[South African lawyers] want to investigate South African citizens who may have fought for the Israeli army during the war on Gaza in December and January, with a view to prosecuting them on South African soil for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
IDF/war crimes
The kill ratio was 100-to-1 in our favor. The destruction ratio was much, much greater than that. To this day, thousands of Gazans are living in tents because we won’t let them import cement to rebuild the homes we destroyed. We turned the Gaza Strip into a disaster area, a humanitarian case, and we’re keeping it that way with our blockade. Meanwhile, here on the Israeli side of the border, it’s hard to remember when life was so safe and secure. So let’s decide: Who was the victim of Operation Cast Lead, them or us?
Wikipedia’s important review of Israel’s military free-range killing doctrine: a proposed and approved strategy under which “Israel finally realizes that Arabs should be accountable for their leaders’ acts”.
It was the sixth known forced return to Gaza of Palestinians stopped at [this] checkpoint… in 10 days, according to the Israeli human rights group Gisha. Israel has also been preventing family reunifications in the West Bank for Palestinians with relatives living in Gaza, in effect forcing people to relocate to the Strip. The steps are part of an Israeli policy of treating Gaza and the West Bank as two separate entities, thereby undermining the coherence of Palestinian claims for a state encompassing both territories. The 1993 Oslo agreement stipulates that the West Bank and Gaza Strip are to be treated as one territorial unit.
“When we [Israelis] say that this is a political conflict, then we lose the battle,” he told the Guardian, adding that it should be remembered that the ancient land of Israel is “given to us by the Bible, not by some United Nations”.
Attorney Daniel Machover from London is one of the best known figures in the international group of lawyers and pro-Palestinian activists trying to put IDF officers on trial in European countries for alleged war crimes… Anyone surprised by the activities of the Israeli-born lawyer does not know his family history. His parents, radical left-wing activists, left Israel in 1968… His father, Moshe Machover, was… one of the founders of the Matzpen movement.
“Israel is transparent,” Ya’alon said. “The IDF has recently conducted five serious probes, the criminal investigation division opened an investigation into credit card theft. There is a team that will respond to the report without having to stop the army in order to do so.”
IOA Editor: Israel’s most transparent liar. Will not stop “the army,” but will he be stopped by by global activists?
I want to know how and why it was decided to embark on Operation Cast Lead in the Gaza Strip and to expand it into a ground offensive… I want to know if those who gave orders to the Israel Defense Forces assumed that hundreds of Palestinian civilians would be killed, and how they tried to prevent this.
A country’s conditions do not remove its obligations under international law… Whether a state is an aggressor or acting in self-defense, whether it faces a regular army or insurgents that commit abuses, the laws of war apply, imposing a duty to minimize civilian harm. And being a democratic country prevents Israel from committing wartime abuses no more than it stopped the United States from torture and unlawful detentions at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib.
Human rights lawyers and pro-Palestinian activists in a number of European countries hold lists with names of Israel Defense Forces soldiers allegedly linked to war crimes committed during Operation Cast Lead in the Gaza Strip. Existing legislation enables arrest warrants to be issued against these officers if they enter those countries.
I believe we should be amending the Basic Law: Human dignity and Liberty, and decide that the State of Israel is committed to maintaining the liberty and dignity of a person only if he’s Jewish; Just like we have land that is only for Jews and roads that are for Jews only. By modifying the Basic Law as suggested, we will know that “dignity and liberty” in the Jewish state are only reserved for Jews.
Richard Goldstone responds to Israel: “In Gaza, I was surprised and shocked by the destruction and misery there. I had not expected it. I did not anticipate that the IDF would have targeted civilians and civilian objects. I did not anticipate seeing the vast destruction of the economic infrastructure of Gaza including its agricultural lands, industrial factories, water supply and sanitation works. These are not military targets.”
Over 750 individuals and organizations from around the world signed on to the US Palestine Community Network’s letter to Ban Ki-Moon, Secretary-General of the United Nations, demanding the full implementation of the Goldstone report into Gaza war crimes. Sign letter.
Approximately 30 activists disrupted a lecture given in Chicago by former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert yesterday which was hosted by the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy. While Olmert’s speech was disrupted inside the lecture hall, approximately 150 activists protested outside the hall in the freezing rain.
IDF Chief of General Staff Gabi Ashkenazi told his French counterpart Jean-Louis Georgelin that Israel is not planning to bomb Iran, but may send elite troops to conduct activities on the ground there.
IOA Editor: Information, misinformation, or disinformation?
On Wednesday we – members of the Combatants for Peace movement, women of Machsom Watch, members of the Forum of Bereaved Families for Peace and writer David Grossman – attended a hearing at the [Israeli] High Court of Justice on the matter of the closing, due to lack of evidence, of the investigatory file on the killing of ten-year-old Abir Aramin about three years ago.
IOA Editor: Reported by Nurit Peled-Elhanan, an Israeli peace activist and professor at Hebrew University, among the founders of the Bereaved Families for Peace. After the death of Elhanan’s 13 year-old daughter in a 1997 suicide bombing attack she became an outspoken critic of the Israeli Occupation.
