I sincerely believed that because of my own record and the terms of the mission’s mandate we would receive the cooperation of the Israeli government. Its refusal to cooperate was a grave error. My plea for cooperation was repeated before and during the investigation and it sits, plain as day, in the appendices of the Gaza report for those who actually bother to read it. (full article…)

For those who criticize the Goldstone report for not addressing Sderot in detail, just remember that it was the Israeli government that denied Goldstone access and would not allow him to investigate Palestinian rocket attacks…

One of the taboo topics in the American media is how the U.S. Government routinely violates the principles we espouse for, and try to impose on, the rest of the world. We systematically torture Muslims and then cover it up and protect our torturers while preaching accountability and the rule of law; we condemn deprivations of due process while maintaining and expanding lawless prison systems for Muslims; we demand adherence to U.N. dictates and international law while blocking investigations into U.N. reports of war crimes and possible “crimes against humanity” by our allies; we righteously oppose aggression while invading and simultaneously occupying numerous countries, while threatening to attack still more, and arming countries like Israel to the teeth to wage still other attacks, etc. etc. (full article…)

“A culture of impunity in the region has existed for too long,” Goldstone, a former UN war crimes prosecutor, told the UN Human Rights Council.

“The lack of accountability for war crimes and possible war crimes against humanity has reached a crisis point; the ongoing lack of justice is undermining any hope for a successful peace process and reinforcing an environment that fosters violence.” (full article…)

Israel is concerned that officers, and even senior government officials and ministers who were involved in approving the operation, would be at risk of being arrested in any country that is a signatory to the treaty recognizing the ICC in The Hague and is therefore obligated to respect its arrest warrants. (full article…)

“There is a war being waged against us in the legal sphere. Its aim is to delegitimize Israel and to create deterrence against a possible use of force in Gaza and Lebanon again,” a senior defense official told The Jerusalem Post. (more…)

Israel has refused to cooperate with investigation of its conduct during an offensive on Gaza earlier this year, depriving Judge Richard Goldstone and his team access to military sources and victims of ongoing rocket attacks. (more…)

Israel consistently complains that the UN fails to investigate rocket attacks against Israeli civilians while it unduly criticizes the Jewish state—yet now it comes out that Israel is blocking these investigations!

But in a covering letter attached to his own 27-page summary of the report, leaked last night, the secretary-general bluntly rejected [the UN report's] recommendations for further investigations into whether Israel had breached international law during the offensive, including by its use of white phosphorus. (more…)

WHY this obscenely inordinate investment of time, money and personnel in bashing us? (more…)

Why Israel’s obscene investment of time, money and personnel is physically bashing the Palestinians?

On Saturday December 27, the latest US-Israeli attack on helpless Palestinians was launched. The attack had been meticulously planned, for over 6 months according to the Israeli press. The planning had two components: military and propaganda. It was based on the lessons of Israel’s 2006 invasion of Lebanon, which was considered to be poorly planned and badly advertised. We may, therefore, be fairly confident that most of what has been done and said was pre-planned and intended.

That surely includes the timing of the assault: shortly before noon, when children were returning from school and crowds were milling in the streets of densely populated Gaza City. It took only a few minutes to kill over 225 people and wound 700, an auspicious opening to the mass slaughter of defenseless civilians trapped in a tiny cage with nowhere to flee. (more…)

Witness reports taken by HRW describe the killing of a bank manager, his wife and two of their children in their car during white phosphorus shelling in the Tel-el-Hawa area of Gaza City on 15 January. According to a Palestinian journalist, Fathi Sabbah, whose own building in the area came under attack, when ambulances came to take the bodies away from the partly melted car, they found “only a few bones” of the four occupants. The report quotes another witness, Muhammad Al Sharif, as saying that a piece of a skull and some teeth lay beside the car. (more…)

Under international law the whole area of East Jerusalem seized by the IDF in 1967 is still–like the rest of the West Bank–judged to be “occupied territory.” Under the Fourth Geneva Convention Israel is therefore prohibited from either implanting its own population as settlers into East Jerusalem or in any other way materially changing the lives of the city’s indigenous Palestinian residents.

