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Palestinians Press for War Crimes Inquiry on Gaza

February 11, 2009
By MARLISE SIMONS |The  New York Times
Published: February 10, 2009

THE HAGUE — The Palestinian Authority is pressing the International Criminal Court in The Hague to investigate accusations of war crimes committed by Israeli commanders during the recent war in Gaza.

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Tyler Hicks/The New York Times

A mosque in El Atatra, Gaza, that was destroyed by the Israeli military. Israel said the mosque had been used by militants.

The Palestinian minister of justice, Ali Kashan, first raised the issue during a visit to the court’s chief prosecutor late last month, and he and other officials are due back again in The Hague this week, court officials said.

Luis Moreno-Ocampo, the prosecutor, had initially said he lacked the legal basis to examine the case. But since the Palestinian Authority signed a commitment on Jan. 22 recognizing the court’s authority, the prosecutor has appeared more open to studying the Palestinian claim.

“The prosecutor has agreed to explore if he could have jurisdiction in the case,” said Béatrice Le Fraper, the director of jurisdiction for the prosecution. She cautioned that accepting jurisdiction would not automatically set off a criminal investigation. “We are still very far from any decision; this is just the beginning of a long process,” she said.

The prosecutor has received more than 200 requests to look into allegations of war crimes during the recent fighting between Israel and Hamas militants. They include accusations from individuals and organizations that Israel violated the rules of war by singling out civilians and nonmilitary buildings, and by using weapons like white phosphorus illegally.

“Quite a few groups have sent experts to the region, people doing forensic work, studying explosives and other weapons,” she said. “The prosecutor can look at all open sources at this stage.”

Should a criminal investigation begin, the prosecution would send its own investigators, who would look into possible violations by both sides. Hamas’s practice of sending rockets into southern Israel, which often landed in civilian areas, might be viewed as a violation. Israeli officials justified their offensive by saying they were trying to stop the rocket attacks.

But even as envisioned by the Palestinian Authority, the case faces numerous hurdles, specialists say.

The court here is the world’s first permanent international criminal court, created to examine war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. It can prosecute any citizen from the 108 countries that are currently members of the court. Individuals, governments, the United Nations Security Council or the prosecutor can initiate cases.

Israel is not a member of the court, and the Palestinian territories, not being recognized as a sovereign nation, appear not to fulfill the requirements. But as a remedy, the Palestinian Authority has taken a first step by presenting a declaration to the court, formally accepting jurisdiction for “an indeterminate duration” over acts “committed on the territory of Palestine” since July 1, 2002, when the court’s authority began.

Lawyers say such a declaration allows for joining the court on an ad hoc basis, and has been allowed before, in the case of Sierra Leone, which is not a member. But while the Palestinian declaration has been recorded at the court, its validity is far from settled. The big question, lawyers at the court say, is whether the Palestinian Authority can grant jurisdiction in any form, and if so, how that will be defined.

The issue has raised the question of whether Palestinian officials hope to obtain an implicit recognition of statehood through the court.

The court “will not use the term statehood,” said a legal expert close to the case who spoke on condition of anonymity because the issue was still being decided. “The court will avoid defining whether Palestine is a state. The decision will be only if Palestine can be admitted for the purposes of the court statute.”

The Palestinian officials visiting The Hague in the coming days are expected to try to demonstrate that they have been allowed to sign other international treaties and conventions, and can therefore be accepted as a party to the 1998 Rome treaty that founded the court.

Ms. Le Fraper, the director of jurisdiction, said her office would call on international experts to help settle such questions.

Another unknown is whether the Palestinian Authority can bring a case involving jurisdiction in Gaza. The authority is run by Fatah, but its rival faction, Hamas, has declared itself the only authority in Gaza and ousted Fatah from the territory.

More than 1,300 Palestinians died in the recent war in Gaza, many of them women and children. Israeli officials have insisted that Israel respected international law during the fighting. Israel has also said that it will investigate its attacks on United Nations schools and headquarters and the use of unlawful weapons in urban areas, including the use of white phosphorus.

Human rights groups and a number of United Nations officials have called for an independent international inquiry into actions by both sides. Human Rights Watch said such an independent effort was essential because of “Israel’s poor record of investigating and prosecuting serious violations by its forces, and the absence of any such effort by Hamas or other Palestinian groups.”

Western politicians and other critics of Israel’s recent conduct in Gaza have also said that Hamas has violated the rules of war and committed war crimes with indiscriminate rocket attacks on Israeli civilians and the use of its own civilians as human shields.

Depending on what happens at the court, Hamas’s rocket attacks and other acts viewed by some as crimes could also become part of any criminal investigation. By accepting the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court on its territory, the Palestinian Authority has also accepted jurisdiction over any war crimes by its own residents.

“That’s the way jurisdiction works,” said a court lawyer. “The Palestinians know that and have taken that risk.”

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How Do People Keep Going in Gaza?

February 10, 2009

What Americans Can’t See About Gaza

Kathy Kelly | Counterpunch, Feb 10, 2009

People have asked me, since I returned from Gaza, how people manage? How do they keep going after being traumatized by bombing and punished by a comprehensive state of siege? I wonder myself. I know that whether the loss of life is on the Gazan or the Israeli side of the border, bereaved survivors feel the same pain and misery. On both sides of the border, I think children pull people through horrendous and horrifying nightmares. Adults squelch their panic, cry in private, and strive to regain semblances of normal life, wanting to carry their children through a precarious ordeal.

