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US House Rejects Goldstone Report
Palestinian civilians flee during an Israeli strike on the Gaza strip town of Beit Lahia in January 2009. Arab delegates to the United Nations are floating a draft resolution that would require UN chief Ban Ki-moon to bring a damning report on the Gaza war before the Security Council. (AFP/File/Mohammed Abed) The
US House of Representatives has rejected as "irredeemably biased" the
findings of a UN-sponsored report which says Israel committed war
crimes during its military assault on the Gaza Strip.
The house on Tuesday voted 344 to 36 in favour of a non-binding resolution calling on Barack Obama, the US president, to maintain his opposition to the report, which was written by a panel led by Richard Goldstone, a South African judge.
The report accused Israel and the Palestinian Hamas group, which has de facto control of Gaza, of war crimes during the 22-day conflict in December and January.
But most of its criticism was directed towards Israel's conduct during the offensive, in which human rights organisations say about 1,400 Palestinians - many of them women and children - were killed.
Thirteen Israelis, including three civilians, were also killed over the course of the war, Israel has said.
Steny Hoyer, the Democrat House majority leader, said it was important to adopt an official resolution against the Goldstone report as it "paints a distorted picture".
It "epitomizes the practice of singling Israel out from all other nations for condemnation," he said on Tuesday.
UN assembly pressure
The US house vote came a day before the United Nations General Assembly is expected to debate its own resolution endorsing the findings of the Goldstone report.
Al Jazeera's Kristen Saloomey, reporting from the UN in New York, said that while the majority of the assembly's member nations were expected to vote in favour of the resolution, the US vote on Tuesday, although non-binding, was likely to dampen its impact."Remember - the key recommendation of Goldstone is to get a credible investigation into the alleged war crimes that the Goldstone commission found evidence of in Gaza, and the UN Security Council is the only body that can move forward and demand an investigation," she said.
"The general assembly just does not have that power. Of course, on the security council, the United States is a veto-wielding member and, as the congressional vote underscores, the US is not going to be interested in moving forward in the security council to call for an investigation by the International Criminal Court (ICC), or anyone else for that matter."
Riyad Mansour, the Palestinian representative to the UN, criticised the Security Council for so far failing to act "in triggering the mechanism that Goldstone wanted, the investigation, the monitoring and then reporting after six months before considering moving into the ICC".
"The General Assembly, in a responsible way in the draft we have submitted by the Arab group, which hopefully in the next two days will receive large support, has taken some of the responsibility from the security council ... and asked for the investigation to begin," he told Al Jazeera.
The United Nations Human Rights Council, which sponsored the Goldstone commission, has already voted to endorse the report.
Bias claims
Steven Rothman, a Democratic congressman from New Jersey, told Al Jazeera that the report was biased against Israel, even after the Goldstone commission's mandate was expanded so that it could investigate war crimes alleged to have been committed by Hamas.
"The report was not written to talk about 12,000 rockets intentionally sent by Hamas to slaughter Israeli men, women and children, versus the Israelis trying in many respects to minimise the damage to Palestinian civilians," he told Al Jazeera.
"So there have been completely different standards applied." But when asked if he had read the Goldstone report in full, Rothman said he had read only the report's executive summary."I did not read the 400 or 500 pages, but I read the executive summary designed for members of congress and other world leaders to read, and I found it terribly, terribly biased and one-sided," he said.
But Brian Baird, a Democrat congressman for Washington state, said that the resolution failed to "accurately characterise" the Goldstone report and made no attempt to reflect the situation on the ground in Gaza.
"My belief is that it is incumbent on all of us who care about justice and peace in the region to look equally, with an equally critical eye, and all sides of this argument," he told Al Jazeera.
"One of the important elements of working towards peace and justice is that if someone of the calibre of Justice Goldstone, with the deligence and thoroughness of his investigation, ... reports on the kind of events that occured that merits further consideration.
