely read a newspaper. People will say that he simply couldn't take the pressure, I think we can rule out bribery.  He could have been directly threatened or had members of his family threatened but all of that speculation would miss the point that Goldstone has written an utterly ludicrous article in order to cover for the racist war criminals of the State of Israel.

Branding the stop BDS campaign

Look at this from the Jewish Fail site:

“Like sexy panties?”

The Birthright Israel Alumni Community, an initiative of the Jewish Enrichment Center, wants you to oppose boycotts of Israel because that’s where Victoria’s Secret lingerie is manufactured.

Except that it’s not. After receiving fabric from Israel, the undergarments are actually made by Palestinian women and foreign workers in Jordan who toil under brutal, intolerable conditions and then sew “Made in Israel” tags onto their work. The underwear is then returned to Israel, which exports it to the U.S. Yay, exploited labor masquerading as economic cooperation!

That makes this a quintuple FAIL: A failure in taste, factuality, Israel advocacy and spelling (“Isreal?”), as well as a failure in tzenuah (modesty) by the Ohr Somayach-affiliated JEC.

Old habits die hard. This is how South Africa and Rhodesia used to get around sanctions, relabeling stuff, "Made in Israel". Of course now BDS is catching up on Israel other pariah states may have to look elsewhere.

Reconsidering Goldstone?

Judge Richard Goldstone produced a report on Israel's "cast lead" attack on Gaza back in 2008/9.  Here's a small piece from the Washington Post:

In a 574-page report, the four-member panel accused Israel of targeting civilians in mosques and schools, as well as destroying crops and factories, including the only flour factory in Gaza City. The panel also said Israeli soldiers blindfolded and handcuffed Palestinian civilians and, at gunpoint, used them as human shields to enter unsecured homes.

"There is strong evidence to establish that numerous serious violations of international law . . . were committed by the Israel Defense Forces," Goldstone said at a news conference in New York. "The mission concluded that actions amounting to war crimes and possibly in some respect crimes against humanity were committed by the Israel Defense Forces."

Goldstone said there was no question that the Palestinian firing of missiles and mortar shells into Israel "was deliberate and calculated to cause loss of life and injury to civilians and damage to civilian infrastructure." The mission "found that these actions also amounted to serious war crimes and also possibly crimes against humanity."

Now, writing in the same Washington Post Judge Goldstone has had a change of view:

We know a lot more today about what happened in the Gaza war of 2008-09 than we did when I chaired the fact-finding mission appointed by the U.N. Human Rights Council that produced what has come to be known as the Goldstone Report. If I had known then what I know now, the Goldstone Report would have been a different document.

The final report by the U.N. committee of independent experts — chaired by former New York judge Mary McGowan Davis — that followed up on the recommendations of the Goldstone Report has found that “Israel has dedicated significant resources to investigate over 400 allegations of operational misconduct in Gaza” while “the de facto authorities (i.e., Hamas) have not conducted any investigations into the launching of rocket and mortar attacks against Israel.”

Our report found evidence of potential war crimes and “possibly crimes against humanity” by both Israel and Hamas. That the crimes allegedly committed by Hamas were intentional goes without saying — its rockets were purposefully and indiscriminately aimed at civilian targets.

The allegations of intentionality by Israel were based on the deaths of and injuries to civilians in situations where our fact-finding mission had no evidence on which to draw any other reasonable conclusion. While the investigations published by the Israeli military and recognized in the U.N. committee’s report have established the validity of some incidents that we investigated in cases involving individual soldiers, they also indicate that civilians were not intentionally targeted as a matter of policy.

For example, the most serious attack the Goldstone Report focused on was the killing of some 29 members of the al-Simouni family in their home. The shelling of the home was apparently the consequence of an Israeli commander’s erroneous interpretation of a drone image, and an Israeli officer is under investigation for having ordered the attack. While the length of this investigation is frustrating, it appears that an appropriate process is underway, and I am confident that if the officer is found to have been negligent, Israel will respond accordingly.

So the worse that Goldstone is now accusing Israel of is "negligence" and he is confident that Israel will "respond accordingly" if it finds that negligence was indeed the case. But what negligence could have led to "Israeli soldiers blindfold[ing] and handcuff[ing] Palestinian civilians and, at gunpoint, us[ing] them as human shields to enter unsecured homes"?

Well I'm sure we'll find out as soon as Israel "responds accordingly".

