August 2011, Pages 27-29

New York City and Tri-State News

Two NYC Panels Discuss the Goldstone Report and Goldstone's Op-Ed Retreat

By Jane Adas

The response of Israel and the U.S. to the September 2009 release of the Report of the United Nations Fact-Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict, aka the Goldstone Report, was a concerted effort to make it disappear. They had almost succeeded when the head of the mission, South African jurist Richard Goldstone, published an April Fool's day op-ed in the Washington Post expressing second thoughts about some of the Report's conclusions (see May/June 2011 Washington Report, p. 14). Israel declared itself vindicated, but its Operation Cast Lead assault on Gaza was again in the news.

Two panel discussions of the issue took place in New York. The Center for Palestine Studies at Columbia University hosted "Israel's War and the Goldstone Report" on May 2. Dr. Norman Finkelstein, author of This Time We Went Too Far: Truth and Consequences of the Gaza Invasion (available from the AET Book Club), began by reviewing what actually happened before and during Israel's assault, lest "the assassins of memory" get the last word. Israel flew thousands of combat missions without any damage to a single plane. Israeli soldiers testified that they saw no combatants, encountered no resistance, and that there were no battles. Israel killed some 1,400 Palestinians in Gaza, but suffered only 13 fatalities, four or five of them the result of friendly fire. "There was no war in Gaza," Finkelstein concluded, "it was a massacre."

Peter Weiss of the Center for Constitutional Rights wryly said he was considering a reverse class action suit against the entire mainstream media for labeling Goldstone's op-ed a "recantation." It is important to recognize, he continued, that Israel's intentionality is the only thing Goldstone recanted. Goldstone reconsidered the case of the AlSamouni family, rounded up in a single house that was then bombed, leaving 29 dead, to be due to a tactical error. He did not retract the other 35 incidents the report cites as possible war crimes, Weiss observed.

Prof. Rashid Khalidi accused the U.S. media and politicians of purposely distorting how Gaza is framed in order to obscure realities, such as the fact that most of the 1.675 million residents are not Gazans, but refugees who were driven there, and 44 percent are under 14. Despite the fact that the majority of the residents in Gaza are women and children, Khalidi accused the U.S. and Israel of demonizing the entire population as a terrorist entity. Nothing Hamas has done, he added, justifies what Israel has done to Gaza: blockade, siege, and numerous assaults. The Israeli and U.S. propaganda machines' claim that Arabs don't really care about Palestinians is true of the undemocratic rulers, Khalidi acknowledged, but the people assuredly do care. If the Arab uprisings result in more democratic governments, he concluded, Israel will no longer have Arab accomplices.

Mondoweiss and the Culture Project sponsored the second panel, "Blueprint for Accountability: Gaza, Goldstone and the Crisis of Impunity," on May 19. The evening began with Trudie Styler—actress, UNICEF ambassador, and, with her husband, Sting, environmental activist—reading the heartbreaking testimony of Khaled Abd Rabbo, whose two daughters were killed by Israeli soldiers, who then bulldozed the ambulance that came to rescue the family (Testimony 15 in The Goldstone Report: The Legacy of the Landmark Investigation of the Gaza Conflict, available from the AET Book Club).

Laura Flanders of Grit TV then posed questions to the panelists. Lizzy Ratner, co-editor with Philip Weiss and Adam Horowitz of the above-mentioned book, said the Report came about because Israel's disproportionate use of force with the Guernica-like images that al-Jazeera managed to transmit shocked the conscience of the world. Asked why the U.S. is so protective of Israel, Ratner responded with three reasons: Israel is our proxy in the region; the strong Israel lobby; and the direct parallel between what Israel and the U.S. do in fighting terrorists. "What is shock and awe," she asked, "if not the intentional use of disproportionate force?" And yet there has been no U.N. fact-finding mission of U.S. conduct in Iraq or Afghanistan.

Naomi Klein, author of The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, discussed Israel's effort to block the Goldstone Report. By not cooperating with the investigation, she suggested, Israel set up conditions whereby it could accuse the Report of bias."Israel does not believe it should be evaluated by any international body," she added. Asked about the Arab Spring, Klein replied that it is scary to see young people across the Arab world embracing democracy and human rights while those in Israel have increasing disdain for both.

Col. Desmond Travers was a member of the Goldstone Commission as a senior military officer. After Goldstone's op-ed, he and the Commission's two other members wrote a response defending the Report. They did so, he emphasized, not because of what Goldstone wrote, which he had every right to do, but because of Israel's spin of the op-ed. Travers has since re-read all 300 reports by various human rights organizations and found nothing that would cause him to reconsider. On the contrary, he would make a stronger statement today. Armies in retreat destroy, he explained, but what victorious Israel did on its way out is almost unique in the world. They bulldozed 140,000 olive trees, 136,000 citrus trees, 113 farms, 100,000 chickens, and all agricultural wells.

Georgetown University law professor Noura Erakat sees the Fatah/Hamas accord as a major accomplishment, one that signifies that Palestinians are moving beyond U.S. and Israeli dictates about how they should represent themselves. In response to Flanders' question about the way forward, Erakat responded that "now is a most hopeful moment" because the post-9/11 war on terror paradigm, whereby all forms of non-state resistance are equated with illegitimate terrorism, is giving way to the bottom-up tactics of the Arab Spring. "They are the model for what we should do," she concluded to huge applause.

In Memoriam: Juliano Mer Khamis

Friends and admirers of Juliano Mer Khamis filled the Church of St. Paul the Apostle in Manhattan on May 4 to mourn his death and celebrate his life. In 2006 Mer Khamis, the son of a Palestinian father and a Jewish Israeli mother, founded the Freedom Theatre in the Jenin Refugee Camp. It was there that he was assassinated by a masked gunman April 4.

