On July 15th, I joined a group of 14 invited guests to speak to Washington State Attorney General Rob McKenna. We’d come to discuss our objections to a letter he co-signed to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. That letter began, "The undersigned Attorneys General write to convey our strong support for the State of Israel's actions in Gaza. The State of Israel's actions are taken in furtherance of its right to self-defense ...."
While 80% of the state Attorneys General offered the letter did not sign, Mr. McKenna joined nine other Attorneys General to sign a letter fully supporting all of Israel’s recent actions in Gaza. The first of our speakers raised the most obvious question: Why is Rob McKenna offering his legal opinion, as the Chief Legal Officer of our state, on the question of Israel's actions in Gaza?
In my turn, I gave Rob McKenna an article from the Israeli paper Ha'aretz, February 19, 2006. It begins, “[The Israeli team responding to Hamas’ election] had not laughed so much in a long time. The team, headed by the prime minister's advisor Dov Weissglas ... agreed on the need to impose an economic siege …, and Weissglas, as usual, provided the punch line: 'It's like an appointment with a dietician. The Palestinians [in Gaza] will get a lot thinner, but won't die'."
This is conclusive public evidence – from the top Israeli official in charge of responding to Hamas’ election victory – that the Israeli response would involve denying food to a civilian population.
Next I gave Mr. McKenna one page – from among 60 pages the Israeli consul provided his office –showing data provided by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) of the amount of humanitarian aid allowed into Gaza. The purpose of the bar graph is to show Israel’s allowing 2,560 shipments of food after the Gaza military operation; however it shows only 92 shipments during the ceasefire.
This is conclusive evidence – from the Israeli military itself – that humanitarian aid allowed into Gaza even during a successful ceasefire with Hamas – amounted to 20% or less of normal.
How bad is the "economic siege" promised by Dov Weissglas? This is President Barack Obama:
"On the other hand, 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."
President Obama was speaking to the Israeli Prime Minister, May 18, 2009, at the White House. He is testifying to the seriousness of the Israeli border closures that affect even safe drinking water.
Finally, I read to Mr. McKenna a quote from Ephraim Halevy, former head of the Israeli Mossad intelligence service. Writing in the Israeli press on January 4, 2009, Mr. Halevy said: "If Israel's goal were to remove the threat of rockets from the residents of southern Israel, opening the border crossings would have ensured quiet for a generation."
Here a former Mossad head is putting a lie to the central claim of Mr. McKenna's letter: that Israel’s actions in Gaza were an unavoidable – and therefore a legal – act of self-defense.
In my first letter to Mr. McKenna, May 18, 2009, I wrote this: “The question I wish to ask you is not, Did Israel allow some humanitarian aid into Gaza? – but rather, What legal justification exists for Israel to have restricted any amount of available humanitarian aid to civilians?”
On June 4th, Rob McKenna’s appeared on KUOW’s Weekday program. I called in to ask him this question. He replied: “The question will probably come down to whether or not it was reasonable for [the Israelis] to interdict humanitarian aid in order to stop weapons from being shipped in, as opposed to interdicting international aid just to cause harm to the civilian population.”
Immediately after the interview – perhaps realizing that Mr. McKenna’s response was, at best, inadequate – his office sought to get more information. His office went to only one source – not an impartial aid provider such as the ICRC – but to the Israel Consul General to the Pacific Northwest.
And the question asked was not did Israel restrict humanitarian aid and, if so, on what legal basis. Instead his office wrote: “We would like advice about how to counter certain arguments, most prominently, the accusation that Israel has blocked the entry of humanitarian supplies into Gaza. … AG McKenna will be meeting with some of these groups – including the parents of Rachel Corrie – in July. He would love to speak with you before that meeting.” (emphasis added. Here our FOIA request found that the AG’s office, in effect, was acting as an agent for the Israelis.)
The contact with the Israeli Consul General was to “counter certain arguments” to answer us. Yet in our meeting Rob McKenna said nothing about this. But I personally did eventually receive an answer: “[Mr. McKenna] doesn't know if [the restrictions on aid] were illegal. Information provided to him by the Israeli people he talked to led him to think Israeli actions were legal.”
As a final point in our meeting, I corrected one part of Dov Weissglas' joke – that Palestinians in Gaza would "get a lot thinner, but won't die." The restriction of food (and medicine and safe drinking water) is a weapon that discriminates against the most vulnerable, children under five.
It is a well-known medical fact that young children who are denied adequate and varied nutrition – who lack calories and/or a reasonable variety of foods – suffer a physical, mental and emotional lack of development. They are also the most vulnerable to opportunistic diseases because their immune system is less developed and unable to fight off simple diseases that a healthy child can.
The epidemiologist with us (yet another Jewish member in our group) confirmed to Mr. McKenna what I had said: Young children are particularly at risk from a food embargo. Using data from The New England Journal of Medicine about a similar embargo, but scaling the number of expected deaths to the smaller population in Gaza, I said the data could leave one to conclude that ever day, on average, ten more children in Gaza would die as an result of this economic siege.
A letter from ten international lawyers and legal scholars sent to Rob McKenna contained this statement: “This siege - an act of war under customary international law - violates Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention as a form of collective punishment.” I ask: Why can’t Attorney General McKenna offer a judgment whether it is legal or not to deny food to a civilian population as a tool of coercion or punishment?
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