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Hamas Is Not Going Away

February 7, 2009

Analysis by Mel Frykberg | Inter Press Service

RAMALLAH, Feb 6 (IPS) – Despite intensive efforts by Israel, the international community and a number of Arab leaders to weaken and destroy Hamas through economic, punitive and military action, the Islamist organisation continues to be a force to reckon with.

Hamas won free and fair democratic elections in January 2006. The U.S. pushed for these elections, which were monitored by international observers including ex-U.S. president Jimmy Carter, and Israel permitted them to be held.

Hamas has since then been dominant, though it took effective control in June 2007, more than a year after its election victory. The Gaza Strip, which the resistance group controls, took a serious battering during Israel’s 22-day military assault, codenamed Operation Cast Lead.

The coastal territory has also been economically crippled by nearly two years of an Israeli embargo which has hermetically sealed Gaza off from the rest of the world, preventing the import of all but a tiny flow of humanitarian aid and goods.

Israel purportedly carried out the military operation to stop Palestinian rockets from hitting Israeli cities and towns bordering the Gaza Strip.

However, rocket fire on Israel had virtually ceased in the five months of ceasefire between Israel and Hamas which preceded an Israeli cross-border military operation into Gaza on Nov. 4. This operation provoked a barrage of retaliatory missiles on Israel.

Prior to Operation Cast Lead, a delegation of British parliamentarians met with Hamas leaders in Gaza. The parliamentarians were told that Hamas would be prepared to accept Israel’s existence, within the internationally recognised borders of 1967, provided the Jewish state legitimised the rights of Palestinians in return.

Despite the immense scale of death and destruction wrought by Operation Cast Lead, which left over 1,300 Palestinians, mostly civilians dead, rockets continue to be fired at Israel in spite of disproportionate responses from the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF).

Following the recent ceasefire most of Hamas’s leadership emerged from underground bunkers unscathed. The digging of smuggling tunnels for everyday necessities as well as arms has resumed.

Furthermore, there are also growing signs that the Europeans, some Israelis and previous Arab opponents are resigned to factoring Hamas into any political equation to address a resolution of the conflict.

Last week after several days of intensive diplomatic pressure, the Israeli government managed to stymie a French initiative to weaken the Jewish state’s stance on Hamas.

Following a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Brussels, France tried to change a pre-written closing statement released by the ministers regarding the ceasefire between Hamas and Israel.

Paris wanted the statement to say that the EU would be prepared to hold talks with a future Palestinian unity government which included Hamas as long as it agreed to honour the principles of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

Additionally, the French delegation to Brussels proposed opening Israeli border crossings into Gaza immediately without any conditions. A previous agreement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA) in 2005 stipulated that the PA had to control the crossings.

However, following intervention by Israel, the Czech Republic – the current holder of the EU presidency – Germany, Italy and the Netherlands pushed the French initiative off the agenda.

Israel viewed the French move as an attempt to get the Quartet for Middle East peace – the UN, the U.S., Russia and the EU – to soften its conditions for international recognition of Hamas.

A senior Israeli official said that since the end of the Gaza operation, his country was concerned about a possible break in European support for the boycott of the Hamas government in Gaza.

U.S. President Barack Obama’s Mideast envoy, George Mitchell, met French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner in Paris recently.

During the meeting the Gaza ceasefire was discussed and Kouchner stressed the need for inter-Palestinian dialogue and for the border crossings into Gaza to be reopened.

Kouchner again suggested France was open to the idea of a unity government if Hamas softened its stance.

Meanwhile, Irish Foreign Minister Michael Martin told reporters in Damascus on Monday that some kind of engagement with Hamas may have to feature in future European Union policy.

Hamas’s erstwhile foe and bitter rival Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who controls the West Bank, also discussed the issue with French President Nicholas Sarkozy in Paris on Monday.

Abbas too called for a unity Palestinian government and said Hamas’s inclusion was imperative as long as it recognised his supreme authority.

On Monday Sarkozy also met Qatar’s Prime Minister, Sheik Hamad bin Jassem Al-Thani, whose Persian Gulf country has emerged as a regional mediator since helping to resolve a political crisis in Lebanon last year. Al-Thani insisted Hamas should not be sidelined from peace efforts.

“We must work for a government of national unity between the Palestinians. There should not be efforts to delete or distance one of the Palestinian parties present on the ground,” Al-Thani told reporters.

Israeli columnist and analyst Akiva Elder noted in the daily Haaretz that Israel’s continual denial of the reality of Hamas as a legitimate political entity was short-sighted.

For 20 years Israel has tried to destroy the movement using carrots and sticks alternately. The only difference between the ruling Kadima party’s leader and minister of foreign affairs, Tzipi Livni, and the more right-wing opposition Likud party leader Binyamin Netanyahu is the size of the clubs to be used, argued Eldar.

“Precisely because of the many children killed in Gaza, Cast Lead has been assured a place of honour in the ethos of the struggle of the Palestinian David, armed with primitive Qassams, and the Israeli Goliath, with his F-16s,” said Eldar.

“When they hear the proud declarations of Israel’s leaders, to the effect that deterrence has been restored, Hamas’s leaders certainly laugh themselves to death, and not just because of the rockets that continue to fall on the people of Ashkelon.

“The threat of a few more bombs on Gaza deters them like the death penalty deters a suicide bomber on the way to carry out an attack,” said Eldar.

Only a long-term ceasefire, it seems, accompanied by a real diplomatic context, can pull the rug of popular support out from under Hamas and restore it to its natural proportions.