UPDATE: The date of the Washington Post article by Goldstone is April 1st.  Could it be an April fool?  I don't think it can be because it is in the name of Richard Goldstone himself.  Goldstone wouldn't joke about something that nearly cost him his place at his grandson's bar mitzvah and surely the Washington Post wouldn't take in vain the name of so august a personage as Judge Goldstone.  Nope, I don't think it can be an April fool but it is bizarre.  The only example he gives of something he described as an Israeli war crime is now explained away by Israeli negligence.  And yet examples of crimes in the report of the report that he linked to cannot possibly have been negligence.  Goldstone's about turn is bizarre but I don't think it's a joke.  I will however keep in mind the possibility that someone thought it might make a funny April fool.

Graphomaniac of the Week: Alexander Cockburn

As every awake person, I believe the NATO-US war has nothing to do "humanitarianism" of any kind. It is an imperial intervention whose goals is to to serve power, not to help revolutions, and it must be exposed and opposed. Unlike many on the left, but like a few others, I believe that trying to mobilize against the no-fly-zone when the rebels were retreating under attack and calling for it was a mistake on many levels. This is a debate worth having because it touches upon a lot of important questions, none of which having anything to do with understanding the purpose and likely consequences of Western imperial interventions in the South.

Unfortunately, we have a different debate, one dominated by demagoguery and demonology. How the liberals do it has been analyzed ad nauseam, and I don't have much to add to that. But I wish this fault was theirs alone. Unfortunately it isn't. The "radical" web is as full of demagoguery as Fox News is. And it has become acceptable that one fights Fox News by becoming more like it. It doesn't work. When radicals convince themselves that they must argue like Glen Beck in order to "win", it means surrendering to the idea that the Fox News mode of thoughtless and content-free trade in signifiers is not merely hegemonic, but beyond challenge.

So here is Fox News of the Left, a.k.a. Alexander Cockburn of Counterpunch, attacking Juan Cole.

But substantial slabs of what passes for the left in America are ecstatic at the intervention – a “good one” at last -- and excitedly pass from hand to hand the vacuous “letter to the left” by Professor Juan Cole, replicated on almost every progressive website. You can tell Cole is a liberal academic by his disdain for any discussion of the fact that aside from other considerations the war launched by Obama and his secretary of state is an outrage to the U.S. Constitution, for which he merits impeachment, as pursued by Rep Dennis Kucinich. Liberal academics have not the slightest interest in the Constitution, since the document doesn’t address issues of tenure and preferment. They evince similar loathing for the jury, putting their faith in “good judges”. (Counterpunch)

Now, this appears in an article on Libya. But I'll ignore that, because it is better to isolate the problem by looking sideways. I also ignore that this is about Juan Cole, whom I have no wish to defend. Cole is a liberal. I don't think he would disagree with that. He claims to be able to chew gum and walk at the same time. Maybe he can. The real questions that he hasn't addressed are, walking to where, and which gum to chew. But that isn't the issue either. The issue is that this attack has no discernible meaning. Cockburn doesn't argue with anything that Cole said about Libya, or even with anything Cole said about the Pentagon. According to Cockburn, the problem with Cole is that he is a "liberal academic," and the mark of that beast is "disdain for...the constitution." A small problem is that, by all accounts, including how people describe themselves, Kucinich is also a liberal, even though he does apparently care about the constitution. I think it is fair to describe Glenn Greenwald as a liberal as well. And he seems quite obsessed with the constitution. But perhaps Cockburn calls attention in this passage to the deep distinction between, on the one hand, liberal lawyers and politicians, including those who might have an academic degree or two, and, on the other hand, "liberal academics," who alone disdain the constitution. If that is the case, that is certainly the sharpest class analysis ever to follow in the footsteps of Marx's Eighteenth Brumaire...

If Cockburn has a problem with Juan Cole's argument, he should tell us what it is. If he merely want to call him names, that's also fine. Name calling may not be deep, but it is a hallowed political tradition. But at least he should show respect for his readers and get his ducks in a row before shooting.

Now. Let's move our "humanitarian intervention" deeper into Fox News territory. When Cockburn attacks "liberal academics" as "what passes for the left in America," he implies a distinction between a false liberal left, and a "true left", a radical left, of which he is supposedly a member. However, by focusing his anger on academic tenure, Cockburn already positions himself inside the distinctively American right-wing anti-intellectualism. There is, to be sure, a radical critique of academia and of intellectuals, but that isn't based on envying them their modest ability to withstand the pressure of employers thank to tenure. In fact, Cockburn's attack on Cole draws from the nutty constitutionalist repertoire of the Tea Party, which is divorced from any practice of radical struggle. It is the language that calls the income tax "unconstitutional," based on the same amnesia regarding the actual history of the constitution and its political life.