And the children want to help their parents. In Rafah, the morning of January 18th, when it appeared there would be at least a lull in the bombing, I watched children heap pieces of wood on plastic tarps and then haul their piles toward their homes. The little ones seemed proud to be helping their parents recover from the bombing. I’d seen just this happy resilience among Iraqi children, after the 2003 Shock and Awe bombing, as they found bricks for their parents to use for a makeshift shelter in a bombed military base.

Children who survive bombing are eager to rebuild. They don’t know how jeopardized their lives are, how ready adults are to bomb them again.

In Rafah, that morning, an older man stood next to me, watching the children at work. “You see,” he said, looking upward as an Israeli military surveillance drone flew past, “if I pick up a piece of wood, if they see me carrying just a piece of wood, they might mistake it for a weapon, and I will be a target. So these children collect the wood.”

While the high-tech drone collected information,– “intelligence” that helps determine targets for more bombing, –toddlers collected wood. Their parents, whose homes were partially destroyed, needed the wood for warmth at night and for cooking. Because of the Israeli blockade against Gaza, there wasn’t any gas.

With the border crossing at Rafah now sealed again, people who want to obtain food, fuel, water, construction supplies and goods needed for everyday life will have to rely, increasingly, on the damaged tunnel industry to import these items from the Egyptian side of the border. Israel’s government says that Hamas could use the tunnels to import weapons, and weapons could kill innocent civilians, so the Israeli military has no choice but to bomb the neighborhood built up along the border, as they have been doing.

Suppose that the U.S. weapon makers had to use a tunnel to deliver weapons to Israel. The U.S. would have to build a mighty big tunnel to accommodate the weapons that Boeing, Raytheon, Lockheed Martin and Caterpillar have supplied to Israel. The size of such a tunnel would be an eighth wonder of the world, a Grand Canyon of a tunnel, an engineering feat of the ages.

Think of what would have to come through.

Imagine Boeing’s shipments to Israel traveling through an enormous underground tunnel, large enough to accommodate the wingspans of planes, sturdy enough to allow passage of trucks laden with missiles. According to UK’s Indymedia Corporate Watch, 2009, Boeing has sent Israel 18 AH-64D Apache Longbow fighter helicopters, 63 Boeing F15 Eagle fighter planes, 102 Boeing F16 Eagle fighter planes, 42 Boeing AH-64 Apache fighter helicopters, F-16 Peace Marble II & III Aircraft, 4 Boeing 777s, and Arrow II interceptors, plus IAI-developed arrow missiles, and Boeing AGM-114 D Longbow Hellfire missiles,

In September of last year, the U.S. government approved the sale of 1,000 Boeing GBU-9 small diameter bombs to Israel, in a deal valued at up to 77 million.

Now that Israel has dropped so many of those bombs on Gaza, Boeing shareholders can count on more sales, more profits, if Israel buys new bombs from them from them. Perhaps there are more massacres in store. It would be important to maintain the tunnel carefully.

Raytheon, one of the largest U.S. arms manufacturers, with annual revenues of around $20 billion, is one of Israel’s main suppliers of weapons. In September last year, the US Defense Security Cooperation Agency approved the sale of Raytheon kits to upgrade Israel’s Patriot missile system at a cost of $164 million. Raytheon would also use the tunnel to bring in Bunker Buster bombs as well as Tomahawk and Patriot missiles.

Lockheed Martin is the world’s largest defense contractor by revenue, with reported sales, in 2008, of $42.7 billion. Lockheed Martin’s products include the Hellfire precision-guided missile system, which has reportedly been used in the recent Gaza attacks. Israel also possesses 350 F-16 jets, some purchased from Lockheed Martin.

Think of them coming through the largest tunnel in the world.

Maybe Caterpillar Inc. could help build such a tunnel. Caterpillar Inc., the world’s largest manufacturer of construction (and destruction) equipment, with more than $30 billion in assets, holds Israel’s sole contract for the production of the D9 military bulldozer, specifically designed for use in invasions of built-up areas. The U.S. government buys Caterpillar bulldozers and sends them to the Israeli army as part of its annual foreign military assistance package. Such sales are governed by the US Arms Export Control Act, which limits the use of U.S. military aid to “internal security” and “legitimate self defense” and prohibits its use against civilians.

Israel topples family houses with these bulldozers to make room for settlements. All too often, they topple them on the families inside. American peace activist Rachel Corrie was crushed to death standing between one of these bulldozers and a Palestinian doctor’s house.

In truth, there’s no actual tunnel bringing U.S. made weapons to Israel. But the transfers of weapons and the U.S. complicity in Israel’s war crimes are completely invisible to many U.S. people.

The United States is the primary source of Israel’s arsenal. For more than 30 years, Israel has been the largest recipient of U.S. foreign assistance and since 1985 Israel has received about 3 billion dollars, each year, in military and economic aid from the U.S. (“U.S. and Israel Up in Arms,” Frida Berrigan, Foreign Policy in Focus, January 17, 2009)

So many Americans can’t even see this flood of weapons, and what it means, for us, for Gaza’s and Israel’s children, for the world’s children.

And so, people in Gaza have a right to ask us, how do you manage? How do you keep going? How can you sit back and watch while your taxes pay to massacre us? If it would be wrong to send rifles and bullets and primitive rockets into Gaza, weapons that could kill innocent Israelis, then isn’t it also wrong to send Israelis the massive arsenal that has been used against us, killing over 400 of our children, in the past six weeks, maiming and wounding thousands more?

But, standing over the tunnels in Rafah, that morning, under a sunny Gazan sky, hearing the constant droning buzz of mechanical spies waiting to call in an aerial bombardment, no one asked me, an American, those hard questions. The man standing next to me pointed to a small shed where he and others had built a fire in an ash can. They wanted me to come inside, warm up, and receive a cup of tea.

