Why does Congress
condemn the Goldstone Report?

BY DONNA SAGGIA

The Goldstone Report is central to the peace process, which is why Israel and the U.S. needed to condemn it. Until now, Israel has steered the discussion of peace in terms of its own security. Israel portrays itself as a victim, a small outpost of democracy in the midst of backward Arabs. This is the image that Israel’s leaders would like the world to have.

The longer Israel can remain in a state of war with Palestinians, the more land it can annex. Staying a “victim” justifies Israel’s “defensive” strategies.

The Goldstone report demolishes this image and exposes Israel as a terrorist state capable of committing war crimes. It describes how Israeli soldiers used Palestinian civilians as human shields, how Israelis targeted Palestinian civilians and the civilian infrastructure, and how Israel used chemical weapons on a civilian population. These are not the actions of a helpless, victimized nation.
Furthermore, the report would lead to real questions about the siege of Gaza and the right of Palestinians to resist the illegal occupation. Israel claimed it attacked Gaza to stop the rockets on Sderot, but in truth, those rockets were a response to the siege, targeted assassinations, the killing of civilians, and the 43-year-old occupation.

Aside from weaponry, Israel’s big advantage over the Palestinians is its PR abilities—it gets better press because it knows how to manipulate the press and because racist Americans want to believe that Israel is the good guy fighting all those “terrorist” Arabs. No doubt we can identify with the Israeli theft of Palestinian land, as our own ancestors stole Native American land and committed genocide against them. But the Goldstone report would hang Israel’s dirty laundry out for all the world to see, and it would force Israel to acknowledge its illegal and criminal actions. It would also expose the U.S. Congress as complicit in Israeli war crimes.