What Obama has done with regards to Libya has been done by every US President at least since Truman, and has never been found unconstitutional by any supreme court or by any legislative process. Bombing dark skinned people abroad is thus just as constitutional as the US legal system's proven preference for executing African-Americans (McCleskey v. Kemp, 1987). "Unconstitutional," on the other hand, is what has been struck down by the US Supreme Court, Affirmative Action, for example (Gratz v. Bollinger, 2003).

It might make sense (or not) to work against militarism together with libertarians, isolationists, and even Tea Party fruitcakes. That is a strategic question. But leftists don't oppose interventions because they are "unconstitutional." The US constitution is a retrograde document written by slave-owning landlords to guarantee forever their class privilege. Not only is the US constitution the product of a limited Bourgeois revolution, but for many reasons, not the least of which the settler colonial nature of that revolution, the US constitution is more reactionary than the many constitutions written by liberals in the eighteenth century all over Europe. Since it was written, the document served consistently to stop and delay progressive social change, to defend business from labor and white racism from the threat of equal rights. The longest constitutional battle was perhaps waged from 1918 to 1941. During that long period, the staunch defenders of the constitution, besieged in the Supreme Court building, stood in the breach against the combined assault of the progressive movement, Congress and the White House, saving the US one day at a time from the menace of legislation outlawing child labor. Contrary to what is the standard belief of most liberals, including apparently Cockburn, this was not the exception but rather the rule. As Robert Dahl has shown many years ago, the bulk of the cases when the supreme court declared an act of Congress "unconstitutional" on the basis of it undermining a fundamental right, it was

...to preserve the rights and liberties of a relatively privileged group at the expense of the rights and liberties of a submerged group: chiefly slaveholders at the expense of slaves, white people at the expense of colored people, and property holders at the expense of wage earners and other groups. These cases, unlike the relatively innocuous ones of the preceding set, all involved liberties of genuinely fundamental importance, where an opposite policy would have meant thoroughly basic shifts in the distribution of rights, liberties, and opportunities in the United States-where, moreover, the policies sustained by the Court's action have since been repudiated in every civilized nation of the Western world, including our own. (Robert A. Dahl, Decision Making in a Democracy)

One wishes that the biggest fault of the US Constitution were that it didn't mention academic tenure. If "what passes as left in America" means hanging on to that document that consistently protects capital from the greed of ordinary people, then indeed, why not just vote Obama and learn to love the bomb?

Ahava megillah no more

Not in London anyway.  Ahava is leaving its current address in Covent Garden because the neighbours are sick of the protests.  Here's the Jewish Chronicle:

The UK branch of Israeli cosmetics store, Ahava, is moving from its central London shop after years of pro-Palestinian demonstrations. 

Protesters claim that the products sold in the store are manufactured in a factory in Israeli settlement, Mitzpe Shalom in the West Bank but are "misleadingly" labelled as produced in Israel.

The owner of the shop, currently in Monmouth Street, Covent Garden, is looking for other sites after owners of neighbouring stores complained to the landlord following protests.

Supporters claim it has been "chased out" of its location by regular "noisy and intimidating" demonstrations.

A spokeswoman for Shaftesbury PLC, which owns the property as well as several others in the Seven Dials area, said: "When Ahava's lease expires in September, we will not offer them a new one."

Pro-Palestinian protesters have been demonstrating fortnightly outside the shop, which opened in April 2007, for more than two years. A counter group of pro-Israeli supporters also demonstrate outside.

Police were drafted in to control the protests and set up a meeting last October between the protesters and other shop managers.

Last week, four demonstrators stood trial for aggravated trespass after they chained themselves to a concrete block inside the store last year.

Colin George, manager of clothes shop The Loft, next door to Ahava, said: "I'm pleased Ahava is leaving. It's brought the street down. I've complained to the landlords, as has everyone here. Everyone would like them to leave. I wish they had left two years ago.

This is highly significant. Notice the local shopkeepers aren't complaining about the demonstrators? And there's another significant thing.  See this:

Richard Millett, who attends the counter-demonstrations, said: "Maybe the neighbours could have had a more positive role and spoken to the protesters, rather than take it out on Ahava.

Whatever happened to Jonathan Hoffman?

