by Bill Moyers
The Israelis would maintain that many of those militants in Gaza were embedded in homes, hospitals, schools, and the like.
Well, we couldn’t cover the field. There were really hundreds of incidents. We chose thirty-six. And it could have been thirty-six hundred.
Why those thirty-six?
Because they seemed to represent the most serious—the highest death toll and the highest injury toll. And they appear to represent situations where there was little or no military justification for what happened. We didn’t want to investigate situations where we would be called upon to secondguess decisions made by Israel Defense Force leaders or soldiers in what’s called the “fog of battle.” It’s really unfair to do that, especially without hearing the other side. So we tried to concentrate on issues that seem to be less likely to be justifiable by applying those standards.
Did you find evidence that Israel tried to avoid targeting civilians?
In some cases, yes. We gave Israel full credit for some of the leaflets that were dropped in Rafah which were specific. They announced, “During such-and-such a period, we’re going to be bombing between X street and Y street, and A street and B street. Get out for your own safety.” And that saved a lot of innocent lives.
But many hundreds of thousands of other leaflets were really unhelpful. They were dropped in many parts of Gaza warning, “We are going to be bombing. Get out of your homes.” Didn’t say when. Didn’t say where. And also didn’t say where people should go. It’s such an overcrowded civilian area—one and a half million people, in a tiny area, with closed borders. There was little action families could take to react to that sort of warning.
I didn’t know until I read your report that the Israelis had actually made a hundred thousand calls to telephones in Gaza and said, in effect, “Get out.” They were giving the occupants a chance to move.
Well, first, move to where? And second, in consequence of the overwhelming majority of those warnings, there was no attack. So they were causing confusion and terror rather than saving lives.
But confusion and terror are part of war, right?
No, there shouldn’t be confusion and terror applied to a civilian population. If you’re going to give warnings, they should be specific.
But when the terrorists, the militants, whatever one wants to call them, are known to be embedded in those tight, concentrated areas, what’s the other army to do?
It’s to launch commando actions to get at the militants and not the innocent civilians. And there’s an element of punishment here: if one looks at the attacks on the infrastructure, on the food infrastructure, one sees a pattern of attacking all of the people of Gaza, not simply the militants.
Why did they bomb the infrastructure so thoroughly?
We’ve found that the only logical reason is collective punishment against the people of Gaza for voting into power Hamas, and a form of reprisal for the rocket attacks and mortar attacks on southern Israel.
If they were interested only in stopping the rockets, did they have to destroy the land?
No, this was a political decision, I think, and not a military one. I think they were telling the people of Gaza that if you support Hamas, this is what we’re going to do to you.
Give me some more examples of what you see as a pattern in the destruction of the infrastructure.
I’d start with the bulldozing of agricultural fields, apparently pretty randomly. It wasn’t as though these farms were owned by Hamas militants. I haven’t seen that allegation made. Then there’s the bombing of some two hundred industrial factories—the only flour-producing factory, the water supply facilities of Gaza, the sanitation facilities, which caused an overflow of filth and muck into neighboring farmland.
Do you know if these were targeted, or were they the consequence of spontaneous actions aimed at militants?
Clearly, there can be no question of militants running two hundred factories. We know from our investigation that the owner of the flour factory, in fact, had one of the rare documents issued by Israelis allowing the owner to go into Israel and deal with Israeli counterparts. He received a warning to evacuate, he evacuated his staff, nothing happened. They went back. He then made inquiries through a friend in Israel, who contacted the Israel Defense Forces, and was told, “Don’t worry. They’re not going to bomb your factory.” They went back. A few days later, he gets another telephone call through the switchboard—not to him directly: “Evacuate.” He again makes inquiries. “Don’t worry. We’re not going to bomb.” So they go back. Nothing happens. Then there’s a third warning to evacuate. They evacuate—and this time the Israelis bomb the factory. Now, the Israelis know who they’re dealing with; they’d given him that document allowing him to go into Israel. This is the sort of conduct that indicates to us an intent to punish civilians in Gaza for what their leaders were complicit in doing.
It’s difficult for us in the United States to understand this intimacy of self-destruction: a Gaza factory owner calls a friend in Israel, who calls the military, and then he calls back to the factory.
It’s the sort of evidence that has some credibility to it. It’s not the sort of evidence that this man is going to concoct.
As you conducted your investigation, what were your standards of evidence?
We spoke to well over a hundred witnesses. We obviously didn’t take at face value everything we were told.
One criticism of your effort is that those witnesses were supplied by Hamas militants.