"The resolution before us in the House would block that."
Goldstone clarifications
The result of Tuesday's vote had been widely anticipated.
In January, as Israel bombarded the Palestinian territory, the House had overwhelmingly backed a resolution "recognising Israel's right to defend itself against attacks from Israel".
The influential American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) had lobbied strongly for the latest resolution and said it "strongly applauded" the House's action on Tuesday.
Goldstone last week sent a letter to the US House of Representatives saying that the text of the US resolution had "factual inaccuracies and instances where information and statements are taken grossly out of context".
He offered several rejections and clarifications of the ideas expressed in the resolution.
In response to Goldstone's criticism, three parts of the resolution were amended on Tuesday to clarify that Goldstone had sought an expansion to the commission's mandate so that his team could investigate claims that Hamas had violated international law during the Gaza war.
The Goldstone report, which accused Israel of using "disproportionate force" and of deliberately targeting civilians, called for independent investigations to be held into Israel's and Hamas's conduct during the war.
The report called for the cases to be referred to the ICC in The Hague if Israel and Hamas do not investigate the war crimes allegations against them within six months.
Hamas has agreed to hold such an investigation, but Israel has not.
- Posted in
60 Comments so far
Show AllDepressing. The Goldstone Report, by a universally respected and recognized Jewish human jurist and rights activist, bent over backwards to make a point of criticizing Palestinians well beyond reasonable proportionality. The Goldstone Report is fair and consistent with what I have learned about the Gaza 'war,' which war really less a 'war' than a MASSACRE, similar in many ways to the WW II Warsaw Ghetto massacre. It is important that these truths be widely known both in the interest of truth and justice and to lessen the likelihood of some Palestinian eventually getting a really big bomb.
Palestinians killed 5 Israeli soldiers (another 4 were killed by friendly fire) and 4 civilians. Israel killed over 1,400 Palestinians, including 300 children, and wounded 5,000. In that tiny area, 1,440 buildings were destroyed, along with 21,000 homes, 700 businesses, 16 hospitals, 38 health care centers, 280 schools, 250 wells (in a desert area), 300,000 trees, and 169 students and 12 teachers, in schools. (Amnesty Int'l)
I find the US House of Representatives "irredeemably biased".
It's a wonder they can sleep at night.
Why shouldn't the US reject the report?
It's not like Israel is a huge buyer for US military hardware or anything.
US politicians aren't beholden to a wealthy minority who supply ready cash for their election war-chests, right?
And it's not as if Israel has a stockpile of unacknowledged nuclear weapons in violation of international treaty.
Meanwhile back in the land of reality, the US and Israel collaborate on ways to ignite yet another war in the MIddle East, this time with Iran. And Israel continues to spy on the US, stealing those few military secrets that the US does not readily share.
Israel has fully transformed into that which tried to exterminate the Jewish people during WWII. They are a racist, xenophobic, militarized Fascist dictatorship, backed up by the world's dominant military power. The few Arabic or Palestinian Israelis are held in utter contempt by the majority Jewish Israelis, treated as near animals. Second class citizenship would be a vast improvement for many of them.
The actions of the Israeli government is nothing less than genocidal. It is long past time they are held accountable for their criminal actions, with politicians past and present held accountable in a court of international law. International sanctions and a trade blockade are the least Israel should suffer. Confirmed disarmament and destruction of it's long rumored nuclear capability is also a must. Reparations and the return of Israel to it's per-1967 borders is absolutely non-negotiable.
"Israel has fully transformed into that which tried to exterminate the Jewish people during WWII. They are a racist, xenophobic, militarized Fascist dictatorship, backed up by the world's dominant military power."
The irony is truly mind-blowing: Israel becomes Nazi Germany. How can such psycho-social forces so utterly swamp reason and humanity?
