20 sept 2009
Haniyeh: World must back Goldstone's Gaza report
De facto Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh urged world powers on Sunday to embrace a recently-released report on alleged war crimes committed during Israel’s recent war on the Gaza Strip.
“We hope the report … will not be doomed to the fate of the dozens of reports that Israel has condemned for decades,” referring to the report of the fact-finding mission led by Justice Richard Goldstone.
Released last week, Goldstone’s 575-page report drew criticism from the US and Israel for its finding that Israel committed war crimes during the attack on Gaza. While the report focuses on Israel, it also calls for further investigations into alleged violations by Palestinian armed groups.
Responding to the alleged Palestinian violations, Haniyeh said he “affirm[s] our right to self-defense under international law.”
Haniyeh specifically asked the Arab League and European countries to use all means to make sure the report is brought to the attention to the UN Security Council and then referred to prosecutors.
Israeli, Palestinian, and international human rights groups reported that more than 1,400 Palestinians were killed during the three-week war, including more than 700 civilians.
The Hamas leader was speaking to a mass prayer session and rally in Yarmouk Stadium in Gaza City, shortly after dawn on Sunday morning, the first day of the Eid Al-Fitr holiday at the end of the month of Ramadan. Some 30,000 men, women and children filled the football pitch. Palestinian and Hamas flags flew from the goal posts.
Shedding his usual suit for the robes and headdress of a Sheikh, Haniyeh said that this first Eid after the war in January is “An Eid of victory.”
“This Eid is your Eid, the Samouni family,” he said, referring to a Gaza family that lost 29 of its members when Israeli forces herded them into one building and then shelled it. “This is our Eid.”
Haniyeh also referred to the current US push for renewed peace negotiations, arguing that the position of the Obama administration is no different from previous administrations, in that it calls for Palestinians to relinquish their rights.
“From Gaza, from a place of strength, we say we will not relinquish our rights.”
The prime minister also spoke about the situation in Jerusalem and the West Bank. He issued a Fatwa against Palestinians working for companies that are building illegal Israeli settlements.
Martyrs Cemetery
Not Enough Graves in Gaza, Old Graves Opened
Also on Sunday morning, Palestinian families carried out an Eid tradition: visiting the graves of those killed in the struggle against the Israeli occupation.
At the Sheikh Radwan Cemetery, dozens of families visited the tombs of their loved ones, mainly “Martyrs” killed in the two Intifadas and the recent war. Hamas leaders Ahmad Yassin, Abdul Aziz Rantisi, and Said Siyam are buried there. Some washed the gravestones. Others sat and contemplated. Some wept. A sign in Arabic hanging at the gate of the warned that the graveyard is full, urging locals not to bury more bodies.
One woman, dressed in black sat weeping at the grave of her son, Ramadan Abu Kheir, a police officer who was killed in the massive airstirkes that began the war on 27 December.
“She hasn’t stopped crying since the day her son died,” said another female relative sitting by her side.
The woman said she hadn’t heard Haniyeh’s speech earlier. Asked if she agreed with Haniyeh that this was an “Eid of victory,” she said “Insha’Allah,” God willing.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=226956
Haniyeh: World must back Goldstone's Gaza report
De facto Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh urged world powers on Sunday to embrace a recently-released report on alleged war crimes committed during Israel’s recent war on the Gaza Strip.
“We hope the report … will not be doomed to the fate of the dozens of reports that Israel has condemned for decades,” referring to the report of the fact-finding mission led by Justice Richard Goldstone.
Released last week, Goldstone’s 575-page report drew criticism from the US and Israel for its finding that Israel committed war crimes during the attack on Gaza. While the report focuses on Israel, it also calls for further investigations into alleged violations by Palestinian armed groups.
Responding to the alleged Palestinian violations, Haniyeh said he “affirm[s] our right to self-defense under international law.”
Haniyeh specifically asked the Arab League and European countries to use all means to make sure the report is brought to the attention to the UN Security Council and then referred to prosecutors.
Israeli, Palestinian, and international human rights groups reported that more than 1,400 Palestinians were killed during the three-week war, including more than 700 civilians.
The Hamas leader was speaking to a mass prayer session and rally in Yarmouk Stadium in Gaza City, shortly after dawn on Sunday morning, the first day of the Eid Al-Fitr holiday at the end of the month of Ramadan. Some 30,000 men, women and children filled the football pitch. Palestinian and Hamas flags flew from the goal posts.
Shedding his usual suit for the robes and headdress of a Sheikh, Haniyeh said that this first Eid after the war in January is “An Eid of victory.”
“This Eid is your Eid, the Samouni family,” he said, referring to a Gaza family that lost 29 of its members when Israeli forces herded them into one building and then shelled it. “This is our Eid.”
Haniyeh also referred to the current US push for renewed peace negotiations, arguing that the position of the Obama administration is no different from previous administrations, in that it calls for Palestinians to relinquish their rights.
“From Gaza, from a place of strength, we say we will not relinquish our rights.”
The prime minister also spoke about the situation in Jerusalem and the West Bank. He issued a Fatwa against Palestinians working for companies that are building illegal Israeli settlements.
Martyrs Cemetery
Not Enough Graves in Gaza, Old Graves Opened
Also on Sunday morning, Palestinian families carried out an Eid tradition: visiting the graves of those killed in the struggle against the Israeli occupation.
At the Sheikh Radwan Cemetery, dozens of families visited the tombs of their loved ones, mainly “Martyrs” killed in the two Intifadas and the recent war. Hamas leaders Ahmad Yassin, Abdul Aziz Rantisi, and Said Siyam are buried there. Some washed the gravestones. Others sat and contemplated. Some wept. A sign in Arabic hanging at the gate of the warned that the graveyard is full, urging locals not to bury more bodies.
One woman, dressed in black sat weeping at the grave of her son, Ramadan Abu Kheir, a police officer who was killed in the massive airstirkes that began the war on 27 December.
“She hasn’t stopped crying since the day her son died,” said another female relative sitting by her side.
The woman said she hadn’t heard Haniyeh’s speech earlier. Asked if she agreed with Haniyeh that this was an “Eid of victory,” she said “Insha’Allah,” God willing.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=226956
19 sept 2009
US folds to Israeli demands; issues muted concern over UN report
US State Department spokesman for the Near East Ian Kelly responded Friday to intensifying Israeli calls to slam a UN Human Rights Commission report that called Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip a war crime.
Speaking in Washington on Friday, Kelly noted, "Although the report addresses all sides of the conflict, its overwhelming focus is on the actions of Israel." The mandate of the report was to investigate possible war crimes and crimes against humanity during Israel’s Operation Cast Lead, which saw more than 1,400 Palestinians and 9 Israelis killed.
From the time the report was released Tuesday Israeli leaders and politicians condemned the report, which the military took no part in assisting. Interviews with residents of southern Israel, where Gaza militant factions launch homemade projectiles as acts against the country’s siege, had to be flown to Geneva to give testimony for the fact finding commission following Israeli refusal to cooperate.
Head of the mission, Jewish South-African justice Richard Goldstone, told Ma’an following the release of the report, "There hasn't been any [Israeli] attempt thus far to deal with the contents of the report at all." Goldstone explained over the phone on Tuesday, that Israeli spokespersons and ministers attacked the report as a concept and criticized its authors just minutes after receiving the 600 page document.
With silence from the international community continuing on Thursday, Israeli leaders switched tactics and began warning the United States and Russia that endorsing the report, and particularly its recommendation that Israel be taken to the International Criminal Court for investigations on their war crimes and “possible crimes against humanity,” would limit American ability to wage its war on terror.
Though the Israeli press came out Friday with stories saying the US had finally “sharply criticized” the report, Kelly’s actual words were muted. "We hope efforts related to the Middle East at the Human Rights Council and other international bodies will look to the future and how we can support the goal of a two-state solution," he said.