Successive Israeli governments flouted these prohibitions from the beginning. In 1967 Israel unilaterally expanded the municipal boundaries and then annexed the whole of the expanded city. That act of Anschluss has never been judged legal by the United States or any other significant government. Since 1967 Israel has implanted nearly 200,000 Jewish-Israeli citizens into settlements in East Jerusalem. (more…)

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who visited the Gaza Strip last week, called for a “full investigation,” Amnesty International is accusing Israel of “war crimes,” and Louis Michel, the EU’s commissioner for aid to developing countries, says: “It is evident that Israel does not respect international humanitarian law.” (more…)

“To lock people into a war zone is something that evokes the worst kind of international memories of the Warsaw Ghetto, and sieges that occur unintentionally during a period of wartime,” Falk, who is Jewish, said, referring to the starvation and murder of Warsaw’s Jews by Nazi Germany in World War Two. (more…)

“Judicially speaking,” Nowak told the German broadcaster ZDF, “the United States has a clear obligation” to prosecute Rumsfeld and Bush for ordering interrogation methods at Guantanamo that contravened a UN convention on torture.” He added that there were publicly available documents “that prove that these methods of interrogation were intentionally ordered by Rumsfeld.” (more…)

The “arrest order” for Barak, for instance, states: “On December 27, 2008, the suspect ordered an aerial assault on all of Gaza’s population centers. The assault included hundreds of sorties by fighter jets that dropped hundreds of tons of bombs on residential areas of Gaza, which led to the deaths of 1,200 people – men, women and children. Some 5,300 people were wounded and hundreds of thousands became refugees. On December 10, 2008, a formal complaint was filed against Ehud Barak to the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Holland … on suspicion of war crimes and crimes against humanity because of the siege of Gaza.” (more…)

A proper trial would provide the victims with the opportunity to tell their stories and to present their evidence to independent judges; Palestinian and Israeli victims would be equal — the disadvantage of being stateless and the power imbalance between the two parties would no longer exist; testimonies of thousands of Palestinians would finally be heard — people who have already suffered tremendously from the illegal Israeli occupation during which they have been deprived of the most basic human rights for over 40 years. (more…)

International Humanitarian Law represents a bare minimum, a threshold which, in the interests of humanity, must not be crossed. It is apparent that IOF have systematically and repeatedly violated this humanitarian threshold, and in doing so are committing war crimes against the civilian population of the Gaza Strip. The 194 High Contracting Parties to the Geneva Conventions – virtually the entire international community – have a legal obligation to ensure respect for the Conventions in all circumstances. They have a further legal obligation to search for persons alleged to have committed grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions, and to bring them to justice; before their own courts if necessary. (more…)

US corporate media coverage of the Israeli military attacks that have reportedly killed more than 900 — many of them civilians — since 27 December has overwhelmingly failed to mention that indiscriminate attacks on civilian targets are illegal under international humanitarian law. (more…)

“On an inter-governmental level, the war crimes process is essentially subject to geopolitical control, which means in practice that the criminal wrongdoing of the most powerful [the U.S. government] and its closest friends [Israel] get a free pass,” Richard Falk, a professor of international law and a U.N. human rights expert, told IPS.

Despite widespread condemnation, this practice of “geopolitical impunity” is likely to shield Israel from formal scrutiny with respect to the alleged crimes of war and crimes against humanity associated with its military operations in Gaza since Dec. 27, he added. (more…)

So I grieve for those numbers, but I don’t understand the word “disproportional” … whether it’s one child in Israel or a hundred children in Palestine or in Gaza. To me, they’re equally tragic. There is no disproportionality. They’re equally tragic. (more…)

Resolution 1860 continues the trend recently favored by the mainstream international human rights groups such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch to equate the clearly disproportionate suffering of the occupied and the occupiers, the victims and the perpetrators of war crimes. For instance, the resolution emphasizes that “the Palestinian and Israeli civilian populations must be protected,” as though Palestinian civilians and Israeli civilians have somehow been under the equivalent threat during this war. The figure of over 4,000 dead and wounded in Gaza compared to a dozen Israelis—mostly soldiers—makes this equivalence morally irresponsible to say the least. (more…)

The fact that Israel pulled its army out of Gaza and even removed 8,000 settlers in 2005 does not alter the fact that Gaza is still, practically and according to international law, occupied territory. Israel controls the entrances and exits, as well as access to necessities such as power and water. Mexico has not spent the last three or more years under an American aerial and sea blockade. (more…)

I believe the Israeli airstrikes are clear violations of international humanitarian law. While the Palestinian rocket fire against civilian targets in Israel may be illegal, that does not give Israel the right to violate the Geneva Conventions. The airstrikes represent:

¶Collective punishment (the civilian population is being punished for actions of a few militants).

¶Unlawful attack on civilians in a protected population (the strikes are targeting civilian areas, Gaza being one of the most densely populated areas in the Middle East).

¶Disproportionate military action (Israel has destroyed the entire security infrastructure of 1.5 million people).

In addition, earlier Israeli actions, like the closing of Gaza’s borders, have led to severe shortages of medicine and fuel, so ambulances can’t respond to the injured, hospitals can’t adequately receive or treat the wounded, and doctors are unable to provide sufficient medical care.

Israel is using F-16 fighter jets and weapons provided by the United States. We must stop military aid to Israel.

