The risks of de-contextualizing Gaza war crimes

Goncalo de Almeida Ribeiro, Vishaal Kishore and Nimer Sultany, The Electronic Intifada, 26 September 2009

"By drawing attention to one short but bloody outburst of violence, an outburst that is cast and investigated as unusual, other periods may implicitly be rendered normal." (MaanImages)

The recent release of a report by the United Nations fact-finding mission chaired by jurist Richard Goldstone concerning the Israeli onslaught on Gaza in late December 2008 through January 2009 sheds important light on human rights violations in Israel/Palestine. One would hope that upon reading this report (or indeed any other from the long list of reports concerning the Occupied Palestinian Territories released by various human rights organizations) readers will be outraged by the ongoing atrocities committed in the region.

Despite expressly claiming to take into account the historical background to the Gaza events, the report, by its very nature, singles out a particular set of facts, and a limited period of time as the primary locus for investigation. In part this is justified. The conflict in Gaza involved levels of violence that are more or less exceptional. Yet, we fear that such a high-profile report, crafted specifically to address what is perceived to be an extreme or peculiar period of time in the lives of Palestinians under occupation, might have significant negative consequences. Particularly, we maintain that such a report, by focusing on one "drastic" period in the Israeli occupation, might in fact have the effect of overshadowing or downplaying the harsh and ongoing reality of the last 43 years of Israeli occupation.

By drawing attention to one short but bloody outburst of violence, an outburst that is cast and investigated as unusual, other periods may implicitly be rendered normal. But these "normal" periods involve Palestinian suffering and hardship that are well beyond the pale of decency. These periods -- which involve low-level Palestinian resistance to occupation and low-level Israeli oppression -- are the deeply implicated historical and contextual backdrop for all of the events that follow. While many tragically lose their lives in conflict, the less dramatic but longstanding and profoundly soul-crushing policies pursued by the Israeli state hinder not only Palestinians' freedom, but also warp and truncate their life prospects.

US healthcare sham
by Serge Halimi

A Republican Congress and President Bill Clinton abolished a welfare programme in 1996 under the (largely fallacious) pretext that it bred fraud, waste and abuse. Thirteen years on, the reforms that Barack Obama is proposing will not fundamentally change the United States’ abysmal healthcare system because those who profit from it have been able to buy protection from the lawmakers. The welfare programme ditched in 1996 absorbed about 1% of the US budget; today’s well-ensconced private insurance companies swallow most of the 17% of the budget set aside for healthcare.

Paradoxically, the US president is one of the most spirited prosecutors of the system he has chosen to retain. Day after day he recounts how “we are held hostage by health insurance companies that deny coverage, or drop coverage, or charge fees that people can’t afford for care they desperately need… We have a healthcare system that too often works better for the insurance industry than it does for the American people” (1).

Obama’s project initially set out with two important objectives. It proposed compulsory health cover for the 46 million Americans outside the system while funding the poorest amongst them. It also suggested the creation of a public insurance system with less prohibitive tariffs than private companies (2), which commit huge resources to finding legal loopholes (“pre-existing conditions”) allowing them not to pay out when their insured clients fall ill.

What is it that so alarms the right? Bobby Jindal, the Republican governor of Louisiana, claims that “any government plan will benefit from taxpayer subsidies and be able to operate at a financial loss, competing unfairly in the marketplace until private plans are driven out of business” (3). Other more telling tales of distress might have concerned him, particularly in Louisiana, one of the poorest US states.