Kelly went further to suggest that Israel itself investigate the allegations on crimes against humanity. "We note in particular that Israel has the democratic institutions to investigate and prosecute abuses, and we encourage it to use those institutions," he said.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=226805
Ban Ki Moon to step in and urge tripartite talks in New York
UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon will make efforts to speak with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu around peace talks, the UN leader said Thursday.
As US shuttle diplomacy efforts to secure a tripartite meeting between US, Israeli and Palestinian leaders ended without securing a the hoped-for meeting, Ban told journalists in New York that he would “try to meet individually those leaders” when they arrive in New York next week.
“My position at this time is that this tripartite meeting will provide good opportunities for leaders of both Israel and Palestine, and of course the United States, to address all the pending issues, to address differences of their policies. I know that there is still serious gap in bridging the differences... I sincerely hope that we will see some positive outcome from this meeting,” Ban noted.
The UN leader went further, announcing that he would “participate, and in fact convene a Quartet meeting,” set to be held on 22 September as well as meet with the Arab Follow-Up Committee members on 26 September.
Responding to a question over whether Ban thought he would be able to persuade sides to sit together given the unresolved issue of settlement construction, he answered, “I don't know if I have a responsibility to ensure it. But I will try my best to facilitate this.”
UN-Commissioned Goldstone report
Ban also addressed questions around whether he would support international proceedings around the war crimes findings in the recently released Goldstone report on Israel’s Operation Cast Lead, which killed more than 1,400 Palestinians in 22 days.
“I believe that accountability for violations of international human rights and international humanitarian law is essential to both protection of human dignity and the quest for sustainable peace and security,” the UN secretary began, noting he has been “supporting Judge Goldstone's mission to investigate any violations of human rights and humanitarian laws in Gaza.”
He noted that he continued to communicate with Justice Goldstone about the report and recommendations would come following a full review.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=226844
UM-Shmum, UM-Boom
by Uri Avnery
Is there no limit to the wiles of those dastardly anti-Semites?
Now they have decided to slander the Jews with another blood libel. Not the old accusation of slaughtering Christian children to use their blood for baking Passover matzoth, as in the past, but of the mass slaughter of women and children in Gaza.
And who did they put at the head of the commission which was charged with this task? Neither a British Holocaust-denier nor a German neo-Nazi, nor even an Iranian fanatic, but of all people a Jewish judge who bears the very Jewish name of Goldstone (originally Goldstein, of course). And not just a Jew with a Jewish name, but a Zionist, whose daughter, Nicole, is an enthusiastic Zionist who once “made Aliyah” and speaks fluent Hebrew. And not just a Jewish Zionist, but a South African who opposed apartheid and was appointed to the country’s Constitutional Court when that system was abolished.
All this in order to defame the most moral army in the world, fresh from waging the most just war in history!
Richard Goldstone is not the only Jew manipulated by the world-wide anti-Semitic conspiracy. Throughout the three weeks of the Gaza War, more than 10,000 Israelis demonstrated against it again and again. They were photographed carrying signs saying “End the massacre in Gaza”, “Stop the war crimes”’ “Israel commits war crimes”, “Bombing civilians is a war crime”. They chanted in unison: “Olmert, Olmert, it is true – They’re waiting in The Hague for you!”
Who would have believed that there are so many anti-Semites in Israel?!
The official Israeli reaction to the Goldstone report would have been amusing, if the matter had not been so grave.
Except for the “usual suspects” (Gideon Levy, Amira Hass and their ilk), the condemnation of the report was unanimous, total and extreme, from Shimon Peres, that advocate of every abomination, down to the last scribbler in the newspapers.
Nobody, but nobody, dealt with the subject itself. Nobody examined the detailed conclusions. With such an anti-Semitic smear, there is no need for that. Actually, there is no need to read the report at all.
The public, in all its diversity, stood up like one person, in order to rebuff the plot, as it has learned to do in the thousand years of pogroms, Spanish inquisition and Holocaust. A siege mentality, the ghetto mentality.
The instinctive reaction in such a situation is denial. It’s just not true. It never happened. It’s all a pack of lies.
By itself, that is a natural reaction. When a human being is faced with a situation which he cannot handle, denial is the first refuge. If things did not happen, there is no need to cope. Basically, there is no difference between the deniers of the Armenian genocide, the deniers of the annihilation of the Native Americans and the deniers of the atrocities of all wars.
From this point of view, it can be said that denial is almost “normal”. But with us it has been developed into an art form.
We have a special method: when something happens that we don’t want to confront, we direct the spotlight to one specific detail, something completely marginal, and begin to insist on it, debate it, examine it from all angles as if it were a matter of life and death.
Take the Yom Kippur war. It broke out because for six years, beginning with the 1967 war, Israel had cruised like a Ship of Fools, intoxicated with victory songs, victory albums and the belief in the invincibility of the Israeli army. Golda Meir treated the Arab world with open contempt and rebuffed the peace overtures of Anwar Sadat. The result: more than 2000 young Israelis killed, and who knows how many Egyptians and Syrians.
And what was furiously debated? The “Omission.” “Why were the reserves not called up in time? Why were the tanks not moved in advance?” Menachem Begin thundered in the Knesset, and about this, books and articles galore were written and a blue-ribbon judicial board of inquiry deliberated.
The First Lebanon War was a political blunder and a military failure. It lasted 18 years, gave birth to Hizbullah and established it as a regional force. And what was discussed? Whether Ariel Sharon had deceived Begin and was responsible for his illness and eventual death.
The Second Lebanon War was a disgrace from beginning to end, a superfluous war that caused massive destruction, wholesale slaughter and the flight of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians from their homes, without achieving an Israeli victory. And what was our debate about? For what was a commission of inquiry appointed? About the way the decision to start the war was taken. Was there an appropriate process of decision making? Was there orderly staff work?
About the Gaza War, there was no debate at all, because everything was perfectly alright. A brilliant campaign. Marvelous political and military leadership. True, we did not convince the Gaza Strip population to overthrow their leaders; true, we did not succeed in freeing the captured soldier Gilad Shalit; true, the whole world condemned us – but we killed a lot of Arabs, destroyed their environment and taught them a lesson they will not forget.
Now, a profound debate on the Goldstone report is going on. Not about its content, God forbid. What’s there to discus? But about the one point that is really important: was our government right in deciding to boycott the commission? Perhaps it would have been better to take part in the deliberations? Did our Foreign Office act as foolishly as it usually does? (Our Ministry of Defense, of course, never behaves foolishly.) Tens of thousands of words about this world-shaking question were poured out from the newspapers, the radio and TV, with every self-respecting commentator weighing in.
So why did the Israeli government boycott the commission? The real answer is quite simple: they knew full well that the commission, any commission, would have to reach the conclusions it did reach.
In fact, the commission did not say anything new. Almost all the facts were already known: the bombing of civilian neighborhoods, the use of flechette rounds and white phosphorus against civilian targets, the bombing of mosques and schools, the blocking of rescue parties from reaching the wounded, the killing of fleeing civilians carrying white flags, the use of human shields, and more. The Israeli army did not allow journalists near the action, but the war was amply documented by the international media in all its details, the entire world saw it in real time on the TV screens. The testimonies are so many and so consistent, that any reasonable person can draw their own conclusions.
If the officers and soldiers of the Israeli army had given testimony before the commission, it would perhaps have been impressed by their angle, too – the fear, the confusion, the lack of orientation – and the conclusions could have been somewhat less severe. But the main thrust would not have changed. After all, the whole operation was based on the assumption that it was possible to overthrow the Hamas government in Gaza by causing intolerable suffering to the civilian population. The damage to civilians was not “collateral”, whether avoidable or unavoidable, but a central feature of the operation itself.
