Condemning Goldstone

 
The sniveling, cowardly behavior of United States officials regarding Israel continues unabated under President Barack Obama and his Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton (who recently trumpeted the “courage” of Israel in agreeing to “restrict” its illegal settlements in the interest of peace; which is like congratulating a rapist for restricting his assault to mere intercourse). It also continues in the House of So-called Representatives, with the prospective passage of a resolution, drafted by Republican Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida, condemning the Goldstone Report for bias against Israel, and resolving to block “any further consideration” by the United States of its findings.
            For those who have been on Mars, the Goldstone Report is the UN-sponsored report headed by South African Justice Richard Goldstone, which recently investigated the alleged war crimes in Israel’s attack last year on Gaza. Goldstone, himself a Jew and longtime Zionist supporter of Israel, insisted, before he agreed to head the report, that the UN resolution include investigations into rocket attacks by Hamas as well, attacks which Goldstone’s report also condemns as war crimes. But to read the House Resolution, one would never know this—for it goes on and on about how the report is biased, the UN is biased, the Human Rights Council is biased, the whole world is biased against Israel. Nor would one know that Goldstone actually responded to each of the Resolution’s charges in detail—showing how each is either factually incorrect or misleading. Consider this response, for example (the House Resolution condemning his report is in italics, and Goldstone’s response is in standard type):
Whereas clause #8: “Whereas the report repeatedly made sweeping and unsubstantiated determinations that the Israeli military had deliberately attacked civilians during Operation Cast Lead;”
This whereas clause is factually incorrect. The findings included in the report are neither "sweeping” nor “unsubstantiated” and in effect reflect 188 individual interviews, review of more than 300 reports, 30 videos and 1200 photographs. Additionally, the body of the report contains a plethora of references to the information upon which the Commission relied for our findings. (from Goldstone letter to U.S. Representatives Howard Berman and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Oct. 29, 2009, cited on website of U.S. Representative Brian Baird.)
But the jurist’s responses are not expected to affect the outcome. Reports suggest that the House Resolution will pass easily—especially given the fact that the House of Representatives is controlled from top to bottom by AIPAC and other pro-Israel organizations, the combined weight of which terrifies and targets House members who dare to question the United States’ undying support for any crime Israel chooses to commit.
            This resolution, though, is taking things to absurd lengths. For what does it say about a nation, the United States of America, and a legislature, the House of Representatives, which, while continually bragging about its commitment to human rights, condemns a UN report commissioned to investigate war crimes, and which indeed finds evidence of war crimes? For that is what the Goldstone Report’s findings amounted to: that Israel, in attacking Gaza and its civic infrastructure including schools, hospitals, and individual homes with the most devastating modern weapons available, committed numerous violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law required of all militaries. And though the report also condemns the firing of rockets by Hamas, the weight of its findings—as indeed the weight of the damage, 1387 Gazans killed, 13 Israeli soldiers killed; no damage to speak of in Israel; Gaza left in ruins—is a condemnation of Israel and its brutal invasion last year (during, it should be noted, the interregnum period when Bush was leaving office and Obama had not yet been inaugurated.)
            The only bit of positive news in all this is that at least one House member, Brian Baird of Washington state, has condemned the House Resolution in no uncertain terms. In a piece appearing on Common Dreams on Nov. 3, and on his website (baird.house.gov), Baird’s essay, “Israel and Gaza Deserve Better than a Misguided Resolution,” asks some pertinent question about H. Res. 867, most significantly, “Have those who will vote on H. Res. 867 actually read the resolution? Have they read the Goldstone report?” Clearly, Baird believes that the answer to both questions is “no.” Nor, he writes, do most House members have any idea what took place in Gaza in late 2008 and early 2009: “Since scarcely a dozen House Members have actually been to Gaza, what actual first-hand knowledge do the rest of the Members of Congress possess on which to base their judgment of the merits of H.Res.867 or the Goldstone report?” And most important, “What will it say about this Congress and our country if we so readily seek to block ‘any further consideration’ of a human rights investigation produced by one of the most respected jurists in the world today…”
            What will it say indeed. Representative Baird considers the issue vital, both to the Middle East, and to the United States of America, whose reputation in the world has taken such a beating in recent years, and most directly, to the conscience of the Congress. Because unlike most of the toadies who will vote to protect their backsides and their pro-Israel funders, Baird himself has seen the devastation caused by Israel in Gaza, and says it seems to support what the Goldstone Report asserts. This makes it more than “just another imposed political litmus test,” Baird writes:
   “This is about whether we as individuals and this Congress as an institution find it acceptable to drop white phosphorous on civilian targets, to rocket civilian communities, to destroy hospitals and schools, to use civilians as human shields, to deliberately destroy non-military factories, industries and basic water, electrical and sanitation infrastructure. This is about whether it is acceptable to restrict the movement, opportunities and hopes of more than a million people every single day….” 
Clearly, Baird thinks it unacceptable, especially given the fact that “our money and our weaponry play a leading role in those violations.” Would that more of his sniveling associates in the United States Congress, and, regrettably, in the White House itself, felt the same way. But at this writing, it appears that the United States is about to announce to the world that not only does it consider such behavior perfectly legitimate and even praiseworthy, but that those who would dare question it deserve public condemnation and burial.
 
