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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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Iraq’s Shocking Human Toll: About 1 Million Killed, 4.5 Million Displaced, 1-2 Million Widows, 5 Million Orphans

February 2, 2009

By John Tirman, The Nation. Posted February 2, 2009.

Now that Bush is gone, perhaps we can honestly face the damage we have wrought and the responsibilities we must accept from it.

We are now able to estimate the number of Iraqis who have died in the war instigated by the Bush administration. Looking at the empirical evidence of Bush’s war legacy will put his claims of victory in perspective. Of course, even by his standards — “stability” — the jury is out. Most independent analysts would say it’s too soon to judge the political outcome. Nearly six years after the invasion, the country remains riven by sectarian politics and major unresolved issues, like the status of Kirkuk.

We have a better grasp of the human costs of the war. For example, the United Nations estimates that there are about 4.5 million displaced Iraqis — more than half of them refugees — or about one in every six citizens. Only 5 percent have chosen to return to their homes over the past year, a period of reduced violence from the high levels of 2005-07. The availability of healthcare, clean water, functioning schools, jobs and so forth remains elusive. According to Unicef, many provinces report that less than 40 percent of households have access to clean water. More than 40 percent of children in Basra, and more than 70 percent in Baghdad, cannot attend school.

The mortality caused by the war is also high. Several household surveys were conducted between 2004 and 2007. While there are differences among them, the range suggests a congruence of estimates. But none have been conducted for eighteen months, and the two most reliable surveys were completed in mid-2006. The higher of those found 650,000 “excess deaths” (mortality attributable to war); the other yielded 400,000. The war remained ferocious for twelve to fifteen months after those surveys were finished and then began to subside. Iraq Body Count, a London NGO that uses English-language press reports from Iraq to count civilian deaths, provides a means to update the 2006 estimates. While it is known to be an undercount, because press reports are incomplete and Baghdad-centric, IBC nonetheless provides useful trends, which are striking. Its estimates are nearing 100,000, more than double its June 2006 figure of 45,000. (It does not count nonviolent excess deaths — from health emergencies, for example — or insurgent deaths.) If this is an acceptable marker, a plausible estimate of total deaths can be calculated by doubling the totals of the 2006 household surveys, which used a much more reliable and sophisticated method for estimates that draws on long experience in epidemiology. So we have, at present, between 800,000 and 1.3 million “excess deaths” as we approach the six-year anniversary of this war.

This gruesome figure makes sense when reading of claims by Iraqi officials that there are 1-2 million war widows and 5 million orphans. This constitutes direct empirical evidence of total excess mortality and indirect, though confirming, evidence of the displaced and the bereaved and of general insecurity. The overall figures are stunning: 4.5 million displaced, 1-2 million widows, 5 million orphans, about 1 million dead — in one way or another, affecting nearly one in two Iraqis.

By any sensible measure, it would be difficult to describe this as a victory of any kind. It speaks volumes about the repair work we must do for Iraqis, and it should caution us against the savage wars we are prone to. Now that Bush is gone, perhaps the United States can honestly face the damage we have wrought and the responsibilities we must accept from it.

John Tirman is Executive Director of MIT’s Center for International Studies.

Link: http://www.alternet.org/story/123818/

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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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Israel Asserting Middle East Supremacy: From Gaza to Tehran

February 2, 2009

“The Israeli Defense Force is the most moral army in the World!”
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert

By James Petras | Information Clearing House, February 2, 2009

Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany bombed, invaded and annexed countries and territories as a prelude to their quest for World Empire.  Israel’s drive for regional dominance has followed in their footsteps, imitating their style: Indiscriminate aerial bombings of civilian and military facilities, a savage blitzkrieg led by armored vehicles, disdain and repudiation of all criticism from international agencies was accompanied by an open, military buildup for a new and bigger war against Iran.  Like the Nazi leadership, who played on the ‘Bolshevik threat’, the Israeli high command has set in motion a vast world-wide propaganda campaign led by its world Zionist network, raising the specter of ‘Islamic terror’ to justify its preparations for a military assault on seventy-four million Iranians.  Just as Nazi Germany interpreted the passivity, sympathy and impotence of the West when confronted by ‘facts on the ground’ as license for aggression, the Israeli military machine receives a powerful impetus for new wars by the Western governments’ inaction and flaccid response to its invasion of Lebanon, the bombing of Syria and now its Nazi style blitz and conquest of Gaza.  For the Israeli high command, the impotence and complicity of the Western states, marks the way to bigger and bloodier wars to establish Israel’s supremacy and dominance of the Middle East, from the Red Sea to the Persian Gulf.