Moreover, the rules of engagement were designed to achieve “zero losses” to our forces – avoiding losses at any price. That was the conclusion our army – led by Gabi Ashkenazi – drew from the Second Lebanon War. The results speak for themselves: 200 dead Palestinians for every Israeli soldier killed by the other side – 1400:6.
Every real investigation must inevitably lead to the same conclusions as those of the Goldstone commission. Therefore, there was no Israeli wish for a real inquiry. The “investigations” that did take place were a farce. The person responsible, the Military Advocate General, kippa-wearing brigadier Avichai Mendelblit, was in charge of this task. He was promoted this week to the rank of major general. The promotion and its timing speak a clear language.
So it is clear that there is no chance of the Israeli government belatedly opening a real investigation, as demanded by Israeli peace activists.
In order to be credible, such an investigation would have to have the status of a State Commission of Inquiry as defined by Israeli law, headed by a Supreme Court justice. It would have to conduct its investigations publicly, in full view of the Israeli and international media. It would have to invite the victims, Gaza inhabitants, to testify together with the soldiers who took part in the war. It would have to investigate in detail each of the accusations that appear in the Goldstone report. It would have to check out the orders issued and decisions made, from the Chief of Staff down to the squad level. It would have to study the briefings of Air Force pilots and drone operators.
This list suffices to make it clear why such an investigation will not and cannot take place. Instead, the world-wide Israeli propaganda machine will continue to defame the Jewish judge and the people who appointed him.
Not all the Israeli accusations against the UN are groundless. For example: why does the organization investigate the war crimes in Gaza (and in former Yugoslavia and Darfur, investigations in which Goldstone took part as chief prosecutor) and not the actions of the US in Iraq and Afghanistan and the Russians in Chechnya?
But the main argument of the Israeli government is that the UN is an anti-Semitic organization, and its Human Rights Commission is doubly anti-Semitic.
Israel’s relations with the UN are very complex. The state was founded on the basis of a UN resolution, and it is doubtful whether it would have come into being at precisely that time and those circumstance had there been no such resolution. Our Declaration of Independence is largely based on this resolution. A year later, Israel was accepted as a UN member in spite of the fact that it had not allowed the (then) 750 thousand Palestinian refugees to return.
But this honeymoon soured quickly. David Ben-Gurion spoke with contempt about UM-Shmum (“Um” is the Hebrew for “UN”, the prefix “shm” signifies contempt). From then on to this very day, Israel has systematically violated almost every single UN resolution that concerned it, complaining that there was an “automatic majority” of Arab and communist countries stacked against it. This attitude was reinforced when, on the eve of the 1967 war, the UN troops in Sinai where precipitously withdrawn on the demand of Gamal Abd-al-Nasser. And, of course, by the UN resolution (later annulled) equating Zionism with racism.
Now this argument is raising its head again. The UN, it is being said, is anti-Israeli, which means (of course) anti-Semitic. Everyone who acts in the name of the UN is an Israel-hater. To hell with the UN. To hell with the Goldstone report.
That is, however, a woefully short-sighted policy. The general public throughout the world is hearing about the report and remembering the pictures they saw on their TV screens during the Gaza war. The UN enjoys much respect. In the wake of the “Molten Lead” operation, Israel’s standing in the world has been steadily going down, and this report will send it down even further. This will have practical consequences – political, military, economic and cultural. Only a fool – or an Avigdor Lieberman – can ignore that.
If there is no credible Israeli investigation, there will be demands for the UN Security Council to refer the matter to the International Criminal Court in The Hague. Barack Obama would have to decide whether to veto such a resolution – a move that would cause grave harm to the US, and for which he would demand a high price from Israel.
As has been said before: UM-Shmum may turn into UM-Boom.
Uri Avnery is an Israeli writer and founder of the Gush Shalom peace movement. A member of the militant Zionist Irgun movement as a teenager, Avnery served in Israel's Knesset from 1965-74 and 1979-81.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=226892
US folds to Israeli demands; issues muted concern over UN report
US State Department spokesman for the Near East Ian Kelly responded Friday to intensifying Israeli calls to slam a UN Human Rights Commission report that called Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip a war crime.
Speaking in Washington on Friday, Kelly noted, "Although the report addresses all sides of the conflict, its overwhelming focus is on the actions of Israel." The mandate of the report was to investigate possible war crimes and crimes against humanity during Israel’s Operation Cast Lead, which saw more than 1,400 Palestinians and 9 Israelis killed.
From the time the report was released Tuesday Israeli leaders and politicians condemned the report, which the military took no part in assisting. Interviews with residents of southern Israel, where Gaza militant factions launch homemade projectiles as acts against the country’s siege, had to be flown to Geneva to give testimony for the fact finding commission following Israeli refusal to cooperate.
Head of the mission, Jewish South-African justice Richard Goldstone, told Ma’an following the release of the report, "There hasn't been any [Israeli] attempt thus far to deal with the contents of the report at all." Goldstone explained over the phone on Tuesday, that Israeli spokespersons and ministers attacked the report as a concept and criticized its authors just minutes after receiving the 600 page document.
With silence from the international community continuing on Thursday, Israeli leaders switched tactics and began warning the United States and Russia that endorsing the report, and particularly its recommendation that Israel be taken to the International Criminal Court for investigations on their war crimes and “possible crimes against humanity,” would limit American ability to wage its war on terror.
Though the Israeli press came out Friday with stories saying the US had finally “sharply criticized” the report, Kelly’s actual words were muted. "We hope efforts related to the Middle East at the Human Rights Council and other international bodies will look to the future and how we can support the goal of a two-state solution," he said.
Kelly went further to suggest that Israel itself investigate the allegations on crimes against humanity. "We note in particular that Israel has the democratic institutions to investigate and prosecute abuses, and we encourage it to use those institutions," he said.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=226805
Ban Ki Moon to step in and urge tripartite talks in New York
UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon will make efforts to speak with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu around peace talks, the UN leader said Thursday.
As US shuttle diplomacy efforts to secure a tripartite meeting between US, Israeli and Palestinian leaders ended without securing a the hoped-for meeting, Ban told journalists in New York that he would “try to meet individually those leaders” when they arrive in New York next week.
“My position at this time is that this tripartite meeting will provide good opportunities for leaders of both Israel and Palestine, and of course the United States, to address all the pending issues, to address differences of their policies. I know that there is still serious gap in bridging the differences... I sincerely hope that we will see some positive outcome from this meeting,” Ban noted.
The UN leader went further, announcing that he would “participate, and in fact convene a Quartet meeting,” set to be held on 22 September as well as meet with the Arab Follow-Up Committee members on 26 September.
Responding to a question over whether Ban thought he would be able to persuade sides to sit together given the unresolved issue of settlement construction, he answered, “I don't know if I have a responsibility to ensure it. But I will try my best to facilitate this.”
UN-Commissioned Goldstone report
Ban also addressed questions around whether he would support international proceedings around the war crimes findings in the recently released Goldstone report on Israel’s Operation Cast Lead, which killed more than 1,400 Palestinians in 22 days.
“I believe that accountability for violations of international human rights and international humanitarian law is essential to both protection of human dignity and the quest for sustainable peace and security,” the UN secretary began, noting he has been “supporting Judge Goldstone's mission to investigate any violations of human rights and humanitarian laws in Gaza.”
He noted that he continued to communicate with Justice Goldstone about the report and recommendations would come following a full review.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=226844
UM-Shmum, UM-Boom
by Uri Avnery
Is there no limit to the wiles of those dastardly anti-Semites?
Now they have decided to slander the Jews with another blood libel. Not the old accusation of slaughtering Christian children to use their blood for baking Passover matzoth, as in the past, but of the mass slaughter of women and children in Gaza.
