If former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert had merely been a diplomat or an academic offering a controversial viewpoint, then interrupting his October 15 speech at Mandel Hall would certainly have been an attempt to stifle debate. Indeed, I experienced exactly such attempts when my own appearance at Mandel Hall last January, with Professor John Mearsheimer and Norman Finkelstein, was constantly interrupted by hecklers.
But confronting a political leader suspected of war crimes and crimes against humanity cannot be viewed the same way.
The report of the U.N. Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict last winter, headed by Judge Richard Goldstone, found that Israel engaged in willful, widespread, and wanton destruction of civilian property and infrastructure, causing deliberate suffering to the civilian population. It found “that the incidents and patterns of events considered in the report are the result of deliberate planning and policy decisions” and that many may amount to “war crimes” and “crimes against humanity.” If that proves true, then the individual with primary responsibility is Ehud Olmert, who, as prime minister and the top civilian commander of Israel’s armed forces, was involved in virtually every aspect of planning and execution.
The killings of more than 3,000 Palestinians and Lebanese during Olmert’s three years in office are not mere differences of opinion to be challenged with a polite question written on a pre-screened note card. They are crimes for which Olmert is accountable before international law and public opinion.
Israel, unlike Hamas (also accused of war crimes by Goldstone), completely refused to cooperate with the Goldstone Mission. Instead of accountability, Olmert is, obscenely, traveling around the United States offering justifications for these appalling crimes, collecting large speaking fees, and being fêted as a “courageous” statesman.
In their October 20 e-mail to the University community, President Robert Zimmer and Provost Thomas Rosenbaum condemned the “disruptions” during Olmert’s speech. “Any stifling of debate,” they wrote, “runs counter to the primary values of the University of Chicago and to our long-standing position as an exemplar of academic freedom.”
Was it in order to promote debate that the University insisted on pre-screening questions and imposed a recording ban for students and media? In the name of promoting debate, will the University now invite Hamas leader Khaled Meshal—perhaps by video link—to lecture on leadership to its students, and offer him a large honorarium? Can we soon expect Sudan’s President Omar Bashir to make an appearance at Mandel Hall?
When I and others verbally confronted Olmert, we stood for academic freedom, human rights, and justice, especially for hundreds of thousands of students deprived of those same rights by Olmert’s actions.
During Israel’s attack on Gaza last winter, schools and universities were among the primary targets. According to the Goldstone report, Israeli military attacks destroyed or damaged at least 280 schools and kindergartens. In total, 164 pupils and 12 teachers were killed, and 454 pupils and five teachers injured.
After the bombing, Olmert and Israel continued their attack on academic freedom, blocking educational supplies from reaching Gaza. Textbooks, notebooks, stationery, and computers are among the forbidden items. In September, Chris Gunness, spokesman for UNRWA, the U.N. agency for Palestine refugees, publicly appealed to Israel to lift its ban on books and other supplies from reaching Gaza’s traumatized students.
Israel destroyed buildings at the Islamic University and other universities. According to the Goldstone report, these “were civilian, educational buildings and the Mission did not find any information about their use as a military facility or their contribution to a military effort that might have made them a legitimate target in the eyes of the Israeli armed forces.”
Gaza’s university students—60 percent of them women—study all the things that students do at the University of Chicago. Their motivations, aspirations, and abilities are just as high, but their lives are suffocated by unimaginable violence, trauma, and Israel’s blockade, itself a war crime. Olmert is the person who ordered these acts and must be held accountable.
Crimes against humanity are defined as “crimes that shock the conscience.” When the institutions with the moral and legal responsibility to punish and prevent the crimes choose complicit silence—or, worse, harbor a suspected war criminal, already on trial for corruption in Israel, and present him to students as a paragon of “leadership”—then disobedience, if that is what it takes to break the silence, is an ethical duty. Instead of condemning them, the University should be proud that its students were among those who had the courage to stand up.
For the first time in recorded history, an Israeli prime minister was publicly confronted with the names of his victims. It was a symbolic crack in the wall of impunity and a foretaste of the public justice victims have a right to receive when Olmert is tried in a court of law.
