Motee’ as-Selaway (left) and brother Ismail, outside al-Maqadmah mosque. Photo from PCHR
The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights is honoring the third anniversary of Cast Lead by talking to survivors. Two of them were at the al-Maqadmah mosque, which was struck by a missile during evening prayer three years ago yesterday, blowing off the door and killing 15 people. The attack was extensively chronicled by the UN Human Rights Commission’s delegation to Gaza, which was chaired by Richard Goldstone. That report described the attack as a likely war crime for the failure to distinguish between military and civilian targets.
On 3 January 2009, at around 17:20, during prayer time, an Israeli drone fired a missile at the western entrance of al-Maqadma mosque in Jabaliya refugee camp. In the attack, 15 worshipers were killed and hundreds were injured.
“In every prayer I remember what happened in the mosque that day. I remember where I saw dismembered arms, legs and other body parts lying on the floor. I can still see our relatives and friends scattered around the praying room”, says sheikh Motee’ as-Selawy (49) as he puts his head in his hands. He was standing on the sheikh’s podium delivering a speech to the worshipers as the missile hit the entrance. “I had a direct line of sight to the door of the mosque and I saw pieces of red shrapnel flying towards us through the doorway,” he recalls.
…Motee’ recalls, “Goldstone came to visit us in our house and went to the mosque with us to investigate. I asked him; ‘where do you go when you feel sad and tired?’ He said, ‘I go to a place for prayer.’ I asked him, ‘what if you were bombed there?’ Goldstone said; ‘I cannot imagine it. Such a crime should be punished.’ Now Goldstone has apologized for his report and we have not seen any results on the ground.”
The statement is consistent with Norman Finkelstein’s recollection of Goldstone’s remarks in Gaza in June 2009, at the time of the factfinding mission’s visit, and Goldstone’s statement to Bill Moyers in October 2009 that what he saw in Gaza would give him nightmares for the rest of his life. But Goldstone has since stepped back from the report.
i went there when i was in gaza and i will never forget what i saw. it was a huge big building crushed. like a movie scene. completely devastating. only it wasn’t in a movie. no special effects, it was real. war is so ugly.
Three years – and already forgotten by we in the west. God preserve our wretched souls.
In 1948, Haganah forces stormed the town of Lydd (Now known in Hebrew as Lod where the Ben-Gurion airport was built) and massacred more than 170 worshipers inside the Dahmash mosque.
After about 20,000 Palestinians were driven out of the city, Zionist forces ordered a group of Palestinians to put up a brick wall inside the mosque, thus sealing off an area of the mosque where the corpses were piled.
In addition, those Palestinians who were ordered at gun point to dig graves in order to bury other dead residents throughout the city were shot and buried in the graves which they themselves had dug.
Thanks for quoting the Goldstone Report on the incident as a “likely war crime” rather than definitively as a “war crime”.
I expect that if he were on a deliberating jury or council, that he would still consider that incident a war crime, but that is only barely a first step to defining the criminal, the specific crime, the jurisdictiton of deliberation, the remedy.
Someone dies. Is that a crime or not?
Someone died from a deliberate action of another. Is that the crime of murder in the first degree, secind degree, manslaughter, involuntary manslaughter, or not a crime by virtue of self-defense, defense of another, insanity, incapacity?
Who is the criminal?
If you subscribe to the idea that a state or a corporation is not a person, then an actual person is the one to address, and convict by virtue of a preponderance of evidence, with right of defense in court, and right of appeal.
Its not so simple as the name-call of “war crime”.
It mostly is a war crime. But, without a clear institutional path of deliberation and then remedy.
Work on that. Get legal. Get specific.
it’s not obfuscation because there is no intent. witty can’t help himself. it’s a psychotic blend of intellectual posturing, narcissism, and generalized misanthropy. oh, and i forgot, sadism. that’s in the mix as well.