And who did they put at the head of the commission which was charged with this task? Neither a British Holocaust-denier nor a German neo-Nazi, nor even an Iranian fanatic, but of all people a Jewish judge who bears the very Jewish name of Goldstone (originally Goldstein, of course). And not just a Jew with a Jewish name, but a Zionist, whose daughter, Nicole, is an enthusiastic Zionist who once “made Aliyah” and speaks fluent Hebrew. And not just a Jewish Zionist, but a South African who opposed apartheid and was appointed to the country’s Constitutional Court when that system was abolished.
All this in order to defame the most moral army in the world, fresh from waging the most just war in history!
Richard Goldstone is not the only Jew manipulated by the world-wide anti-Semitic conspiracy. Throughout the three weeks of the Gaza War, more than 10,000 Israelis demonstrated against it again and again. They were photographed carrying signs saying “End the massacre in Gaza”, “Stop the war crimes”’ “Israel commits war crimes”, “Bombing civilians is a war crime”. They chanted in unison: “Olmert, Olmert, it is true – They’re waiting in The Hague for you!”
Who would have believed that there are so many anti-Semites in Israel?!
The official Israeli reaction to the Goldstone report would have been amusing, if the matter had not been so grave.
Except for the “usual suspects” (Gideon Levy, Amira Hass and their ilk), the condemnation of the report was unanimous, total and extreme, from Shimon Peres, that advocate of every abomination, down to the last scribbler in the newspapers.
Nobody, but nobody, dealt with the subject itself. Nobody examined the detailed conclusions. With such an anti-Semitic smear, there is no need for that. Actually, there is no need to read the report at all.
The public, in all its diversity, stood up like one person, in order to rebuff the plot, as it has learned to do in the thousand years of pogroms, Spanish inquisition and Holocaust. A siege mentality, the ghetto mentality.
The instinctive reaction in such a situation is denial. It’s just not true. It never happened. It’s all a pack of lies.
By itself, that is a natural reaction. When a human being is faced with a situation which he cannot handle, denial is the first refuge. If things did not happen, there is no need to cope. Basically, there is no difference between the deniers of the Armenian genocide, the deniers of the annihilation of the Native Americans and the deniers of the atrocities of all wars.
From this point of view, it can be said that denial is almost “normal”. But with us it has been developed into an art form.
We have a special method: when something happens that we don’t want to confront, we direct the spotlight to one specific detail, something completely marginal, and begin to insist on it, debate it, examine it from all angles as if it were a matter of life and death.
Take the Yom Kippur war. It broke out because for six years, beginning with the 1967 war, Israel had cruised like a Ship of Fools, intoxicated with victory songs, victory albums and the belief in the invincibility of the Israeli army. Golda Meir treated the Arab world with open contempt and rebuffed the peace overtures of Anwar Sadat. The result: more than 2000 young Israelis killed, and who knows how many Egyptians and Syrians.
And what was furiously debated? The “Omission.” “Why were the reserves not called up in time? Why were the tanks not moved in advance?” Menachem Begin thundered in the Knesset, and about this, books and articles galore were written and a blue-ribbon judicial board of inquiry deliberated.
The First Lebanon War was a political blunder and a military failure. It lasted 18 years, gave birth to Hizbullah and established it as a regional force. And what was discussed? Whether Ariel Sharon had deceived Begin and was responsible for his illness and eventual death.
The Second Lebanon War was a disgrace from beginning to end, a superfluous war that caused massive destruction, wholesale slaughter and the flight of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians from their homes, without achieving an Israeli victory. And what was our debate about? For what was a commission of inquiry appointed? About the way the decision to start the war was taken. Was there an appropriate process of decision making? Was there orderly staff work?
About the Gaza War, there was no debate at all, because everything was perfectly alright. A brilliant campaign. Marvelous political and military leadership. True, we did not convince the Gaza Strip population to overthrow their leaders; true, we did not succeed in freeing the captured soldier Gilad Shalit; true, the whole world condemned us – but we killed a lot of Arabs, destroyed their environment and taught them a lesson they will not forget.
Now, a profound debate on the Goldstone report is going on. Not about its content, God forbid. What’s there to discus? But about the one point that is really important: was our government right in deciding to boycott the commission? Perhaps it would have been better to take part in the deliberations? Did our Foreign Office act as foolishly as it usually does? (Our Ministry of Defense, of course, never behaves foolishly.) Tens of thousands of words about this world-shaking question were poured out from the newspapers, the radio and TV, with every self-respecting commentator weighing in.
So why did the Israeli government boycott the commission? The real answer is quite simple: they knew full well that the commission, any commission, would have to reach the conclusions it did reach.
In fact, the commission did not say anything new. Almost all the facts were already known: the bombing of civilian neighborhoods, the use of flechette rounds and white phosphorus against civilian targets, the bombing of mosques and schools, the blocking of rescue parties from reaching the wounded, the killing of fleeing civilians carrying white flags, the use of human shields, and more. The Israeli army did not allow journalists near the action, but the war was amply documented by the international media in all its details, the entire world saw it in real time on the TV screens. The testimonies are so many and so consistent, that any reasonable person can draw their own conclusions.
If the officers and soldiers of the Israeli army had given testimony before the commission, it would perhaps have been impressed by their angle, too – the fear, the confusion, the lack of orientation – and the conclusions could have been somewhat less severe. But the main thrust would not have changed. After all, the whole operation was based on the assumption that it was possible to overthrow the Hamas government in Gaza by causing intolerable suffering to the civilian population. The damage to civilians was not “collateral”, whether avoidable or unavoidable, but a central feature of the operation itself.
Moreover, the rules of engagement were designed to achieve “zero losses” to our forces – avoiding losses at any price. That was the conclusion our army – led by Gabi Ashkenazi – drew from the Second Lebanon War. The results speak for themselves: 200 dead Palestinians for every Israeli soldier killed by the other side – 1400:6.
Every real investigation must inevitably lead to the same conclusions as those of the Goldstone commission. Therefore, there was no Israeli wish for a real inquiry. The “investigations” that did take place were a farce. The person responsible, the Military Advocate General, kippa-wearing brigadier Avichai Mendelblit, was in charge of this task. He was promoted this week to the rank of major general. The promotion and its timing speak a clear language.
So it is clear that there is no chance of the Israeli government belatedly opening a real investigation, as demanded by Israeli peace activists.
In order to be credible, such an investigation would have to have the status of a State Commission of Inquiry as defined by Israeli law, headed by a Supreme Court justice. It would have to conduct its investigations publicly, in full view of the Israeli and international media. It would have to invite the victims, Gaza inhabitants, to testify together with the soldiers who took part in the war. It would have to investigate in detail each of the accusations that appear in the Goldstone report. It would have to check out the orders issued and decisions made, from the Chief of Staff down to the squad level. It would have to study the briefings of Air Force pilots and drone operators.
This list suffices to make it clear why such an investigation will not and cannot take place. Instead, the world-wide Israeli propaganda machine will continue to defame the Jewish judge and the people who appointed him.
Not all the Israeli accusations against the UN are groundless. For example: why does the organization investigate the war crimes in Gaza (and in former Yugoslavia and Darfur, investigations in which Goldstone took part as chief prosecutor) and not the actions of the US in Iraq and Afghanistan and the Russians in Chechnya?
But the main argument of the Israeli government is that the UN is an anti-Semitic organization, and its Human Rights Commission is doubly anti-Semitic.
Israel’s relations with the UN are very complex. The state was founded on the basis of a UN resolution, and it is doubtful whether it would have come into being at precisely that time and those circumstance had there been no such resolution. Our Declaration of Independence is largely based on this resolution. A year later, Israel was accepted as a UN member in spite of the fact that it had not allowed the (then) 750 thousand Palestinian refugees to return.
But this honeymoon soured quickly. David Ben-Gurion spoke with contempt about UM-Shmum (“Um” is the Hebrew for “UN”, the prefix “shm” signifies contempt). From then on to this very day, Israel has systematically violated almost every single UN resolution that concerned it, complaining that there was an “automatic majority” of Arab and communist countries stacked against it. This attitude was reinforced when, on the eve of the 1967 war, the UN troops in Sinai where precipitously withdrawn on the demand of Gamal Abd-al-Nasser. And, of course, by the UN resolution (later annulled) equating Zionism with racism.