Kathy Kelly, a co-coordinator of Voices for Creative Nonviolence, is writing from Arish, a town near the Rafah border between Egypt and Gaza. Bill Quigley, a human rights lawyer and law professor at Loyola New Orleans and Audrey Stewart are also in Egypt and contributed to this article. Kathy Kelly is the author of Other Lands Have Dreams (published by CounterPunch/AK Press). Her email is kathy@vcnv.org

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US Senator Leahy Seeks Bush-Era ‘Truth Commission’

February 10, 2009

Published on Monday, February 9, 2009 by Reuters

by Randall Mikkelsen

WASHINGTON – A U.S. “truth commission” should investigate Bush administration policies including the promotion of war in Iraq, detainee treatment and wiretapping without a warrant, an influential senator proposed on Monday.

[US President Barack Obama gave a cool welcome to a proposal from Democratic Senator Pat Leahy, seen here at the US Capitol, for a "truth commission" to probe alleged abuses under George W. Bush -- but did not rule out possible prosecutions for wrongdoing. (AFP/Getty Images/File/Alex Wong)]US President Barack Obama gave a cool welcome to a proposal from Democratic Senator Pat Leahy, seen here at the US Capitol, for a “truth commission” to probe alleged abuses under George W. Bush — but did not rule out possible prosecutions for wrongdoing. (AFP/Getty Images/File/Alex Wong)

Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, urged a commission as a way to heal what he called sharp political divides under former President George W. Bush and to prevent future abuses.He compared it to other truth commissions, such as one in South Africa that investigated the apartheid era.

“We need to come to a shared understanding of the failures of the recent past,” Leahy said in a speech at Georgetown University.

“Rather than vengeance, we need a fair-minded pursuit of what actually happened,” he said. “And we do that to make sure it never happens again.”

Some Republicans and intelligence officials have resisted any suggestion of broad inquiries into accusations against the Bush administration, saying it would be a distraction or weaken morale in the fight against terrorism.

“If every administration started to reexamine what every prior administration did, there would be no end to it. This is not Latin America,” the Judiciary committee’s top-ranking Republican, Senator Arlen Specter, told reporters last month.

President Barack Obama suggested shortly before he took office in January that he did not favor prosecuting Bush administration officials over their counterterrorism policies, but said he would look into “past practices.”

“What we have to focus on is getting things right in the future as opposed to looking at what we got wrong in the past,” he said.

Leahy said he had not begun to promote the truth commission idea with the Obama administration or with the Democratically controlled Congress. But he suggested it could be formed by both Congress and the White House, and said the panel must have credibility across the political spectrum.

Issues to investigate would include the Justice Department’s firings of several U.S. attorneys, which Leahy said may have been motivated by a White House aim to influence elections, policies on the treatment of terrorism suspects and other areas “where (congressional) committees were lied to.”

This included the war in Iraq, he said. “There were lies told to the American people all the way through.”

Bush has acknowledged that intelligence on Iraqi weapons programs was wrong, but said he never lied to the public about the war.

Leahy said he wanted the Defense Department investigated for filming Iraq-war protesters, which he said came “shockingly close” to the FBI’s Vietnam War-era Cointelpro operation to investigate domestic war protesters. “We fought a revolution in this country so we could protest the actions of our government,” he said.

(Editing by David Storey)

© 2009 Reuters

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Israel: It won’t be a vote for peace

February 9, 2009
Editorial

Arab News, 9 February 2009
Israel will elect a new prime minister tomorrow, either a very new one or one who has been there before. But regardless of who wins, few people in Israel or beyond are predicting significant diplomatic shifts any time soon. If anything, the situation with regards to the peace process could get worse — if that is at all possible.

The latest polls predict that Benjamin Netanyahu, a former premier, will recapture his post and will lead his right-wing Likud party to victory. Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni of the centrist Kadima party is a close second. Perhaps the most striking poll result indicates that Defense Minister Ehud Barak’s Labor party, which has long dominated Israeli politics, has been pushed out of third place by hard-liner Avigdor Lieberman and his Yisrael Beiteinu party. That sets Lieberman up as a kingmaker, holding the crucial swing votes that any winner will need to form a government. And Lieberman is as anti-Arab as it gets.

Polling organizations are warning that unusually large numbers of Israelis, estimated at 15-20 percent, say they are undecided, which could make the result difficult to predict. Yet, running across Israel is a sense of inevitability that the right will win this election. All the signs are that Israel has shifted to the right, in large part because many Israelis no longer believe further peace agreements are a serious prospect. The war in Gaza has boosted Netanyahu and other hard-line candidates as Israelis prepare to choose not only their new leader but a new 120-member Parliament.

After last month’s devastating Israeli offensive, Gaza and Hamas are at the top of the agenda in the Israeli campaign, and each candidate seems to be trying to outdo the next with a harsher stand against the group. While all the top candidates promise to be tough with Hamas, Netanyahu takes the hardest line. He has called for Hamas to be uprooted from Gaza and says the Gaza campaign was ended too soon. Lest this give any joy to President Mahmoud Abbas and his “moderate” Fatah party, Netanyahu says he will allow existing Jewish settlements in the West Bank to expand. He claims any territory Israel relinquishes to the Palestinians as part of a peace deal would be “grabbed by extremists.” He contends peace efforts should focus on anything other than creating an independent state.

