Tuesday, November 17, 2009
At CAMERA: A Formal Letter to Justice Goldstone. This is another sober fact and logic based response. Here's a bit, but do check out the rest:
At the debate, you mentioned the damage to a flour mill in Gaza (the al Bader flour mill) as one of the incidents that convinced you that civilians were intentionally targeted. The Report is more specific, stating that the mill was attacked "for the purposes of denying sustenance to the civilian population" - which it charges may constitute "a war crime."
A) How can you reconcile this imputed motive with Israel's act of transferring 14,208 tons of flour into Gaza during the war - an average of 618 tons/day which is not only significantly more flour than the 220 metric tons the Al Bader mill could have produced in a day; but well over the 450 tons/day that the UN and the World Food Programme says Gaza needs?
Clearly if Israel's intention was to deny flour to Palestinian civilians, it would not have facilitated the import of almost triple the amount produced by the mill that was damaged.
B) And more broadly, how can you reconcile the imputed motive of purposefully denying sustenance to the civilian population with Israel's implementation of a daily humanitarian recess during the war in order to facilitate the transfer of humanitarian supplies?
C) Why did the mission fail to investigate or mention the fact that Hamas repeatedly seized shipments of humanitarian goods that were sent into Gaza from Israel and interfered with their distribution to the point where UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon issued a demand to Hamas to release the goods? Why did the Mission avoid charging Hamas with "denying sustenance to the cvilian population"?...