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Self-Defense Against Peace

February 6, 2009

Israel’s Unjust War on Gaza

By Michael Mandel | Counterpunch, Feb 5, 2009

Did self-defence justify Israel’s war on Gaza?

Objections have been raised to this claim on grounds of a lack of both proportionality and necessity. To kill over 1000            Palestinians in 3 weeks, hundreds of them children, and wound thousands more, in order to deter a threat from rockets that did not kill or injure anybody in Israel for the six months the truce was declared by both sides, or even before Israel launched its attack on December 27, is so disproportionate as to be intolerable in any ethical system that holds Palestinian lives equal in value to Israeli lives. It is also so disproportionate as to defy belief that defence against these rockets was the real motive of the war. To ignore the many diplomatic avenues available to avoid even this threat, such as lifting the suffocating 18-month siege, suggests the same thing.

A more fundamental objection, however, is the self-evident legal and moral principle that an aggressor cannot rely upon self-defence to justify violence against resistance to its own aggression. You can find this principle in domestic law and in the judgments of the Nuremberg tribunals.

To quote one Nuremberg judge:

On of the most amazing phenomena of this case which does not lack in startling features is the manner in which the aggressive war conducted by Germany against Russia has been treated by the defense as if it were the other way around. …If it is assumed that some of the resistance units in Russia or members of the population did commit acts which were in themselves unlawful under the rules of war, it would still have to be shown that these acts were not in legitimate defense against wrongs perpetrated upon them by the invader. Under International Law, as in Domestic Law, there can be no reprisal against reprisal. The assassin who is being repulsed by his intended victim may not slay him and then, in turn, plead self defense. (Trial of Otto Ohlendorf and others, Military Tribunal II-A, April 8, 1948)

So who was the aggressor here?

There would have been no question as to who was the aggressor had this attack taken place before Israel’s withdrawal from the Gaza strip in 2005. At that point Israel had been committing a continuous aggression against Gaza for 38 years, in its illegal and violent occupation of it, along with the rest of the Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem, after its conquest in 1967.

By 2005, the occupation had been condemned as illegal by the highest organs with jurisdiction over international law, most notably the International Court of Justice in its 2004 opinion on the separation barrier. A central illegality of the occupation for the International Court lay in Israel’s settlements, which violate the law against colonization, and which are central to the occupation. The fifteen judges of the International Court were unanimously of the opinion that the settlements were illegal and the wall itself was held by a majority of 13-2 to be illegal, partly because it was there to defend the settlements, and not Israel itself, and thus could not qualify as self-defence.

The rocket attacks from Gaza started in 2001 and took their first Israeli victim in 2004. Since then, there had been 14 Israeli victims prior to the current war. Tragic, indeed, but obviously paling in comparison to the 1700 Palestinians killed in Gaza during the same period. One death is indeed a tragedy, but many deaths are not just “a statistic”, as Stalin had it; they are the tragedy multiplied many times over. Given Israel’s illegal, aggressive and violent occupation, prior to the withdrawal, Gaza rockets could only be regarded as necessary and proportionate self-defence, or as reprisals against Israel’s aggression.

Did Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza in 2005 change the situation?

It has been forcefully argued that the 18-month siege of Gaza, a major reason for Hamas’ refusal to extend the truce, was itself an act of aggression, giving rise to a right of self-defence.

But even more important, though usually ignored, is Israel’s continued illegal and aggressive occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem after the withdrawal from Gaza in 2005. Indeed, the withdrawal from Gaza was intended to strengthen the hold on the other territories and was accompanied by a greater increase in the number of settlers there than those removed from Gaza.

The occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem figured equally with Gaza in the condemnations of the World Court and the Security Council. Furthermore, in the Oslo Accords, Israel and the Palestinians agreed that “The two sides view the West Bank and the Gaza Strip as a single territorial unit, the integrity and status of which will be preserved during the interim period.” Indeed, when Hamas won the elections in 2006, elections declared impeccably fair and civil by all international observers, it won them for the whole of the Palestinian Authority, including the West Bank (it was not allowed by Israel to campaign in East Jerusalem). Many Hamas West Bank legislators remain in Israeli jails.

And the basic fact is that the Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza are one people, however separated they are by walls and fences and check-points. Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from one part of that people’s land cannot turn that people into aggressors when they resist the illegal occupation of the rest.

So self-defense cannot justify this attack, or the siege that preceded it. What can? That Hamas is a “terrorist organization”? But terrorism is about deliberately killing civilians for illegal political ends, and in that enterprise, Israel has topped Hamas by many multiples. That Hamas does not recognize Israel’s “right to exist”? But Hamas has offered many times to make a long-term truce with Israel on the basis of the legal international borders, something it is clearly entitled to insist upon. Israel says that’s not good enough, that Hamas first has to recognize Israel’s legitimacy, in other words, it has to concede the legitimacy of the Jewish state and all it has meant to the Palestinians. In other words, as one Israeli journalist ironized, Israel is insisting that Hamas embrace Zionism as a condition of even talking peace with it.

These are not justifications for violence on this or any scale. Indeed, they point to the most plausible reason Israel is fighting Hamas (and the PLO before it): self-defence, if you will, not against rockets and mortars, but against having to make peace with the Palestinians on the basis of the pre-1967 borders as required by international law.

Michael Mandel is Professor of Law at Osgoode Hall Law School of York University in Toronto, where he teaches the Law of War. He is the author of How America Gets Away with Murder.

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Sri Lanka: Disregard for Civilian Safety Appalling

February 6, 2009
Tamil Tigers Also Preventing Civilians From Fleeing Fighting

Human Rights Watch, February 3, 2009

2009_SriLanka_civilians.jpg

Medical staff at a hospital in Vavuniya rush to treat a child injured during the fighting. January 22, 2009.

