Shame. The American Jewish Committee attacks the Goldstone report and for not one instant examines factual allegations: that white phosphorus was dropped indiscriminately in civilian areas, that the chief food production of the strip was willfully destroyed, and so on. The indifference of a Jewish organization to these actual factual statements is simply staggering blindness. And look at this attack on the Gaza Community Mental Health program, and Eyad El-Serraj. From Ed Rettig of AJC:
[Goldstone’s] panel often neglected the most basic examination of
the testimony it heard. Transcripts reveal the credulous atmosphere
in which the commission did its work. When a psychiatrist, Dr. Iyyad
el-Sarraji, suggested that "inside Israel there is an identification
with the aggressor, the Nazi," no one challenged the extraordinary
charge. that thThe credibility of the Goldstone Report, then, resembles that
of an Oliver Stone movie, a problem that its author either cannot see
or chooses not to address.
Well 95 percent of Israelis supported the slaughter. If you don’t think we have psychic work to do involving our projection of the Nazi experience, you should read Avraham Burg on this subject.
Also in this piece Rettig attacks Leonard Fein of the Forward for this piece without mentioning his name. Seems like a dis. (Inside Jewish baseball– sorry!) To his credit, Rettig also goes after the University of Buffalo Hillel’s decision to invite General Effie Eitam, an Israeli propagandist and racist.
we have the UB Hillel’s invitation to a decorated Israeli general, whose hard-line approach in the Knesset was epitomized in a 2006 declaration at the funeral of a fallen IDF officer: "We cannot be with all these Arabs, we’ll have to expel the overwhelming majority of West Bank Arabs from here and remove Israeli Arabs from the political system." The attorney-general of Israel informed him that this constituted incitement and that he would be prosecuted if he repeated it. He has not done so, and yet he has never recanted or apologized, nor gave any reason to suspect that these are not his genuinely held beliefs. Why this particular Hillel thought that someone who has advocated the transfer of Arabs out of the country was an appropriate speaker on Israel-related issues is a question I hope the board of that institution is pondering.