Gaza Blitz:  Dress Rehearsal for an Assault on Iran

Israel’s military victory in Gaza is a dress rehearsal for a full-scale military assault on Iran.  In the course of their Gaza extermination campaign, Israeli political and military strategists gained a great deal of vital information about: (1) the levels of complicity and impotence of European, North American and Arab states;  (2) the high degree and depth of material and political support obtainable from the United States government in pulverizing adversaries; (3) the high degree of internal support among the Jewish electorate for even the most brutal killing fields; (4) the massive unquestioning backing of an offensive war from all the biggest and most politically influential and wealthiest Jewish-Zionist organizations in the US and Western Europe; (5) the weakness and ineffectiveness of the United Nations and the incapacity of the entire range of humanitarian organizations to limit Israel’s extermination campaign directed at destroying the very existence of an entire people; (6) the unconditional backing of the entire mass media and news agencies in the US and most of the mass media in Europe and the rest of the world; (7) the willingness of the liberal critics to equally blame the victims of extermination and the exterminators for the ‘violence’, thus neutralizing any effective consequential condemnation of the Israeli state; and (8) the adaptation of practically all the journalists, writers, academics and politicians to the entire euphemistic vocabulary of the Israeli propaganda office.

For example, sustained total war is called an ‘incursion’.  Ten thousand aerial assaults by hundreds of Israeli helicopters and fighter-bombers are equated with sporadic harmless homemade rocket attacks as ‘violence’.  Israeli targeting of thousands of civilian homes, hospitals and basic infrastructure are labeled ‘terrorist’ targets.  Resistance fighters are labeled ‘Hamas terrorists’.  The bombing of the Red Cross, the United Nations relief facilities, hospitals, mosques are called ‘mistakes’ or justified as ‘launching sites for Hamas terrorists.

Israeli political leaders have drawn the lesson from their dirty little ‘war’ that they can totally destroy a nation, decimate a society and murder and maim 7000 civilians with impunity.  Israeli leaders learned they can carry out an offensive genocidal war without suffering breaks in diplomatic relations (except Mauritania, Qatar, Bolivia and Venezuela).  The Israelis have successfully tested the loyalty and submissiveness of the major Arab regimes in the region and secured cooperation and acquiescence from Egypt, the ‘Palestinian Authority’, Jordan and Saudi Arabia.  Israeli civilian-military leaders calculate that with this high degree of governmental complicity, combined with support from all the major Zionist leaders and mass media moguls, they can dismiss even large-scale street protests, repeated calls for boycotts and United Nations denunciations.  Israeli leaders know that the criticism of major religious leaders and the growing number of Jewish dissidents, critical intellectuals and activists will have no consequential impact on Western governments nor lessen the fervor and loyalty of the major Jewish organizations.

Continued >>

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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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Prosecutor looks at ways to put Israeli officers on trial for Gaza ‘war crimes’

February 2, 2009
From The Times
February 2, 2009

Catherine Philp in Davos and James Hider in Jerusalem

The International Criminal Court is exploring ways to prosecute Israeli commanders over alleged war crimes in Gaza.

The alleged crimes include the use of deadly white phosphorus in densely populated civilian areas, as revealed in an investigation by The Times last month. Israel initially denied using the controversial weapon, which causes horrific burns, but was forced later, in the face of mounting evidence, to admit to having deployed it.

When Palestinian groups petitioned the ICC this month, its prosecutor said that it was unable to take the case because it had no jurisdiction over Israel, a nonsignatory to the court. Now, however, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, the ICC prosecutor, has told The Times that he is examining the case for Palestinian jurisdiction over alleged crimes committed in Gaza.

Palestinian groups have submitted arguments asserting that the Palestinian Authority is the de facto state in the territory where the crimes were allegedly committed.

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“It is the territorial state that has to make a reference to the court. They are making an argument that the Palestinian Authority is, in reality, that state,” Mr Moreno-Ocampo told The Times at the World Economic Forum in Davos.

Part of the Palestinian argument rests on the Israeli insistence that it has no responsibility for Gaza under international law since it withdrew from the territory in 2006. “They are quoting jurisprudence,” Mr Moreno-Ocampo said. “It’s very complicated. It’s a different kind of analysis I am doing. It may take a long time but I will make a decision according to law.”

Mr Moreno-Ocampo said that his examination of the case did not necessarily reflect a belief that war crimes had been committed in Gaza. Determining jurisdiction was a first step, he said, and only after it had been decided could he launch an investigation.

The prosecutor’s office has already received several files on alleged crimes from Palestinian groups and is awaiting further reports from the Arab League and Amnesty International containing evidence gathered in Gaza.

Under the Rome treaty that founded it, the ICC can investigate and prosecute allegations of the most serious war crimes only if the country responsible is unwilling or unable to do so through its national courts.