Award-winning actress Kathleen Chalfont hosted the many tributes to Mer Khamis, including Maya Angelou by video and playwright Betty Shamieh in person. There were musical performances by Simon Shaheen on oud and violin and by Liz Magnes on piano, and original poetry by Eve Ensler, Nathalie Handal and Remi Kanazi. Playwright Tony Kushner recited "Blessed are they who sow and do not reap" by Israeli poet Avraham Ben Yitzhak, and attorney Abdeen Jabara read from Palestinian poet Taha Mohammed Ali's "Thrombosis in the Veins of Petroleum."

Kushner described Mer Khamis' documentary about his mother's work in Jenin during the first intifada, "Arna's Children" (available from the AET Book Club), as the "best film on theater" with its "magnificent refusal to moralize." Jabara recalled Mer Khamis telling him that his mother had not wanted a religious burial. When she died in 1994, the family could not find a kibbutz that would sell them land for her burial. After three days, when they announced they would bury her in the backyard, Kibbutz Ramot Menashe relented, and that is where Mer Khamis was also buried.

When actor and playwright Najla Said met Mer Khamis in 2006, she recalled, he encouraged her to write "Palestine," a one-person play, which she performed at a benefit for the Jenin Freedom Theatre as well as off-Broadway. Because Mer Khamis influenced her life so profoundly, Said asked the audience to "imagine the effect of his daily presence on the children of Jenin." Israeli playwright Udi Aloni spent the last year in Jenin making a film on the refugee camp and learning from his best friend "how to become a Palestinian Jew." He cautioned that "Juliano was not a saint, but a trickster," and offered as evidence an occasion when the two of them along with three Palestinians were stuck in a car at the Qalandia checkpoint. The situation looked hopeless and Aloni advised turning back. Instead, Mer Khamis roared up to the checkpoint, screeched to a stop and yelled, "Please help us. There are so many Arabs back there." The Israeli soldiers allowed them to pass.

Nabeel al-Ra'ee, director of the Jenin Freedom Theatre's drama school, gave his tribute by video. He described Mer Khamis as a very nice dictator who fought in a different way, "blowing up their minds with theater." Al-Ra'ee concluded by saying, "Don't worry—every one of us is holding a message: to fight for something we believe." To learn more about Mer Khamis's work in Jenin, e-mail <>.

Dr. Ahmet Dogan at AMP Benefit

American Muslims for Palestine (AMP) held a May 28 benefit in northern New Jersey to commemorate 63 years of ongoing Nakba. AMP chairman and Berkeley professor Dr. Hatem Bazian explained why such an organization is needed. After 9/11, he said, Muslims and Arabs in the U.S. were afraid to speak about Palestine for fear of being put on a watch list—to such an extent that at huge gatherings of Arab Americans there would be no mention of Palestine unless it was by "liberal Zionist" guest speakers. AMP was founded in 2006 to show that American Muslims care about Palestine, and that while this may be a minority viewpoint in the U.S., it is the majority position worldwide. AMP's strategy is to reach young people on college campuses. Evidence that they are succeeding in shifting the consensus, Bazian noted, is that, in a reversal of the usual flow, the Israeli government is sending money to the U.S. to combat what it perceives as the delegitimization of Israel and to silence discussion.

Dr. Ahmet Dogan spoke calmly and eloquently about his son Furkan, the American citizen whom Israeli commandos killed aboard the Mavi Marmara one year ago (see April 2011 Washington Report, p. 56). Although he speaks English, Dr. Dogan chose to speak in Turkish with an interpreter, "because the issue is emotional." Born in Troy, New York in 1991 while his father was earning an MBA, Furkan was concerned about Palestinians, especially those in Gaza because of Israel's blockade. As he was ending his senior year of high school, Furkan saw a billboard about the flotilla. He immediately applied on the Internet to join the flotilla, then asked his parents for permission. They gave it, but thought he would not be accepted because of his age. They were right—but Furkan persisted, and in the end was one of nine from his hometown of Kayseri to join the flotilla. He immediately began buying presents for children in Gaza with his own money. On May 27, 2010, Furkan boarded the Mavi Marmara. His family never saw him alive again.

The family followed the progress of the flotilla on the Internet. When the attack occurred on May 31 at 4:30 during morning prayer, Furkan's mother screamed. Still, they did not think Furkan would be hurt because of his youth. They contacted Turkish and U.S. authorities, but could get no information for three days. When they learned that all the passengers were being deported to Istanbul, they prepared clean clothes for Furkan and went to the airport. But their son did not get off any of the planes. Nor was he on the list of wounded and killed. They were then told there were three unidentified bodies, so they went to the morgue. That was where Dr. Dogan identified his son's body. The doctor in the morgue told him that the wounds revealed that Furkan was shot three times in the back, and then twice pointblank in the face. Eyewitnesses and the U.N. report also confirmed this. "My son was executed by the Israelis," Dr. Dogan stated. "This is a crime against humanity."

Dr. Dogan has come to the U.S. to seek accountability for his son's assassination. He has spent the last year pursuing all possible legal remedies, but now says it is clear that the U.S. will not investigate the murder of its own citizen. He believes this is because Furkan was a Turk and a Muslim, which shows U.S. hypocrisy on human rights. Yet, the family never says they wish they had not sent Furkan. "The issue of Palestine and of Gaza is our concern too," his father said. "As the family of Furkan and we, the Turks, will always stand by the Palestinians."

Noting that Furkan's older brother, Mustafa, will be on the second flotilla set to depart in late June, Dr. Dogan closed with, "Please do not forget to pray for us." 

Jane Adas is a free-lance writer based in the New York City metropolitan area.