Seattle Times Editorialist Repeats Falsehood that Qassam Rockets from Hamas controlled Gaza have not Killed anyone: Please ask for Retraction

Seattle Times editorialist Bruce Ramsey is certainly entitled to his opinions when it comes to the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict. One would expect no less from an editorialist at the city's only major daily newspaper. What he is not entitled to are his own facts. Last week he published an opinion piece Congressman Brian Baird stands up for the people of Gaza which has several questionable premises. The article is very short and provides scant context for some of his assertions. Most egregious though is his repeated insistence that the rockets fired from Gaza haven't killed any Israelis. This is a bald-faced lie. I (and no doubt many others) pointed this out when Ramsey made this pronouncement last September in an opinion piece regarding an interview with Attorney General Rob McKenna (see below).

Ramsey's antipathy towards the Israeli narrative is his prerogative. What is unacceptable is that he continues to peddle the falsehood that the Qassam rockets have not resulted in any Israeli deaths. It behooves the editorial board of the Seattle Times to make the appropriate retraction and offer the community an apology for this egregious lack of oversight on the part of the paper. Please send your request for such a retraction to the publisher,
Frank Blethen: opinion@seattletimes.com
and the Editorial page editor Ryan Blethen: rblethen@seattletimes.com

Note that B'Tselem, one of Israel's major NGO human rights monitoring organizations, counts at least 12 deaths resulting from Gazan Qassams just between June 2004 and May of 2007.
27 May 2007: Israeli civilian died of wounds inflicted by Qassam rocket

"B'Tselem again sharply condemns the Qassam rockets recently fired at Israeli communities by Palestinian organizations in the Gaza Strip, which had killed two Israeli civilians and injured several more in Sderot. Since June 2004, Qassam rockets have killed twelve Israeli civilians, five Palestinian civilians, and one foreign national. In addition, hundreds of persons have been wounded or suffered post-traumatic stress syndrome as a result of rocket fire.

Aiming attacks at civilians, regardless of the circumstances, is a "grave breach," a war crime, under international humanitarian law, and the perpetrators are subject to individual criminal prosecution. B'Tselem calls on the Palestinian Authority to impose its authority on the bodies engaged in firing rockets at Israeli communities, and to meet its obligations to prevent attacks against civilians. International humanitarian law requires the PA to take urgent and vigorous action to achieve this objective."

Even if the Qassam's killed no one, they are clearly meant as weapons of terror, and in that, they function superbly. As Yossi Klein Halevi points out, part of the sinisterness of the rockets is their very primitiveness. They aren't intended against military targets but only to terrorize civilians.
The perverse genius of the tactic is that it’s not strong enough to justify, for world opinion, an effective military response, but it is just powerful enough to make daily life unlivable.
db


Qassam rockets killed at least 14
my published letter on Friday, April 2nd

Bruce Ramsey’s column repeats the lie that the Qassam rockets fired at Israel (more than 6,000) “hadn’t killed any Israelis, but they might have.”

The rockets fired by these “hotheads” —presumably the same hotblooded types who threw fellow Palestinians off Gazan rooftops, blindfolded and handcuffed, during Hamas’ bloody coup in June 2007 — have in fact killed more than a dozen Israelis and wounded scores more. Less than two weeks ago, a rocket attack from Gaza proved fatal as a Thai farmworker was killed.

Downplaying the rockets’ deadliness by calling them “homemade pipe-bomb-type rockets” obscures the fact that the launching of these rockets at civilians is not only a war crime, but also a weapon of terror that has traumatized thousands of Israeli children and adults, in addition to murdering at least 14 people on Israeli soil.

— David Brumer, Seattle

my full letter, before edited by the Seattle Times

To the Editor:

Bruce Ramsey is at it again, distorting the historical record, making facile generalizations devoid of any meaningful context (Congressman Brian Baird stands up for the people of Gaza, 3/31). Most invidiously, he repeats the lie that the Qassam rockets fired at Israel (over 6,000) “hadn’t killed any Israelis, but they might have.” Having gotten away with this journalistic malpractice back in September (McKenna's Middle East adventure, Opinion, Sept. 2), he reiterates the falsehood, referring to the Islamist terrorists who fire the rockets as “Gazan hotheads.” Let me remind Mr. Ramsey that the rockets fired by these “hotheads” (presumably the same hot-blooded types who threw fellow Palestinians off of Gazan rooftops, blindfolded and handcuffed, during Hamas’ bloody coup in June '07) have in fact killed more than a dozen Israelis and wounded scores more. Less than 2 weeks ago, a rocket attack from Gaza proved fatal as a Thai farm worker was killed (see: Gaza rocket kills Thai farm worker in Israel).

Downplaying the rockets’ deadliness by calling them “homemade pipe-bomb-type rockets” obscures the fact that the launching of these rockets at civilians is not only a war crime but also a weapon of terror that has traumatized thousands of Israeli children and adults, in addition to murdering at least 14 people on Israeli soil. That Bruce Ramsey chooses to deny this can only be construed as moral depravity. That the Seattle Times publishes such bald-faced lies is scandalous.