Encouragingly, many more liberal Jews now see this with painful clarity, and are taking great risks to attempt to save Israel from its self-destructive path. One of these is the J Street Lobby working with increasing success to counter the deadly monopoly of AIPAC. We should applaud and support them, and resist the temptation to paint all Germans as Nazis.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/oct/23/j-street-america-israel-lobby
Bravo!
Meanwhile, back in Gaza...
Really, don't you think that it's a tad too late for the thousands of innocent Palestinians who have been massacred by these neo Nazis? And how much longer do you think they can afford to wait for J Street to work its magic from the comfort of Washington, DC?
War crimes charges have already been filed in several countries, including in Europe, against Israeli government officials and military commanders.
Should any of them enter those countries, they will be arrested and tried. The UK happens to be one such country.
Arrest warrants for Israeli war criminals have also been issued in Belgium, Spain, Sweden, Norway, South Africa and Ireland.
It seems the US government is yet again on the wrong side of justice and humanity.
Former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet was charged with crimes against humanity. He went to England for cancer treatment, was arrested, tried and released, partly on 'humanitarian' grounds because he was suffering from cancer, but mostly because the threatened to go public with how much English and US corporations had contributed to the suffering the Chilean people had endured during his reign of terror.
George W. Bush has been charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity, yet still jets across the globe, making speeches (bragging) about his criminal actions and being paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for doing so. He has not been arrested, even in Canada which is a signatory to the treaty to arrest and assist in the prosecution of said crimes.
So we have to be honest with ourselves that these Israeli butchers will get away with their crimes.
"...yet still jets across the globe..."
has he been? i thought he got no further than canada so far... and they burned him in effigy...
Only the social activists and protesters in the streets, who came damn close to having Quebec's notorious Gendarmes break some heads.
The attendees at his speeches in Canada were the upper elite of the Conservative and Liberal parties, as well as most of the Canadian Council of Chief Executives (3CE), who represent the 400 top Corporations in Canada. Ticket price to attend was reported to be $2500 per person.
As to his further travels, I would hazard a guess he is welcome in the UK, Saudi Arabia, and Dubai.
And turned out by the hundreds to pay thousands of dollars to hear his idiotic babble. Hardly a punishment, I'd say, particularly for someone who has even less of a heart than he has a brain.
Interesting that the two progressives the television media has been selling us hard all year, Anthony Weiner and Alan Grayson voted "Yea".
I guess it's easy to be progressive when the television lights are shining and you have majority public support. It's a little more difficult to be progressive when there's no media coverage and the public is against a position.
Dennis Kucinich, of course, voted "Nay".
Here's the list of votes:
http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2009/roll838.xml
Throw the bums out!
Yeah, that's a buzz-kill, all right.
In 2006, I would've contributed to pols like Grayson despite my inveterate cynicism. I didn't subscribe to the "more and better" Democrats approach, but I had my moments of despair and weakness.
As I once heard somewhere: never again!
Knee-jerk Zionism is a dealbreaker.
· Yr Obd't Servant
I fail to see how either Hamas or the Palestinian Authority would bother talking to the US in regards to peace talks with Israel. It has been patently obvious for years that the US is not an impartial player in these talks. The US government cannot be trusted by any other country in the world. And yet the majority of the people of the US fail to see why the US is loathed by the rest of the world. It couldn't possibly be anything that the US has done - could it?
I agree with SMITTY.
Depressing.
Both the Republicans and Democrats are bought out and differences on most major issues are cosmetic but are played up by the MSM to be more than they are so the public actually thinks the two parties offer choice. This vote on the Goldstone Report shows the parties are so tainted by influence that they've lost morality.
Recently Canada tried and sentenced a person for war crimes Committed in Rwanda under new legislation that allows Canada to try such people in domestic courts rather then seek to extradite them.
At the same time they allow War Criminals from the USA and Israel entry.
Its amazing how everyone still gives Hamas and the Palestinians a pass after reading this report. It was a fair and unbiased report condemning the Israeli for many of the things they did including Willie Petes use....then we have Hamas using human shields, ambulances and Mosques to shield themselves............