Those views will put Netanyahu at odds with the Palestinians, all other Arabs and most of the international community, whose most important member as far as Israel is concerned, is the US. President Barack Obama has been attempting to reach out to Arabs and promising fresh approaches to deal with the Middle East, including moving forward vigorously with the vision of establishing a Palestinian state alongside Israel. Apparently, however, Netanyahu and the majority of Israelis are unwilling to make any concessions for peace even if it stands in the way of Obama’s softer overtures. Popular with Israelis, the military action in Gaza swung voter concerns away from peace talks, and back to conflict, boosting the likes of Netanyahu, Barak and Lieberman.

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Israel holding 42 Palestinians in administrative detention for over two years

February 9, 2009

B’Tselem – Press Releases, 5 Feb. ’09

B’Tselem releases 2008 annual report – among the findings:

Of the 548 Palestinians Israel is detaining without trial, 42 have been held for over two years, according to figures appearing in B’Tselem’s annual report, published today. Twenty-three have been administratively detained for over two and a half years, including three who have been detained between three and four and a half years, and two over four and a half consecutive years. In fact, the vast majority of administrative detainees (372) have been held without charge or trial for at least two consecutive periods.

In 2008, the number of administrative detainees dropped gradually: from 813 in January to 546 in December. Six of the detainees in December were minors. For the first time, Israel held two female minors in administrative detention; both had their detention period extended for a second period. B’Tselem demands that Israel immediately release all administrative detainees, or try them for the offences they are alleged to have committed. The total number of Palestinian prisoners and detainees in Israeli custody at the end of December was 7,904.

Casualties

B’Tselem’s annual report also includes figures on the number of Palestinians and Israelis killed during the course of the year (not including in Operation Cast Lead). Up until December 26, Israeli security forces killed 455 Palestinians (including eighty-seven minors). At least 175 of those killed (38 percent) did not take part in the hostilities.

18 Israeli civilians were killed by Palestinians inside Israel. Eight of them (four minors), were killed in the attack at the Merkaz Harav yeshiva, in Jerusalem and Four were killed by rocket attacks and mortar fire. Three Israeli civilians were killed by Palestinias in the Terrritories. Palestinians killed ten members of the Israeli security forces.

Restrictions on movement

In contrast to official Israeli claims, Palestinian freedom of movement did not improve significantly in 2008. There are sixty-three permanent staffed checkpoints inside the West Bank, eighteen of them in the city of Hebron. In addition, the army restricts Palestinian movement on 430 kilometers of roads, on which Israelis are allowed free use. On 137 kilometers of these roads, Palestinian travel is completely prohibited. Forty checkpoints serve as crossing points into Israel, although most are them are located a few kilometers inside the West Bank, and not along the Israeli border. The number of physical obstructions Israel maintained in the West Bank actually increased in 2008. In the first nine months of 2008, the average number of such obstructions was 537, compared with a monthly average of 459 in 2007.

B’Tselem’s annual report surveys many additional violations of human rights in the Occupied Territories during 2008. Among them: house demolition, the continued construction of the separation barrier within the West Bank, settlement expansion and the lack of law enforcement on violent settlers. The report also addresses the systematic lack of accountability for harm caused to Palestinians by Israeli security forces.

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Gaza Massacre Foretold in 2005: What May Come After the Evacuation of Jewish Settlers from the Gaza Strip

February 9, 2009

A Warning from Israel

by Uri Davis and Ilan Pappe and Tamar Yaron

Global Research, February 8, 2009

Counterpunch – 2005-07-15

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We feel that it is urgent and necessary to raise the alarm regarding what may come during and after evacuation of Jewish settlers from the Gaza Strip occupied by Israel in 1967, in the event that the evacuation is implemented.

We held back on getting this statement published and circulated, seeking additional feedback from our peers. The publication in Ha’aretz (22 June 2005) quoting statements by General (Reserves) Eival Giladi, the head of the Coordination and Strategy team of the Prime Minister’s Office, motivated us not to delay publication and circulation any further. Confirming our worst fears, General (Res.) Eival Giladi went on record in print and on television to the effect that “Israel will act in a very resolute manner in order to prevent terror attacks and [militant] fire while the disengagement is being implemented” and that “If pinpoint response proves insufficient, we may have to use weaponry that causes major collateral damage, including helicopters and planes, with mounting danger to surrounding people.”

We believe that one primary, unstated motive for the determination of the government of the State of Israel to get the Jewish settlers of the Qatif (Katif) settlement block out of the Gaza Strip may be to keep them out of harm’s way when the Israeli government and military possibly trigger an intensified mass attack on the approximately one and a half million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, of whom about half are 1948 Palestine refugees.

The scenario could be similar to what has already happened in the past – a tactic that Ariel Sharon has used many times in his military career – i.e., utilizing provocation in order to launch massive attacks.

Following this pattern, we believe that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz are considering to utilize provocation for vicious attacks in the near future on the approximately one and a half million Palestinian inhabitants of the Gaza Strip: a possible combination of intensified state terror and mass killing. The Israeli army is not likely to risk the kind of casualties to its soldiers that would be involved in employing ground troops on a large scale in the Gaza Strip. With General Dan Halutz as Chief of Staff they don’t need to. It was General Dan Halutz, in his capacity as Commander of the Israeli Air Force, who authorized the bombing of a civilian Gaza City quarter with a bomb weighing one ton, and then went on record as saying that he sleeps well and that the only thing he feels when dropping a bomb is a slight bump of the aircraft.

The initiators of this alarm have been active for many decades in the defence of human rights inside the State of Israel and beyond. We do not have the academic evidence to support our feeling, but given past behavior, ideological leanings and current media spin initiated by the Israeli government and military, we believe that the designs of the State of Israel are clear, and we submit that our educated intuition with matters pertaining to the defence of human rights has been more often correct than otherwise.

We urge all those who share the concern above to add their names to ours and urgently give this alarm as wide a circulation as possible.