That’s not correct. We made our own inquiries and we decided who we would see. We weren’t given a list by Hamas or anybody else. We chose incidents—thirty-six out of hundreds. We chose the people we wanted to see, and there was no Hamas presence anywhere we talked to these people. There were malicious statements to the effect that militants were around, but I can give you every assurance that it didn’t happen. And I can assure you that if it did happen, I wouldn’t have been prepared to continue to operate under those situations. I would have insisted that they leave. And if I couldn’t achieve that, I would have abandoned the investigation.
Was there a moment when you thought, “Why am I doing this?”
Oh, there’ve been frequent moments. I was, quite frankly, nervous going into Gaza. I had nightmares about being kidnapped. It was very difficult, especially for a Jew, to go into an area controlled by Hamas. So I went in with a certain amount of fear and trepidation. But I was struck by the warmth of the people we met and dealt with in Gaza. My fears were put aside.
Why do you do these things?
Well, I think one accepts these duties and obligations, not knowing where they’re going to lead. And then one has to do one’s duty.
Yes, but why do you have to do your duty?
I think it’s one’s experience. I got involved in the antiapartheid movement in South Africa because of my anger and frustration at the unfairness of racial oppression. I was privileged to be able to get involved and make a difference. And then, solely because of pressure from Nelson Mandela, I found myself getting involved in the war crimes tribunal in the former Yugoslavia. I didn’t want to do it. But he twisted my arm—he’s a very good arm-twister—and I found myself in Bosnia. Then the UN Security Council asked me to do Rwanda. The Swedish prime minister asked me to do Kosovo. Kofi Annan asked me to do the oil-for-food investigations at the UN. These were all difficult, difficult inquiries. I must confess that I got a tremendous amount of satisfaction from doing work that put me into a position of working with absolutely outstanding people. Really, one thing leads to the other.
But on this most recent occasion you have been accused by some right-wing Jews in Israel of betraying your people. This is different, isn’t it?
It’s different, but it’s symptomatic of the same disease, which is a form of racism. Why should my being Jewish stop me from investigating Israel? I just don’t see it. I think a friend should be open to criticism from friends. I think it’s more important. I think true friends criticize their
friends when they do wrong things.
Israelis claim that if you hold them to the standard that you have just described, any democracy that’s fighting terrorism is likely to find itself dragged into an international court of justice. Do you consider that a valid concern?
No. Absolutely not. Take the United States fighting wars in Kosovo and Iraq and Afghanistan. They have certainly at a high level gone to extremes to protect innocent civilians. Where they’ve made mistakes, and mistakes have been made—in Kosovo, in Iraq, in Afghanistan—apologies have followed. The United States, in general, has accepted and tried its best, with the assistance of military lawyers, to avoid violating international humanitarian law. So it seems to me this is a smokescreen. I’ve no doubt that the laws of war are sufficient to cover the situation of fighting what is now termed “asymmetric war.” It’s not easy; I concede that. But there’s a line over which you just don’t transgress without clearly violating the law.
Israelis point out they live in a sea of animosity and, if they took your findings to heart, they would not be able to root out the terrorists that surround them.
I just don’t accept that, Bill. I don’t accept that the destruction of the food infrastructure is necessary to fight terrorism from Gaza.
Here’s what Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said at the United Nations: “A democracy legitimately defending itself against terror is morally hanged, drawn and quartered, and given an unfair trial to boot. By these twisted standards, the UN Human Rights Council would have dragged Roosevelt and Churchill to the dock as war criminals. What a perversion of truth. What a perversion of justice.... The same UN that cheered Israel as we left Gaza, the same UN that promised to back our right of self-defense now accuses us, my people, my country, of being war criminals. And for what? For acting responsibly in self-defense? For acting in a way that any country would act with a restraint unmatched by many. What a travesty. Ladies and gentlemen, Israel justly defended itself against terror. This biased and unjust report provides a clear-cut test for all governments. Will you stand with Israel? Or will you stand with the terrorists?” What were you thinking as you just listened to that?
I was thinking that it’s a complete misunderstanding, and a lack of appreciation of what humanitarian law is all about. Again, it’s no answer to say that there’s a right of self-defense. As I said to you, I accept the right of Israel, absolutely, to defend itself. But let me give you an example. Assuming the United States, in fighting the Taliban, started bombing the whole food infrastructure of the people in the area where the Taliban thrives—plowing up fields, bombing food factories, and so on. I don’t believe that this would be accepted as legitimate by the people of the United States.
Do we need to change the rules of war in fighting terrorism?
Not at all, and you know, it struck me when I heard Prime Minister Netanyahu suggest that the law of war needs to be changed—it seemed to me to contain an implicit acceptance that they broke the law as it now is, and that’s why it needs to be changed.
From the outset, Israel refused to cooperate with you. Israel would not even let you in the country to conduct investigations. How could you expect to do a good job with only one side of the story?
