Sept 18, '09 - email to Rob McKenna on UN Israel-Gaza mission

Dear Attorney General McKenna,

I am sure that by now you must have seen reports of the UN's mission concerning recent actions between Israel and Gaza.

I wish to point out three paragraphs relevant to the letter you co-signed, to our meeting, and to my subsequent request.

In the letter your office received from me at the start of this week, I asked this question: "What is the basis for your belief that the restrictions on supplies to the people of Gaza had anything to do with preventing the movement of weapons?

The position of the UN mission on this issue is stated below:

"The Mission found that, in the lead up to the Israeli military assault on Gaza, Israel imposed a blockade amounting to collective punishment and carried out a systematic policy of progressive isolation and deprivation of the Gaza Strip."

There is no mention of preventing smuggling of weapons. This would be very strange, especially given that Judge Goldstone is a self-described Zionist and lover of Israel.

(He is, in my judgment, a greater lover of truth and fairness.)

I ask again, Do you still believe restrictions on humanitarian supplies by Israel at its border with Gaza had anything to do with stopping weapons from entering? If so, on what basis?

I thank you again for your prompt reply to this question.

Sincerely,

Bert Sacks

bert.sacks@gmail.com

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict

PRESS RELEASE

15 September 2009

UN Fact Finding Mission finds strong evidence of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed during the Gaza conflict; calls for end to impunity

NEW YORK / GENEVA - The UN Fact-Finding Mission led by Justice Richard Goldstone on Tuesday released its long-awaited report on the Gaza conflict, in which it concluded there is evidence indicating serious violations of international human rights and humanitarian law were committed by Israel during the Gaza conflict, and that Israel committed actions amounting to war crimes, and possibly crimes against humanity.

...

In compiling the 574- page report, which contains detailed analysis of 36 specific incidents in Gaza, as well as a number of others in the West Bank and Israel, the Mission conducted 188 individual interviews, reviewed more 10,000 pages of documentation, and viewed some 1,200 photographs, including satellite imagery, as well as 30 videos. The mission heard 38 testimonies during two separate public hearings held in Gaza and Geneva, which were webcast in their entirety. The decision to hear participants from Israel and the West Bank in Geneva rather than in situ was taken after Israel denied the Mission access to both locations. Israel also failed to respond to a comprehensive list of questions posed to it by the Mission. Palestinian authorities in both Gaza and the West Bank cooperated with the Mission.

The Mission found that, in the lead up to the Israeli military assault on Gaza, Israel imposed a blockade amounting to collective punishment and carried out a systematic policy of progressive isolation and deprivation of the Gaza Strip.

Full UN press release at: http://www.tikkun.org/article.php?story=20090916110713735

Sept 12, '09 - Letter back to Rob McKenna with key question

Bert Sacks

6550 Greenwood Ave N, #11

Seattle, WA 98103

September 12, 20098

The Honorable Rob McKenna

Washington State Attorney General

1125 Washington Street SE

Olympia, WA 98501-2283

Dear Attorney General McKenna:

Thank you for your letter of August 31, 2009 to all of us who met with you on July 15^th to voice our concerns regarding your sign-on to the NAAG letter regarding Israel.

In that letter to us you wrote, “I share your concern for the innocent people of Gaza – the women, children and others harmed during the military action and by the restrictions on supplies that were put in place to prevent the movement of weapons.”

I am writing to ask you: What is the basis for your belief that the restrictions on supplies to the people of Gaza had anything to do with preventing the movement of weapons?

Of course we are speaking of restrictions on supplies at the Israeli border to Gaza (not the Egyptian border). In the two articles from the Israeli press I supplied you – and in the many pages of material your office received from the Israeli Consul General – I am not aware of any reference at all to a concern to stop the smuggling of weapons from Israel.

Additionally, data from the IDF itself shows that during Israel’s military incursion into Gaza, 577 shipments of food were allowed to cross from Israel into Gaza. Yet during the ceasefire with Gaza (referred to as the “period of the lull”), Israel allowed an average of 92 shipments of food into Gaza. If there was a concern about movement of weapons with food, how could six times more food be allowed to cross to Gaza during the fighting?

If I am mistaken in my understanding, I welcome more information – just as you were open to hearing from us. I thank you again for your willingness to engage in this exchange of information and concerns. And I await your prompt reply to my question.

Sincerely,

Bert Sacks

Reference: http://docs.google.com/View?id=dfjj4rpq_206c4g42khm is a link to the IDF data I mentioned. I supplied this to you during our July meeting and in a previous letter.

Sept 9, '09 - "McKenna and Israel" in Real Change

Just Heard

by: Adam Hyla , Editor

McKenna and Israel

Sep 9, 2009, Vol: 16, No: 40

State Attorney General Rob McKenna is getting some heat on a rare front: U.S. relations with Israel.

