One of my goals today is to undermine the recent NYT piece, written by a reporter whose son is in the Israeli military, that characterizes Judge Goldstone as thoroughly-unreliable in his criticisms of the Israeli military, just now when Goldstone’s report is going to go to the UN secretary-general. As I pointed out earlier today, reporter Ethan Bronner quotes an Israeli general saying that Goldstone’s report is completely out of line with several other reports on the Gaza war– when in fact the Arab League report the general cites goes much further than Goldstone.
Another report that general cites as being somehow sane and reasonable as opposed to deluded Goldstone is the Human Rights Watch report. Norman Finkelstein writes, "Here’s an illuminating comparison, HRW explicitly states Israel’s use of white phosphorus was a ‘war crime,’ whereas Goldstone never explicitly states that Israel’s use of white phosphorus was a war crime."
Finkelstein passed along the following paragraph from his forthcoming book, "This Time We Went Too Far: Truth & Consequences of the Gaza Invasion," which comes out in a month or so from OR Books.
An HRW study homed in on Israel’s “unlawful” use of white phosphorus in Gaza. Although it is used primarily to obscure military operations on the ground—white phosphorus ignites and burns on contact with oxygen generating a dense white smoke—it can also be used as an incendiary weapon: when making contact with skin white phosphorus causes “horrific burns,” sometimes to the bone, as it reaches temperatures of 1,500 degrees Fahrenheit (816 degrees Celsius). HRW concluded that Israel “repeatedly exploded white phosphorus munitions in the air over populated areas, killing and injuring civilians, and damaging civilian structures, including a school, a market, a humanitarian aid warehouse and a hospital,” and that such use of white phosphorus “indicates the commission of war crimes.” It further found that insofar as Israel wanted an obscurant for its forces, it could have used smoke shells (manufactured by an Israeli company); that Israel’s persistent use of white phosphorus where no Israeli forces were present on the ground indicated it was being used as an incendiary weapon; that in its targeting of the UNRWA headquarters in Gaza City, which warehoused vast quantities of humanitarian food and medical supplies, the IDF “kept firing white phosphorus despite repeated warnings from U.N. personnel about the danger to civilians”; that Israel targeted the U.N.’s Beit Lahiya school despite the fact that “the U.N. had provided the IDF with the GPS coordinates of the school prior to military operations”; and that Al-Quds hospital, also a target, was “clearly marked and there does not appear to have been fighting in that immediate area.” It deserves special emphasis that the U.S. manufactured “all of the white phosphorus shells” recovered by HRW in Gaza.
HRW quotations are trom Human Rights Watch, Rain of Fire: Israel’s unlawful use of white phosphorus in Gaza (New York: March 2009), pp. 1-6, 39, 60. See also Al-Mezan, Bearing the Brunt, pp. 42-45.
Grandpa Al Lewis quoted one of Arno Mayer’s books in which it was stated that among the Germans there was the attitude of some that the next step of Hitler would finally make people aware and that they would then express their outrage. This did not happen as Hitler proceded step after step. I can’t believe that Norman Finkelstein thinks the same thing about the inevitability of such awareness of Israel’s ethnic cleansing and occupation. For example, who or what is holding back New York Times?
Just to add about White Phosphorus, not only can it cause skin burns, but even when doused with water or covered in sand, it can still reignite hours later and continue to burn whatever it has come in contact with.
Toward the end of the 22 day massacre in early 2009, Israeli forces dropped a significant amount of WP on a UN owned and operated warehouse where food was stored. By noon that day, everything had been consumed by the flames and thousands of pounds of flour and rice were gone.
The Israeli army often conducts exercises off the Israeli coast. When they conduct exercises at night, they use illumination flares, when fired the flares shoot up some 500 feet or more and stay in the air for a good 30-45 minutes. What I’m getting at is that the excuse of using WP as an obscurant or an illuminant is ludicrous. WP shells fall to the ground immediately after being fired. So, as an illumination device they are useless.
And just like Philip mentioned in the post above, smoke grenades/shells could have been used if the idea was to obscure visibility.
But, forget all that, let’s pretend for a moment that none of the above proves anything.
Knowing that WP falls like rain from the sky, with no accuracy whatsoever, are we to believe that the Israelis were using WP in areas where their own forces were located and that the WP was indeed being used to obscure visibility? Surely, those soldiers can’t be nimble enough to slink through the falling WP without fear of getting burned.
A BIT OF DARK “HUMOR” COURTESY OF NORMAN FINKELSTEIN –
Date: The year 2050
Setting: In the past 40 years Israel has nuked almost every country on the planet
Script: Invoking the memory of the Holocaust for the 100th consecutive year, Prime Minister Bibi Jr. warns world that Nauru poses existential threat to Israel — “If we don’t obliterate it now, the evil will spread.”
SOURCE – link to normanfinkelstein.com
THE ABOVE “HUMOR” FROM FINKELSTEIN IS IN REFERENCE TO –
“PM at Yad Vashem: Stop evil”, YNET, 01/25/10
(EXCERPTS) Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited Yad Vashem on the eve of International Holocaust Memorial Day Monday.
During his speech at the memorial, the prime minister addressed threats coming from Iran: “Today there are new Judaism haters with new reasons to destroy the Jewish people. This is a test for humanity, and we will see in the coming weeks how the international community will stop the evil before it spreads.”
Netanyahu, who participated in the opening ceremony of the “Architecture of Murder” exhibit at Yad Vashem which presents the Auschwitz blueprints, compared the Holocaust with Iran’s intentions, even though he did not explicitly mention Iran in his speech.
“The evil is spreading and hurting innocent people. Large things must be stopped while they are still small. There is still denial, and lies are still being spread in the world,” said the prime minister.
“There is an evil that can spread, and it is threatening the security of the Jews,” Netanyahu warned. “We know that it just starts with the Jews and then continues on to the rest of the world. There are new Judaism haters who have a new reason to destroy the Jewish state. This is our concern.”…
…The prime minister said on Sunday: “This is the essence of the Zionist legacy. I hope that the UN remembers what it was like when the Jews did not have a country and the right and responsibility of the international community to defend the existence of the Jewish state.”
SOURCE – link to ynetnews.com
P.S. It appears Israel has become a ‘dissociative state’. Netanyahu “saving” Judaism is akin to Bill O’reilly and Glenn Beck “saving” Christmas. – J.L.D.