States that are party to the treaty can refer cases of crimes committed by their citizens or on their territory. Cases involving the citizens or territory of a country that has not signed up to the court can be referred by the United Nations Security Council – as in the case of Darfur. Ivory Coast set a precedent as the first nonstate party to accept the ICC’s jurisdiction over alleged war crimes on its territory. It signed the Rome treaty but never ratified it. In 2005 it lodged a declaration with the court accepting the ICC’s jurisdiction over crimes committed there since September 2002.

Palestinian lawyers argue that the Palestinian Authority should be allowed to refer the cases in Gaza on this same ad hoc basis – despite its lack of internationally recognised statehood.

The case has wide-reaching ramifications for the Palestinian case for statehood. If the court rejects the case, it will highlight the legal black hole that Palestinians find themselves in while they remain stateless. However, it also underlines some of Israel’s worst fears about a Palestinian state on its borders. A Palestinian state that ratified the Rome treaty would then be able to refer alleged Israeli war crimes to the court without the current legal wrangling. The case could also lead to snowballing international recognition of a Palestinian state by countries eager to see Israel prosecuted.

One avenue would be for Israel to agree to investigate its commanders and prosecute any crimes discovered. That would remove any case from the orbit of the international court. So far that appears unlikely, given Israel’s repeated denials of war crimes in Gaza.

The Israeli army has, however, launched an internal inquiry into whether white phosphorus was used in some cases in built-up areas, having eventually admitted that it did use the incendiary substance, which is not illegal as a battlefield smokescreen but is banned from being used in civilian areas. Camera footage from one such attack shows what appears to be white phosphorous raining down on a UN school in Beit Lahiya, where Red Crescent ambulances and their crews were stationed.

A coalition of Israeli human rights groups has urged the country’s attorney-general to open an independent investigation into allegations of war crimes by troops, urging that to do so could head off international court cases. The groups, including the antisettlement organisation B’Tselem, said that there had been reports of Israeli forces firing into civilian areas, denying medical aid to the wounded and preventing Palestinian ambulances from reaching them, and of firing at people carrying white flags.

Meanwhile, the UN is preparing an inquiry into the bombardment of a UN school in Jabaliya, in the northern Gaza Strip. Israeli forces fired artillery shells outside the school, which had been converted into a refugee shelter for Gazans fleeing their homes. At least 43 people were killed. Israel said that Palestinian militants had fired from the compound, which was denied by the UN.

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Anti-fascist and anti-war activist Dr George Barnsby at 90

February 1, 2009

Nasir Khan

The famous anti-racist, anti-war activist, a historian of the working class movement and revolutionary politics Dr George Barnsby turned 90 on January 29, 2009. To celebrate the occasion the Barnsby family organised a memorable birthday party in which more than one hundred guests took part.

The site of the event was Wolverhampton, now a thriving multicultural and ethnically diverse city in the Midlands, where once, in 1968, British Tory leader Enoch Powell had made his well-known apocalyptic ‘rivers of blood’ speech, in which he had warned the danger Britain faced because of the coming into Britain of non-white immigrants from the former British colonies. But the subsequent history of race relations in Wolverhampton has shown that the alarmist forebodings of the prophet of doom and racist reactionary politician were false.

The main reason for rejecting what Enoch Powell stood for that also had certain amount of backing in some sections of the white population was due to the incessant work of local politicians and workers, both from the white and non-white communities for creating a positive attitude towards the race issue and to cultivate a better understanding between the people of different ethnic backgrounds. As a result, we see that Wolverhampton emerged as a multicultural city we can all be proud of. Among those who contributed much to such a positive development the work of George Barnsby has a special significance. He was also able to mobilize support for his work with the assistance of many non-racist people and organizations.

From Norway, I had the honour to participate in the celebrations of my close comrade and friend. It was my first face-to-face meeting with him. The comradely affection and esteem he extended towards me on the occasion was something of an overwhelming experience for me. Our comradeship was very deep. Ever since our incidental contact that started about four years ago, I realised that ideologically and politically both of us were working on the same lines having a common world-outlook. In our own ways, both of us have been busy offering our views and showing our concerns through our websites.

Dr Barnsby consistently exposed the role of President Bush and his British ‘poodle’ Tony Blair in starting the genocidal wars of aggression in Iraq and Afghanistan as well their active support to the Zionist rulers of Israel to crush and destroy the people of Palestine. His expertise in understanding the international affairs as a class conscious writer and his revolutionary zeal in advancing the cause of peace and human rights earn him a special place of distinction among radical writers. I feel greatly honoured to have seen and talked to him and wish him many happy and active years in the future. His website (The Barnsby Blog: <http://gbpeopleslibrary.co.uk/blog/>) provides us with a necessary corrective to what the main stream media offer and I recommend it to our readers.