Circulating and publishing this text may constitute a significant factor in deterring the Israeli government, thus protecting the Palestinian population in the Gaza Strip from this very possible catastrophe and contributing to prevent yet more war crimes from occurring.

Please sign, circulate, and publish this alarm without delay!

Please send notification of your signature to Tamar Yaron tiyaron@hazorea.org.il

WE WOULD ALSO APPRECIATE RECEIVING NOTIFICATION IF THE ALARM WAS PUBLISHED IN ANY MEDIA AND/OR IF IT WAS SENT TO A GROUP DISTRIBUTION LIST.

Uri Davis, Sakhnin, uridavis@actcom.co.il ,
Ilan Pappe, Tiv’on, pappe@poli.haifa.ac.il , and
Tamar Yaron, Kibbutz Hazorea, tiyaron@hazorea.org.il

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Indian Army chief terms surgical strikes feasible

February 9, 2009
The News, Feb 9, 2009

News Desk

NEW DELHI: Indian Army chief General Deepak Kapoor on Sunday said the option of surgical strikes against ‘the terror infrastructure’ in Pakistan was “very much feasible” militarily.

“Surgical strikes are definitely feasible but whether you wish to take that decision or not is a separate issue,” he said when asked by PTI whether such strikes were feasible. “Definitely, yes. Whether you would like to look at doing it (carrying out such strikes) by air or artillery or by another means or physically there,” he said in reply to questions.

Asked if the Indian armed forces were ready for such strikes if the political leadership gave the go-ahead, Kapoor said: “We are an army which has been involved in operations in Kashmir and the Northern Command on a perpetual basis and on an ongoing basis.”

During the wide-ranging interview, the Indian Army chief also sought to dispel the impression that there was no clarity about the nuclear command when Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was hospitalised for heart surgery last month.

Also, Indian ruling Congress party chief Sonia Gandhi warned Pakistan against aiding

terrorists, saying those supporting terror elements should not mistake India’s patience as its weakness.

Addressing the Congress Convention here, Sonia Gandhi said India will give those supporting terror a befitting reply. ‘’We have resolved to fight terrorism till the end, those supporting terror elements from across the border will be given a befitting reply,” Sonia added. She said Mumbai and Assam attacks had been a painful reminder of the problem the country was facing.

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What We Found in Gaza

February 9, 2009

Published on Sunday, February 8, 2009 by CommonDreams.org

Strong Indications of Violations of the Laws of War, U.S. Law, and War Crimes Found in the Gaza Strip

NLG Delegation

GAZA CITY – We are a delegation of 8 American lawyers, members of the National Lawyers Guild in the United States, who have come here to the Gaza Strip to assess the effects of the recent attacks on the people, and to determine what, if any, violations of international law occurred and whether U.S. domestic law has been violated as a consequence. We have spent the last five days interviewing communities particularly impacted by the recent Israeli offensive, including medical personnel, humanitarian aid workers and United Nations representatives. In particular, the delegation examined three issues: 1) targeting of civilians and civilian infrastructure; 2) illegal use of weapons and 3) blocking of medical and humanitarian assistance to civilians.

Targeting of Civilians and Civilian Infrastructure

Much of the debate surrounding Israel’s aerial and ground offensive against Gaza has centered on whether or not Israel observed principles of proportionality and distinction. The debate suggests that Israel targeted Hamas i.e., its military installations, its leaders, and its militants, and in the process of its discrete military exercise it inadvertently killed Palestinian civilians. While we have found evidence that Palestinian civilians were victims of excessive force and collateral damage, we have also found troubling instances of Palestinian civilians being targets themselves.

The delegation recorded numerous accounts of Israeli soldiers shooting civilians, including women, children, and the elderly, in the head, chest, and stomach. Another common narrative described Israeli forces rounding civilians into a single location i.e., homes, schools which Israeli tanks or warplanes then shelled. Israeli forces continued to shoot at civilians fleeing the targeted structures.

We spoke to Khaled Abed Rabbo, who witnessed an Israeli soldier execute his 2-year-old and 7-year-old daughters, and critically injure a third daughter, Samar, 4-years old, on a sunny afternoon outside his home. Two other Israeli soldiers were standing nearby eating chips and chocolates at the time on January 7, 2009. Abed Rabbo recounts standing in front of the Israeli soldiers with his mother, wife and daughters for 5 – 7 minutes before one of the soldiers opened fire on his family.

We spoke to Ibtisam al-Sammouni, 31, and a resident of Zaytoun neighborhood in Gaza City. On January 4th, the Israeli army forced approximately 110 of Zaytoun’s residents into Ibtisam’s home. At approximately 7 am on January 5th, the Israeli military launched two tank shells at the house without warning killing two of Ibtisam’s children: Rizka, 14 and Faris, 12. When the survivors attempted to flee Israeli forces shot at them. Her son Abdullah, 7, was injured in the shelling and remained in the home among his deceased siblings for four days before Israeli forces permitted medical personnel into Zaytoun to rescue them. After medical personnel removed the injured persons, an Israeli war plane destroyed the house and it crumbled over the lifeless bodies. The dead remained beneath the rubble for 17 days before the Israeli Army permitted medical personnel to remove their bodies for burial.

We spoke to the family of Rouhiya al-Najjar, 47, who lived in Khoza’a, Khan Younis. Israeli forces ordered her neighborhoods residents to march to the city center. Rouhiya led 20 women out of her home and into the alley. They all carried white scarves. Upon entering the alley, an Israeli sniper shot Rouhiya in her left temple killing her instantly. Israeli forces prevented medical personnel from reaching her body for twelve hours. These are only some of the accounts that we’ve collected.