In the first 100 days of the Obama administration, the top lawyers of 10 states sent Secretary of State Hillary Clinton a group letter defending that country’s actions in the Gaza Strip. They asked that Clinton view Israel’s retaliatory actions as taken “in furtherance of its right to self-defense.”

Among the signers-on to that March 31 letter: McKenna, the state’s foremost Republican elected official.

Seattle activist Bert Sacks took McKenna’s stance as an invitation to clarification — seeking his legal opinion on whether the Israeli blockade of imports into Gaza was also justified.

Sacks received a letter in reply from the AG last week — a letter which expressed regret for the humanitarian consequences of the blockade following the January 2008 war with Hamas.

“I share your concern for the innocent people of Gaza — the women, children and others harmed during the military action and by the restrictions on supplies that were put in place to prevent the movement of weapons,” says McKenna’s Aug. 31 letter.

Weapons, shmeapons, says Sacks, who has found statements by Israeli military leaders forecasting massive deprivation — resembling the effects of U.S.-led sanctions in Saddam-era Iraq, where an estimated half million children died — will undermine the population’s support for its leaders.

A report last month by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs says Israel’s blockade has resulted in a “protracted human dignity crisis with negative humanitarian consequences.” Israeli restrictions on industrial, agricultural and construction materials have prevented reconstruction and limited the amount of fuel coming in to power Gaza’s only power plant.

Sept 1, '09 - Bruce Ramsey column on Rob McKenna

Tuesday, September 1, 2009 - Page updated at 04:16 PM

Permission to reprint or copy this article or photo, other than personal use, must be obtained from The Seattle Times. Call 206-464-3113 or e-mailresale@seattletimes.com with your request.

JIM BATES / THE SEATTLE TIMES

Attorney General Rob McKenna cosigned a letter defending Israel's 2008-2009 invasion of Gaza

AG Rob McKenna's letter about Israel's response to Gaza ignores broader issues

By Bruce Ramsey

Seattle Times editorial columnist

Last winter, Israel shelled Gaza, rolled in the tanks, shot it up and left much of it in ruins. Some 1,400 Gazans and 13 Israelis died, a ratio of 100-to-1.

Israel was defending itself, or so it said. To persuade the new Obama administration of that, a letter was circulated among U.S. state attorneys general who had visited Israel, some as guests of the America-Israel Friendship League. The letter is addressed to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. It begins:

"The undersigned Attorneys General write to convey our strong support for the State of Israel's actions in Gaza." The letter deems it unfair to compare the dead on each side the way I just did. It says Israel was not bound to be "proportionate" in its response to Gazan rocket attacks. "Israel's acts were justified and, in our view, met the international legal standards required of a modern state."

Signing the letter were four Democrats and six Republicans, including Washington's Rob McKenna.

This is a remarkable thing. The chief legal officers of Colorado, Florida, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Nebraska, Ohio, Rhode Island, Utah and Washington — state governments, with no authority over foreign affairs — were lobbying the U.S. secretary of state on behalf of a foreign power.

I asked our attorney general about the propriety of that. "We're elected officials," McKenna said. "All the attorneys general have constituencies for which Israel is important."

They do — and on both sides. Some friends of Gaza heard about the letter and went to see McKenna in July. One was Craig Corrie, whose daughter Rachel was killed in Gaza in 2003 by an Israeli soldier. Corrie told me he objected to a state official who had supported "increased violence in the Middle East."

That is what the letter does. McKenna focused on what it says. "The letter was narrowly crafted around whether Israel has a right to self-defense," he said.

I asked him whether 1,400 deaths were not excessive in response to rocket fire that had killed no one by the time the Israelis responded.

"You have to wait until enough of your people die so that it's roughly equal to the number of people you're going to kill?" he asked. "Nobody operates on that principle."

Indeed not. But under the rules of war, surely the other side had just cause as well. After the people of Gaza had elected the Hamas government, Israel had blockaded Gaza for a year and a half, by land and sea. The Gazans could export nothing, and could not make a living in the world. Israel had reduced them to living on handouts, and only a ration of those.

A blockade of such a small place — less than twice the area of Seattle — can be more lethal to civilians than rockets. It is also an act of war. But there is nothing in the letter about any of this.

Nor was there any mention that Israel's centrist Kadima Party government was facing an election Feb. 10 and was afraid of losing to the rightist Likud Party. The Gaza incursion was part of an election campaign. (Likud was elected anyway.)

McKenna said the letter came across his desk and he turned it around in 24 hours. He is a lawyer, and he responded like one.

But in this state he is Mr. Republican, his party's brightest and most successful standard-bearer. Someday he will run for U.S. Senate, where his foreign-policy views count. He should be careful about what he signs.

Bruce Ramsey's column appears regularly on editorial pages of The Times. His e-mail address is bramsey@seattletimes.com

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