“We cannot ignore the truth – the occupation is a violent, racist, inhumane, illegal, undemocratic, immoral and an extreme condition that presents a mortal danger to both peoples,” the letter read. “We, who were educated on the values of liberty, justice, honesty and peace, cannot accept it.”
“We hereby announce our refusal to take part in the military apparatus,” read the letter which was signed by 88 youths. “We do not see a military solution as the proper solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”
IOA Editor: This is the largest number of Israelis collectively refusing the draft – even though the majority of them found ways to evade military service without formally refusing and being subjected to multiple, consecutive jail terms.
According to Dr. Muweiyah Hassenein, head of the ministry’s ambulance and emergency department, “we have found cases among newborn babies involving heart defects and brain abnormalities.”
IOA Editor: This report can be found in surprisingly few current media sources (Ma’an in Sept, Haaretz and Xinhua).
“I don’t understand why we incarcerate them in Israel in the first place,” the professor told [Israeli] Army Radio Saturday. She added that “all prisoners should be returned to Palestine regardless of a deal for Gilad Shalit’s release.”
[Bil'in] residents say the IDF conducts nighttime raids up to four times a week, sometimes using percussion grenades and tear gas and sometimes also entering homes, which has led to Israeli activists staying overnight in village homes.
After years of total disdain for the international community, of violating laws and treaties while Israeli legal experts turn into a kind of public defense counsel for our generals, there are finally members of the military elite who can no longer travel to Switzerland to ski, or to the opera in Covent Garden, or to a high-tech exhibition in Spain, without first consulting their lawyers. And that’s a good thing.
Ya’alon was asked to attend the dinner by the British branch of the Jewish National Fund.
IOA Editor: Ya’alon is the former IDF chief of staff and a life-long career officer who, in different capacities – including the commanding officer of Israel’s Central Command, responsible for the West Bank during the Second Intifada – was responsible for the death of possibly thousands of innocent Palestinians.
The Jewish National Fund, which predates Israel’s existence, is the foremost national institution responsible for the acquisition of lands, ultimately bearing a significant part of the responsibility for the dispossession of the Palestinian people.
There couldn’t be a more deserving person, or institution, to stand before the International Criminal Court.
See also Tiptoeing between lawsuits: Senior officials stay in Israel
When the world said in near unison, “War crimes,” Kasher said, “We are the most moral army in the world, no one is better than us.” If this is how a philosopher of ethics speaks, who needs propagandists?
The Palestinian leadership—under heavy international pressure lead by the United States—deferred the draft proposal at the Human Rights Council endorsing all the recommendations of the UN Fact Finding Mission (the Goldstone Report). This deferral denies the Palestinian peoples’ right to an effective judicial remedy and the equal protection of the law. It represents the triumph of politics over human rights. It is an insult to all victims and a rejection of their rights.
The wounds of Gaza have not yet healed, the debris has not yet been cleared and the housing there has not yet been rehabilitated. Israel has also not been rehabilitated. It still insists that everything went as it should have. But cracks are now appearing. There is something cynical and depressing about the fact that it is happening only after Israeli leaders started to fear for their personal fates. Now it may be hoped that Goldstone, the United Nations and the world will not give in.
According to Jane’s Defence Weekly, the U212s… have a range of 4,500 kilometres (2,810 miles) and can launch cruise missiles carrying nuclear warheads. Israeli media have written that the Dolphin submarine could be key in any attack on arch-foe Iran’s controversial nuclear sites.
IOA Editor: For technical specifications, see Israeli Dolphins Rule The Waves
[The military researcher] also warned of the possibility that in a future conflict, the United States might not help Israel as it had in the past… Sandman recommended that the IDF ask the US to establish additional warehouses with emergency stockpiles of weaponry in Israel, even “if Israel has to pay for their maintenance.” The US already has several warehouses with weaponry in Israel.
Meanwhile, Israel has warned the Palestinian Authority that it would condition permission for a second cellular telephone provider to operate in the West Bank – an economic issue of critical importance to the PA leadership – on the Palestinians withdrawing their request at the International Court.
The report’s findings demand action by the international community, including the United States. The importance of U.S. action is elevated because the U.S. currently holds the Presidency of the U.N. Security Council, the U.N. body charged with enforcing the report’s conclusions.
The soldiers left behind graffiti in the home of Rashad Samouni, which Haaretz saw and photographed: “1 down, 999,999 to go,” “The People of Israel lives,” “God is the king, there is nothing besides him,” “Almighty God, we love you,” “We have no one to rely on but our father in heaven,” “Arabs need to die,” “Less than 300 days left ’til I’m released,” “We haven’t drank our fill of blood.”
Following the release last week of the Goldstone commission findings which accused Israel of committing war crimes during its offensive in the Gaza Strip, [Israeli] diplomatic officials feared that the report would weigh heavily on the agenda of this week’s United Nations General Assembly meeting. Israel’s fears proved to have no basis in fact as the report was cited by just a few world leaders.
A senior prosecutor at the International Criminal Court in The Hague said Monday that he is considering opening an investigation into whether Lt. Col. David Benjamin, an Israel Defense Forces reserve officer, allowed war crimes to be committed during the IDF’s three-week offensive in the Gaza Strip this winter.