Israeli forces also destroyed numerous buildings throughout the Gaza Strip during the recent incursion. Guild delegates viewed the remains of hundreds of demolished homes and businesses – in addition to the remains of the American School in Gaza, damaged medical centers, and the charred innards of UNRWA warehouses. While in situations of armed conflict, collateral damage and mistakes can occur, the circumstances surrounding the cases that the delegation investigated indicate deliberate targeting rather than collateral damage or mistake. Specifically:

The American School at Gaza, which was hit with two F-16 missiles on January 3, 2009, killing the watch guard on duty. According to Ribhi Salem, the school’s director, the Israelis gave no warnings. Mr. Salem stated that the school had come to an agreement with resistance groups not to use school grounds and there had never been resistance activity on the property.

United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA)

John Ging, the Director of Gaza Operations for UNRWA reported that Israeli forces fired missiles at UNRWA schools in Gaza City, Jabalyia and Bet Lahiya. The United Nation compound in Gaza city was also hit with white phosphorous shells and missiles. Ging noted that al United Nations buildings and vehicles all fly UN flags, are marked in blue paint from the top, and that during hostilities the UN personnel remained in constant contact with Israeli authorities.

Misuse of Weapons

Our delegation has heard allegations of the use of DIME (Dense Inert Metal Explosive) weaponry, white phosphorus and other possible weapons whose use in civilian areas is prohibited. We have also heard of the use of prohibited weapons, such as flachettes. We have found our own evidence of the use of flachette shells, which we will combine with evidence collected by Amnesty International to push for further investigation. We have not found any conclusive evidence of the use of DIME, though we believe that this warrants further investigation and disclosure by the Israeli military.

Our findings overwhelmingly point to the use of conventional weapons in a prohibited manner, specifically, the use of battlefield weaponry in densely populated civilian areas. Customary international law forbids the use of weapons calculated to cause unnecessary suffering. We found evidence that Israel used white phosphorus in extensively throughout its three-week offensive in a manner that led to numerous deaths and injuries. For example, Sabah Abu Halima, 45, lived in Beit Lahiya with her husband, seven boys, and one girl. It was midday and she and her entire family was home. Within minutes she felt her home shaking and missiles fell through the rooftop. She fell to the ground upon impact. When she looked up she saw her children burning.

Preventing Access to Medical and Humanitarian Aid

Under customary international humanitarian law, the wounded are protected persons and must receive the medical care and attention required by their conditions, to the fullest extent practicable and with the least possible delay. Parties to a conflict are required to ensure the unhindered movement of medical personnel and ambulances to carry out their duties and of wounded persons to access medical care. Speaking to medical workers and the family of victims, NLG delegates documented serious violations of this provision. Among the stories documented include:

Zaytoun neighborhood, which came under attack and invasion by ground foces on January 3, 2009. The Palestinian Red Crescent received 145 calls from Zaytoun for help, but were denied entry by Israel. Bashar Ahmed Murad, Director of Emergency Medical Services for the Palestinian Red Crescent Society told us that “a lot of people could have been saved, but hey weren’t given medical care by the Israelis, nor did the Israeli army allow Palestinian medical services in.” When paramedics were finally allowed to enter on January 7, Israeli forces only gave them a 3-hour “lull” to work and prohibited ambulances into the area. Instead they forced paramedics park the ambulances 2 kilometers away and enter the area on foot. Murad told delegation members how they had to pile the wounded on donkey carts and have the medical workers pull the carts in order to help the most people possible in the short time they were given. After the 3 hours were over, the
Israeli army started shooting toward the ambulances. The Red Crescent was not able to reach that area again to evacuate the dead until January 17, 2009 when the Israeli army pulled out.

Al-Shurrab Family

On January 16th, Israeli forces shot at the jeep of Mohammed Shurrab, 64 years of age, and two of his sons, Kassab and Ibrahim, aged 28 and 18 as they were returning from their fields. Mohammad was shot in the left arm and Ibrahim was shot in the leg. The elder son, Kassab, sustained a fatal bullet wound to the chest, being shot multiple times after being ordered out of the car. Mohammad, bleeding from his wound, contacted the media, the International Committee of the Red Cross, and a number of NGOs via mobile phone in order to acquire medical assistance. Israeli forces denied medical relief agencies clearance to reach them until almost 24 hours after Mohammad, Ibrahim and Kassab had been shot. Earlier that morning, Ibrahim had succumbed to his wound and died. Mohammad Shurrab and his sons were shot during a so-called “lull” in Israeli ground operations, which Israeli forces had agreed to in order to allow humanitarian relief to enter and be
distributed in the Gaza Strip. As such NLG delegates fail to see how this denial of medical access to the wounded Shurrab family could have been absolutely necessary and not simply arbitrary.

International humanitarian law also prohibits attacks on medical personnel, medical units and medical transports exclusively assigned to carry out medical functions. Delegate members saw ambulances seriously damaged and destroyed, some apparenly deliberately crushed by Israeli tanks. The Palestinian Red Crescent Society and the Palestinian Ministry of Health informed delegates that 15 Palestinian medics were killed and 21 injured in the course of Israel’s assualt.

Conclusions

This delegation is seriously concerned by our initial findings. We have found strong indications of violations of the laws of war and possible war crimes committed by Israel in the Gaza Strip. We are particularly concerned that most of the weapons that were found used in the December 27 assualt on Gaza are US-made and supplied. We believe that Israel’s use of these weapons may constitute a violation of US law, and particularly the Foreign Assistance Act and the US Arms Export Control Act.