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Amnesty International: Israeli army used flechettes against Gaza civilians

January 31, 2009

Global Research, January 29, 2009

Al Mezan Center for Human Rights

Apart from white phosphorus, the Israeli army used a variety of other weapons in densely populated civilian areas of Gaza in the three-week conflict that began on 27 December.

Flechettes are 4cm long metal darts that are sharply pointed at the front, with four fins at the rear. Between 5,000 and 8,000 are packed into 120mm shells which are generally fired from tanks. The shells explode in the air and scatter the flechettes in a conical pattern over an area about 300m wide and 100m long.

An anti-personnel weapon designed to penetrate dense vegetation, flechettes should never be used in built-up civilian areas. The Israeli army has used them in Gaza periodically for several years. In most cases their use has resulted in civilians being killed or injured.

Amnesty International’s fact-finding team in Gaza first heard about the use of flechettes in the most recent conflict some ten days ago. The father of one of the victims showed the team a flechette which had been taken out of his son’s body.

In its latest post on Amnesty International’s Livewire blog, the team described how on Monday it visited towns and villages around Gaza and found more hard evidence of the use of flechettes.

In ‘Izbat Beit Hanoun, to the south-west of the town of Beit Hanoun, several flechette shells were fired into the main road, killing two people and injuring several others on the morning of 5 January.

Wafa’ Nabil Abu Jarad, a 21-year-old pregnant mother of two, was one of those killed. Her husband and her mother-in-law told the team that the family had just had breakfast and were outside the house drinking tea in the sun.

Wafa’ and her husband were standing by the corner of the house when they heard a noise, followed by screams. They turned to go back into their house but at that moment Wafa’ and several other members of the family were hit by flechettes. Wafa’ was killed outright.

That same day, at the other end of the street, 16-year-old Islam Jaber Abd-al-Dayem was struck in the neck by a flechette. He was taken to the hospital’s intensive care unit but died three days later. Mizar, his brother, was injured in the same attack and still has a flechette lodged in his back.

In the village of al-Mughraqa on the morning of 7 January, a shell struck the room where Atta Hassan Aref Azzam was sitting with two of his children, Mohammed, aged 13 and Hassan, aged two and a half. All three were killed. The six other members of the family who were in the house fled to the nearest school for shelter. The team examined the bloodstained wall by which the three were killed. It was full of flechettes.

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Israel and the Bomb

January 31, 2009

The Calculus of Death

By Jules Rabin | Counterpunch, January 31 / February 1, 2009

Can Israel be trusted with the nuclear bombs it steadfastly refuses to admit owning?

On the evidence of events in Gaza, I think not. Here’s why.

In the last week of December, when Israel lost patience over a series of rocket attacks from Gaza that killed three Israelis in as many days, on top of 25 more who had been killed in the same manner in the eight years preceding, the Israeli armed forces retaliated with sustained and overwhelming attacks on the entirety of densely populated Gaza.

Under intense Israeli bombardment and tank fire, over 1,300 Gazans, a third of them children, were killed in the 21 days of the Israeli onslaught — a stunningly great number of them under circumstances that have opened Israel to charges of committing war crimes.

Mark the ratio: 1,300 Palestinian lives, fighters and civilians, taken in skewed payment for the original three Israelis, whose deaths were the proximate cause — call it the last straw after eight years of rocket attacks from Gaza — of the assault on Gaza.

And mark the overwhelming swiftness of the reaction. It took Israel a mere 22 days to present the people of Gaza with a definitive version of the type of blunt lesson that the Hamas government of Gaza had been trying for eight years of intermittent rocket attacks to teach Israel.

With those ratios in mind — the 1,300 Palestinian deaths achieved in 22 days and the 28 Israeli deaths inflicted in eight years — it’s fair to ask how might an Israel in possession of an arsenal of nuclear weapons react if instead of a ragtag force of guerillas like that of Hamas it were threatened by a modern army like its own, equipped with tanks and attack jets. If, say, as happened with Gaza, a major Israeli city were to undergo an assault of 22 days duration that turned a great part of it into rubble, and caused a thousand Israeli deaths.

On the showing of the overwhelming scale of its punitive assault on Gaza, could we expect Israel to show restraint — nuclear restraint — in the event of an assault by an armed force more nearly matching its own? When there is no other lesson on earth, militarily speaking, that can be taught as swiftly and conclusively as the one the nuclear bomb teaches?

In the calculus of death, how many lives of the “other” will the taking of the life of a single Israeli, or three, or a thousand, be worth, finally, tomorrow and the next day and the last day of all?

Jules Rabin is a writer, political critic, and longtime resident of Marshfield, Vermont.

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