Author: ludek

Israel created ‘terror without mercy’ in Gaza

More evidence of Israel’s state terrorism comes to light. Following charges of war crimes by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the Guardian’s own investigative team, a new report commissioned by Physicians for Human Rights-Israel and the Palestinian Medical Relief Society accuses Israel of  “creating terror without mercy to anyone” and “terrorising the population.” Here’s a rather bland summary of the report by the Guardian’s Rory McCarthy:

The Israeli military attacked civilians and medics and delayed – sometimes for hours – the evacuation of the injured during the January war in Gaza, according to an independent fact-finding mission commissioned by Israeli and Palestinian medical human rights groups.

Physicians for Human Rights-Israel and the Palestinian Medical Relief Society yesterday said their findings showed Israel’s military committed serious violations of international humanitarian law. In their 92-page report, compiled by five senior health experts from across the world, they documented several specific attacks, with interviews from 44 separate witnesses.

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Lost in the Buffer Zone

Editors Note: In the light of Bartlett’s recent activities and reporting, we believe there is reason to be sceptical of her commitment to truth so we cannot vouch for any of her past claims. 

Eva Bartlett’s latest report from Gaza, this time describing the struggles for survival of Palestinian farmers living in the ‘buffer zone’ border area with Israel.

“They’re always shooting at us. Every day they shoot at us,” says Alaa Samour (19), pulling aside his shirt to show a scar on his shoulder. Samour said he was shot on Dec. 28 last year by Israeli soldiers positioned along the border fence near New Abassan village, east of Khan Younis in the south of the Gaza Strip.

“We were cutting parsley like we do almost every day, and the soldiers began shooting. We started crawling away. When I got out of the line of fire I realised my shoulder was bleeding and that I had been shot.”

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Khmer Rouge & Cambodia

An interview with Noam Chomsky on the UN-sponsored war crimes tribunal in Cambodia. While much of the Western media hail the trials as a “landmark genocide tribunal” holding out “hope” for justice for the Cambodian people, the genocidal crimes of the Nixon-Kissinger administration are dispatched down the Memory Hole.

March27, 2009 — Top Khmer Rouge (KR) leaders are going on trial in Cambodia. You have some history with Cambodia and have written extensively on the KR. Do you believe a United Nations trial is the best way forward, or should it be left to the Cambodian people?

I think it should be left to the Cambodian people. I can’t imagine a UN, international trial. But then it shouldn’t be limited to the Cambodians – after all, an international trial that doesn’t take into account Henry Kissinger or the other authors of the American bombing and the support of the KR after they were kicked out of the country – that’s just a farce – especially with what we now know about the bombing of Cambodia since the release of the Kissinger-Nixon tapes, and the release of declassified documents during the Clinton years. There has been a very different picture of the scale and intensity of the bombing and the genocidal scale of it. For an international trial to omit this would be scandalous.

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Changing the rules of war

An excellent article by George Bisharat, Professor of Law at Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco, on the possibly disastrous implications of Israel’s latest attack on Gaza for international law. Israel has long sought to frame its actions as falling under the legal doctrines of ‘armed conflict’ instead of ones governed by the laws of occupation – the former permitting far greater uses of force. Bisharat warns that “this shift, if accepted, would encourage occupiers to follow Israel’s lead, externalizing military control while shedding all responsibilities to occupied populations.”

The extent of Israel’s brutality against Palestinian civilians in its 22-day pounding of the Gaza Strip is gradually surfacing. Israeli soldiers are testifying to lax rules of engagement tantamount to a license to kill. One soldier commented: “That’s what is so nice, supposedly, about Gaza: You see a person on a road, walking along a path. He doesn’t have to be with a weapon, you don’t have to identify him with anything and you can just shoot him.”

What is less appreciated is how Israel is also brutalizing international law, in ways that may long outlast the demolition of Gaza.

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Kafka Era Double Standard

Edward S. Herman’s article published in Zmag on Israel-Palestine, the ‘right to self-defense’ and the double standards to which the crimes of official allies and enemies are held.

The U.S. political class and those of the EU and the new “hope” and “change” leader of the United States, Barack Obama, justify Israel’s attack on Gaza as based on its “right of self-defense.” There is, of course, the question of whether it is acceptable to defend yourself by a massive attack on a civilian population when this is not the only route to self defense—the Israelis could withdraw from an illegal occupation, they could stop starving the Gaza population, and they could abide by negotiated ceasefires (in this case, effectively and almost surely deliberately ended by their November 6 killing of six Gaza Palestinians). There is also the problem that the Israeli action violated the UN Charter. Article 51, the self-defense exception, requires immediate notification of the Security Council and, after any immediate attack is contained, giving over remedial action to the Security Council. There is also the problem that this “self-defense” operation was planned six months in advance and is widely believed in Israel to be linked to Israeli politics, with the two ruling parties seeking an improved standing—which they achieved—by military action.