A report of our initial findings will be compiled and submitted to, among others, members of the United States Congress. We intend to push for an investigation by the United States government into possible violations by Israel of US law. We also hope to contribute our finding and efforts to other efforts by local and international lawyers to push for accountability against those found responsible for the egregious crimes that we have documented.
Members of the Legal Delegation

Huwaida Arraf (New York, Washington DC)
huwaida.arraf@gmail.com
Palestine: 0599-130-426
USA: 1-202-294-8813

Noura Erekat (Washington DC)
noo194@yahoo.com
Palestine:
USA: 1-510-847-4239

James Marc Leas (Vermont)
jolly39@gmail.com
Palestine:
USA: 1-802 864-1575 and 1-802 734-8811(cell)

Linda Mansour (Ohio)
Lindamansour@aol.com
Palestine:
USA: 1-419-535-7100 and 1-419-283-8281 (cell)

Rose Mishaan (California)
roseindigo7@gmail.com
Palestine:
USA: 1-917-803-2201

Thomas Nelson (Oregon)
nelson@thnelson.com
Palestine:
USA: 1-503-709-6397

Radhika Sainath (California)
radhika.sainath@gmail.com
Palestine:
USA: 1-917-669-6903

Reem Salahi (California)
reemos@gmail.com
Palestine:
USA: 1-510-225-8880

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Why Charles Darwin matters

February 8, 2009

Big enough to undermine the idea of creation but simple enough to be stated in a sentence, the theory of natural selection is a masterpiece, writes Richard Dawkins

Charles Darwin

Charles Darwin had a big idea, arguably the most powerful idea ever. And like all the best ideas it is beguilingly simple. In fact, it is so staggeringly elementary, so blindingly obvious that although others before him tinkered nearby, nobody thought to look for it in the right place.

Darwin had plenty of other good ideas – for example his ingenious and largely correct theory of how coral reefs form – but it is his big idea of natural selection, published in On the Origin of Species, that gave biology its guiding principle, a governing law that helps the rest make sense. Understanding its cold, beautiful logic is a must.

Natural selection’s explanatory power is not just about life on this planet: it is the only theory so far suggested that could, even in principle, explain life on any planet. If life exists elsewhere in the universe – and my tentative bet is that it does – some version of evolution by natural selection will almost certainly turn out to underlie its existence. Darwin’s theory works equally well no matter how strange and alien and weird that extraterrestrial life may be – and my tentative bet is that it will be weird beyond imagining.

Explanation ratio

But what makes natural selection so special? A powerful idea assumes little to explain much. It does lots of explanatory “heavy lifting”, while expending little in the way of assumptions or postulations. It gives you plenty of bangs for your explanatory buck. Its Explanation Ratio – what it explains, divided by what it needs to assume in order to do the explaining – is large.

If any reader knows of an idea that has a larger explanation ratio than Darwin’s, let’s hear it. Darwin’s big idea explains all of life and its consequences, and that means everything that possesses more than minimal complexity. That’s the numerator of the explanation ratio, and it is huge.

Yet the denominator in the explanatory equation is spectacularly small and simple: natural selection, the non-random survival of genes in gene pools (to put it in neo-Darwinian terms rather than Darwin’s own).

You can pare Darwin’s big idea down to a single sentence (again, this is a modern way of putting it, not quite Darwin’s): “Given sufficient time, the non-random survival of hereditary entities (which occasionally miscopy) will generate complexity, diversity, beauty, and an illusion of design so persuasive that it is almost impossible to distinguish from deliberate intelligent design.” I have put “which occasionally miscopy” in brackets because mistakes are inevitable in any copying process. We don’t need to add mutation to our assumptions. Mutational “bucks” are provided free. “Given sufficient time” is not a problem either – except for human minds struggling to take on board the terrifying magnitude of geological time.

A certain kind of mind

It is mainly its power to simulate the illusion of design that makes Darwin’s big idea seem threatening to a certain kind of mind. The same power constitutes the most formidable barrier to understanding it. People are naturally incredulous that anything so simple could explain so much. To a naive observer of the wondrous complexity of life, it just must have been intelligently designed.

But intelligent design (ID) is the polar opposite of a powerful theory: its explanation ratio is pathetic. The numerator is the same as Darwin’s: everything we know about life and its prodigious complexity. But the denominator, far from Darwin’s pristine and minimalist simplicity, is at least as big as the numerator itself: an unexplained intelligence big enough to be capable of designing all the complexity we are trying to explain in the first place!

Here may lie the answer to a nagging puzzle in the history of ideas. After Newton’s brilliant synthesis of physics, why did it take nearly 200 years for Darwin to arrive on the scene? Newton’s achievement seems so much harder! Maybe the answer is that Darwin’s eventual solution to the riddle of life is so apparently facile.

Claims to priority were made on behalf of others, and by Patrick Matthew in the appendix to his work On Naval Timber, as was punctiliously acknowledged by Darwin in later editions of the Origin. However, although Matthew understood the principle of natural selection, it is not clear that he understood its power. Unlike Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace, who hit on natural selection independently, prompting Darwin to publish his theory, Matthew seems to have seen selection as a purely negative, weeding-out force, not the driving force of all life. Indeed, he thought natural selection so obvious as to need no positive discovery at all.

Garbled versions

Although Darwin’s theory can be applied to much beyond the evolution of organic life, I want to counsel against a different sense of Universal Darwinism. This is the uncritical dragging of some garbled version of natural selection into every available field of human discourse, whether it is appropriate or not.

Maybe the “fittest” firms survive in the marketplace of commerce, or the fittest theories survive in the scientific marketplace, but we should at very least be cautious before we get carried away. And of course there was Social Darwinism, culminating in the obscenity of Hitlerism.