Now this argument is raising its head again. The UN, it is being said, is anti-Israeli, which means (of course) anti-Semitic. Everyone who acts in the name of the UN is an Israel-hater. To hell with the UN. To hell with the Goldstone report.
That is, however, a woefully short-sighted policy. The general public throughout the world is hearing about the report and remembering the pictures they saw on their TV screens during the Gaza war. The UN enjoys much respect. In the wake of the “Molten Lead” operation, Israel’s standing in the world has been steadily going down, and this report will send it down even further. This will have practical consequences – political, military, economic and cultural. Only a fool – or an Avigdor Lieberman – can ignore that.
If there is no credible Israeli investigation, there will be demands for the UN Security Council to refer the matter to the International Criminal Court in The Hague. Barack Obama would have to decide whether to veto such a resolution – a move that would cause grave harm to the US, and for which he would demand a high price from Israel.
As has been said before: UM-Shmum may turn into UM-Boom.
Uri Avnery is an Israeli writer and founder of the Gush Shalom peace movement. A member of the militant Zionist Irgun movement as a teenager, Avnery served in Israel's Knesset from 1965-74 and 1979-81.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=226892
17 sept 2009
Reactions to Goldstone report highlight gaps in stance on human rights
Israel dismissed, condemned and declared itself immune to the recently released Goldstone report for the UN Human Rights Council this week, while Palestinian rights organizations focus on the ramifications of the report, and the war it examined.
Operation Cast Lead was directed at both the armed elements in Gaza responsible for projectile launches toward Israel and “on the people of Gaza as a whole,” a coalition of human rights organizations in the Palestinian territories said in a joint statement Wednesday.
The coalition made the comments in response to the UN-mandated fact finding mission report around war crimes and human rights violations committed during the Israeli offensive in December and January.
The UN-mandated Goldstone report, released Tuesday, concluded that war crimes were committed by both the Israeli military and armed elements in Gaza. The report refuted the claim that the actions of armed factions in the Strip justified Israel’s response.
Israel noted that this “failure” to produce a justification for Israel’s disproportionate actions in Gaza led the Israeli President Shimon Peres to demonize the fact finding mission and the subsequent 700 page document as a “mockery of history.”
In sharp contrast to Israel’s dismissive response to the report, the coalition of 13 human rights organizations “welcomed” the document. They focused on the “importance of the recommendations … for the restoration of justice to the victims of Israel’s offensive attack, Operation Cast Lead.”
The human rights coalition agreed with the report’s recommendation to further “emphasize the need for accountability, whether it is through the Security Council, acting under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, referring the situation to the International Criminal Court, or by States fulfilling their obligations to bring perpetrators to account under universal jurisdiction.”
Peres’ response went so far as to praise his military’s role in the region saying, “IDF operations enabled economic prosperity in the West Bank, relieved southern Lebanese citizens from the terror of Hezbollah and have enabled Gazans to have normal lives again.”
Yet, the UN-mandated Fact Finding Mission found sufficient evidence to make indictments for crimes against humanity.
The Palestinian human rights coalition commented that “normal relations cannot be conducted with States that have committed and continue to commit serious violations of international human rights and humanitarian law, including crimes against humanity.”
“The reality of Israel’s longstanding occupation of Palestinian land was graphically illustrated by the events of Operation Cast Lead.”
“As long as individuals and States are allowed to act with impunity, they will continue to violate international law and civilians will continue to suffer the horrific consequences.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu continued Peres’ dismissive trend, this time suggesting Israel was above the call to respect human rights based on its self-declared mandate to propagate the “war on terror.” Netanyahu appealed to international bigwigs the USA and Russia, saying that if the UN Human Rights Council brought Israel before the International Criminal Court, the US and Russia would be hampered in their own wars on terrorism.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=226330
Reactions to Goldstone report highlight gaps in stance on human rights
Israel dismissed, condemned and declared itself immune to the recently released Goldstone report for the UN Human Rights Council this week, while Palestinian rights organizations focus on the ramifications of the report, and the war it examined.
Operation Cast Lead was directed at both the armed elements in Gaza responsible for projectile launches toward Israel and “on the people of Gaza as a whole,” a coalition of human rights organizations in the Palestinian territories said in a joint statement Wednesday.
The coalition made the comments in response to the UN-mandated fact finding mission report around war crimes and human rights violations committed during the Israeli offensive in December and January.
The UN-mandated Goldstone report, released Tuesday, concluded that war crimes were committed by both the Israeli military and armed elements in Gaza. The report refuted the claim that the actions of armed factions in the Strip justified Israel’s response.
Israel noted that this “failure” to produce a justification for Israel’s disproportionate actions in Gaza led the Israeli President Shimon Peres to demonize the fact finding mission and the subsequent 700 page document as a “mockery of history.”
In sharp contrast to Israel’s dismissive response to the report, the coalition of 13 human rights organizations “welcomed” the document. They focused on the “importance of the recommendations … for the restoration of justice to the victims of Israel’s offensive attack, Operation Cast Lead.”
The human rights coalition agreed with the report’s recommendation to further “emphasize the need for accountability, whether it is through the Security Council, acting under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, referring the situation to the International Criminal Court, or by States fulfilling their obligations to bring perpetrators to account under universal jurisdiction.”
Peres’ response went so far as to praise his military’s role in the region saying, “IDF operations enabled economic prosperity in the West Bank, relieved southern Lebanese citizens from the terror of Hezbollah and have enabled Gazans to have normal lives again.”
Yet, the UN-mandated Fact Finding Mission found sufficient evidence to make indictments for crimes against humanity.
The Palestinian human rights coalition commented that “normal relations cannot be conducted with States that have committed and continue to commit serious violations of international human rights and humanitarian law, including crimes against humanity.”
“The reality of Israel’s longstanding occupation of Palestinian land was graphically illustrated by the events of Operation Cast Lead.”
“As long as individuals and States are allowed to act with impunity, they will continue to violate international law and civilians will continue to suffer the horrific consequences.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu continued Peres’ dismissive trend, this time suggesting Israel was above the call to respect human rights based on its self-declared mandate to propagate the “war on terror.” Netanyahu appealed to international bigwigs the USA and Russia, saying that if the UN Human Rights Council brought Israel before the International Criminal Court, the US and Russia would be hampered in their own wars on terrorism.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=226330
16 sept 2009
Goldstone tells Ma'an: Israel has yet to deny our findings
Despite its outrage, Israel has not disputed any single allegation contained in a bombshell United Nations report released on Tuesday, according to its author, Richard Goldstone, in an interview the same day.
"There hasn't been any attempt thus far to deal with the contents of the report at all," insisted the former South African justice, who was appointed to head the UN Human Rights Council's investigation of the assault last winter that left some 1,400 Palestinians dead by mid-January.
Goldstone, an expert on international law and the laws of war, was chief UN prosecutor for the Yugoslavia and Rwanda post-conflict international criminal tribunals in the early 1990s, and later chaired the international independent panel on Kosovo.
After a six-month inquiry, his UN Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict released a stream of allegations on Tuesday against Palestinian armed groups and Israel's military, accusing both of war crimes, but singling out Israel for specifically targeting "the people of Gaza as a whole."
While opting not to address the task force's charges, Goldstone explained over the phone, Israeli spokespersons and ministers attacked the report as a concept and criticized its authors just minutes after receiving the document, and despite that it totaled nearly 600 pages.
Israel's immediate response was to attack the report's perceived bias, a tactic perhaps necessitated by the UN's failure to provide advance copies to Israeli representatives in Geneva, or to Hamas in Gaza, until less than an hour before Goldstone began addressing reporters, according to one HRC official.