Protecting countries from war crimes allegations

Daniel Machover in Comment is free on The Guardian website arguing against the idea of "protected countries" for the purpose of universal jurisdiction:

The rationale behind universal jurisdiction is that certain crimes – piracy, war crimes, genocide, torture, crimes against humanity and hostage taking – are so harmful to international interests that states are entitled, and in some cases even obliged, to bring proceedings, regardless of the location of the crime and the nationality of the perpetrator or the victim. In accordance with that principle, in December 2009 a British judge granted an arrest warrant against Tzipi Livni, who had been the foreign minister during Israel's assault on Gaza a year earlier. It was withdrawn when it emerged that she had not travelled here after all, but the Labour government, backed by the Conservative leadership, expressed outrage that the warrant had been issued.

The coalition government claims that it is in favour of applying universal jurisdiction here. But it has brought forward proposals to change the law on arrest warrants requested by private individuals in international cases that will, in practice, deny access to criminal justice to victims from those countries allied to Britain who are prepared to withdraw intelligence co-operation or use other political or economic pressure to achieve immunity for suspects.

If the law is changed, suspects from a list of "protected countries" that includes Israel, America, China, Saudi Arabia and potentially others, such as Bahrain, will visit our shores with impunity, making us a safe haven for some war criminals and torturers. This outcome would be a sick parody of true universal jurisdiction.

Echoes of the "white list".

Land Day Gift from Argentina: BDS reaches Buenos Aires

Boicot a maim PRODUCTOS DEL MAR MUERTO-Buenos Aires from julieta on Vimeo.

Israel must own up to calorie counting in Gaza

From the Gisha website:

·         The Defense Ministry must reveal the "red lines document" in which the state apparently established the minimum caloric intake required for the survival of residents of the Gaza Strip.

·         The court also demanded that the Defense Ministry reveal the names and positions of the officials enforcing the closure of Gaza, which were blacked out in the documents previously provided to Gisha.

·         In a two-year-long legal proceeding, Gisha managed to reveal additional documents connected with the closure policy: the procedure for monitoring and assessing inventories in the Gaza Strip, the procedure for approving transfer of goods into the Gaza Strip and the list of humanitarian products whose transfer into the Gaza Strip is permitted.

Gisha is Israel's "Legal Center for Freedom of Movement.

Stop the JNF

This is from a press release from the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network:

National campaign launched against Cameron’s racist charity

A national campaign is being launched today against the Jewish National Fund (JNF), a UK registered charity whose patrons include high profile figures such as Prime Minister David Cameron.

The JNF was created in 1901 by the Fifth Zionist Congress in order to “build a country out of nothing”, according to JNF literature. However, Palestinian civil society organisations say that from its establishment “the JNF has been a chief partner in the Zionist colonial drive to dispossess indigenous Palestinians of their land, culminating in the Nakba of 1948 when Zionist militias and later Israel expelled a majority of the Palestinian population in order to establish a state with a Jewish majority”.

Campaigners claim that the role of the JNF remains unchanged until today and that the organisation, which has para-statal status in Israel, should not benefit from charity status in the UK.

Michael Kalmanovitz of the Stop the JNF Campaign says:

“the JNF controls land either directly or through the Israel Land Authority on which it has majority seats. That’s how it prevents Palestinians from living or working on this Palestinian land. According to the ideology of the JNF and the state of Israel, as a Jewish person, Zionists have given me more legal right to live on that land than the Palestinian people who were born there, although I have never lived there. For example, the Bedouin village of al Araqib in the Negev has been demolished by the JNF twenty one times since July 2010 in order to drive them out.”

“We refuse to stand by while the racist JNF is allowed to operate as a legitimate organisation in this country receiving tax relief and other associated benefits of being a charity. Can we continue to allow racism to be charitable in Britain? Although Nick Clegg and Ed Milliband are not patrons, unfortunately David Cameron has chosen to endorse the criminal activities of the JNF.”

Samuel Hayek, chair of JNF UK, has said that “For over 100 years we have had one mission: to settle and develop the Land of Israel. Today, thanks to the incredible support we receive and particularly our work in the Negev, JNF continues to pioneer this historic Zionist dream in the 21st century.”

The JNF is no stranger to protest. Over the years the Charities Commission has received complaints about the charitable status of the organisation. In December 2009 human rights protestors demonstrated outside the JNF ‘2020 Vision’ conference in Hendon. Their guest speaker, Israeli Minister Tzipi Livni, cancelled her appearance when Palestinian families affected by Operation Cast Lead successfully applied for a warrant for her arrest.