Phyllis Bennis

Washington, Dec. 29, 2008

The writer, a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, is the author of a book about understanding the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

Israel’s siege of Gaza, largely unseen by the outside world because of Jerusalem’s refusal to allow humanitarian aid workers, reporters and photographers access to Gaza, rivals the most egregious crimes carried out at the height of apartheid by the South African regime. It comes close to the horrors visited on Sarajevo by the Bosnian Serbs. It has disturbing echoes of the Nazi ghettos of Lodz and Warsaw.

“This is a stain on what is left of Israeli morality,” I was told by Richard N. Veits, the former U.S. ambassador to Jordan who led a delegation from the Council on Foreign Relations to Gaza to meet Hamas leaders this past summer. “I am almost breathless discussing this subject. It is so myopic. Washington, of course, is a handmaiden to all this. The Israeli manipulation of a population in this manner is comparable to some of the crimes that took place against civilian populations fifty years ago.”

The U.N. special rapporteur for human rights in the occupied Palestinian territory, former Princeton University law professor Richard Falk, calls what Israel is doing to the 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza “a crime against humanity.” Falk, who is Jewish, has condemned the collective punishment of the Palestinians in Gaza as “a flagrant and massive violation of international humanitarian law as laid down in Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention.” He has asked for “the International Criminal Court to investigate the situation, and determine whether the Israeli civilian leaders and military commanders responsible for the Gaza siege should be indicted and prosecuted for violations of international criminal law.” (more…)

Israel’s Supreme Court ruled Monday against Israel’s influential security establishment on the route of the West Bank barrier, with the decision having possible implications for other disputed sections of the route. (more…)

Kershner fails to mention that the International Court of Justice demanded in 2004 that Israel dismantle the wall immediately. Israel’s High Court has a long history of lending domestic justification for violations of international law.

Yesterday’s nomination of Tzipi Livni as Kadima’s candidate for Israel’s upcoming national election (and especially the pleasant reception of the news by Ramallah) confirms two immutable facts about Israel/Palestinian relations: 1) Israel’s tradition of electing killers to the highest office is alive and well… Likewise, 2) the Palestinian puppet leadership always lick it all up.

Let me elaborate…

To begin, yesterday’s contest between Tzipi Livni and Shaul Mofaz was an old-fashioned battle between two evils. Despite Kadima’s reputation for being “moderate” and offering Israel’s best hope for brokering peace with the Palestinians, both candidates were (in Livni’s case, still is) entirely unfit to rule.

On the one hand, yesterday’s nomination offered Shaul Mofaz – a man notorious for recent revelations that, during his tenure as commander of the IDF in the West Bank and Gaza, he called for 70 slain Palestinians per day. This, as well as his role in demolishing hundreds of Palestinian homes during the same period, has led to accusations of war crimes. David Kretzmer, emeritus professor of international law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, says that recent evidence suggest that Mofaz “committed serious offenses, some of which at least, fall into the category of war crimes.” (more…)

In another few days, I will sail on one of the Free Gaza movement boats from Cyprus to Gaza. The mission is to break the Israeli siege, an absolutely illegal siege which has plunged a million and a half Palestinians into wretched conditions: imprisoned in their own homes, exposed to extreme military violence, deprived of the basic necessities of life, stripped of their most fundamental human rights and dignity. The siege violates the most fundamental principle of international law: the inadmissibility of harming civilian populations. Our voyage also exposes Israel’s attempt to absolve itself of responsibility for what is happening in Gaza. Israel’s claim that there is no Occupation, or that the Occupation ended with “disengagement,” is patently false. Occupation is defined in international law as having effective control over a territory. If Israel intercepts our boats, it is clear that it is the Occupying Power exercising effective control over Gaza. Nor has the siege anything to do with “security.” Like other elements of the Occupation in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, where Israel has also besieged cities, towns, villages and whole regions, the siege on Gaza is fundamentally political. It is intended to isolate the democratically-elected government of Palestine and break its power to resist Israeli attempts to impose an apartheid regime over the entire country. (more…)

Palestinians are being regularly and illegally barred from reaching Dead Sea beaches in the occupied West Bank, according to a Supreme Court petition filed by Israel’s leading civil rights organisation.

The Association of Civil Rights (Acri) in Israel is challenging what it says is the frequently imposed ban by the military on Palestinians seeking to swim or relax at beaches in the northern Dead Sea. The salt-saturated sea is the only open water accessible to Palestinians from the otherwise landlocked West Bank.

The petition says that the Israeli military is using the Beit Ha’arava checkpoint on Route 90 – the only open access route in the occupied West Bank for travel to the Dead Sea – to turn back Palestinians, mainly but not exclusively on weekends and Jewish holidays.

