Final UN Gaza Report

jlew24asu wrote:

Hamas broke the cease fire in 08. and its nice to see you justifying the use of civilians as human shields. you call them martyrs right?

AMY GOODMAN: Israel’s response to the Goldstone report. Your response, Norman Finkelstein?


NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: Well, Richard Goldstone is a very respected jurist, and he also has a long record of being very supportive of Israel. If I’m not mistaken, he sits on the Hebrew University of Jerusalem board of directors.


Now, when the UN Human Rights Council asked Goldstone to chair the mission, originally his mandate was just to investigate Israeli crimes. He himself said he couldn’t fulfill that mandate, unless it was modified and included crimes on all sides. The Human Rights Council said, “Fine. We’ll modify the mandate, and we’ll accept your terms.” At that point, Richard Goldstone accepted to head the mission.


So you have to ask yourself the question: if what the gentleman said were true, why did Goldstone accept? If it were so biased, he always had the option of saying no. Why would a well-known supporter of Israel have accepted that mandate if it were biased against Israel?


AMY GOODMAN: What do you think, Norman Finkelstein, are the limitations of the report?


NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: The main limitation of the report is it’s all cast in the language of violations of the laws of war. And the fundamental fact about what happened in Gaza is it wasn’t a war. There was no war in Gaza. That’s the main misunderstanding about what happened there. In fact, one of Israel’s leading strategic analysts, he said—after what happened in Gaza, he said the one mistake Israelis are making is that there was a war there. He said there was no war. There were no battles in Gaza.


The picture is fairly clear. Israel flew about 3,000 sorties over Gaza. Every plane came back. None was damaged. None was downed. There was no fighting in Gaza. If you read the reports that were issued by the—the testimonies of the Israeli soldiers, the one consistent theme in all of the testimonies was they never met any Hamas militants, they never engaged in any battles. Some of the Israeli soldiers expressed exasperation: “We came here to fight. We’re not fighting anyone.” There was no—there were no battles. There were no Hamas militants in the field. The basic fact was, as a couple of Israeli soldiers said—one of them said, “This was like PlayStation, a computer game.” Another Israeli soldier said, literally—I’m quoting exactly, almost word for word—he said, “It was like a child with a magnifying glass burning ants.” That’s what Gaza was like.


One soldier after another, literally—I wish listeners would just bring up the report. It’s called “Breaking the Silence.” And then, under—enter under the search mechanism, just enter the word “insane.” One soldier after another after another after another said Israel used insane amounts of firepower. Insane amounts of firepower. There were no soldiers, no battles, but they’re using insane amounts of firepower. One soldier said—two soldiers, actually, talked about how the ground was trembling because of all the bombing and all of the missiles and all of the rockets. Another said that “We were told—even though we were firing in the distance, we were told to evacuate the houses we were in, because the shaking from the distance was going to cause the house to collapse over our heads.”


It was a massacre in Gaza. And you don’t really see that, because they’re measuring everything against what they call the laws of war. But you’re applying laws of war to a massacre. There was no war there.

Byrnzie wrote:

cincybearcat wrote:

Yes it was a simple question. But take it and run with it anyway you like. You're ASSuming.

It's about being honest. It was an attempt to blame the high number of civilian casualties on Hamas. Just as during and after Israel's attack on Lebanon in 2006 the same unfounded accusations were made against Hezbollah. It's a way of deflecting responsibility.