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.