Acri says that the ban is to appease Israeli settlers operating concessions along the Dead Sea’s northern shore. They fear losing Jewish customers if there are large numbers of Arabs using the beaches in territory seized by Israel during the Six Day War in 1967. (more…)

In the Gaza Strip, there are a vast number of inspiring individuals prepared to put their personal reputation (and even their own physical well-being) on the line for matters of conviction. Dr. Eyad Sarraj is one of the more prominent of these figures and I was fortunate enough to speak with him on several occasions during my time in the Gaza Strip.

Dr. Sarraj, a Harvard-trained psychiatrist, is the founder of the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme—a groundbreaking NGO in Gaza catering to the masses of Palestinians suffering from emotional trauma, especially victims of torture. Sarraj is well known for his outspoken criticism of the Israeli occupation and of corruption in the Palestinian Authority.

In the excerpts that follow, I discuss the state of Palestinian democracy with Dr. Sarraj. (more…)

Two evenings ago, speaking before the American-Israeli Pubic Affairs Committee (AIPAC), Barack Obama desperately attempted to win back his floundering support among the American Jewish community by demonstrating his hawkish, pro-Israel stance. This is neither unusual nor suspect—especially in the United States where the Jewish demographic tends to be more fundamentally Zionist than the Israelis themselves and aspiring candidates are almost required to recite Theodor Herzl’s Der Judenstaat by heart.

Naturally, Obama made the typical platitudes: “Israel has the right to defend itself”, “I will always keep the threat of military action on the table to defend … Israel”, ad nauseam. But then he said something that could have caused Ariel Sharon to crack a smile through his coma:

“Any agreement with the Palestinian people must preserve Israel’s identity as a Jewish state, with secure, recognised, defensible borders. And Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel and must remain undivided,” he said to rapturous clapping and cheering.

What? East Jerusalem will remain part of Israel? Have U.S. politicians finally ceased pretending they support a negotiated settlement? (more…)

“They came at four in the morning, with two bulldozers, and they left before 8am. I own this chicken farm with my three brothers, and we worked day and night for eighteen years to build up our business. The Israelis destroyed everything in less than four hours.”

Nasser Jaber’s chicken farm was bulldozed by the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) ten days ago, in the early morning hours of May 16, while he was sleeping at home in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip. He still looks stunned. Wearily he guides us round the ruins of his eighteen-year business. “This was a lifetime project for me and my brothers” he says as we clamber over rubble, wire, shattered sheets of metal and thousands of putrefying chickens. “I have never belonged to any political faction, and I have never been to jail. I don’t know why they did this.” The farm workers who are starting to clear some of the rubble are all wearing facemasks. Forty thousand dead chickens lie smashed amidst the rubble and the stench is sickening. (more…)

Apparently, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has ordered a halt to Israeli attacks in Gaza and has instead entered into talks with Hamas via Egyptian mediators.

It should not be necessary to point out that Hamas has previously offered to talk with Israel on more than one occasion and that it was Israel, not Hamas, that finally broke the ceasefire in October 2006. Nevertheless, Olmert’s detractors cried for blood and he delivered. Over 125 Palestinians (half of whom were children) killed last week is enough to satiate the wolves for now, so this week why not put on the mask of peacemaker? Israel is no stranger to playing Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in this way.

“We certainly appear to have entered a period of talking rather than fighting now,” Al Jazeera’s Jacky Rowland reported from Gaza.

“For more than three days now there have been virtually no rocket attacks into Israel … and also there have been no Israeli air strikes, no overflights of Gaza.”

(more…)

IOF Launches Fifth Day of Open War on the Gaza Strip
Death Toll Rises to 101, with Hundreds of Injuries

[The Palestinian Center for Human Rights] condemns in the strongest possible terms the continuing IOF open war on the civilians of the Gaza Strip. Air and land bombardments have killed 101 Palestinians since 27 February, and injured hundreds of others. The Centre also denounces continuing international silence over the carnage which has effectively encouraged the IOF to commit additional war crimes against Palestinian civilians and their property. The Centre warns that deaths and injuries will undoubtedly rise if the IOF operation continues, and reiterates its demand that the international community act immediately and effectively to put an end to these crimes, and to protect the lives of Palestinian civilians.

During the last 24 hours, another 39 Palestinians were killed throughout the Gaza Strip. Twenty-two of them were unarmed civilians, including 9 children. Six of the victims were from one family, including 3 women and 3 men who were killed in an air strike in Gaza City. The death toll since 27 February currently stands at 101 victims, including 49 unarmed civilians. The civilians who have been killed include 25 children and 5 women. In addition, more than 250 other people have been injured, mostly unarmed civilians. IOF have also destroyed houses and property across the Gaza Strip. (more…)