While the House is certainly showing bias, to place blame on the Israeli at this point shows the same type of bias. The blame is more than shared with the majority going to the Israeli.
The allegations you make show beyond a doubt that you have not read the Goldstone report.
"Hamas using human shields, ambulances and Mosques to shield themselves", is old and tired Israeli propaganda.
By the way, that game you play where you pretend to be after the truth and balance and then inject a lie in there hoping no one would notice, well, that game is pathetic and transparently ludicrous.
But, thanks for playing. Better luck next time.
Really.
And while I don't want to "wind up" here on henry, it just CAN'T be a coincidence that on every comments board I check out regularly, there are certain commenters who follow the pattern you describe.
Henry's penchant for historical nyms is unusual; mostly these commenters have good ol' boy first-name nyms like Joe Don Nugget or "Old Joe"-- lots of "Joes" and "Toms". They always begin by presenting themselves as well-meaning, sincerely intellectually curious people who allow that they don't have a lot of education or experience in political analyses... but they Want to Learn.
But inevitably, this "aw shucks, jes' stoppin' in for a chaw 'n a talk" innocence is sooner or later punctuated by "tells" revealing both intellectual dishonesty and a reactionary, if not necessarily full-blown wingnut troll, perspective.
Anyway, it's impossible to know for sure what motivates any commenter. But I've picked up on the dynamic you correctly describe, and in many cases can spot a potential troll at their first wide-eyed, glad-handing appearance.
· Yr Obd't Servant
YOS:
This may help:
That commenter on your blog may actually be working for the Israeli government
http://www.muzzlewatch.com/2009/07/14/that-angry-commenter-on-your-blog-may-actually-be-working-for-the-israeli-government/
--------------------------
Hasbara spam alert
With Israel's foreign ministry organising volunteers to flood news websites with pro-Israeli comments, Propaganda 2.0 is here
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jan/09/israel-foreign-ministry-media
I agree. The last time things got hot for Moore, he switched to henry8. I suspected him of being Steel Gray also.
Yes that tell tale phraseology like "gosh darn" of the folksy John Wayne imitation gets old real quick. I guess addressing us as "pilgrim" would be too obvious.
At any rate, I track where this dude DOESN'T post. It yeilds an amazing amount of information. human interest is not his thing, to put it mildly. He has a nose for political discussions and will not ever admit the republicans are in bed with the democrats. He won't touch pentagon war funding with a ten foot pole but he'll wail about our deficit when health care money is discussed. He posts mostly in the morning except on weekends. He slips up now and then and makes extremely callous remarks and then tries to "qualify" his remarks. He uses mendacity as a weapon. I believe that he believes that lying on this forum is quite justified for the "good" of our country. The fact that people like him are, by following corporate orders, destroying our country never dawns on him. I'll go as far as to say that he thinks we are the enemy and would gladly shoot us if he were ordered to. He is serious and he is deadly. In mocking him I hope I'm not digging my own grave.
You do not know what you are talking about.
The report, if you would READ it, accurately places blame on both sides.
And just for the sake of arguing, even if the Israeli allegations were technically true, what would you rather them do? Defending ones people from a vastly better armed invader, in an extremely densely populated area, would require that one be in proximity the people one is defending, right? Also, when it comes to self-defense against a vastly more powerful inveder, I have no problem with engaging in "dirty tricks".
Are the Palestinian freedom fighters supposed to just stand in a open field and wait to be annihilated?
I at least respect you for your honesty.
"...then we have Hamas using human shields, ambulances and Mosques to shield themselves..."
Are you kidding? Have you even read the report? If nothing else this is the one thing that the report expressly states: that there was no evidence of such. And if nothing else, you should know that when Israhell accuses the Palestinians of doing something is simply because they are the ones doing it.
Get real!
It's amazing how your arguments can be consistently so one sided.