Ali Abunimah, MA ’95 (political science), is author of One Country, A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse and co-founder of The Electronic Intifada.
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Discussion
AK
October 23rd 2009 at 02:35 AM
"If this were a court of law there would have been nothing proven. ...I wouldn't consider it in any way embarrassing if many of the allegations [made in the Goldstone Report] turn out to be disproved." -Richard Goldstone
Ali, You are basing all your allegations against Olmert on a report that is largely disputed.
ZIA
October 23rd 2009 at 07:23 AM
Right on! I wish I disrupted him as well!
RACHEL
October 23rd 2009 at 10:13 AM
What ever happened to the notion that someone is innocent until proven guilty? The Goldstone Report was a contraversial written work that is hotly disputed in many circles, not a court of law. It is also very difficult to consider the Goldstone Report to be credible when the report quotes Hamas officials as if they are civillian eye-witnesses. While it is true that many schools were destroyed and civillians were hurt in Gaza, the report does not take into account that this happened largely because Hamas had a policy of hiding their weapons and men behind Palestinian civillians and institutions as human shields, which are definitely war crimes. What Israel did in Gaza and in Southern Lebanon is no worse than what the US did in Iraq and Afghanistan. Why aren't people talking about sending Bush to the Hague and focusing so much on Israel? It does not seem fair to me. In fact, it sounds like a double standard. It is also not fair that the committee in Geneva neglected Hamas war crimes and chose to focus on Israel, who was merely acting in self-defense, while it was Hamas who intitiated the conflict by firing rockets into civillian population centers in Israel for eight years.
THE TRUTH
October 23rd 2009 at 10:31 AM
What ever happened to the notion that someone is innocent until proven guilty?
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Yes, but we are all eyewitnesses to the murder. Eyewitnesses don't need the jury to tell them what happened. We saw the pictures ourselves - among other things, the showers of white phosphorous in one of the most densely populated residential areas on earth.
BALLSACK
October 23rd 2009 at 12:05 PM
"What ever happened to the notion that someone is innocent until proven guilty?"
Fine. Let's assume there is a possibility that he is not guilty. Within that also lies the possibility that he is responsible for massacring thousands of people. Does it make sense for the university to invite a man who might be (is) responsible for killing thousands of people? Also, keep in mind that like "the truth" said, we all saw the crimes committed.
And people need to stop talking about Hamas. No Hamas official spoke here.
DEVIL'S ADVOCATE
October 23rd 2009 at 01:24 PM
I don't believe that seeing pictures and reading the news is one and the same as actually being an eye-witness. Pictures can be manipulated by journalists in order to leave their viewers with a certain perspective, which is why I try to read as many types of newspapers as possible, to get a full perspective. Unless something has been proven in a court of law, it is wrong to pressume that one is guilty. And even if Israel did use white phosphorous in one of the most densely populated areas on earth, one also has to remember the context, which is that Hamas was using this densely populated area to fire rockets at Israeli civillians centers over the course of eight years and that they hid their weapons in schools, mosques, residential homes, etc. While one can question Israeli methods, no one can deny that Israel was provoked by Hamas into this war and for this reason, ultimate blame for any thing that happens during the war rests with Hamas, not Israel, under international law.
BENJAMIN DOHERTY
October 23rd 2009 at 02:03 PM
"Innocent until proven guilty" is a right predicated upon a judicial process which Israel has totally rejected. When Ehud Olmert agrees to let a judge hear evidence, he will have the right to be innocent until proven guilty.
A. TURMAN
October 23rd 2009 at 03:01 PM
This article is great, but it overemphasizes the Goldstone Report. Israel is violating other key international legal instruments, including the Geneva Conventions.
These did not need Goldstone to be confirmed. Bombing schools and civilian infrastructure is illegal under international law.