---

Notes for editors/bloggers:

1. The Stop the JNF Campaign launch, Land Day, 30 March 2011:

History of the campaign
The first meeting to build the Stop the JNF campaign was held in Geneva in May 2009, during the World Conference Against Racism/Durban Review and the shadow Israel Review Conference. Plans to build the campaign were started at this meeting with the Habitat International Coalition (HIC), the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network (IJAN), the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions National Committee (BNC), the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign (SPSC).

In May, 2010, these organizations co-sponsored an organizing meeting in Edinburgh, Scotland, for activists and lawyers who were already building campaigns against the JNF in their regions. The goal of the meeting was the development and international coordination of campaigns against the Jewish National Fund (JNF).

What is the campaign to stop the JNF?
Stop the JNF is an international campaign aimed at ending the role of the Jewish National Fund (Keren Kayemet LeIsrael) (JNF-KKL) in:

• the on-going displacement of indigenous Palestinians from their land
• the theft of their property
• the funding of historic and present day colonies, and
• the destruction of the natural environment.

The JNF (also known as Keren Kayemeth L'Yisrael or KKL) continues to serve as a global fundraiser for Israeli ethnic cleansing, occupation and apartheid. Despite its role in a State institution of Israel (the Israel Land Authority) and in institutionalized racism and apartheid, the JNF and its affiliate organizations enjoy charitable status in over 50 countries and many also enjoy consultative status with the United Nations.

The Stop the JNF Campaign also launched internationally today, on 30 March, Land Day, which is a day of commemoration for six Palestinian citizens of Israel killed by security forces in 1976 for protesting Israeli government land expropriation and confiscation.


Stop the JNF Campaign
www.stopthejnf.org
gb@stopthejnf.org.uk
Tel 07931200361 or 07816251377

2. Background Paper: The controversial land policies of the Jewish National Fund, by JNews: www.jnews.org.uk/commentary/background-paper-the-controversial-land-policies-of-the-jewish-national-fund

3. Apartheid Israel: The Jewish National Fund, by Professor Uri Davis: www.uridavis.info/jewish_national_fund_apartheid_israel.htm

4. A list of JNF patrons are available here: www.jnf.co.uk/about_executive.htm

5. A statement by the Palestinian civil society organisations, the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions National Committee (BNC), 26 March 2011, Occupied Palestine: www.stopthejnf.org/supportingstatements_bnc26Mar2011.html

6. JNF UK History: www.jnf.co.uk/about.html

7. El Araqib Destroyed for 21st time, JNF Changing Facts on Ground: www.alternativenews.org/english/index.php/topics/news/3384-el-araqib-destroyed-for-21st-time-jnf-changing-facts-on-ground

8. For Samuel Hayek’s quote see JNF UK Accounts, 31 December 2009: www.charity-commission.gov.uk/ScannedAccounts/Ends10%5C0000225910_ac_20091231_e_c.pdf

9. For a list of cases raised by the Charities Commission as a result of complaints see Appendix 5 in the JNF E-book Vol published in January 2010, ‘Introducing the Jewish National Fund’: http://www.stopthejnf.org/documents/JNFeBookVol1ed2x.pdf

10. Israel confirms U.K. arrest warrant against Livni, published by Haaretz: www.haaretz.com/news/israel-confirms-u-k-arrest-warrant-against-livni-1.2133

11. Jewish National Fund Conference resisted from inside and out, December 2009: www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2009/12/443416.html

12. Protests at JNF events:

• Goldie Hawn, 2009: www.haaretz.com/news/palestinians-protest-goldie-hawn-appearance-at-jnf-event-1.240993
• Colin Powell, 2006: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/4612560.stm
• Ruby Wax, 2004, and campaigns to challenge the JNF: www.badil.org/en/component/k2/item/1408-napier-macleod-kershnar-jnfcampaigns
• Bill Clinton, 2001: http://news.scotsman.com/news/Protest-over-Clinton-speech.2285143.jp& www.haaretz.com/news/anti-israel-protesters-jeer-clinton-in-glasgow-1.77005

13. History of the Palestinians in Israel, Adalah (The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel): www.adalah.org/eng/backgroundhistory.php

14. Palestinian call for a day of action, Land Day, 30 March 2011: http://bdsdayofaction.net/

Don't stop boycottin'

Peace in Palestine?

