Israel

Five months have passed since Justice Richard Goldstone et al. submitted their report on the UN fact-finding mission's investigation into the recent conflict in the Gaza Strip. Shortly after it was submitted, the Obama administration claimed that the report was "deeply flawed" and unduly critical of Israel, and the US ambassador to the UN voted against the Resolution in the United Nations General Assembly. Despite the serious nature of these allegations, the Obama administration has not offered any objective evidence or analysis to substantiate them.

First printed in MRZine.org on 13 November 2009

On 3 November 2009, the United States House of Representatives voted 344-36 in favor of House Resolution 867, making it Congress' official response to the 575-page Report submitted by Justice Richard J. Goldstone to the United Nations Human Rights Council at the conclusion of a “fact-finding” mission on the Gaza conflict. The Resolution does little more than recycle traditional rhetoric about an anti-Israel bias, Qassam rocket attacks, Hamas' use of human shields, and Israel's right of self-defense, all in an effort to ignore the reality of the Israeli Occupation of the Palestinian Territories and the devastating effects it has had on the region. By passing HR 867, Congress has opted to join the Israeli government in rejecting international efforts to defend the civilians in Palestine and to hold Israeli and Palestinian forces accountable to international law.

President Obama's 4 June 2009 speech in Cairo briefly turned the media's spotlight back to the conflict between the Israeli government and the Palestinian people. In keeping with the traditional role of the commercial press, the reports of CNN, The New York Times, the ever-reactionary FOX News, and others faithfully reiterated the "official" position of the two ruling parties and their array of "experts" (although FOX News did take the time to find a fanatical settler who would venture even farther right than the experts). The mainstream media's historically one-sided coverage of the issues that Obama raised in his speech has consistently failed to offer any critical analysis of the popular assumptions regarding the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian people. Consequently, most people in the United States who rely on the media for their information have an extremely distorted perception of what's actually happening in the Occupied Territories, and why Israel has been such a significant source of tension in the Middle East. This article attempts to eliminate some of this ignorance by filling in a few of the contextual lacunae left by the corporate media's irresponsible journalism.

This column first appeared in the 7 April 2009 print edition of the Purdue Exponent
The domestic press has largely ignored Amnesty International's call for an arms embargo on Israel, Hamas, and other militant groups, even after the human rights organization's recent report that Israeli forces had used US-supplied weapons, including illegal white phosphorus artillery, against civilians. While several mainstream and student papers, including the Exponent, carried heated debates about the justification for Israel's three-week assault on the Gaza Strip, that this attack was almost entirely subsidized by the US government was largely overlooked.

The United States government is frequently criticized for abusing its veto power in the United Nations Security Council to block resolutions that call on Israel to deescalate military violence. A Security Council resolution is vetoed when any one of the five permanent member states casts a negative vote. In addition to the United States, the five permanent member states are the United Kingdom, France, China, and the Russian Federation. The Security Council also has ten rotating member states, but only a vote of "nay" from a permanent member state can veto a resolution. In addition to vetoing a resolution, a member state can abstain from voting, which allows a state to express its disapproval of a resolution without issuing an outright veto. Professor Noam Chomsky has referred to an abstention by the United States as a "double veto," because it effectively eliminates any coverage of the resolution in the media and it erases it from the historical record.1 In its defense, the United States government does not hold the record for the most vetoes cast by a single member state. That dubious honor belongs to the USSR, which cast 118 vetoes in its lifetime. The US follows in second place with 76 vetoes (which means it is the nation with the highest number of vetoes that still exists in the Security Council). The nation in third place--the United Kingdom--cast only 31 vetoes.2 The record of resolutions vetoed by the US government is troubling as it demonstrates, in addition to a commitment to continued violence by the Israeli government, a pattern of violence openly opposed by the international community and excluded from the mainstream domestic press.

1. 1. Chomsky, N. 2003. Dominance and its Dilemmas. Boston Review http://www.chomsky.info/articles/200310--.htm
2. 2. I tallied these vetoes manually, so they may be off by a couple vetoes

As of Monday 29 December 2008, the death toll of Israeli military assaults in the Gaza region has passed 335 deaths since Israel began its bombing campaign on Saturday 27 December 2008. In this same time, rocket attacks by Hamas forces have caused two Israeli deaths. 1 As usual, spokespeople for the U.S. government have helped to escalate the violence by offering unconditional military support to the Israeli government. In an effort to help the government understand that the people of the U.S. do not condone U.S. backing for further violence in the region, I drafted and transmitted a brief letter to the President and to my two U.S. Senators and one Representative. While I expect my individual request to have little bearing on on this matter, it is my hope that many others are also doing something similar. Anyone who is looking for information to include in a letter of h(er|is) own is welcome to use what I have to offer below.

1. 1. Rory McArthy and Ewen MacAskill (29 Dec 2008) Israel says its army is fighting war to the bitter end against Hamas. guardian.co.uk. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/dec/29/gaza-israel-palestinians-middle-east