© 2009 Reuters
Related Materials:
Trapped and Mistreated
Besieged, Displaced, and Detained

Laws-of-war violations by one side never justify violations by the other. The government and the LTTE appear to be holding a perverse contest to determine who can show the least concern for civilian protection.

Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch.

(New York) – A Sri Lankan government statement that it is not responsible for the safety of civilians who remain in areas controlled by the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) indicates an appalling disregard for the well-being of the civilian population and is contrary to international law, Human Rights Watch said today. There are continuing reports of high civilian casualties in the fighting between government forces and the LTTE in the Mullaittivu district of the northern Vanni area.

A Ministry of Defense statement issued on February 2, 2009, states: “While the Security Forces accept all responsibility to ensure the safety and protection of civilians in the Safety Zones, they are unable to give such an assurance to those who remain outside these zones. Therefore, the government, with full responsibility, urges all civilians to come to the Safety Zones; and also states that as civilians who do not heed this call will be among LTTE cadres, the Security Forces will not be able to accept responsibility for their safety.”

“The Sri Lankan government knows full well that the civilians caught up in the current fighting are dangerously trapped,” said Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “The government shows callous indifference by saying civilians should not expect the government to consider their safety and security.”

Under the laws of war applicable to the fighting in Sri Lanka, parties to a conflict must take all feasible precautions during military operations to minimize loss of civilian life. Disregarding the distinction between civilians and combatants, as the government statement suggests, violates a fundamental principle of the laws of war. Combatants who order or conduct deliberate or indiscriminate attacks against civilians are responsible for war crimes.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and local health workers have expressed considerable concern over civilian deaths and injuries from artillery shelling. The ICRC reported that over the past weekend, the hospital in LTTE-controlled Puthukkudiyiruppu, known as PTK, was hit three times by artillery during a 24-hour period, causing at least nine deaths and numerous injuries. The hospital was struck a fourth time on February 2, killing three people and wounding 10, resulting in the hospital’s partial evacuation.

Under the laws of war, hospitals are strictly protected from attack unless they are being used for military purposes and ample warning is provided. Because the Sri Lankan government has denied independent journalists and human rights monitors access to the area, Human Rights Watch has not been able to conduct its own field investigations into the conduct of hostilities by government forces and the LTTE.

Human Rights Watch also reiterated its deep concerns that the LTTE was placing civilians at grave risk by preventing them from leaving conflict zones. The political leader of the LTTE, B. Nadesan, recently told the media: “Of course our people can move wherever they want.” However Nadesan’s assertion was not borne out by reports from sources on the ground, Human Rights Watch said. Civilians in LTTE-controlled areas have consistently been prevented from fleeing the battle zone to reach safer areas under government control.

The laws of war require a party to an armed conflict to remove civilians from areas where they are deploying their military forces. Combatants who deliberately use civilians as “human shields” to deter attacks on their forces are responsible for war crimes (http://www.hrw.org/en/reports/2008/12/15/trapped-and-mistreated-0 ).

Human Rights Watch again called on the Sri Lankan government to stop detaining civilians who manage to flee LTTE-controlled areas, including entire families, in government camps, and to permit them to move in with relatives and host families. Both sides should permit impartial humanitarian agencies to have full access to the population at risk (http://www.hrw.org/en/reports/2008/12/22/besieged-displaced-and-detained ).

“Laws-of-war violations by one side never justify violations by the other,” said Adams.  “The government and the LTTE appear to be holding a perverse contest to determine who can show the least concern for civilian protection.”

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Saudi Monstrosity and International Silence

February 5, 2009

By Huda Jawad| Informatioin Clearing House, Feb 4, 2009

For the past several weeks, dozens of family members have been reaching out to the Iraqi government in a fragile gesture meant to save the lives of their sons. In January 2009, Saudi courts convicted 25 young Iraqi men of trespassing into Saudi Arabia. Their punishment: beheading. Among the Iraqi prisoners are at least several men suffering from tuberculosis, all of whom are being denied medical attention by the Saudi judiciary.

Relatives of the Iraqi prisoners in Saudi prisons have been holding protests in the southern province of Al-Muthana, withstanding the bitter cold and wind. The response by the Iraqi officials has been ridiculously indifferent, with the buck being passed between the bureaucracies. Human rights officials have announced today that the case should be pursued by National Security Advisor Mowaffak al-Rubaie. However, Rubaie has refused to take any proactive action in this regard. In September 2008, Rubaie had met with the Saudi King and authorized the transfer of 400 Saudi terrorists out of Iraq and back to Saudi Arabia. Any mention of the Iraqi death-row prisoners in Saudi Arabia was not present.

Iraqi politicians are far too engulfed in the elections to even grant a second glance to the young men about to lose their lives for petty crimes. However, these same power holders have no grievance with releasing Saudi terrorists and allowing them to live a normal life, long after they had wrecked that of the Iraqi children. Saudi Arabia has become the shame of the Muslim and Arab world; to think some claim these barbarians represent us is an insult to humanity and Islam.

Saudi Arabia is a state party to the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. Secrecy and the lack of internationally recognized standards of due process have long been distinctive features of the Saudi justice system. None of the Iraqi men had access to any form of legal representation, nor were they offered such an option. This is a recurring theme within the Saudi legal system, and it strips away the most basic of rights for prisoners, both foreign and domestic.

The treatment of detained foreign nationals both in the case of the Iraqi men and other multinationals gives insight into the closed world and fundamental flaws of the Saudi judicial system, including prolonged incommunicado detention, the absence of protection against torture, and other forms of mistreatment during interrogation. In many cases involving foreigners, foreign governments rarely if ever publicly raise fair-trial concerns or engage in other vigorous public advocacy on behalf of their nationals, prior to or even after their executions.