Why do you think we are the enemy?
Never mind. By the way I, was cruising virtually over your neck of the woods recently and I ran into a place called Gun Barrel. It would be interesting to know if there are any Americans living there. Yeah, I know it's in Texas. So?
"I did not read the 400 or 500 pages, but I read the executive summary designed for members of congress..."
"See Arab woman..See Arab woman run..See Arab woman catch on fire from White Phospourus...burn Arab woman, burn!!"
"The only means of strengthening one's intellect is to make up one's mind about nothing, to let the mind be a thoroughfare for all thoughts." - John Keats
In the final tally on HR 867;
179 democrats voted in favor of this piece of fraudulent deception. 165 republicans did likewise.
43 democrats voted "present" or did not vote. This means they were willing to let it pass.
So really, 222 democrats accept this endorsement of war crimes.
So, in the U.S. House of Representatives, 33 democrats and 3 republicans have the integrity to support accuracy and justice.
You can bet that there are very few who have read the "Goldstone Report".
Go to house.gov and follow through role call votes 111th congress HR867 major actions and see if your CON-gressperson is a dimwit arrogant murder supporter.
The really, really terrible thing about this is that the report which these whores denounced could, and I suspect, SHOULD be the basis of bringing an end to the chronic stalemate in the Israeli/Palestininian horror show. The "Goldstone report" is a remarkably accurate history and assessment of the conflict up to this point.
Those who supported HR 867 do not want an end of violence.
But the fake peace process continues..... The Palestinian leaders know that the peace process is dead as a dodo but they are misleading their constituents into believing that something good will come out of it. All the peace process does is to give them a few more years to remain in power as well as giving the Israelis time to move the Palestinians towards the Jordan River.
US House rejects report that earth is round not flat.
the best house of reps that money can buy.
Bend over, the Zionists have spoken
Let's not forget that congress was ready to reject the report without even reading it, as per AIPAC's orders, so it does not matter what the report says now. The resolution is nothing but a pro-Israel litmus test to weed out moderates for the 2010 elections.
...and as such, the litmus test shows huge progress from single digits to over 60 legislators showing less than total capitulation to AIPAC. It is not yet a tipping point but an important step, so we should all be grateful to a degree and know that the arc of history is going the right way.
Let's be honest about *why* the US has decided to ignore an internationally acclaimed examination of Israeli actions.
To acknowledge it is to accept the fact that the weapons the Israelis used in violation of international laws and treaties were supplied at a heavily subsidized discount by the US. That makes the USA, it's government, and every one of it's citizens complicit accomplices in the commission of these war crimes.
And Canada, my home, is just as guilty. Because we have refused to honor our treaty obligations to arrest and remand for trial at the International Criminal Court at The Hague these war criminals when the visit Canada. Mr. Harper routinely praises the criminal actions of the Israeli government.
No offense but if there's one thing Americans don't have is a conscience. This is much more deeper and complicated than feeling guilty - something they're incapble of anyway
On the positive side the list of "Nays" and "Presents" is MUCH bigger than in the past, so don't lose heart. Call to thank them if you can.
Here’s a list of the Nays
Baird
Baldwin
Blumenauer
Boustany
Capps
Carson (IN)
Clarke
Clay
Davis (KY)
Dingell
Doggett
Edwards (MD)
Ellison
Filner
Grijalva
Hinchey
Johnson, E. B.
Kilpatrick (MI)
Kucinich
Lee (CA)
Lynch
McCollum
McDermott
McGovern
Miller, George
Moran (VA)
Olver
Pastor (AZ)
Paul
Price (NC)
Rahall
Snyder
Stark
Waters
Watt
Woolsey
"Present:"
Becerra
Cooper
Dahlkemper
DeFazio
Delahunt
Duncan
Eshoo
Farr
Heinrich
Hirono
Honda
Johnson (GA)
Jones
Kaptur
Loebsack
Lofgren, Zoe
Luján
Obey
Speier
Tierney
Welch
Wu
Thank the dimwits who voted "present"?