Here's a letter in today's Independent by my friend Diana Neslen:

It was with deep concern that I noted the headline of your report about the bomb in Jerusalem (24 March), stating it had shattered "seven years of peace". During this time, Israel has invaded Gaza, laying waste to the land and killing 1,400 people, including 300 children. 

Daily, there are incursions into Palestinian territory, to arrest and on occasion to kill Palestinians; there is an ongoing land and water grab by Israel, and Palestinians, including children, are arrested with impunity and incarcerated by the Israeli occupying forces, and are constant targets for attack by Israeli settlers.

All this while demolitions of Palestinian homes in Jerusalem continue apace and violence is meted out to non-violent demonstrators against the Wall. This does not sound like any form of peace that a neutral observer would recognise.

Diana Neslen

Jews for Justice for Palestinians, London W9

Struck dumb at Brum

The Jewish Chronicle is applauding the adoption of the so-called "working definition" of antisemitism by the students' union at Birmingham University.  Here's the JC under the misleading headline, Birmingham embraces EU:

All speakers invited to appear at the University of Birmingham will, in future, be required to adhere to the EU Monitoring Committee's working definition of antisemitism.

Birmingham Guild of Students passed a motion last week requiring all societies and speakers to work with the EUMC guidelines to ensure incidents on campus do not allow antisemitic language or behaviour.

The move follows a controversial lecture in February during which US army veteran Mike Prysner, speaking to the Friends of Palestine Society, compared Gaza to a concentration camp..

I think this is quite important because, in spite of being hosted by what used to be the European Monitoring Centre on Xenophobia and Racism, now the Fundamental Rights Agency's website, it has never been formally adopted by any part of the EU bureaucracy, commission or judiciary.  It's almost like the zionists that pulled it together don't want it subjected to forensic, judicial or parliamentary scrutiny.

Since we've covered this on JSF before, let's just have a quick look at what the dodgy definition consists of.  It starts innocuously enough with an abstract definition headed, "Working Definition" and states, :

Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.

Ok, but when the American Jewish Committee first pulled the thing together, it said that

Examples of the ways in which antisemitism manifests itself with regard to the State of Israel include: ·         Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of the State of Israel is a racist endeavor.   ·         Applying double standards by requiring of it a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation. ·         Using the symbols and images associated with classic antisemitism (e.g., claims of Jews killing Jesus or blood libel) to characterize Israel or Israelis. ·         Drawing comparisons between contemporary Israeli policy and that of the Nazis. ·         Holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the State of Israel.

That was a bit too obviously designed to stifle criticism of Israel so they threw in a couple of sops to free speech involving "context" and the word "could". So now rather than saying that "Examples of the ways in which antisemitism manifests itself with regard to the State of Israel include" it now says, 

Examples of the ways in which antisemitism manifests itself with regard to the State of Israel taking into account the overall context could  include

And then it sets out those various things by which "antisemitism" "could" manifest itself, subject to "context". I've had some chats about this on line, and the Israel advocates are very quick to accuse a person of dishonesty if they fail to mention the "context" and the "could".

The problem now is that this has been adopted by a students' union because someone likened Gaza to a concentration camp at a public meeting on campus. So what happens now? Will people who want to give talks about Israel on campus be asked what they are going to say so that can be told they are not allowed to say a certain thing? Will they be vetted for what they have said in the past so that they can be banned forevermore? Will they have to sign a document promising not to say anything that sounds like it might be accusing Israel or bearing comparison to the nazis or of practicing apartheid, or of being generally not nice to the Palestinians but without criticising other states that do nasty things too?  Was it even discussed before being adopted? I couldn't find the new policy or discussion of it on the University of Birmingham Guild of Students website though I'm not the best of web searchers. If someone finds anything please let me know.

The fact that the working definition exists on line at all under the auspices of the EU is a disgrace. It clearly essentialises Jews as zionists and seeks to implicate Jews generally in Israel's crimes at the same time as correctly pointing out that it is antisemitic to hold Jews responsible for the State of Israel. So it is antisemitic in itself though the clearest intention is the stifling, indeed preventing of meaningful criticism of Israel.

It is all the more problematic that it doesn't inform the laws of any EU state as yet because that has enabled it to evade scrutiny and simply get adopted where activism outweighs forensics, like students' bodies.

And this Birmingham Uni Students' Guild decision is disgraceful, particularly as I understand it was proposed by the Guild's anti-racism officer. But now it has been adopted by an organisation with the ability to approve or ban speakers, we might be able to see how the working definition, er, works. But I must say, that more needs to be done against it than the setting up of a facebook page.