"Both the mandate of the Mission and the resolution establishing it prejudged the outcome of any investigation," the Israeli Foreign Ministry insisted in its own statement to Ma'an.
However, Goldstone dismissed those and other denunciations from Israeli officials, particularly remarks alleging bias by the prime minister's spokesman, Mark Regev, which he "found disappointing because it sounds to me like he hadn't read the report."
"I certainly have every confidence that any reasonable person would regard the report as being even-handed, and looking into all relevant allegations on all sides," Goldstone said, countering allegations that he set out to blame Israel from the beginning.
"I think that's for objective people to judge," he added, before moving on to one of the stranger allegations distributed by the Foreign Ministry on Tuesday, that Hamas officials joined his team throughout its investigation in Gaza.
'Hamas didn't follow us'
"You know, this allegation keeps being made," Goldstone said, even though he said his report accused Hamas in unmistakably clear language of war crimes for its targeting of Israeli civilian population centers. "It is absolutely without any truth at all."
Israel's Foreign Ministry had claimed that "at every stage of their visit to Gaza the Mission members were accompanied by Hamas representatives," citing unspecified Palestinian media reports. "If so, this was clearly a major obstacle to obtaining genuine evidence."
But Goldstone insisted that "Hamas didn't follow us at all," much less "at every stage" of the visit. "They were nowhere near any of the interviews we held, and there was just no question; there was no issue."
He added, "Had they attempted in any way to do that, I would have found that objectionable and I would not have accepted it - but it just didn't happen."
Although he said Hamas never tried to harm the investigation, Israel refused to cooperate with the UN mission, forcing Goldstone and his team to enter the besieged coastal strip via Egypt's crossing, and forcing Israeli victims to testify in Geneva.
Team's findings unanimous
On Tuesday, the ministry explained in a statement why it opted to obstruct the team, citing a resolution establishing the inquiry that Israel considered "one-sided" and that "prejudges the outcome of any inquiry."
"Prior to any investigation, it determines that Israel has 'caused massive violations of human rights' and accuses Israel of targeting medical facilities and systematically destroying Palestinian cultural heritage," the statement said. "It does not accuse the Hamas of any violations."
"It was for this reason that many distinguished individuals who were asked to head the Mission refused," the statement went on to say. "One of them was [former Irish president] Mary Robinson," the former high commissioner for human rights often the target of Israel's ire, but who nevertheless refused a seat on the mission due to what she called a one-sided nature of the preliminary mandate.
But what the ministry failed to mention, according to Goldstone, is that the fact-finding mission's mandate was changed to a targeted investigation of all violations of law committed "at any time" during the Gaza assault, "whether before, during or after."
"The mandate Mary Robinson refused was not the mandate I accepted," the South African justice explained. "It's comparing apples and pears."
In any case, Goldstone, who is Jewish and somewhat well-respected in Israel, urged the country's leaders to respect his findings and act accordingly by investigating its own actions rather than elements of perceived bias on the part of the UN team.
"I can vouch for the independence and the integrity of all the members of the mission," he said of his four-member group. "All the findings were made after a lot of debate between the four of us but we ended up, I'm happy to say, with unanimity."
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=226141
Goldstone tells Ma'an: Israel has yet to deny our findings
Despite its outrage, Israel has not disputed any single allegation contained in a bombshell United Nations report released on Tuesday, according to its author, Richard Goldstone, in an interview the same day.
"There hasn't been any attempt thus far to deal with the contents of the report at all," insisted the former South African justice, who was appointed to head the UN Human Rights Council's investigation of the assault last winter that left some 1,400 Palestinians dead by mid-January.
Goldstone, an expert on international law and the laws of war, was chief UN prosecutor for the Yugoslavia and Rwanda post-conflict international criminal tribunals in the early 1990s, and later chaired the international independent panel on Kosovo.
After a six-month inquiry, his UN Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict released a stream of allegations on Tuesday against Palestinian armed groups and Israel's military, accusing both of war crimes, but singling out Israel for specifically targeting "the people of Gaza as a whole."
While opting not to address the task force's charges, Goldstone explained over the phone, Israeli spokespersons and ministers attacked the report as a concept and criticized its authors just minutes after receiving the document, and despite that it totaled nearly 600 pages.
Israel's immediate response was to attack the report's perceived bias, a tactic perhaps necessitated by the UN's failure to provide advance copies to Israeli representatives in Geneva, or to Hamas in Gaza, until less than an hour before Goldstone began addressing reporters, according to one HRC official.
"Both the mandate of the Mission and the resolution establishing it prejudged the outcome of any investigation," the Israeli Foreign Ministry insisted in its own statement to Ma'an.
However, Goldstone dismissed those and other denunciations from Israeli officials, particularly remarks alleging bias by the prime minister's spokesman, Mark Regev, which he "found disappointing because it sounds to me like he hadn't read the report."
"I certainly have every confidence that any reasonable person would regard the report as being even-handed, and looking into all relevant allegations on all sides," Goldstone said, countering allegations that he set out to blame Israel from the beginning.
"I think that's for objective people to judge," he added, before moving on to one of the stranger allegations distributed by the Foreign Ministry on Tuesday, that Hamas officials joined his team throughout its investigation in Gaza.
'Hamas didn't follow us'
"You know, this allegation keeps being made," Goldstone said, even though he said his report accused Hamas in unmistakably clear language of war crimes for its targeting of Israeli civilian population centers. "It is absolutely without any truth at all."
Israel's Foreign Ministry had claimed that "at every stage of their visit to Gaza the Mission members were accompanied by Hamas representatives," citing unspecified Palestinian media reports. "If so, this was clearly a major obstacle to obtaining genuine evidence."
But Goldstone insisted that "Hamas didn't follow us at all," much less "at every stage" of the visit. "They were nowhere near any of the interviews we held, and there was just no question; there was no issue."
He added, "Had they attempted in any way to do that, I would have found that objectionable and I would not have accepted it - but it just didn't happen."
Although he said Hamas never tried to harm the investigation, Israel refused to cooperate with the UN mission, forcing Goldstone and his team to enter the besieged coastal strip via Egypt's crossing, and forcing Israeli victims to testify in Geneva.
Team's findings unanimous
On Tuesday, the ministry explained in a statement why it opted to obstruct the team, citing a resolution establishing the inquiry that Israel considered "one-sided" and that "prejudges the outcome of any inquiry."
"Prior to any investigation, it determines that Israel has 'caused massive violations of human rights' and accuses Israel of targeting medical facilities and systematically destroying Palestinian cultural heritage," the statement said. "It does not accuse the Hamas of any violations."
"It was for this reason that many distinguished individuals who were asked to head the Mission refused," the statement went on to say. "One of them was [former Irish president] Mary Robinson," the former high commissioner for human rights often the target of Israel's ire, but who nevertheless refused a seat on the mission due to what she called a one-sided nature of the preliminary mandate.
But what the ministry failed to mention, according to Goldstone, is that the fact-finding mission's mandate was changed to a targeted investigation of all violations of law committed "at any time" during the Gaza assault, "whether before, during or after."
"The mandate Mary Robinson refused was not the mandate I accepted," the South African justice explained. "It's comparing apples and pears."
In any case, Goldstone, who is Jewish and somewhat well-respected in Israel, urged the country's leaders to respect his findings and act accordingly by investigating its own actions rather than elements of perceived bias on the part of the UN team.
"I can vouch for the independence and the integrity of all the members of the mission," he said of his four-member group. "All the findings were made after a lot of debate between the four of us but we ended up, I'm happy to say, with unanimity."
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=226141
15 sept 2009
Goldstone report: Evidence of war crimes, crimes against humanity
A UN fact-finding mission led by Justice Richard Goldstone on Tuesday released its long-awaited report on the Gaza assault, in which it alleged serious violations of international law committed by both Israel's military and Palestinian armed groups.