If this was any other nation, there would outrage, but since it is Saudi Arabia, the world has become complacent. The kingdom spends a fortune on US public relations firms to cover up human rights violations. In the year 2000, Amnesty International reported that Saudi Arabia has spent more than one million dollars on public relations firms to ensure secrecy about abuses of human rights. An oil-dependent international community sits back in silence as the suffering continues inside the kingdom.

The death penalty is used in Saudi Arabia more than in any other country, mainly because many crimes are punishable by execution. Defendants are typically poor foreign migrant workers from developing countries in Africa and Asia, often have no defense lawyer, and are usually unable to follow court proceedings in Arabic. For countless prisoners, they had no knowledge of their sentence until the actual day of their execution.

We must act now to save the Iraqi prisoners in Saudi custody. These Iraqi nationals were beaten until they confessed, and all claim that they are innocent. Prisoners in Saudi Arabia can be put to death without a scheduled date for execution being made known to them or their families. Subsequently, these men could be put to death any time.

Here is whom to contact regarding appeals in the cases of the Iraqi prisoners, while also expressing our outrage at the abuse of all prisoners:

Ambassador Adel A. Al-Jubeir
Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia
601 New Hampshire Ave. NW
Washington DC 20037
Fax: 1 202 944 3113
Email: info@saudiembassy.netThis e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

His Majesty King Abdullah Bin Abdul Aziz Al- Saud
The Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques
Office of His Majesty the King
Royal Court
Riyadh
KINGDOM OF SAUDI ARABIA
Fax (via Ministry of the Interior): 011 966 1 403 1185 (please keep trying)
Salutation: Your Majesty

Turki bin Khaled Al-Sudairy
President
Human Rights Commission
P.O. Box 58889
King Fahad Road, Building No. 373
Riyadh 11515
KINGDOM OF SAUDI ARABIA
Fax: 011 966 1 4612061

Huda Jawad is a writer for http://islamicinsights.com/, a weekly publication in North America.

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Secrets behind torture victim’s detention

February 5, 2009
MICHAEL SETTLE, UK Political Editor | The Herald, Feb 5, 2009

Binyam Mohamed claims to be a humble cleaner from London. The US military has a different view, believing him to be a dangerous terrorist.

The 31-year-old terror suspect, who now finds himself at the centre of an extraordinary row between British judges and the US authorities, has been incarcerated in the controversial camp at Guantanamo Bay since September 2004.

He was born in Ethiopia and came to Britain as a teenager in 1994, seeking asylum. He was given leave to remain and studied and worked as a janitor in London.

However, in 2002, he was arrested in Pakistan and then allegedly rendered to Morocco.

His lawyers claim that during his 18 months in north Africa he was tortured, including having a razor blade held to his penis.

He is said to have made confessions at Bagram, in Afghanistan, between May and September 2004, and at Guantanamo Bay before November that year.

He was originally charged with involvement in a “dirty bomb” plot, but that was withdrawn and the US authorities said new charges might be brought.

But no fresh indictment was filed, and on January 22 US President Barack Obama issued an executive order that no new charges should be sworn, pending a review of the position of all those detained at Guantanamo Bay.

Mohamed insists evidence against him was based on confessions extracted by torture and ill treatment – claims denied by the US authorities. Now there is speculation that he could soon be released.

He wrote to his lawyer Clive Stafford Smith recently that “several reliable sources” had told him his release to Britain had been approved.

He has been on hunger strike to protest against his continued imprisonment. “I should have been home a long time ago,” the Ethiopian said in the letter dated December 29.

Earlier in August, two High Court judges ruled MI5 had participated in his unlawful interrogation and said the UK had a duty to disclose what it knew about his treatment.

The information, described as a “short summary” of Mohamed’s treatment by the US, was supplied to the court on the condition that it not be released publicly. Yesterday’s ruling was the result of an appeal by the media against the documents being withheld.

While the same judges ruled the dossier provided by the US authorities should remain secret, they bitterly criticised the Americans over the way they had sought to prevent the information from being released, particularly as it was “relevant to allegations of torture and cruel, inhumane, or degrading treatment – politically embarrassing though it might be”.

In the end, they decided to suppress the material because David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, played the national security card, telling them he believed there to be a “real risk” the potential loss of intelligence co-operation would seriously increase the threat from terror faced by the UK.

The Foreign Office backed up the line, saying: “Intelligence relationships, especially with the United States, are vital to Britain’s national security. They are based on an assumption of trust.”

This is not the first time America has sought to restrict a UK court’s access to information.

In 2007, the US military was criticised for failing to provide an inquest with evidence about the death of British soldier Matty Hull in a friendly fire incident involving American jets in Iraq.

There have also been previous cases where the UK Government has cited national security in making major legal decisions.

In 2006, a long-running Serious Fraud Office investigation into a multi-billion pound BAE Systems arms deal with Saudi Arabia was controversially halted.

Having applauded Barack Obama for signing an order to close Guantanamo Bay, human rights campaigners and opposition MPs now fear that the heavy-handed non-disclosure policy that existed under the Bush administration is simply continuing blithely under its successor.

Pressure will undoubtedly grow today for Mr Miliband to answer MPs’ questions at the Commons despatch box; it will be interesting to see if he will comply.