Lawrence DiStasi

The “Inexperience” Code

 
You’ve all heard it endlessly by now, the Republican attack on Barack Obama which maintains that he has no experience in running a government or a business, and thus is too inexperienced to be President. Now aside from the inanity of this argument, especially when considering the opposite argument employed for Sarah Palin—CEO of Alaska, with a population (around 600,000) smaller than most cities, and Mayor of Wasilla, with a population (6,000) smaller than most colleges—there is a coded message here that is necessary for Americans to understand.
            “Inexperience,” when applied to Barack Obama, is code for “race.”
            Let me explain with an example. Prior to World War II, the United States Navy was desperately searching for boats to supplement its vastly under-equipped Navy. It began to inspect fishing boats, among them the large purse seiners used by hundreds of Sicilian fishermen along the west coast. The Navy would eventually requisition hundreds of such boats and outfit them as mine sweepers, but before it did, it considered whether it would, like England, induct not just the boats but their crews as well. A February 1939 memo from Admiral Hepburn, commandant of the 12th Naval District, summarizes the Navy’s findings, including its assessment of the Sicilian fishermen it might wish to induct. Here is part of what it said:
            “The majority of Italians are not good seamen, good fishermen, nor good navigators. They are not over-intelligent, do not know the Rules of the Road, and, in general, appear to have the characteristics of big, overgrown children….” (see my “Fish Story,” in Lawrence DiStasi, UNA STORIA SEGRETA [2001],  for more details.)
Based on such assessments, the Navy decided that it would requisition the boats alright, but not these “child-like” Sicilians, a group that was, at that very time, presiding over the most efficient and opulent sardine fishing industry the world has ever seen.
            This type of more subtle racism has been thoroughly analyzed by David A.J. Richards in his 1999 book, “Italian American: The Racializing of an Ethnic Group.” In that book, Richards argued that phrases like “big, overgrown children” really represent a judgment that a group is developmentally inferior, even genetically incomplete. This means that its members never quite reach the full mental and moral development that would make them truly adult, i.e. truly human. African Americans, Native Americans, and, in their turn, many immigrant groups like Italians and Latin Americans have been judged in exactly this way.
            Now we come back to the code for Obama. The term “inexperienced,” I would maintain, when applied to Obama, means not just that he has never been a CEO. It cuts deeper, cuts to a place that most Americans understand, if not consciously, then subliminally. And what it is meant to signify is that this man, Harvard-educated or not, U.S. Senator or not, lacks the full development that one finds most ideally in white people—Sarah Palin, for instance. No matter what he does, no matter how eloquently he can speak, therefore, he can never quite rise to the level of full humanity signified by whiteness. That’s because as a black man, by (America’s) definition, he is lacking in those adult qualities of mind and morality that America must have in its president.
            Of course, not John McCain nor Sarah Palin nor even the vicious conservative shock jocks could say this outright. That would be racism, and so toxic is this label that even Obama’s comment about not being the right “type” elicited a “reverse racism” accusation from the outraged McCain. No, the Republican slime machine is too canny for that. So it uses code. This year the code word is “inexperienced.” During the Reagan campaign, it was “welfare queens.” George H.W. Bush employed the now-infamous Willie Horton commercial, suggesting that his opponent, Michael Dukakis, would free black rapists. And our dear George, G.W., not only spread racial slurs in the Carolinas to sink McCain’s surging campaign for the nomination (McCain was said to have a black child), but then employed several techniques to disenfranchise mostly black urban voters in Florida, Ohio, and elsewhere in order to steal one, and probably two elections. These slimy tactics are still going on, the latest being the Republican ploy of requiring all voters to display photo IDs allegedly to “ensure against election fraud” (though hardly a single case of election fraud has ever been demonstrated in states with these requirements, like Indiana.) But in reality the tactic is meant to discourage as many inner-city black voters (who almost universally vote Democratic) as possible from attempting to vote. More generally, it is no secret that the Republican Party’s southern strategy—to incite the racial animosity and fear still prevalent in southern and Midwestern states—has been the key to its ability to win elections since Nixon first employed it in 1968.
            So count on it. You will hear the “inexperienced” slur against Obama repeatedly, daily, without letup. And to the increasingly fearful white populace of the heartland it will signify what it has always signified: in the United States of America, a black man simply does not have the mental, moral, or emotional heft to be fully human, much less to be the highest official in the land.
 
Lawrence DiStasi