The mission concluded that there was evidence indicating Israel committed serious violations of international human rights and humanitarian law during the assault, including actions amounting to war crimes, and possibly crimes against humanity.
The report also concluded that there is evidence that Palestinian armed groups committed war crimes, as well as possibly crimes against humanity, in their repeated launching of rockets and mortars into southern Israel over the course of the winter assault, which left some 1,400 Palestinians dead by mid-January 2009.
In a preliminary statement, Israel dismissed the findings. However, its Foreign Ministry said it would read the report "carefully," and noted that the military had opened a handful of investigations into individual cases.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=226080
Israel accused of Gaza war crimes
In a damning report on Israel’s conduct during its invasion of the Gaza Strip, a United Nations panel on Tuesday accused its forces of war crimes and of deliberately spreading terror among civilians.
Richard Goldstone, a South African jurist, who chaired the four-member panel on behalf of the UN Human Rights Council, said the alleged crimes resulted from military policies adopted in the invasion at the turn of the year. He said the findings in the 574-page document “do not amount to second-guessing commanders and soldiers in the heat of battle”.
His panel urged action by the UN Security Council that could lead to alleged crimes being referred to the International Criminal Court in The Hague.
The panel’s investigation, with which Israel refused to co-operate, said the military operations in Gaza, aimed at ending Palestinian rocket fire from the territory, were “directed at the people of Gaza as a whole”.
The report, handed to Israeli and Palestinian diplomats just half an hour before its release, comes a week before Barack Obama, US president, is expected to chair a meeting between Israeli and Palestinian leaders in New York to try to restart the peace process.
Mr Goldstone, who was chief prosecutor in war crime trials involving former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, said: “As a Jew, with a long affiliation with Israel, it’s obviously a disappointment to me – putting it mildly – that Israel has behaved as described in the report.”
He said there was no justification in international law for incidents such as an attack on a crowded Gaza mosque, even if Israel had been able to establish its erroneous claim that arms and militants were inside.
The Israeli government refused to allow the UN panel to visit Israel or the occupied West Bank after previous negative UN assessments of its conduct in Gaza. The panel visited Gaza and interviewed Israeli witnesses elsewhere.
Israel regards the Geneva-based Human Rights Council, which the US attended for the first time on Monday since joining it, as fundamentally anti-Israeli.
In a report that also condemns Hamas in Gaza for failing to halt rocket fire and take action against the perpetrators, the Goldstone panel accuses Israel of failing to investigate war crimes against international law in an operation in which 1,400 Palestinians were killed.
He urged the UN Security Council “as soon as possible” to establish a committee to determine whether, after a period of six months, Israel had pursued adequate investigations into alleged war crimes. He said Israeli probes so far had relied on the testimony of soldiers rather than victims and had been held in secret.
Separately, George Mitchell, US envoy to the Middle East, will continue talks on Wednesday with Benjamin Netanyahu, Israeli premier, to try to wrap up a deal to freeze Jewish settlement activity as a step to renewing the Middle East peace process.
Goldstone report: Evidence of war crimes, crimes against humanity
A UN fact-finding mission led by Justice Richard Goldstone on Tuesday released its long-awaited report on the Gaza assault, in which it alleged serious violations of international law committed by both Israel's military and Palestinian armed groups.
The mission concluded that there was evidence indicating Israel committed serious violations of international human rights and humanitarian law during the assault, including actions amounting to war crimes, and possibly crimes against humanity.
The report also concluded that there is evidence that Palestinian armed groups committed war crimes, as well as possibly crimes against humanity, in their repeated launching of rockets and mortars into southern Israel over the course of the winter assault, which left some 1,400 Palestinians dead by mid-January 2009.
In a preliminary statement, Israel dismissed the findings. However, its Foreign Ministry said it would read the report "carefully," and noted that the military had opened a handful of investigations into individual cases.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=226080
Israel accused of Gaza war crimes
In a damning report on Israel’s conduct during its invasion of the Gaza Strip, a United Nations panel on Tuesday accused its forces of war crimes and of deliberately spreading terror among civilians.
Richard Goldstone, a South African jurist, who chaired the four-member panel on behalf of the UN Human Rights Council, said the alleged crimes resulted from military policies adopted in the invasion at the turn of the year. He said the findings in the 574-page document “do not amount to second-guessing commanders and soldiers in the heat of battle”.
His panel urged action by the UN Security Council that could lead to alleged crimes being referred to the International Criminal Court in The Hague.
The panel’s investigation, with which Israel refused to co-operate, said the military operations in Gaza, aimed at ending Palestinian rocket fire from the territory, were “directed at the people of Gaza as a whole”.
The report, handed to Israeli and Palestinian diplomats just half an hour before its release, comes a week before Barack Obama, US president, is expected to chair a meeting between Israeli and Palestinian leaders in New York to try to restart the peace process.
Mr Goldstone, who was chief prosecutor in war crime trials involving former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, said: “As a Jew, with a long affiliation with Israel, it’s obviously a disappointment to me – putting it mildly – that Israel has behaved as described in the report.”
He said there was no justification in international law for incidents such as an attack on a crowded Gaza mosque, even if Israel had been able to establish its erroneous claim that arms and militants were inside.
The Israeli government refused to allow the UN panel to visit Israel or the occupied West Bank after previous negative UN assessments of its conduct in Gaza. The panel visited Gaza and interviewed Israeli witnesses elsewhere.
Israel regards the Geneva-based Human Rights Council, which the US attended for the first time on Monday since joining it, as fundamentally anti-Israeli.
In a report that also condemns Hamas in Gaza for failing to halt rocket fire and take action against the perpetrators, the Goldstone panel accuses Israel of failing to investigate war crimes against international law in an operation in which 1,400 Palestinians were killed.
He urged the UN Security Council “as soon as possible” to establish a committee to determine whether, after a period of six months, Israel had pursued adequate investigations into alleged war crimes. He said Israeli probes so far had relied on the testimony of soldiers rather than victims and had been held in secret.
Separately, George Mitchell, US envoy to the Middle East, will continue talks on Wednesday with Benjamin Netanyahu, Israeli premier, to try to wrap up a deal to freeze Jewish settlement activity as a step to renewing the Middle East peace process.
29 aug 2009
Fighting for the right to walk
by Ramzy Baroud
Gaza's troubles have somehow been relegated, if not completely dropped from the mainstream media's radar, and subsequently the world's conscience and consciousness.
Weaning the public from the sadness there conveys the false impression that things are improving and that people are starting to move on and rebuild their lives.
But nothing could be further from the truth. Since the conclusion of Israel's war last year, the Palestinian Health Ministry declared that 344 Gaza patients have reportedly been added to the swelling number of casualties.
Khaled Abed Rabbu, once a young father of four, is a precise living example, such an eloquent paradigm of what no human being ought to endure in this world laden with international human rights organizations, mediators, advocates, and diplomats.
His house was completely destroyed, as were two of his little girls. He buried seven-year-old Soad and Amal, just two, soon after burying any hope that his four-year-old Samar's future would be any less bleak.
According to an IslamOnline report, Khaled's wife, Kawthar lined up the children in front of their house in the Jabaliya refugee camp, holding a white flag. But their internationally recognized gesture was disregarded by Israeli forces and the shelling of their home and family commenced. These miserable events unfolded at Christmastime last year, when the Rabbu family was reduced by nearly half.
But since then, they, and a disgracefully large number of other such families, have somehow slipped our minds. Completely surrounded still, and prevented from ever advancing back to point zero, the Israeli siege on Gaza is what one must certainly brand the quintessence of barbarism.
Like in December of 2008, the Israeli blockade means that almost nothing enters or exits Gaza; injured in need of treatment are not allowed exit nor entrance, as is the case with medical supplies, medicine, food, and almost anything in between.