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Editorials: Gaza: Welcome initiative by ICC

February 3, 2009

Arab News, Feb 3, 2009

The International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague is wisely reconsidering its decision last month that it was unable to mount a war crimes prosecution over Israeli savagery in Gaza because it did not have jurisdiction. Israel along with the United States (as well as China, Russia and India) does not recognize the ICC. Therefore it was initially argued that procedurally a case could not be brought against named Israeli soldiers and politicians. Yesterday the ICC chief prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo revealed that he was investigating the possibility that because the “alleged” war crimes were committed on Palestinian territory and the Palestinian Authority had requested a prosecution, it was after all possible to bring a case. The UN is separately investigating the shelling of its Gaza schools. This change of heart may have come about because of a belated recognition of international outrage at the shelling of the Gaza ghetto, causing thousands of deaths and injuries among a totally trapped civilian population. There is also clear evidence that the Israelis used phosphorus munitions in dense built-up areas, which is an offense under the Geneva Conventions.

The ICC is still a fledgling international court. If it embarks on a prosecution of Israeli war criminals, it can expect to be heading on a collision course, almost certainly with Washington and very probably with a number of European capitals, whose governments busily condemned the barbarous onslaught but, as with the 2007 Israeli invasion of southern Lebanon, did precious little to try and stop it.

The reason why the ICC must bring a case against Israel is that it is time the court was seen to be prepared to prosecute any one from any country, without fear or favor. So far the ICC has acted over allegations involving developing countries such as Chad and Senegal, Sierra Leone and Rwanda. It has not challenged a modern state like Israel. Most certainly it should. It cannot afford to have the watching world believe that there is one law for poor, unsophisticated countries and another for advanced states enjoying US backing and protection. A war crime is just as heinous when committed by a modern, well-equipped and allegedly disciplined army as it is by fanatics with machetes in the African jungle. Israel’s wrongdoing is compounded in that the butchery of helpless Palestinians was clearly an obnoxious political ploy to try and save the Kadima-led Israeli coalition from defeat at the next week’s general election.

If the ICC does accept the Palestinian complaint and the Israelis refuse to cooperate, as has the Sudanese government over war crimes allegations in Darfur, it does not mean that the case falls. With Sudan the matter was referred to the UN Security Council, who though stopping short of accusing Sudan of genocide, as Washington had wished, condemned the government of President Omar Bashir. To the African Union’s concern, the ICC is now considering if the first international arrest warrant should be issued for a sitting head of state. The court should be no less robust in its early investigation of Israel’s abhorrent behavior in Gaza. War crimes do not cease to be war crimes just because they were committed by the victims of the Holocaust or their descendants.

Bad news from neighborhood

THE news that Israel has invested close to NIS 200 million in Mevasseret Adumim, a new Jewish neighborhood east of Jerusalem where 3,500 housing units are slated to be built, reveals the real intentions of the outgoing government, said the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.

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Under the Black Flag: Israeli War Crimes

February 3, 2009

By URI AVNERY | Counterpunch, Feb 2, 2009

A Spanish judge has instituted a judicial inquiry against seven Israeli political and military personalities on suspicion of war crimes and crimes against humanity. The case: the 2002 dropping of a one ton bomb on the home of Hamas leader Salah Shehade. Apart from the intended victim, 14 people, most of them children, were killed.

For those who have forgotten: the then commander of the Israeli Air Force, Dan Halutz, was asked at the time what he feels when he drops a bomb on a residential building. His unforgettable answer: “A slight bump to the wing.” When we in Gush Shalom accused him of a war crime, he demanded that we be put on trial for high treason. He was joined by the Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, who accused us of wanting to “turn over Israeli army officers to the enemy”. The Attorney General notified us officially that he did not intend to open an investigation against those responsible for the bombing.

I should be happy, therefore, that at long last somebody is ready to put that action to a judicial test (even if he seems to have been thwarted by political pressure.) But I am sorry that this has happened in Spain, not in Israel.

* * *

ISRAELI TV VIEWERS have lately been exposed to a bizarre sight: army officers appearing with their faces hidden, as usual for criminals when the court prohibits their identification. Pedophiles, for example, or attackers of old women.

On the orders of the military censors, this applies to all officers, from battalion commanders down, who have been involved in the Gaza war. Since the faces of brigade commanders and above are generally known, the order does not apply to them.

Immediately after the cease-fire, the Minister of Defense, Ehud Barak, promoted a special law that would give unlimited backing by the state to all officers and soldiers who took part in the Gaza war and who might be accused abroad of war crimes. This seems to confirm the Hebrew adage: “On the head of the thief, the hat is burning”.

* * *

I DO NOT object to trials abroad. The main thing is that war criminals, like pirates, should be brought to justice. It is not so important where they are caught. (This rule was applied by the State of Israel when it abducted Adolf Eichmann in Argentina and hanged him in Israel for heinous crimes committed outside the territory of Israel and, indeed, before the state even existed.)

But as an Israeli patriot, I would prefer suspected Israeli war criminals to be put on trial in Israel. That is necessary for the country, for all decent officers and soldiers of the Israeli army, for the education of future generations of citizens and soldiers.

There is no need to rely on international law alone. There are Israeli laws against war crimes. Enough to mention the immortal phrase coined by Justice Binyamin Halevy, serving as a military judge, in the trial of the border policemen who were responsible for the 1956 massacre in Kafr Kassem, when dozens of children, women and men were mown down for violating a curfew which they did not even know about.

The judge announced that even in wartime, there are orders over which flies “the black flag of illegality”. These are orders which are “manifestly” illegal – that is to say, orders which every normal person can tell are illegal, without having to consult a lawyer.

War criminals dishonor the army whose uniform they wear – whether they are generals or common soldiers. As a combat soldier on the day the Israeli Defense Army was officially created, I am ashamed of them and demand that they be cast out and be put on trial in Israel.