David Brumer


AG Rob McKenna's letter about Israel's response to Gaza ignores broader issues
Ramsey's quote from article:
"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."

my published letter in response back in September

Times columnist is the one who ignores broader issues

Editor, The Times:

Bruce Ramsey has it exactly backward in his column ["McKenna's Middle East adventure," Opinion, Sept. 2] when he wrote, "AG Rob McKenna's letter about Israel's response to Gaza ignores broader issues."

In fact, the letter McKenna signed was quite narrow in scope, responding only to Israel's right to defend itself from thousands of rockets deliberately launched into its civilian population from Gaza, under Hamas leadership.

It is Ramsey who ignores the broader issues by avoiding any meaningful context that would shed light on Israel's actions.

Ramsey trots out the tired trope of disproportionality, displaying an ignorance of the rules of engagement in war. Legitimate self-defense is enshrined in Article 51 of the United Nations Charter. Furthermore, attacks are only prohibited if they cause incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians or damage to civilian objects that is excessive in relation to the anticipated concrete military advantage of the attack.

Ramsey's statement that "rocket fire had killed no one" is factually incorrect and morally repugnant, even if it were true. Thousands of rockets fired at civilians is not only a war crime but a weapon of terror that has traumatized thousands of Israeli children and adults, incidentally killing more than a dozen people and wounding scores more.

As to the so-called blockade, Israel's partial siege of Gaza following Hamas' putsch in June of 2007 still allows literally tons of food, fuel and medical supplies into Gaza through daily border crossings.

Finally, it is scandalous to suggest that "the Gaza incursion was part of an election campaign." In fact, Hamas miscalculated, assuming Israel would not respond to increased rocket attacks precisely because of the status of a lame-duck government.
In this they were proven disastrously wrong at a tragic cost to their own people.

-- David Brumer, Seattle


Congressman Brian Baird stands up for the people of Gaza
By Bruce Ramsey

Seattle Times editorial columnist

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — The United States should break Israel's blockade of Gaza and deliver badly needed supplies by sea, a U.S. congressman told Gaza students.

The congressman was Brian Baird. Many of his colleagues go to Israel, few to Gaza, and none as often as he. The southwest Washington Democrat likes to see things for himself. He went to Iraq, and changed his opinion of U.S. strategy there.

Why Gaza? In an interview, Baird recalled a speech some years ago by Israel's current premier, Benjamin Netanyahu, at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). To Baird, the speech was "thinly disguised racism" and he recoiled from it. When the crowd applauded, he and his wife walked out.

Then there was Rachel Corrie, who in 2003 was killed in Gaza while trying to block an Israeli bulldozer from wrecking a Gazan house. The Corrie family lives in Baird's district.

Many of his friends "are very distressed" with his criticism of Israel, Baird said. "But if they would see what I have seen and could meet the people I have met, they would change their position."

He recalled his visit to Gaza in February 2009, after Israel's invasion. The American International School had been "a beautiful school, with a Western curriculum." Israel had flattened it, Baird said, "using bombs made by us." A U.S. military man told him of finding a phosphorus shell from the Redstone Arsenal in Alabama.

By Israel's count, the final death toll of the war on Gaza was 1,166 Gazans and 13 Israelis a kill ratio of 90-to-1. By the Gazans' count the ratio was 111-to-1.

Israel said it was defending itself, against rockets, homemade pipe-bomb-type rockets. These had been fired by Gazan hotheads against the Israeli town of Sderot to protest Israel's quarantine. The rockets hadn't killed any Israelis, but they might have.
All sides in war claim self-defense. Maybe because Baird is a psychologist he is less inclined to accept such claims at face value. He recalled the reaction of Israeli generals and rightist politicians when he disputed them: How dare you question us?

Keep pushing on them, he said, "and something more pernicious comes out." They will say, "Don't lecture us about humanity after all you've done."

Netanyahu once reminded an interviewer who was pushing him that the British and Americans had firebombed Dresden. Years ago, on a radio show, when I condemned Israel for taking Palestinian land, my host asked if I would give New Mexico back to the Mexicans.

It is a telling argument. A conqueror's argument. You don't hear it, though, unless you peel off the wrapping paper of "defense." And Congress won't do that.

Baird recalled the vote on the Goldstone report, in which jurist Richard Goldstone listed human-rights violations on both sides of the Gaza war. Goldstone has big credentials from his work in Bosnia and Rwanda. And he is Jewish. But he criticized the Israeli military and the House quickly voted to dismiss his report. All of this state's representatives voted against the report except Baird and Seattle Democrat Jim McDermott, a psychiatrist.

"Colleague after colleague denounced a report they had never read, about a place to which they had never been," Baird said. "I read the Goldstone report. All of it. I found it credible."

Baird is not running for re-election.