Less obnoxious but still intellectually unhelpful is the loose and uncritical way in which amateur biologists apply selection at inappropriate levels in the hierarchy of life. “Survival of the fittest species, extinction of poorly adapted species” sounds superficially like natural selection, but the apparent resemblance is positively misleading. As Darwin himself was at pains to point out, natural selection is all about differential survival within species, not between them.

I’ll end on a subtler legacy of Darwin’s big idea. Darwin raises our consciousness to the sinewy power of science to explain the large and complex in terms of the small and simple. In biology we were fooled for centuries into thinking that extravagant complexity in nature needs an extravagantly complex explanation. Darwin triumphantly dispelled that delusion.

There remain deep questions, in physics and cosmology, that await their Darwin. Why are the laws of physics the way they are? Why are there laws at all? Why is there a universe at all? Once again, the lure of “design” is tempting. But we have the cautionary tale of Darwin before us. We’ve been through all that before. Darwin emboldens us – difficult as it is – to seek genuine explanations: explanations that explain more than they postulate.

Richard Dawkin FRS is the Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford. His latest book is The God Delusion

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Top US lawyer warns of deaths at Guantánamo

February 8, 2009
Binyam Mohamed, a UK resident held in Guantánamo Bay.

Binyam Mohamed, a UK resident held in Guantánamo Bay. Photograph: PA

Lieutenant-Colonel Yvonne Bradley, an American military lawyer, will step through the grand entrance of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in London tomorrow and demand the release of her client – a British resident who claims he was repeatedly tortured at the behest of US intelligence officials – from Guantánamo Bay. Bradley will also request the disclosure of 42 secret documents that allegedly chronicle not only how Binyam Mohamed was tortured, but may also corroborate claims that Britain was complicit in his treatment.

But first, Bradley, a US military attorney for 20 years, will reveal that Mohamed, 31, is dying in his Guantánamo cell and that conditions inside the Cuban prison camp have deteriorated badly since Barack Obama took office. Fifty of its 260 detainees are on hunger strike and, say witnesses, are being strapped to chairs and force-fed, with those who resist being beaten. At least 20 are described as being so unhealthy they are on a “critical list”, according to Bradley.

Mohamed, who is suffering dramatic weight loss after a month-long hunger strike, has told Bradley, 45, that he is “very scared” of being attacked by guards, after witnessing a savage beating for a detainee who refused to be strapped down and have a feeding tube forced into his mouth. It is the first account Bradley has personally received of a detainee being physically assaulted in Guantánamo.

Bradley recently met Mohamed in Camp Delta’s sparse visiting room and was shaken by his account of the state of affairs inside the notorious prison.

She said: “At least 50 people are on hunger strike, with 20 on the critical list, according to Binyam. The JTF [the Joint Task Force running Guantánamo] are not commenting because they do not want the public to know what is going on.

“Binyam has witnessed people being forcibly extracted from their cell. Swat teams in police gear come in and take the person out; if they resist, they are force-fed and then beaten. Binyam has seen this and has not witnessed this before. Guantánamo Bay is in the grip of a mass hunger strike and the numbers are growing; things are worsening.

“It is so bad that there are not enough chairs to strap them down and force-feed them for a two- or three-hour period to digest food through a feeding tube. Because there are not enough chairs the guards are having to force-feed them in shifts. After Binyam saw a nearby inmate being beaten it scared him and he decided he was not going to resist. He thought, ‘I don’t want to be beat, injured or killed.’ Given his health situation, one good blow could be fatal,” said Bradley.

“Binyam is continuing to lose weight and he is going to get worse. He has been told he is about to be released, but psychologically and physically he is declining.”

It is conceivable that Mohamed himself may shortly return to London, heralding yet another political embarrassment for Foreign Secretary David Miliband, who already faces a tumultuous week over claims that he was keen to suppress evidence of torture.

On Tuesday, the unprecedented dispute between Miliband and the judiciary is set to reignite when High Court judges Lord Justice Thomas and Mr Justice Lloyd Jones decide whether to reopen the case which Mohamed believes substantiates his torture claims.

Meanwhile, in San Francisco, a little-publicised court case into the treatment of Mohamed will open. American civil liberties lawyers are hoping to shine a light on the defence firm that allegedly carried out the practice of “rendition” on behalf of the CIA. Jeppesen Dataplan, a Boeing subsidiary, helped to arrange rendition flights for several terror suspects, including Mohamed, to nations where they claim they were tortured.

The case was originally dismissed after the Bush administration asserted “state secrets privilege”, indicating that it would endanger national security – the same argument used by Miliband. However, Obama has repeatedly stressed his willingness to be less secretive than his predecessor and a similar decision would lead to claims that the current administration is bent on suppressing evidence of torture.

Closer to home, the Observer has found evidence suggesting a broader unwillingness by Britain to confront the US over its war on terror programme. The Attorney General says it is “actively considering” possible criminal wrongdoings against MI5 and the CIA, but sources claim the government’s senior lawyer has failed, after almost four months of looking into the issue, to request material from the US that may substantiate allegations of MI5 complicity in Mohamed’s torture.

Suspicion is also growing that some sections of the US intelligence community would prefer Binyam did die inside Guantánamo. Silenced forever, only the sparse language of his diary would be left to recount his torture claims and interviewees with an MI5 officer, known only as Witness B. Such a scenario would also deny Mohamed the chance to personally sue the US, and possibly British authorities, over his treatment.

But if Mohamed survives to come back to London, his experiences of the past six years promise a harrowing journey through the dark underbelly of the war on terror. For Miliband, the questions concerning Britain’s role may have only just begun.

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