My list of suspects includes politicians, soldiers, rabbis and lawyers.

* * *

THERE IS not the slightest doubt that in the Gaza war, crimes were committed. The question is to what extent and by whom.

Example: the soldiers call on the residents of a house to leave it. A woman and her four children come out, waving white handkerchiefs. It is absolutely clear that they are not armed fighters. A soldier in a near-by tank stands up, points his rifle and shoots them dead at short range. According to testimonies that seem to be beyond doubt, this happened more than once.

Another example: the shelling of the United Nations school full of refugees, from which there was no shooting – as admitted by the army, after the original pretexts were disproved.

These are ”simple” cases. But the spectrum of cases is far wider. A serious judicial investigation has to start right from the top: the politicians and senior officers who decided on the war and confirmed its plans must be investigated about their decisions. In Nuremberg it was laid down that the starting of a war of aggression is a crime.

An objective investigation has to find out whether the decision to start the war was justified, or if there existed another way of stopping the launching of rockets against Israeli territory. Without doubt, no country can or should tolerate the bombing of its towns and villages from beyond the border. But could this be prevented by talking with the Gaza authorities? Was our government’s decision to boycott Hamas, the winner of the democratic Palestinian elections, the real cause of this war? Did the imposition of the blockade on a million and a half Gaza Strip inhabitants contribute to the launching of the Qassams? In brief: were the alternatives considered before it was decided to start a deadly war?

The war plan included a massive attack on the civilian population of the Strip. The real aims of a war can be understood less from the official declarations of its initiators, than from their actions. If in this war some 1300 men, women and children were killed, the great majority of whom were not fighters; if about 5000 people were injured, most of them children; if some 2500 homes were partly or wholly destroyed; if the infrastructure of life was totally demolished – all this clearly could not have happened accidentally. It must have been a part of the war plan.

The things said during the war by politicians and officers make it clear that the plan had at least two aims, which might be considered war crimes: (1) To cause widespread killing and destruction, in order to “fix a price tag”. “to burn into their consciousness”, “to reinforce deterrence”, and most of all – to get the population to rise up against Hamas and overthrow their government. Clearly this affects mainly the civilian population. (2) To avoid casualties to our army at (literally) any price by destroying any building and killing any human being in the area into which our troops were about to move, including destroying homes over the heads of their inhabitants, preventing medical teams from reaching the victims, killing people indiscriminately. In certain cases, inhabitants were warned that they must flee, but this was mainly an alibi-action: there was nowhere to flee to, and often fire was opened on people trying to escape.

An independent court will have to decide whether such a war-plan is in accordance with national and international law, or whether it was ab initio a crime against humanity and a war-crime.

This was a war of a regular army with huge capabilities against a guerrilla force. In such a war, too, not everything is permissible. Arguments like “The Hamas terrorists were hiding within the civilian population” and “They used the population as human shields” may be effective as propaganda but are irrelevant: that is true for every guerrilla war. It must be taken into account when a decision to start such a war is being considered.

In a democratic state, the military takes its orders from the political establishment. Good. But that does not include “manifestly” illegal orders, over which the black flag of illegality is waving. Since the Nuremberg trials, there is no more room for the excuse that “I was only obeying orders”.

Therefore, the personal responsibility of all involved – from the Chief of Staff, the Front Commander and the Division Commander right down to the last soldier – must be examined. From the statements of soldiers one must deduce that many believed that their job was “to kill as many Arabs as possible”. Meaning: no distinction between fighters and non-fighters. That is a completely illegal order, whether given explicitly or by a wink and a nudge. The soldiers understood this to be “the spirit of the commander”.

Continued >>

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Living (and dying) in the age of barbarism

February 2, 2009

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William Bowles | uruknet.info, Jan 31, 2009

Israeli Soldiers Play ‘Sophie’s Choice’ With Palestinian Mothers
“…Out of all the devastation I have seen so far, there is one story in particular that I think the world needs to hear. I met a mother who was at home with her ten children when Israeli soldiers entered the house. The soldiers told her she had to choose five of her children to “give as a gift to Israel.” As she screamed in horror they repeated the demand and told her she could choose or they would choose for her. Then these soldiers murdered five of her children in front of her…” www.uruknet.de/?p=51196[1]

“Let us waste no time in sterile litanies and nauseating mimicry. [Let us] Leave this Europe where they are never done talking of Man, yet murder men everywhere they find them, at the corner of every one of their own streets, in all the corners of the globe. For centuries they have stifled almost the whole of humanity in the name of a so-called spiritual experience. Look at them today swaying between atomic and spiritual disintegration…” Franz Fanon ‘The Wretched of the Earth’

It surely cannot have escaped your attention that our much vaunted ‘democracies’ are in fact barbarian states masquerading as civilized. And if you haven’t noticed then it’s time you did not only because they do their ‘civilizing’ in your name but when they’ve done ‘civilizing’ the brown and poor people of our planet, it’ll be your turn next to get ‘civilized’.

The greed of the few would seem to be the underlying cause and of course greed needs power and to paraphrase, (private) power corrupts and total (private) power corrupts completely. Looked at historically, the crime against humanity committed by the ‘Chosen People’ in Gaza is but the tip of an iceberg but it is most definitely as brazen a piece of ‘civilizing’ as we have witnessed recently.

In turn, this brazen and murderous use of power reflects the complete separation between the rulers and the ruled. They claim to act in ‘our’ names but as long as they are accountable to no one, they can claim to represent anything they choose to.

