Amira Hass - Tag Search

I don't know if any of this came through in my earlier post, but as I sat on Capitol Hill this afternoon and listened to debate over the anti-Goldstone Report resolution, I found myself getting angry.

Furious, actually. The congressmen defending the resolution made no attempt to be honest; they made no effort to have an intelligent debate about Goldstone's findings. They smeared the report as the "hopelessly biased" product of an anti-Israel inquisition. Rep. Howard Berman, D-Calif., went so far as to compare Goldstone to the justices who approved the internment of Japanese prisoners during World War II.

And then 344 members of the United States Congress (here's the roll call) voted to bury his findings.

A Goldstone double feature today - one section now, one section later tonight - since it's a dreary Columbus Day here in Washington.

We pick up on p. 280 with a chapter on Israel's alleged use of Palestinian human shields during Operation Cast Lead. The mission considers stories from four men. The first, Majdi Abd Rabbo, is a 39-year-old father of five, a Fatah member, and an intelligence officer in the Palestinian Authority. He lives east of the Jabaliyah camp, near the Israeli border.

Rabbo told the mission that Israeli forces entered his house around 9:30 a.m. on January 5, 2009. Soldiers told him to strip to his underwear (to make sure he wasn't armed), and repeated the procedure for his sons.

Amira Hass has an excellent column in Ha'aretz this morning about the new restrictions on travel between Israel and the West Bank that we mentioned on Sunday.

The column starts out with the story of Mohammed Sabawi, a Palestinian-Canadian businessman who was told in April that he should enter the country via the Allenby Bridge, not Ben Gurion Airport.