Maine Owl

Both Maine U.S. House members, Mike Michaud and Chellie Pingree, vote yea on one-sided, pro-Israel H. Res. 34

On Friday January 9, the U.S. House of Representatives "agreed to suspend the rules" and passed the following measure:

H. Res. 34 to recognize Israel's right to defend itself against attacks from Gaza, to reaffirm the United States' strong support for Israel, and to support the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

The vote of 390 yeas to 5 nays with 22 voting ``present,'' Roll No. 10, included both Chellie Pingree and Mike Michaud in the yeas.

Read the full text of H. Res. 34 by going HERE and retrieving H95 for 2009.

The U.S. Senate then passed the Resolution on a voice vote.

Is it really so clear as it is to the U.S. Congress and our representatives that what Israel is doing fully is justified by proper notions of self-defense?

Not in my opinion. H. Res. 34 is loaded with misconceptions bound into nakedly pro-Israel talking points. I have included below a commentary about today's quite excellent Democracy Now! among other things. A version of this commentary is cross-posted at Turn Maine Blue.

Commentary
While rocket attacks certainly are terrifying and must stop, they are in no way justification for the massive-scale Israeli operation now increasing "inexorably" the death toll of Palestinians, according to a BRIEFING in the latest issue of The Economist. Israel has no right of self-defense when it crosses the line of collective punishment, described starkly in the Briefing,

Gaza?s main vegetable market was hit: five people were killed, 40 wounded. Two days later a school run by the United Nations in the Jabaliya camp was shelled, leaving at least 30 dead. Nearly all were children. Gazans have long felt they lived in an open prison; now they are trapped in a shooting gallery. [emphasis added]

Furthermore, it is false, as H. Res. 34 does, to

lay blame both for the breaking of the ??calm?? and for subsequent civilian casualties in Gaza precisely where blame belongs, that is, on Hamas;

Almost no one actually observing the situation thinks that impressive numbers of aid trucks given in pro-Israel statements are in any way ameliorating the humanitarian disaster Israel is causing.

In fact, when nobody was watching, from the time of the U.S. presidential election in November to the Israeli attack on December 27, the Gaza Strip was under a cruel blockade described in the London Review of Books HERE by Sara Roy (Harvard Center for Middle Eastern Studies),

On 5 November the Israeli government sealed all the ways into and out of Gaza. Food, medicine, fuel, parts for water and sanitation systems, fertiliser, plastic sheeting, phones, paper, glue, shoes and even teacups are no longer getting through in sufficient quantities or at all. According to Oxfam only 137 trucks of food were allowed into Gaza in November. This means that an average of 4.6 trucks per day entered the strip compared to an average of 123 in October this year and 564 in December 2005. The two main food providers in Gaza are the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) and the World Food Programme (WFP). UNRWA alone feeds approximately 750,000 people in Gaza, and requires 15 trucks of food daily to do so. Between 5 November and 30 November, only 23 trucks arrived, around 6 per cent of the total needed; during the week of 30 November it received 12 trucks, or 11 per cent of what was required. There were three days in November when UNRWA ran out of food, with the result that on each of these days 20,000 people were unable to receive their scheduled supply. According to John Ging, the director of UNRWA in Gaza, most of the people who get food aid are entirely dependent on it. On 18 December UNRWA suspended all food distribution for both emergency and regular programmes because of the blockade.

Apologists for Israel do not like to discuss any of this, preferring instead a fact set woven for public consumption and probably sourced from the same entities who wrote H. Res. 34. For example, Fmr. Clinton Special Counsel Lanny Davis on Democracy Now! today (see HERE) presented the "civilized nation" case for Israel versus the animal, reflexively terrorist Hamas. There is no such thing as "proportion" when you deal with those kinds of killers. In Davis's words, "To sit across the table from an organization that says, 'We will not recognize you. We want to destroy you, and we will use terrorism against your innocent children,' is impossible."

Maybe it looks to Hamas like Israel has exactly the same plan to destroy it, while destroying the whole population of Gaza at the same time. Yet the notion that Hamas has a right of self-defense against Israel is inconceivable. Hence the pro-Israel side shows no diplomatic ability to avoid trapping the entire population of Gaza "in a shooting gallery" and raising their death toll "inexorably."

But there must be another way, a way to peace that eludes the hard-line supporters of Israel and those in the U.S. Congress who shamelessly swallow their line. Israeli professor at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Neve Gordon, explained such a rational path to true diplomacy in his reply to Davis in the same Democracy Now! program,

Prof. Neve Gordon: We have to come out and say we are willing to talk with our enemies, even with people that say that they do not believe in the existence of Israel. The PLO?you mentioned Fatah?the PLO said that they do not believe in the existence of Israel for many years. And ultimately, we sat down and talked with them, and they are now considered our Palestinian partner. I believe that if there is a pragmatic side, a strong pragmatic wing in Hamas, that if we start negotiation with them, over the years these people will also agree to the existence of Israel and be willing to live side by side with us. If we do not talk with them, if we continue this cycle of violence, ultimately Israel will be destroyed, because ultimately, the technological edge that we have over our neighbors will not be meaningful. So we have to change our approach. We have to be pro?by changing our approach, we?re actually pro-Israeli. We say we want to see Israel a hundred years from now. And the only way we?ll see Israel exist a hundred years from now is if Israel makes peace with Syria, with Lebanon and with the Palestinian people.

I am extremely disappointed in both Mike Michaud and Chellie Pingree. Please let them know that they should take under consideration what Rep. Dennis Kucinich said today, also ON Democracy Now!, about the possibly illegal methods with which the U.S. is supplying arms to Israel, and the failure of H. Res. 34:

Rep. Dennis Kucinich: It didn?t truly address the humanitarian crisis. It didn?t address the nature of the blockade. And it did not talk about the broad issues of occupation. Nor did it set a path that could truly get us out of this crisis. So I?m continuing to talk to the leaders of the House about the urgency of America taking a more balanced approach in reaching out to all the parties to show that we understand the suffering that?s going on there, we understand the humanitarian disaster that?s been visited upon the people of Gaza.

A genuine peace process would recognize that the time is over for destruction and killing. The U.S. should be setting an example, not fanning the flames with one-sided H. Res. 34.