With entire neighborhoods pulverized in the attack, concrete is desperately needed to rebuild the many homes, mosques, hospitals and other structures that were destroyed. That too, is forbidden. And so Khaled, like so many others, has little hope that his home, which has now lain in shambles for the better part of a year, will be restored any time soon.
From 14 September to 2 October 2009, the Human Rights Council will conduct a session where the office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights will present its report based on the fact-finding mission, headed by Justice Richard Goldstone, conducted after the Israeli attacks.
Nearly eight months after the bloodletting of "Operation Cast Lead," a 34-page report by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights was released on 13 August, pressing for a lifting of the Gaza blockade. The new report, which will be presented along with Goldstone's report in September, lays out the many incomprehensible details of how the Israelis battered the Strip, one of the most impoverished and the most densely populated pieces of planet Earth.
The details were laid out, chastising Israel for snubbing the most basic norms of human decency:
• Under the Universal Declaration of Human rights, everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country - and everyone has the right to seek asylum. Such calls were ignored, and the borders of the Gaza Strip remained closed throughout the conflict.
• The right to health of children, set out in article 24 of CRC, is of particular concern in Gaza. United Nations agencies, Ministry of Health officials and health NGOs report that rising poverty, unemployment and food insecurity, compounded by the conflict, have increased the threat of child malnutrition. In January, UNICEF said that 10.3 percent of Gazan children under five were stunted.
The report continued on, expressing concern that the only export allowed out of Gaza in nearly two years was 13 large truckloads of cut flowers, fully recognizing that the siege was in direct response to the Gazan people exercising their right to elect the Hamas government.
From the denial of food to medical supplies to housing to clean water to education to any basic sense of what is called the "highest attainable standard of physical and mental health," according to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), Israel managed, as the report concluded, to deny pretty much every last one.
One has to wonder, and even after so many years of witnessing such amazing ingenuity when it comes to tormenting the Palestinians, does the Israeli government, and further, does the Israeli public feel any sense of shame, remorse or even the slightest embarrassment when the most basic norms of human behavior must be laid out in so elementary a fashion, reminding, and then re-reminding them that it is a fundamental human right to have access to something as basic as food and clean water?
This is a thought that Khaled must ponder from time to time. It is for sure that life has been no cake-walk for Khaled, but perhaps this last year has been the most trying of all. Two little ones lost, homeless, and his third of four children struggling to walk in a Belgium hospital.
Sana, his four-year-old, was supposedly one of the lucky ones on that day, for she survived, and was one of very few that escaped to safety through Egypt's sealed border. But she has two bullets lodged in her tiny spine, so deeply embedded that Belgian surgeons cannot remove them.
So now she is paralyzed, her body propped up and supported by a vibrant pink and purple back brace, like a fairy suit of armor. Chances of ever walking again are grim. Just two or three short years after graduating from a crawl, and now she will most likely be in a wheelchair for the rest of her life, even though her doctors and her mother say that she is desperate to walk again.
And so it seems to be the sad case that this exhaustive 34-page report failed to declare, or perhaps it may be until this point that a clause has never been drafted of, the universal right for every little girl and boy to walk.
Ramzy Baroud is an author of several books and editor of www.palestinechronicle.com.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=222126
Fighting for the right to walk
by Ramzy Baroud
Gaza's troubles have somehow been relegated, if not completely dropped from the mainstream media's radar, and subsequently the world's conscience and consciousness.
Weaning the public from the sadness there conveys the false impression that things are improving and that people are starting to move on and rebuild their lives.
But nothing could be further from the truth. Since the conclusion of Israel's war last year, the Palestinian Health Ministry declared that 344 Gaza patients have reportedly been added to the swelling number of casualties.
Khaled Abed Rabbu, once a young father of four, is a precise living example, such an eloquent paradigm of what no human being ought to endure in this world laden with international human rights organizations, mediators, advocates, and diplomats.
His house was completely destroyed, as were two of his little girls. He buried seven-year-old Soad and Amal, just two, soon after burying any hope that his four-year-old Samar's future would be any less bleak.
According to an IslamOnline report, Khaled's wife, Kawthar lined up the children in front of their house in the Jabaliya refugee camp, holding a white flag. But their internationally recognized gesture was disregarded by Israeli forces and the shelling of their home and family commenced. These miserable events unfolded at Christmastime last year, when the Rabbu family was reduced by nearly half.
But since then, they, and a disgracefully large number of other such families, have somehow slipped our minds. Completely surrounded still, and prevented from ever advancing back to point zero, the Israeli siege on Gaza is what one must certainly brand the quintessence of barbarism.
Like in December of 2008, the Israeli blockade means that almost nothing enters or exits Gaza; injured in need of treatment are not allowed exit nor entrance, as is the case with medical supplies, medicine, food, and almost anything in between.
With entire neighborhoods pulverized in the attack, concrete is desperately needed to rebuild the many homes, mosques, hospitals and other structures that were destroyed. That too, is forbidden. And so Khaled, like so many others, has little hope that his home, which has now lain in shambles for the better part of a year, will be restored any time soon.
From 14 September to 2 October 2009, the Human Rights Council will conduct a session where the office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights will present its report based on the fact-finding mission, headed by Justice Richard Goldstone, conducted after the Israeli attacks.
Nearly eight months after the bloodletting of "Operation Cast Lead," a 34-page report by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights was released on 13 August, pressing for a lifting of the Gaza blockade. The new report, which will be presented along with Goldstone's report in September, lays out the many incomprehensible details of how the Israelis battered the Strip, one of the most impoverished and the most densely populated pieces of planet Earth.
The details were laid out, chastising Israel for snubbing the most basic norms of human decency:
• Under the Universal Declaration of Human rights, everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country - and everyone has the right to seek asylum. Such calls were ignored, and the borders of the Gaza Strip remained closed throughout the conflict.
• The right to health of children, set out in article 24 of CRC, is of particular concern in Gaza. United Nations agencies, Ministry of Health officials and health NGOs report that rising poverty, unemployment and food insecurity, compounded by the conflict, have increased the threat of child malnutrition. In January, UNICEF said that 10.3 percent of Gazan children under five were stunted.
The report continued on, expressing concern that the only export allowed out of Gaza in nearly two years was 13 large truckloads of cut flowers, fully recognizing that the siege was in direct response to the Gazan people exercising their right to elect the Hamas government.
From the denial of food to medical supplies to housing to clean water to education to any basic sense of what is called the "highest attainable standard of physical and mental health," according to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), Israel managed, as the report concluded, to deny pretty much every last one.
One has to wonder, and even after so many years of witnessing such amazing ingenuity when it comes to tormenting the Palestinians, does the Israeli government, and further, does the Israeli public feel any sense of shame, remorse or even the slightest embarrassment when the most basic norms of human behavior must be laid out in so elementary a fashion, reminding, and then re-reminding them that it is a fundamental human right to have access to something as basic as food and clean water?
This is a thought that Khaled must ponder from time to time. It is for sure that life has been no cake-walk for Khaled, but perhaps this last year has been the most trying of all. Two little ones lost, homeless, and his third of four children struggling to walk in a Belgium hospital.
Sana, his four-year-old, was supposedly one of the lucky ones on that day, for she survived, and was one of very few that escaped to safety through Egypt's sealed border. But she has two bullets lodged in her tiny spine, so deeply embedded that Belgian surgeons cannot remove them.
So now she is paralyzed, her body propped up and supported by a vibrant pink and purple back brace, like a fairy suit of armor. Chances of ever walking again are grim. Just two or three short years after graduating from a crawl, and now she will most likely be in a wheelchair for the rest of her life, even though her doctors and her mother say that she is desperate to walk again.
And so it seems to be the sad case that this exhaustive 34-page report failed to declare, or perhaps it may be until this point that a clause has never been drafted of, the universal right for every little girl and boy to walk.
Ramzy Baroud is an author of several books and editor of www.palestinechronicle.com.
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