What Goldstone stated was that beyond war crimes, the acts of the IDF in Gaza could in some instances be crimes against humanity. These are crimes the law cannot even begin to contemplate. Think about that. Phosphorus fume bombs were dropped in civilian areas, including near a school. The fumes, not the bomb itself, burns skin so badly it dissolves.
The Samouni family was told by the army to gather in one house [for their ostensible safety], and then repeatedly and incessantly fired upon and finally bombed. Over 20 members of the family were killed in one explosion. The IDF bombed a hospital.
These aren't legalities, or disputations. These are facts. Beyond who or what the "reasoning" is for Israel's actions, what Israel did in Gaza was horrific. And it was orchestrated by Mr. Olmert. So, to the students, some of whom I understand had family members killed in Gaza, his presence on campus must surely have been "disturbing," and shame on the Unviersity for not even being sensitive enough to recognize that.
DERRICK ROSE
October 23rd 2009 at 04:05 PM
I can see how people would be disturbed by the interruptions. There were times when I felt uncomfortable by them myself, but it is important to realize that this was not an ordinary speaker. Like Ali noted, I do not think the university would be willing to give the stage to other war criminals, from Hamas or whatever. Besides the fact that Olmert should not have been invited, disrupting his speech was the only way these students had to make their position and voices heard at such an event. That is the only reason why this is getting so much attention and the truth is coming out.
Also, I am all for free speech, but when the lecture itself was designed in such a way as to prevent open dialogue (no free questioning, no recording), it is then hypocritical for the administration to attack the students for preventing open discourse.
AMI ROSUSUPI
October 24th 2009 at 06:14 PM
To follow up with AK, the Goldstone Report also held Hamas equally liable for human rights violations in the Gaza conflict. Oh but if I say that Meshal broke international law by firing rockets at Israeli civilians you would say that they were only small rockets and not multi-ton bombs (like if Hamas had multi-ton rockets they wouldn't have used them...). And Shalit's kidnapping is also clearly off the table. I also love how when you're speaking it's heckling but when people you don't agree with speak it's a just protest.
I don't say this because I'm pro-Israeli. Because I'm not. Israel has screwed up. But I will say that most people - even pro-Israelis - acknowledge this. But to speak anything ill about the Palestinian politicians brings with it allegations of genocide. Is this any way to attain peace? Both Hamas and Israel has screwed up and done bad things. Can we please stop pointing the damn finger at each other and instead come together in peace to solve this? No one is right and nobody is righteous in this conflict. Please, put away the bullhorns and beat your swords into plowshares. Peace is not attained through "victory" but through a state of mind.
I will leave with a quote:
"The only way to make sure people you agree with can speak is to support the rights of people you don't agree with." - Eleanor Holmes Norton
BENJAMIN DOHERTY
October 25th 2009 at 08:29 AM
AMI ROSUSUPI:
The Goldstone report says that Hamas and Israel are equally responsible to uphold human rights, but the report does not say that they are equally liable for the violations that occurred.
JUST TRYING TO BE FAIR
October 26th 2009 at 02:56 PM
And the fact that Israel is liable but not Hamas for war crimes is my main problem with what is happening now. Hamas being an underdog does not give them an excuse to commit war crimes and crimes against humanity.
E.L.
November 1st 2009 at 04:24 PM
The decay of civil discourse is always a sad thing to witness.
GIDEON KLIONSKY
November 5th 2009 at 12:22 AM
I was privileged enough to be at the event Abunimah mentioned (with Finkelstein and Mearsheimer). My memory indicates that applause was heavy on the one-state solution lines her delivered and that heckling was reserved for those same applauders when the rest of us finally had an opportunity to ask the panel questions - civilly, I might add.
Tomorrow I will be at the forum between Dore Gold and Richard Goldstone at Brandeis. Those of you who think the audience's reaction is pre-determined based on the makeup of the school haven't really done their homework. I can only hope that our student body is more polite tomorrow than yours was last month - maybe more like how it was in January when Abunimah spoke.
FREE_SPEECH_LUVR
November 5th 2009 at 11:02 PM
that's a whole lotta words to defend screaming at some old guy