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Euros do not buy the Palestinians political rights

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EU Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso greets Tzipi Livni, former foreign minister of Israel

Despite being the PA’s largest donor and Israel’s biggest trading partner, the EU’s policies towards the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are rarely subjected to the kind of critical analysis that the US attracts. Scant attention has been paid to attempts by the EU Council of Ministers to push through an upgrade of the current relationship with the Israeli state since mid-2008 – an upgrade which would grant Israel access to the Single Market and deepen ‘cooperation’ on key strategic issues. Though a planned EU-Israel summit has been put on hold as a result of Israel’s most recent war on Gaza, it is likely the talks will be resumed once the outrage over Israel’s actions subsides, all the more so given that the presidency over the EU presently rests in the hands of the Czech Republic – one of Israel’s staunchest European supporters. Pepijn van Houwelingen’s excellent article exposes the EU’s supposedly ‘impartial’ approach for what it is: “Israel suffers no consequences for its actions and the Palestinians are generously granted the right to barely survive.”

The carnage of Israel’s recent invasion of Gaza spurred great numbers of dismayed Europeans to participate in demonstrations against the war. In major cities such as Madrid, Brussels, Rome, Berlin and London, tens of thousands took part in demonstrations to make clear to their governments that what was happening was unacceptable. Yet, their objections to Israel’s massive use of deadly force were not reflected in the declarations and actions of their countries, as represented by Europe’s most significant political body, the European Union, which did not alter its policy of status quo relations with Israel.

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Divestment campaign gains momentum in Europe

Once again, the Swedes lead the way – the latest news from the BDS front in Europe:

The Swedish national pension fund AP7 is the latest institution to follow the socially responsible investment example of Dutch ASN Bank by excluding the French transportation giant Alstom from its portfolio. Alstom was excluded because of the company’s involvement in Israel’s occupation of Palestinian land.

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HRW: Israel accused of indiscriminate phosphorus use in Gaza

White Phosphorus
Palestinian civilians and medics run to safety during an Israeli strike using phosphorus shells at a UN school. Photograph: Mohammed Abed/AFP

Human Rights Watch has released a new detailed report charging the Israeli government with committing numerous and repeated grave violations of the laws of war. The report entitled ‘Rain of Fire’ focuses on the illegal use of white phosphorus in Gaza and is only the latest in a growing series of evidence documenting Israeli war crimes. Additionaly, HRW “found no evidence that Hamas fighters used Palestinian civilians as human shields – a key Israeli claim – in the area at the time of the attacks it researched.” Here is the Guardian’s brief summary of HRW’s main findings:

Israel’s military fired white phosphorus over crowded areas of Gaza repeatedly and indiscriminately in its three-week war, killing and injuring civilians and committing war crimes, Human Rights Watch said today.

In a 71-page report, the rights group said the repeated use of air-burst white phosphorus artillery shells in populated areas of Gaza was not incidental or accidental, but revealed “a pattern or policy of conduct”.

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Lieberman – the worst thing that could happen to the Middle East

Robert Fisk on the rise of Avigdor Lieberman and its implications for the plight of the Palestinians. Fisk draws parallels between Lieberman’s fascist campaign slogans and the discourse of viscious nationalists like Mladic, Karadzic and Milosevic.

Only days after they were groaning with fury at the Israeli lobby’s success in hounding the outspoken Charles Freeman away from his proposed intelligence job for President Obama, the Arabs now have to contend with an Israeli Foreign Minister whose – let us speak frankly – racist comments about Palestinian loyalty tests have brought into the new Netanyahu cabinet one of the most unpleasant politicians in the Middle East.

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UK economic links with Israeli settlements

A new comprehensive report by the Dutch research group Profundo – prepared for the Sir Joseph Hotung Programme for Law, Human Rights and Peace Building in the Middle East, SOAS – details the economic ties of a long list of British companies to Israeli settlements and other breaches of international law committed by the Israeli state. An indespensable resource for those engaged in the BDS campaign. Here is the edited summary of the full report:

Since June 1967, Israel has occupied the West Bank (including East Jerusalem), the Gaza Strip and the Golan Heights. These territories are beyond the “Green Line,” which is accepted as the provisional, de facto border of Israel, until the successful conclusion of the Middle East peace process confirms its permanent international frontiers. Israel has established civilian settlements in these occupied territories, which is illegal according to international law. The creation of these settlements is in violation of Israel’s obligations under the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 which was adopted to protect civilians during armed conflict. This was known by Israel in 1967 when the then-Israeli government first considered establishing civilian settlements in the territories it had captured during the 1967 War. Israel’s settlements in the Gaza Strip were dismantled in August 2005. In the West Bank and the Golan Heights, however, settlements are expanding and new ones are being established in breach of international law and, in relation to the West Bank, the Road Map.

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