Tonight Brian Baird, the former congressman from Washington state, will be speaking in New York at the New School. I plan to go; you can sign up to go at that link. Baird wrote an important piece on Congress and the Goldstone Report in the book we just published on the report.
To get a flavor for Baird’s great service, read this account that he gave to Rabbis Brian Walt and Brant Rosen last fall, about his work on behalf of his late constituent, Rachel Corrie, in 2003, after Israeli security forces killed her in Gaza. And note the complete indifference of American officials to the rights of an American killed while engaging in nonviolent protest in a foreign country:
[L]et me go back, actually, to the days immediately after Rachel was killed. My experience at the time was that there were a number of people within our own administration and within the Israeli government who were sincerely and deeply moved and saddened by the loss. You can tell it when you talk to someone. There were also some people for whom it was lip service, almost, to express their sadness. Some of the people who visited my office – the feeling I had was, “Well, we’re here to express our condolences,” but you – I had a feeling in my gut that the attitude was, “And we know you understand these things happen. You’re not going to do anything about it.” And then when I said, “Well, as a matter of fact, I don’t really accept this explanation. I want to see the evidence. I want there to be a full investigation,” people were somewhat taken aback.
Now, the fact that they were taken aback was troubling. After all, my constituent had been killed by a US-made bulldozer purchased by US funds by one of our biggest allies. And I think that’s a problem. And I have a responsibility. But there was almost an attitude of, “Oh, well, of course we’ll do that.” But not – but it was clearly a surprise that I would ask for it.
The next day after I introduced the resolution calling for an investigation, Tom Lantos, then chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, introduced basically a counter resolution calling for the investigation of any US citizens’ deaths at the hands of any terrorist. I don’t fault that. In fact, those things already happen. But the timing of that, the day after I introduced the resolution on Rachel’s behalf, was very telling and problematic.
Then it became a long process of pulling teeth, almost literally, to get evidence. So we would get smidgens of evidence about the case. “Okay, here’s a two-minute segment of a video that we know to be 12 to 15 minutes long.” Whatever. I – those numbers are off the top of my head. I wouldn’t quote them. But the gist is we’d get small portions of video imagery when we knew there was more imagery present. We would get some testimony but not the rest. And on and on this went.
We were assured – and this is particularly galling of late. I was told by the Israeli government that the bulldozer driver was in a state of shock, grief, mourning, and loss, and was on psychiatric watch, and there were concerns about whether he would commit suicide, et cetera. Now, the testimony we’ve heard over the last couple months [from the civil suit brought by Corries’ parents against the Israeli government, on trial in Haifa] – it appears that he can hardly remember the event. There’s no evidence that he was moved by it at all. So one comes to believe that perhaps that was just a story made up to elicit empathy on the part of the Psychologist/Congressman, myself. But in fact, it doesn’t seem from the testimony, at least, I’ve read – I’ve not been in the courtroom, but – that that was the case….
The issue really was we were asking, if I remember correctly – and it’s been a long time- but if I remember, we were asking for FBI and others to investigate this. I mean, there was a killing of a US citizen by an ally with US-made goods. And we wanted a full and thorough investigation. And the attitude basically was, “Well, we’ll defer to our friend and ally, Israel. We’re sure they’ll do the right thing, and we’ll trust whatever they say.” Now, that’s not that everybody in State – certainly Wilkerson was not that way, to my memory. But there were higher-ups, it seemed, for whom that was the attitude, and that was sort of the official attitude. And sadly, that was the attitude of Chairman Lantos, to my judgment, and the – many of the members of the Foreign Affairs Committee in the House and Senate.
