Rashid Khalidi on Palestine Papers & Turkel Commission
January 25th, 2011 § Leave a Comment
Rashid Khalidi provides a summary analysis of the Palestine Papers on Monday’s Democracy Now! and discusses Israel’s recent investigation by a Netanyahu-appointed Israeli commission into Israel’s deadly raid on the Turkish Gaza aid Flotilla. The Turkel Commission concluded that Israel’s actions were legal under international law and referred to the murder of the 9 activists on board as ‘regrettable.’
States Khalidi:
I don’t see why anybody should be surprised. It essentially hewed to exactly the lines of the Israeli propaganda offensive that was launched the very day that this ship was attacked, which argued that the blockade of essential supplies from Gaza, which is a violation of international humanitarian law, is legal, that everything that the Israeli forces that attacked this ship did, including killing nine Turkish, including one Turkish American, citizens was legal. Essentially, this thing was written, or could have been written, insofar as what we’ve seen so far of it, by the same people who are in charge of Israeli spin management. It’s taken them a number of months to produce it, but the Israeli government spokesmen could easily have written this. Almost every key argument in this commission report was put forward by the Israeli government spokesmen at the outset of this affair.
Richard Silverstein also notes that:
The inquiry delivered the result expected. Now Israel can say it did its duty and the rest of the world can laugh in disbelief. Just the way Israel wants things apparently. It would’ve been far too dangerous to have a genuinely independent panel. Israel doesn’t allow such things when it cannot control the outcome. It really doesn’t care what the world thinks about it. For domestic political consumption it needs to be able to tell Israelis it did its best to comply with the world’s wishes, and that it’s not responsible if the world thinks it wasn’t good enough. After all, that’s what the world always says about us now, doesn’t it (say Israel’s leaders)?
Khalidi is followed by a live in-studio performance by K’NAAN.
