I have been to the Gaza Strip twice
and southern Israel once since the 2008-09 war, where I had the opportunity
to listen to accounts from both people about what had happened to them
during that time. Israelis showed me thickly walled rooms that act as
bomb shelters and explained air raid siren systems in Sderot and Ashqelon.
As difficult as their situation was, nothing could have prepared me
for the level of destruction I found in Gaza.
Shame on the House of Representatives, and on the Democratic
leadership of the House, for pushing through a resolution once again
blindly taking the side of Israeli aggression.
I’m referring to the vote on Tuesday, by a lopsided 344-to-36 margin, to condemn the Goldstone report on Gaza.
Before
House Members vote on H.Res. 867, regarding the U.N. Goldstone report
on the Gaza conflict, there are a few questions worth asking.
Two loud wake-up calls came in from the Middle East over the weekend. The next voice you hear will
be from the U.S. House of Representatives, which
will vote this week (perhaps as soon as Tuesday) on H.R. 867, an AIPAC-sponsored
resolution denouncing the Goldstone Report. That's the UN fact-finding mission
accusing Israel as well as
Hamas of war crimes in Israel's attack on Gaza last December.
On Tuesday,
November 3, Congress is poised to vote on H.Res.867, which calls on the
“President and the Secretary of State to oppose unequivocally any
endorsement or further consideration of the `Report of the United
Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict' in multilateral
fora.’ ”
Ehud Olmert, Israel's prime minister during the Gaza war, would probably face arrest on war crimes
charges if he visited Britain, according to a UK lawyer who is working
to expand the application of "universal jurisdiction" for offences
involving serious human rights abuses committed anywhere in the world.
Israel is denying Palestinians access to even the basic minimum of clean, safe water, Amnesty International says.
In a report, the human rights group says Israeli water restrictions
discriminate against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.
![The war left about 1,400 Palestinians dead and prompted a UN-led investigation [File: EPA]](http://www.commondreams.org/files/imagecache/article_image_thumb/files/article_images/gaza_goldstone.jpg)
Richard
Goldstone, the jurist who authored a UN report accusing Israel of war
crimes and crimes against humanity during its war on Gaza, has
challenged the US to justify its claims that his findings are flawed
and biased. Goldstone told Al Jazeera on Thursday that he had
not heard from the administration of Barack Obama, the US
president, about the flaws Washington claims to have identified in the
report.
Richard Goldstone, former judge of South Africa's Constitutional Court, the first prosecutor at The Hague on behalf of the International Criminal Court for Former Yugoslavia, and anti-apartheid campaigner reports that he was most reluctant to take on the job of chairing the United Nations fact-finding mission charged with investigating allegations of war crimes committed by Israel and Hamas during the three week Gaza war of last winter.
JERUSALEM — Israeli soldiers battling Hamas militants last winter
in Gaza opened fire on at least seven groups of Palestinian civilians
who were carrying white flags, killing 11 people, according to a Human
Rights Watch report released Thursday.
During the three-week conflict, the U.S.-based human rights group says,
Israeli soldiers in separate parts of Gaza killed five women, four
children and two men as they used white flags to try to escape the
battle zone.