What makes my blood run cold is the arrogance of these ‘masters of the universe’. Take for example the following extract from Turkish prime minister Erdogan’s ‘exchange’ that took place this week at the Davos conference:

Moderator: There was a heated debate here. This is a discussion that can last for hours. We are already out of time.

Erdogan: One minute.

Moderator: Mr. President, well, you know…

Erdodan: One minute, one minute! No! One minute.

Moderator: Ok, but I want you not to speak more than one minute.

Erdogan: Mr. Peres, you are older than me. Your voice is very loud. I know that you are speaking aloud because of the requirement of a sense of guilt. My voice will not be that loud. About murdering, you know killing very well. I am well aware how you murdered children on beaches. Two former prime ministers of your country had important sayings to me. You have former prime ministers who say When I entered Palestine over armed combat cars, I consider myself more and more pleased. I can give their names, maybe some of you wonder. Besides, I condemn those of you who applaud this persecution. Because applauding these killers who murdered those children, who massacred those people is, I believe, also another crime committed against humanity. Look, we cannot disregard a reality here. Here, I jotted down a lot of notes, but I dont have time to answer all of them. But, I will say you only two things:

Moderator: Excuse me Prime Minister, we can’t start the debate again.

Erdogan: Excuse me. First, excuse me, do NOT interrupt me! First, The Old Testament says in the 6th commandment: You shall not kill! But there is murder here. Second, this is also very interesting. Gilad Atzmon, a Jew himself, says: Israeli barbarity is far beyond even ordinary cruelty. Besides, Avi Shlaim, Professor of Oxford who performed his military duty in Israeli army, says in the Guardian the following:

Moderator: Prime Minister, Prime Minister. I wanna ask to our host.

Erdogan: Israel became a gangster state. (to the moderator) I thank you, too. For me, Davos is done for me from now on. I will not come again. You all know this in this way. You are not letting us speak. (pointing to Shimon Peres) He spoke for 25 minutes, but you let me speak 12 minutes. No way!

Now I don’t know who the ‘moderator’ is but I assume he or she is a European talking to the prime minister of Turkey! (Watch the video).

For us regular folks conditioned to be deferential in the presence of POWER, the Davos display should be an indication of what we are dealing with here, actions that are in actuality expressions of weakness and weakness that leads to desperation and desperate and murderous actions in defence of POWER.

The problem we confront is in linking the greed of our ruling classes to their actions, hidden as they are behind all manner lies and half-truths about ‘democracy’ and ‘freedom’, words that have been debased and cheapened to the point where they cease to have any meaning.

Worse still, the real culprits are, for the most part, hidden from view, instead they are represented by a professional political class that utilizes all the trappings of its power to bury the reality. It maybe a cliché but all one need do is follow the money.

All of our major politicians are either in bed with big capital or will be once their public offices come to an end. We call it revolving door politics. They sit on the boards of corporations, retained as ‘consultants’, become lobbyists and/or are part of an intricate network of cross-connected directorships, thinktanks, they even marry each other, thus dynasties are created of the ‘high and mighty’ that extend across the generations.

Many are overtly corrupt, receiving kickbacks and payoffs for ‘services rendered’, in short a Corporate Mafia that makes the ‘mafia’ of the movies small potatoes indeed as the recent revelations concerning the House of ‘Lords’ shows, with as many as 140 ‘Lords’ on the receiving end of gifts for fixing legislation or other services rendered (the four names recently revealed is but the tip of the iceberg).

Without any kind of oversight except lip service to the idea of transparency or accountability, never mind absolutely no democracy, over time they have become brazen in their contempt for the working man and woman, flaunting their wealth in our faces. The examples are everywhere especially of late with literally billions being paid to what are actually a bunch of cheap crooks and shysters, these so-called captains of industry.

In the final analysis however, it is our own total lack of political participation that has allowed this situation to come to pass. It is argued that we have no real choice when it comes to who we have to vote for, but the vote is only a small part of the democratic process, it’s what leads up to your vote that counts.

For nearly a century we fought for the universal franchise, eventually forming our own political parties that we trusted to represent us and fight for our interests, a trust that has been betrayed over and over again. Thus we have become cynical and fatalistic about the political process to the point where we have opted out in our droves, preferring instead to consume. But the party, as they say, is over.

On the face of it, as so many say, ‘it’s always been this way, there’s nothing we can do about’ but history tells a different story even right now as the events shaking France reveal. And the reason the French are in revolt is simple, they have trade unions and political parties that may not be the best but they are vehicles through which citizens can act collectively, so much so that Sarkozy ignores them at his (political) peril. (Watch the video ‘Working Class Fightback: Lessons of the Last Great Depression’.)

The BBC disguises it when it talks of “social unrest”, newsspeak for revolt (see ‘Crisis may ’spark social unrest’’).

The BBC piece quotes France’s finance minister Christine Lagarde who tells us that “trust in the financial system needed to be restored.

“Leaders needed to send a clear, understandable signal to ordinary people about how governments were intending to act, she added.”

Laughably and in direct contradiction, another BBC piece quotes that buffoon Gordon Brown, “Gordon Brown says there is no precedent for the “first financial crisis of the global age”, (‘PM says ‘no clear map’ for crisis’). What they really mean is that there is no capitalist solution to the crisis as crisis is fundamental to capitalism.

By contrast and to illustrate the point, here in the UK we turn against our fellow workers, incited by Gordon Brown’s cynical calls for “British jobs for British workers”. The contrast could not be greater and once more revealing the total bankruptcy of those who claim to lead us.

If we are to put our trust in political parties once again, they are going to have to prove to us that our trust is deserved by not being opportunistic and making promises they cannot deliver on.