Naively, I must confess, I believed Israel would cooperate. I thought that I had obtained an even-handed mandate, really for the first time, from the Human Rights Council. I really expected the Israeli government to seize this opportunity of using an even-handed mission to its advantage. And I pleaded with the Israeli government—in one letter directly to Prime Minister Netanyahu, I said, “Please meet with me. Tell me how you want us to implement the mandate. Give us advice as to how we should go about it.” I assumed they’d do that.
Did you hear from him?
The final refusal came some two and a half months later, after we were busy, involved, committed. It seemed to me too late to withdraw at that stage.
Your report recommends that both Israel and Hamas conduct their own investigations, and that if there are war crimes alleged and proven, that those perpetrators—Israelis or Hamas—be taken to the International Criminal Court.
No. They should be punished in their own countries. Only if there are no investigations should the International Criminal Court become the court of last resort. If nations investigate their own war crimes in good faith, then the International Court has no jurisdiction. If Israel and Hamas conduct good-faith investigations, that’s the end of criminal investigations at the international level.
So what is Israel afraid of?
Well, I can only assume they’re afraid of an even-handed, good-faith investigation proving that serious war crimes were committed. That, they don’t want.
Do you think Hamas will likely do an investigation itself?
There would be tremendous pressure on them to do that, if Israel did.
You said recently that to understand international justice, you have to understand the politics of international justice. What do you mean?
Well, without the political will we wouldn’t have had an international war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. That was a huge departure. If you think about what’s happened between 1993 and 2009, there’s been a rapid development of this idea. Nobody anticipated a permanent International Criminal Court now with more than a hundred nations actively involved, including every member of the European Union. Japan. One wouldn’t have expected that.
But none of that would have happened without political will, and particularly the political will of the United States. It was the Clinton administration, and particularly Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who drove that whole policy. Without Madeleine Albright there wouldn’t have been a Yugoslavia tribunal, there wouldn’t have been a Rwanda tribunal, and Kofi Annan wouldn’t have been encouraged to call a diplomatic conference to set up an International Criminal Court. Without political will on the part of the United States, these things wouldn’t have happened.
Why does the world need an International Criminal Court?
It really is a question of principle. Until 1993, war criminals literally had impunity. They didn’t have to fear justice at home, because at home they were usually war heroes and not war criminals. And there wasn’t a single international court with jurisdiction over them. There were no individual nations that were prepared to use universal jurisdiction against war criminals. That’s changed. War criminals have trouble traveling around many countries of the world. One of the things worrying the Israeli government is that if they don’t have their own investigation, they’re going to face investigations in some of the European countries and some of the African countries, including my own country, South Africa. So there are a lot of political reasons to indicate that it’s in their interest to conduct their own domestic investigation.
Not everyone has been critical of your report. The Financial Times—a very respected British-based newspaper—ran an editorial saying that “Goldstone’s Gaza report is balanced. Israel is not alone in the dock; it simply looms larger.” It’s hard to understand why Israel is so vociferously opposed to what you call a necessary act of justice.
The only reason they’ve given has come from Defense Minister Ehud Barak, who says that an independent investigation would somehow downgrade the military’s own investigation of itself. Well, that would be a good thing. One thing that disturbs me about the internal military investigation is that seven months after the end of the war, there’s been only one successful prosecution against a soldier.2 He stole a credit card—and this has become fodder for cartoonists, considering the plethora of alleged war crimes. What also concerns me is that in only one case, as far as I’ve read, has the military even approached the victims in Gaza. Obviously, to have a full investigation, one needs to hear both sides.
The Israelis say that they hold their military accountable and that there’s no government better at investigating the actions of its own military.
In secrecy? I like to quote the late Supreme Court Justice Brand
eis, who said the best disinfectant is sunlight. Israel’s investigations happen in the dark. And even with the best good faith in the world on the part of the military investigators, the victims are not going to accept decisions that are taken in the dark.
But aren’t Israelis fearful of a United Nations that historically has been biased against the country?
Yes, but I would go out of my way to meet that head-on, and not to simply put one’s head in the sand and say, “Well, the United Nations is biased; I’m going to ignore it.” That’s not the way one succeeds in the modern world.
The Financial Times says it is your reputation and your methods that the Israeli government fears.
The only thing they can be afraid of is the truth. And I think this is why they’re attacking the messenger and not the message.
Why do you think a report like this is essential to the peace process in the Middle East?
It’s been my experience that in the aftermath of serious human rights violations, you cannot get enduring peace if you leave rancor among the victims. What victims need is acknowledgment. They need official acknowledgment that they have been wronged. Whether that’s done by Truth and Reconciliation Commissions, as we did in South Africa, or through domestic prosecutions or international prosecutions, official truth-telling is an essential building brick to lasting peace.
ROBERT BLY