They Died in Gaza

Lizzy Ratner said she was in "triage mode" finishing up an article, and could she answer my question in "two or three days?" The question was, what prompted her to co-edit THE GOLDSTONE REPORT: The Legacy of the Landmark Investigation of the Gaza Conflict? It was just published by Nation Books.

She hasn't got back to me yet. But she doesn't have to. She already answered the question in her article, "Two Years After Gaza." It's a stunner:

In January 2009, during a lull in the bombing of Israel's "Cast Lead" operation against Gaza, I spoke by telephone with an old family friend, Dr. Izzeldin Abuelaish, from his home on Gaza's Salah al-Din Street. In a voice etched with panic, he told me about his family's dwindling water supply, his children's terror, his dream of escaping. He asked if I could help find a way for him and his family to leave the Gaza Strip. I made some genuine efforts to solicit help from friends with more connections than I, people who might actually be able to do something, but it pains me to this day that I did not do more. The next time we spoke, it was about the death of his three daughters.

The article continues:

On January 16, 2009, three of Dr. Abuelaish's eight children--Bessan, 21, Mayar, 15, and Aya, 14--were killed when Israeli soldiers trained the nozzle of their tank on the Abuelaish house and fired. Twice. The blasts killed all three girls immediately, as well as their cousin Noor, and it wounded their sister, Shatha, another cousin and an uncle. Dr. Abuelaish himself was unharmed, but in a harrowing turn of events that is now well and painfully known, he phoned Israeli newscaster Shlomi Eldar and, in a frantic tangle of Hebrew and Arabic, begged for help on Israel's nightly news. "Oh God, oh my God, my daughters have been killed. They've killed my children," he cried. "Could somebody please come to us?" The phone call, which was broadcast live throughout Israel, sounds like a shriek out of hell. It is almost impossible to listen to.

In the wake of this tragedy, Dr. Abuelaish, a well-known peace activist, remained resolutely, even stubbornly, committed to reconciliation and understanding. He did not want revenge. He just wanted accountability. "They were my beloved girls, very beautiful, very kind. Why were they killed?" he asked in a phone conversation shortly after his daughters' deaths. "I don't ask for anything, just [for the Israeli military] to admit and say sorry."

"Take responsibility," he begged.

One of the beautiful things about Lizzy Ratner, apart from her terrific writing and reporting, is her own sense of responsibility. Despite what Alan Dershowitz claims, she and her co-editors -- Philip Weiss and Adam Horowitz -- have made a huge effort to contextualize the Goldstone Report in their edited version as, in the publisher's words, "a corrective to the relentless attacks" on the original.

The book includes essays by Archbishop Desmond Tutu; human rights activist Raji Sourani; legal expert Jules Lobel; Israeli philosopher Moshe Halbertal; historians Rashid Khalidi and Jerome Slater; congressman Brian Baird; policy analyst Henry Siegman; authors Ali Abunimah, Naomi Klein, and Letty Cottin Pogrebin; and journalists Noam Sheizaf and Leila El-Haddad.

The original U.N. mission, headed by Richard Goldstone, caused enormous controversy -- and still does -- because it emphasized atrocities by the Israeli military in a bombing campaign, which had the stated aim of ending rocket attacks into Israel by Hamas and other Palestinian factions, but which was described in the report as a "deliberately disproportionate attack designed to punish, humiliate, and terrorize a civilian population."

Although both sides -- the Palestinians, mainly Hamas fighters, and the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) -- violated international humanitarian law, it was the Israelis who were culpable of massively greater crimes, according to the report. The IDF deliberately targeted unarmed civilians; purposely destroyed critical infrastructure in Gaza, razing large areas to the ground; and used weapons, such as incendiary white phosphorous in highly populated areas, that were beyond reprehensible.

Amnesty International issued its own detailed report in 2009 (available for free download as a pdf). Here, according to that report, is an example of what happened when "three white phosphorous artillery shells crashed through the roof of Sabah Abu Halima's home":

"Everything caught fire. My husband and four of my children burned alive in front of my eyes; my baby girl, Shahed, my only girl, melted in my arms. How can a mother have to see her children burn alive? I couldn't save them, I couldn't help them. I was on fire. Now I am still burning all over, I am in pain day and night; I am suffering terribly." [Italics in the original.]

Postscript: Just discovered this -- Lizzy Ratner talks about the book in a video interview. (The video report, which also includes an interview with Palestinian journalist and author Laila El-Haddad, begins at 10:38 on the track).

PPS: Jan. 26 -- In re the leaked documents of the Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations, a new truth dawns on the Arab world.