Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, November 2006, page 68

Waging Peace

Protesters Meet Moshe Ya’alon

ON AUG. 14 THE day the U.N.-brokered cease-fire between Israel and Hezbollah took effectformer Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) Chief of Staff Moshe Ya’alon gave a briefing to congressional staffers to give the Israeli perspective of its bombardment of Lebanon, which had been almost universally criticized as disproportionate. The controversial briefing was sponsored by the Endowment for Middle East Truth, an organization whose stated aim is to influence policymakers on issues “concerning the nature of those with whom Israel is at war,” and whose advisory board members include such rabid Israel-firsters as Daniel Pipes, Frank Gaffney, Meyrrav Wurmser and former U.N. Ambassador Jeanne Kirkpatrick.

Originally scheduled to take place in the Russell Senate Office Building, at the last moment no senator could be found to sponsor the briefing, so it was held outside the building under a tree.

Protesters comprised nearly half of Ya’alon’s audience, and they came to hold him accountable for his involvement in an earlier Israeli massacre on Lebanon, the 1996 bombardment of a U.N. compound in Qana, where 106 civilians died. Sued under the Alien Tort Claims Act, a 1789 U.S. statute, the former IDF chief of staff was served in 2005 with a class action lawsuit for war crimes, including crimes against humanity, extrajudicial killings and cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment or punishment.

The protesters wore T-shirts proclaiming that “Ya’alon=War Criminal” and “Ya’alon is a Murderer.” When confronted with his history of war crimes, Ya’alon dismissed the accusations by responding, “I am used to this propaganda.”

After the briefing, the protesters unfurled a banner and chanted, “1, 2, 3, 4! We don’t want your racist war! 5, 6, 7, 8! Israel is a terrorist state!”

—Amie Draves and Miriam Wakim

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