The congresspersons who voted that way KNEW the resolution was going to pass, but were too weasel-like to do the decent thing and say NO!
8.27% of the house (33 democrat and 3 republican) stood up for accuracy and justice.
Agree. Those who voted present should not have any clearer a conscious than those that voted yes. They likely know that voting "no" was the correct action to take, but were protecting themselves politically because they didn't have the guts to stand up for what is right. Meanwhile, another day and another Palestinian family is evicted from their home because the US Congress and government are complict in supporting the Israeli ethnic cleansing.
Thanks for posting that list. I was wondering who the nay sayers were. I'll keep them in mind.
The following is a link to Judge Goldstone's letter to the US Congress before they voted against his report on Gaza.
As you read his letter, don't you get the feeling that Goldstone sounds as if he's responding to Rush Limbaugh?
Has US Congress members really steeped this low when it comes to their irrational support of Israel?
http://www.aaper.org/site/c.quIXL8MPJpE/b.5571053/k.A832/Justice_Goldstones_Letter_to_Congress.htm
What of the USA's well-known use of White Phospourous in Iraq against civilians?
I guess they can't condmen what they do themsleves.
"The only means of strengthening one's intellect is to make up one's mind about nothing, to let the mind be a thoroughfare for all thoughts." - John Keats
I wonder what the survivors of the Israeli attack on the USS Liberty think about this?
This is yet another reason why I did not vote yesterday after voting each and every time in my life. There is no difference between Democrats and Republicans. All members of Congress only do the will of special interests and those who feed their pockets with reelection campaign money. In all aspects the Goldstone report was a reasoned, factual account of what transpired. It questioned the tactics of both sides in the dispute. But, god forbid that anyone in Congress have the nerve to take on Israel. Can you imagine how the world looks upon our bias, our unwillingness to be a leader in peace, our utter refusal to act conscientiously, morally and ethically, even legally in international affairs?
Voting is giving them power. If we all stop showing up to the polls, they won't be able to claim victory. There's sending a peaceful but forceful message. They only need us serfs to make crap for them, buy it from them and pull those levers. I stopped voting a decade ago. I won't give them that power!
Disagree. I voted in yesterday's election because there were true progressives from the Green Party on the ballot. Yesterday in this town only 11% of the public showed up to vote. Does that mean we gave them less power? No, on the contrary, the progressive candidates I voted for got a larger percentage of the votes because there is a progressive community that votes even in off year elections. The fact that 11% of the public voted doesn't concern the politicians. If that percentage dropped to 5%, they wouldn't care either. The rich and powerful will always vote and the lower percentage of voters that show up, the more your weight your vote has. In addition, the Green Party has trouble getting on the ballot in many states because it can't meet either the signature requirement, or when it does, it doesn't get enough votes to avoid another signature drive. "Voting is giving them power" is a slogan as bad as "my vote doesn't count". Both are excuses to do nothing.
As I posted elsewhere today, the obvious goal of those who engage in assymetric warfare aime to take their opponents advantage(superior might) out of the equation. In this case, the game is to attack the status quo and effectively make resistance illegal. Clearly those with authority anywhere in the world would oppose that strategy.
Keep in mind, every successful revolution made illegal the very means they employed to revolt successfully.
...The AIPAC is a group of American Jews who are TRAITORS to our country and spies for Israel. AIPAC is a group of unregistered lobbyists, who bribe and intimidated most of the elected officals of the United States Government.
The rejection of the Goldstone Report by the U.S. House of Representatives makes the United States collaborator in these War Crimes against the civilian casualities in Gaza.
This proves that the U.S.A. is on the side of Israel...the War Criminal State,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
.
........On the other hand: Adolph Hitler said, "WHO REMEMBERS THE ARMMENIANS ???????????????????????"
.