By Jennifer Loewenstein - Madison, WI
Palestine Chronicle
"....The Goldstone Report, powerful in its condemnation of the conduct of the Israeli military’s behavior during Operation Cast Lead (OCL), never goes on to say how this operation could have been justified; or to explain how Israel was allowed to get away with such savagery in the first place. Indeed, Justice Richard Goldstone initially refused to take on the investigation into the winter assault at all. He agreed to do so only after the chairperson of the United Nations Committee that had originally sought his assistance agreed to let him write the mandate for the mission in his own words. Goldstone’s personally written mandate insisted that both Israel’s and Hamas’ actions would have to be investigated in order for the report to be fair –a prerequisite that could have been legitimate had it simultaneously emphasized the military and political disparities between Israel and Hamas. In the end, however, Goldstone’s report does the opposite: it equates Israel’s and Hamas’ actions; or those of the occupied with those of the occupier, and then goes on to blame Hamas for the outbreak of hostilities it by firing rockets over the Gaza border into Israel.....
If the informed public in our own country were not so deeply indoctrinated with the United States’ imperial ideology that what we and our allies do is just and good and what our ‘enemies’ and their supporters do is terrorist and bad, it might then more easily grasp the simple truth that all acts of aggression are illegal and are the source for the collective set of horrors that follow in their wake. Denouncing aggression as such before it begins could help prevent the suffering and violence that await far too many of us in the near future. We have to do more than identify and condemn individual war crimes after they are committed. We must stop the servants and the machinery of war before they embark on their destructive paths. Overcoming the entrenched propaganda is difficult but not impossible, especially when families, students, educators, workers, activists and other concerned citizens work together to awaken, organize and mobilize public opinion in the United States and across the world."
Palestine Chronicle
"....The Goldstone Report, powerful in its condemnation of the conduct of the Israeli military’s behavior during Operation Cast Lead (OCL), never goes on to say how this operation could have been justified; or to explain how Israel was allowed to get away with such savagery in the first place. Indeed, Justice Richard Goldstone initially refused to take on the investigation into the winter assault at all. He agreed to do so only after the chairperson of the United Nations Committee that had originally sought his assistance agreed to let him write the mandate for the mission in his own words. Goldstone’s personally written mandate insisted that both Israel’s and Hamas’ actions would have to be investigated in order for the report to be fair –a prerequisite that could have been legitimate had it simultaneously emphasized the military and political disparities between Israel and Hamas. In the end, however, Goldstone’s report does the opposite: it equates Israel’s and Hamas’ actions; or those of the occupied with those of the occupier, and then goes on to blame Hamas for the outbreak of hostilities it by firing rockets over the Gaza border into Israel.....
If the informed public in our own country were not so deeply indoctrinated with the United States’ imperial ideology that what we and our allies do is just and good and what our ‘enemies’ and their supporters do is terrorist and bad, it might then more easily grasp the simple truth that all acts of aggression are illegal and are the source for the collective set of horrors that follow in their wake. Denouncing aggression as such before it begins could help prevent the suffering and violence that await far too many of us in the near future. We have to do more than identify and condemn individual war crimes after they are committed. We must stop the servants and the machinery of war before they embark on their destructive paths. Overcoming the entrenched propaganda is difficult but not impossible, especially when families, students, educators, workers, activists and other concerned citizens work together to awaken, organize and mobilize public opinion in the United States and across the world."
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