Dear Tammy Teeter,
I am emailing you to ask if you would please pass all this along to Mike Bigelow so that he'll be able to look it over (before he leaves) and discuss it with Rob McKenna.
Thanks, Bert Sacks
P.S. I've just left you and Mike Bigelow voice messages about this. If you're not able to pass this along, please get back. And if you can, please also please just let me know. Thanks again.
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Dear Attorney General McKenna:
I appreciate the chance to meet with you to discuss my concerns regarding Gaza.
However, for the meeting to be useful from my perspective, I am asking you to familiarize yourself with articles I have already sent -- and reply again to my request.
In particular, I ask you to read the concern President Obama expressed to the Israeli Prime Minister about Gaza during Mr. Netanyahu's recent visit. It is in the email (below) that I'd sent Mike Bigelow to pass on to you about a month ago.
I appreciate that your motivation to co-sign the letter to Secretary Clinton was a desire to support Israel. But, as President Obama pointed out, politically supporting Israeli policies doesn’t necessarily help Israel. I ask for your legal opinion of these policies.
If my first letter to you is not in your files, I am attaching an electronic copy and its two enclosures. I especially ask you to re-read that first letter to you, followed by the attached article by Richard Falk (Professor Emeritus of Int'l Law at Princeton).
In previous letters, I asked for your legal judgment whether the Israeli denials of (any amount of) food, medicine, fuel and water to civilians is legal under international law.
Mike Bigelow forwarded your response: "[Rob McKenna] doesn't know if they were illegal. Information provided to him by the Israeli people he talked with led him to think Israeli actions were legal."
You might think it unnecessary to form an opinion because you believe Hamas’ firing rockets is much worse than restricting food, medicine and fuel to civilians by Israel.
The deaths of the several Israeli civilians caused by rockets from Gaza is a human-rights violation and is not excusable. But denying food, medicine and fuel to civilians can cause an amount of suffering and death that is orders of magnitude greater.
If you doubt this, please re-read the relevant paragraphs of Professor Falk's article – and do your own research on UN and Red Cross reports of malnutrition, anemia, water-borne diseases and lack of medicines in Gaza.
If you are still in doubt about the potential impact of an economic blockade on civilians, then please read the results of The New England Journal of Medicine report for the case of the US/UN economic embargo on Iraq covering just the first 8 months of 1991: the NEJM found excess deaths of 46,900 Iraqi children!**
If you had not chosen to condemn Hamas, you would have no obligation to also pass a judgment on Israeli actions. But you chose otherwise. Therefore I am asking you: If you believe these actions by Israel are legal, please explain; and if not, please explain. (I believe you have an obligation to form some opinion.)
I hope this brief discussion will begin to make clear the seriousness of the issue. The denial of any amount of food, medicine, fuel and water is potentially a grave matter of life and death. And a lack of adequate nutrition also has a devastating impact on the mental and physical development of young children, those who are most vulnerable.
I am glad to put you in touch with a number of fine medical doctors – either from Washington Physicians for Social Responsibility (WPSR) who have visited Gaza or from the Jewish Israeli group Doctors for Human Rights – who can testify to you about this.
Therefore, I am asking you for a serious consideration of what I have written -- now that the seriousness of this potential violation of international law is, I hope, made clear.
Your previous answer -- that Israelis you spoke with led you to think what they did was legal -- could be compared to asking Hamas leaders whether their firing of rockets was legal. There are serious reasons to think the Israeli blockade was – and continues to be – equally indiscriminate and equally illegal.
Before our July 15th meeting, I am asking you to please respond with your legal judgment of the Israeli actions I discuss here -- in just the same way as you offered your legal judgment to Secretary Clinton about the actions of Hamas.
Thank you.
Sincerely,
Bert Sacks
* Ha'aretz is the only one of three major Israeli Hebrew-language newspapers that is re-printed online in English. It's a sad commentary on the U.S. mass media that it will hardly ever cover stories that address Palestinian concerns -- as Ha'aretz does. As an example, I include a new article from Ha'aretz, "Gaza Bonanza," which gives a real insiders' view of the policy. Equally, the article I’d sent by Gideon Levy is revealing.
** That New England Journal report – which has gone virtually unreported in the media of this country – is at http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/abstract/327/13/931
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On Thu, May 28, 2009 at 7:54 AM, Bert Sacks wrote:
Dear Ms. Teeter,
Thank you for passing on my voice message to Mike Bigelow. He called me yesterday and we spoke on the phone about my concerns and request for a reply.
Would you kindly pass this email on to him so that he'll have my email contact?
Also, I'll use this chance to pass on a brief paragraph from President Obama's recent press conference with the visiting Israeli Prime Minister. (Unfortunately, The NY Times failed to include it in their coverage.) It shows that President Obama is aware of the issue that I focus on in my letter -- and that he shares his own concern.
Thank you.
Sincerely,
Bert Sacks
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(From a commentary by By David Bromwich, Professor of Literature at Yale, in the Huffington Post online, dated May 19, 2009)
Finally, Gaza was much in President Obama's mind and on
his conscience at this meeting; so much so that he
broke decorum and stepped out of his way to mention it:
The fact is, is that if the people of Gaza have no
hope, if they can't even get clean water at this
point, if the border closures are so tight that it
is impossible for reconstruction and humanitarian
efforts to take place, then that is not going to be
a recipe for Israel's long-term security or a
constructive peace track to move forward.
And yet not a word from Stolberg and the Times about
these words of Obama's on Gaza. Nor was any analytic
piece offered as a supplement -- the usual procedure in
assessing an event of this importance.
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