In early May, Cindy and Craig Corrie, parents of the late Rachel Corrie, learned that the Washington State Attorney General, Rob McKenna, was one of 10 state Attorney Generals to sign on to a March 30th letter to Secretary of State Clinton lending legal endorsement to the Israeli attacks in Gaza in December and January. Shockingly, the letter analogizes the Hamas rocket attacks on southern Israel to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, and says that both attacks invited "disproportionate" responses–war. Cindy Corrie describes her response:
When the news broke on our various lists, there were many concerned folks here who set to work to find out what had occurred. The AG’s office started to get phone calls and emails. Through one, we learned that, in fact, the AG had signed the letter to Clinton, and we were sent a copy. As you will see, it comes from the ten "Chief Legal Officers" of their respective states and is stunning in its inaccuracies, omissions, and findings.

For us in Washington State (who had been working tirelessly since the Israeli attacks began in December with our expanding statewide network, the Save Gaza Campaign) this was too much.

We had seen something similar in our State Senate in January, when immediately after the inaugural week-end, a Christian-right member of the Senate with encouragement apparently from a Stand With Us group successfully introduced a resolution celebrating the wonderful democracy of Israel and the 60th anniversary of its first election–and also the Israeli-U.S. relationship. We got wind of this on the week-end, only a couple days before a vote, and tried to flood state senate offices with calls and emails and to get the resolution postponed, at least. While some receptionists seemed to get the message, the members themselves were all away watching the inaugural activities, apparently; because on Tuesday morning at 10 AM, when the State Senate reconvened, their first item of business was to pass this resolution unanimously–as bodies were still being pulled from the rubble in Gaza. Clearly, the resolution had been brought forward to lend support to Israel when a growing number were questioning Israeli military actions. Craig and I had gone off to the State Capitol to try to talk to people about this, and I managed to slip into the gallery as the vote was taken. Maybe half the Senators were on the floor. One walked in late and said he had just heard what had taken place and he thought the Senate might consider more carefully what it chose to address (something to that effect). But that was the only objection to this resolution celebrating Israel–no mention of the previous 22 day massacre in Gaza. Three co-sponsors spoke in favor of the resolution. And the twenty-five or so in the gallery from Stand With Us were asked to stand for recognition (like the boy scout troops and school groups that visit). This resolution, too, was to be sent to Secretary of State Clinton and–as a State Senator told us later–these resolutions are meant to reflect the "sense of the Senate."

I later found out that resolutions supporting Israel or Israel’s actions in Gaza had been introduced and passed at the same time in Colorado and North Dakota, too. Maybe there were more places. Craig and I were outraged by this–with the resolution and the timing of it. We did get a statement from the Senate Majority Leader saying that the passage of the resolution was a mistake and a promise to change the procedures for the remainder of the session so that resolutions with foreign policy implications would have to first go to committee for review.

Working with the Save Gaza Campaign, we tried to come up with more of a response, but felt that we delayed too long. So when this matter with the state Attorneys General surfaced, we were determined to act on it. Across the state, people who know anything about Gaza were and continue to be very disturbed by the AG letter, too. There has been a successful email and phone campaign. The AG was on a local NPR segment for an hour program–set up to talk about other matters, I’m sure–but the first 20 minutes were devoted to the AG Clinton letter.

Otherwise, there has not been media attention to the story, though we have tried. Concerned groups and individuals asked to meet with the AG.

Finally, in mid-July, we got our meeting with him and his Chief of Staff, Randy Pepple. Pepple is new to the AG staff, and it’s been widely publicized that his hiring signals McKenna’s interest in running for Governor in 2012 or for the U.S. Senate. McKenna is a popular, moderate Republican. Our meeting was quite extraordinary and powerful. Fourteen (many who had been in Gaza at various times), took just over an hour to set the record straight. We took with us the rebuttal to the AG letter written by George Bisharat and signed by nine other international legal scholars and attorneys.

As Tom Nelson, a member of Washington State Bar and the National Lawyers’ Guild Delegation that went to Gaza this year, said, we had just the right amounts of analysis, fact, and emotion. He thought it one of the best meetings of its kind that he had attended.

I was touched particularly by Ramzi Baroud whose father died in Gaza during the siege because he couldn’t get out for a medical diagnosis and by another participant who identified as a Jewish member of our local Temple Beth Hatfiloh. She said that as a Jew, she was “totally offended and disempowered” by the Attorney General’s letter to Clinton. “Somehow, I felt it was done in my name–that it was done for Israel and for Jews–and the letter is so divorced from the facts.”

We presented requests and we will wait a few weeks for McKenna’s response to those–until he meets with those who support his letter. But you’ll see that he made some small concessions already–to say that he would go to Gaza if the opportunity arose and that while it was unlikely that the same approach to such a letter would occur again, if he did get such a letter he would consult with individuals and groups represented in our meeting.

I think the change in approach he refers to must be with the NAAG (National Association of Attorneys General) whose DC office circulated the letter to the fifty state AGs with a deadline for return. Ten signed. We are trying to determine who authored the letter. We know it was the President of NAAG–the AG from Rhode Island–who told the DC office to circulate it. We know from FOIA that it was discussed by one of the AG’s at one of their earlier meetings.

Another interesting bit we learned through FOIA is that that there is an e-mail from the AG’s communications director, Dan Sytman, to Akiva Tor (Israeli Consul General at the Consulate in San Francisco) in which he refers to criticism from "anti-Israel groups" and a few paragraphs later says that the AG will be meeting with "some of those groups," including the parents of Rachel Corrie. So by inference the AG’s communications director has lumped Craig and me with "anti-Israel" groups–a label that most who objected to the AG’s actions would, I believe, feel was incorrectly applied to them and to Craig and me, and is objectionable. I have not read all of this FOIA but my daughter and others point out that Tor told McKenna that all he needed to do was say the word and they would have the Jewish Federation in Seattle ready for the call-in talk shows when they come.

I pointed out in the McKenna meeting that there were others he might turn to for information if he was interested in truth rather than simply "countering" criticism. I suggested that even our U.S. Department of State or some of the people in the room might be good resources. I quoted Michele Bernier-Toff, Managing Director of the Office of Overseas Citizen Services at the Department of State who wrote to us in March 2008, “We have consistently requested that the Government of Israel conduct a full and transparent investigation into Rachel’s death. Our requests have gone unanswered or ignored.”

I suggested to AG McKenna that if the Israeli Government couldn’t in nearly seven years get viable information to the U.S. Government about one American’s killing, that he might not want to rely on the Consul-General for information about all that happened in Gaza.

When the AG’s office wrote to Akiva Tor or to the Consulate, the staffer apparently said that AG McKenna was getting criticism from many "anti-Israel" groups and Cindy and Craig Corrie. Interestingly, Akiva Tor is one who later led the attack in San Francisco trying to censor the film Rachel– and me, from responding to questions about the film. Mr. Tor does not like the work we are doing in Washington State. I know it’s possible to get caught up in a story and to have it feel bigger than it really is. But I think it’s intriguing to see how pieces of the issue play out on a state level and then spill over–in this case to San Francisco.

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