Note

1. The term ‘Sophie’s Choice’ originates with the ordeal of an inmate in Auschwitz who had to make the choice as to which of her two children should be put to death.

:: Article nr. 51424 sent on 02-feb-2008 01:39 ECT
 www.uruknet.info?p=51424

Link: www.creative-i.info/?p=4366

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Obama to let CIA use controversial renditions

February 2, 2009

Terror suspects can still be secretly seized and sent to other countries.

LOS ANGELES TIMES | statesman.com
Sunday, February 01, 2009

WASHINGTON — The CIA’s secret prisons and Guantánamo Bay detention center are being shuttered. Harsh interrogation techniques are off-limits.

But, under executive orders issued by President Barack Obama last week, the CIA still has authority to carry out “renditions,” the secret abductions and transfers of prisoners to countries that cooperate with the U.S.

Current and former U.S. intelligence officials said that the rendition program may be poised to play an expanded role going forward because it is the main remaining mechanism — aside from Predator missile strikes — for taking suspected terrorists off the street.

“Obviously you need to preserve some tools. You still have to go after the bad guys,” said an Obama administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity when discussing the legal reasoning. “The legal advisers working on this looked at rendition. It is controversial in some circles. … But if done within certain parameters, it is an acceptable practice.”

The decision to preserve the program didn’t draw major protests, even among some human rights groups.

“Under limited circumstances, there is a legitimate place” for renditions, said Tom Malinowski, the Washington advocacy director for Human Rights Watch.

But Malinowski said he has urged the Obama administration to require that prisoners be transferred to other countries only when there is a guarantee they will get a public hearing in an official court. “Producing a prisoner before a real court is a key safeguard against torture, abuse and disappearance,” Malinowski said.

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Human Rights Activists Call to Try Bush

February 2, 2009

By Julio Godoy | Inter Press Service

BERLIN, Feb 2 (IPS) – Now that former U.S. president George W. Bush is an ordinary citizen again, many legal and human rights activists in Europe are demanding that he and high-ranking members of his government be brought before justice for crimes against humanity committed in the so-called war on terror.

“Judicial clarification of the crimes against international law the former U.S. government committed is one of the most delicate issues that the new U.S. president Barack Obama will have to deal with,” Wolfgang Kaleck, general secretary of the European Centre for Human and Constitutional Rights told IPS.

U.S. justice will have to “deal with the turpitudes committed by the Bush government,” says Kaleck, who has already tried unsuccessfully to sue the former U.S. authorities in European courts. “And, furthermore, the U.S. government will have to pay compensation to the innocent people who were victims of these crimes.”

Kaleck and other legal experts consider Bush and his highest-ranking officials responsible for crimes against humanity, such as torture.

Many agree that the evidence against the U.S. government is overwhelming. U.S. officials have admitted some crimes such as waterboarding, where a victim is tied up and water is poured into the air passages. Also, human rights activists have gathered testimonies by innocent victims of torture, especially some prisoners at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp.

In an interview with the German public television network ZDF, Austrian human rights lawyer Manfred Nowak, UN special rapporteur on torture, said that numerous cases of torture ordered by U.S. officials and perpetrated by U.S. authorities are well documented.

“We possess all the evidence which proves that the torture methods used in interrogation by the U.S. government were explicitly ordered by former U.S. defence minister Donald Rumsfeld,” Nowak told ZDF. “Obviously, these orders were given with the highest U.S. authorities’ knowledge.”

“George W. Bush is without doubt responsible for crimes such as torture,” says Dietmar Herz, professor of political science at the university of Erfurt, 235 km southwest of Berlin.

“According to the U.S. constitution, the U.S. president is responsible for all actions carried out by the executive,” Herz told IPS. “Therefore, George W. Bush is responsible for the torture methods used by U.S. authorities, such as waterboarding.”

International justice against crimes against humanity began in 1945, with the Nuremberg trials against Nazi criminals, says Kaleck. Leading prosecutor Robert Jackson said at the opening of the trials in October 1945 that “we are able to do away with…tyranny and violence and aggression by those in power against the rights of (the) people…only when we make all men answerable to the law.”

But since then this promise has been fulfilled only in exceptional cases, Kaleck said.

“Crimes against humanity have been repeatedly committed ever since, but very few people have been brought before international courts for these crimes,” he said, adding that this impunity is particularly obvious for leaders of the Allied countries (such as the U.S., France and Britain), who had organised the Nuremberg trials.

Nobody was ever judged for crimes against humanity committed in Algeria by France, in Vietnam and Latin America by the U.S., in Afghanistan by the Soviet Union and in Chechnya by Russia.

Only in the 1990s, after the Yugoslav wars of secession, the Rwanda genocide, and civil wars in countries such as Liberia and Sierra Leone were state criminals captured, judged and convicted.

“The creation of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in 2002 in The Hague in the Netherlands marks a turning point in the prosecution of state officials accused of crimes such as genocide, crimes against humanity or of war,” Kaleck added.

But prosecution for crimes of war or for crimes against humanity continues to be highly selective. So far, only perpetrators from weak or failed states from south-eastern Europe, or from the south, especially Africa, have been brought to court. In a case such as that of former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, Britain acted as an accomplice to protect him.

Over the last couple of years, human rights activists and some national courts in Europe have been fighting these arbitrary ways. They are appealing for, and in some cases even applying, a universal jurisdiction of national courts.

The Spanish judiciary has opened cases against Latin American dictators such as Guatemalan general Efraín Ríos Montt, who ruled the Central American country between 1982 and 1983, and Argentinean military officers involved in kidnapping and killing civilians.

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