Ban Rebukes Israel over UN Warehouse Strike;
UK Jewish MP Calls for Arms Boycott of Israel;
Civilian Suffering Spreads
It is being claimed that Israeli troops fired on Gazans attempting to flee the fighting, even though they had white flags. Israel is denying the allegation.
UN and other groups contest Israeli claims that they are only hitting targets from which hostile fire has originated.
Aljazeera English reports on United Nations Secretary-General Ban-Ki Moon's rebuke of Israel for its attack on a UN warehouse, and on the split in the Israeli elite about whether to accept a ceasefire. The UN website also carries the angry secretary-general's protest.
Cont'd
And, No place is safe for Gazans: "We are being killed!"
A veteran Jewish member of the British parliament condemned the Israeli attack on Gaza, saying, "It is time for our Government to make clear to the Israeli government that its conduct and policies are unacceptable and to impose a total arms ban on Israel."
In general, the British parliamentary debate on Gaza is not very much like the comments made in the US Congress.
posted by Juan Cole @ 1/16/2009 12:06:00 AM
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In 2006, Hizbullah managed to hit back, killing scores of the invading soldiers and forcing a million Israelis to flee. But the Gazans do not have the firepower that the Lebanese had, and the impact of their attack on Israel has been negligle.
This has led to Israel getting carried away with the violence. Their sociopathic instinct is to punish the civilians so hard that they would turn against Hamas and do Israel's dirty work.
Now, with only 3 days left of Bush's term, the Israelis are in panic, trying to wrap this thing up before Obama takes over. Hamas is therefore in the driving seat.
Hamas refuses a permanent cease-fire, which amounts to accepting the occupation. Israel, and the US and EU, have made it very clear that a temporary cease-fire will not be accepted, so they have put themselves in a corner.
A unilateral cease-fire by Israel is one possibility but the Gazans are not obliged by it.
Israel and its allies will most likely find some language to disguise the one-year deal as permanent, saying it is renewable.
Israel will also end the blockade which has caused massive suffering for the last year and a half. Hamas will be seen by the people of all of Palestine as having forced Israel and the US to end it. Hamas have already won the general election of 2006 (in both Gaza and the West Bank BTW.) So they will very likely win the Presidency too if elections are held.
The British PM is right. I seen Israel military budgets that show half of their costs are paid through transfers and gifts from the West. That is quite a bit. It insulates Israel from the real cost of its Occupation.
Not only that, lets assume that nations behave on a model of self-interest based on the ability. In a conflict like this, where the goal is to attain and control land for ones people, then what is the incentive to compromise if you have such overwhelming force? I deeply believe that lower Israel's relative power is vital to finding a solution to the conflict. Without doing so, it is not willing to make concessions it can maintain on its own, within the realm of its own power. So, if an unjust solution is attained, like they have been trying to do, through superior power, it will be unstablized once the power structure of the international community switches, and that is a long term risk to Israeli security.
Israel didn't HAVE to attack Gaza. It DID have other options, much better options, and that makes any attempts on the part of Israel's military to mitigate civilian harm, however admirable, secondary to the initial choice that was made to harm civilians by attacking Gaza in the first place.
But even the argument that Israel is being 'careful' in it's mode of attack is in itself outrageous. From the very beginning Israel declared nearly everyone and everything in Gaza a legitimate target. Reports from the ground indicate that the IDF is shooting at nearly everything that moves. The point here isn't to blame IDF soldiers. The policy is at fault, the policy of Israeli hardliners that ignores human decency, international law, and US law (against the use of American arms to escalate conflict).
The leadership of Israel acts with near total impunity. Again and again they have chosen to target the UN. I cannot understand why it doesn't seem to have penetrated the understanding of the US Congress that targeting the UN really is stepping across a line. A nation that does not fear to target the UN is a nation that has taken a stand against international law. If Israel can 'get away' with brazen attacks on the UN, is it any wonder that the UN flag is often impotent in disputes? The UN is the standard bearer for what there is of international law, norms, governance. Attack the UN and you are attacking peace itself, to the extent that the world has a standard bearer for peace.
This time the Israeli leadership needs to face real consequences. Their impunity has gone too far. I think they need to stand trial. They cannot claim that they didn't know that what they were doing was wrong. The whole world pleaded with them again and again to stop. They sneered at such pleadings and refused to stop. It must be clear now to the international community that Israel simply will continue to ignore international law and international norms until it faces consequences.
No one that I know of is letting Hamas 'off the hook'. The point here isn't that Hamas=good guys.
But it has to be recognized that Israel has massive military control over its corner of the world, and it has run roughshod over its neighbors and over international law again and again. My guess is that most Israelis will breath a sigh of relief when the warmongers are cut down to size. I think we all know that civilians pay the price, in the end, when warmongers run amuck.
"...Israeli claims that they are only hitting targets from which hostile fire has originated."
I recall something on "proportionality" I posted during the 2006's Lebanon war.
Michael Ratner, an attorney, former director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, and past president of the National Lawyer’s Guild, dealing with the (first) Gulf War, happened to say: «At Nuremberg, the Nazis were tried for crimes against humanity which included killings of the civilian population and the wanton destruction of cities, towns or villages and devastation not justified by military necessity. These laws are embodied in various treaties, including most importantly the Hague Convention of 1907, the Geneva Conventions of 1949, and Protocol I Additional to the Geneva Conventions. They all reflect a similar set of rules, violations of which are war crimes. They are built around two principles. First, military operations are to be directed at military objectives - the civilian population and civilian objects are not to be targets. So, massive bombing, as was engaged in by the U.S., which kills civilians and destroyed the water supply, is illegal.»
About that topic he added that the second limit international law places on the conduct of war is the principle of proportionality.
Well, I think that it is not easy to separate the two issues: a) proportionality, b) protection of civilian objects, but there is an interesting provision in Protocol 1, additional to the Geneva Conventions, 1977, chapter III, art. 52, par. 1 e 3. “Civilian objects shall not be the object of attack or of reprisals. Civilian objects are all objects which are not military objectives as defined in paragraph 2 [...] “In case of doubt whether an object wich is normally dedicated to civilian purposes, such as a place of worship, a house or other dwelling or a school, is being used to make an effective contribution to military action, it shall be presumed no to be so used”.
http://pipistro.wordpress.com/2006/09/08/disproportionate-memo/
Final victory will not go to the one handing out the greatest punishment but to him who can absorb the most.
The holocaust Jews refer to is when 60 Million people , of which 6 million were Jews , were killed. They have consigned the other 54 million people to history. This was before the Iraq war, the Vietnam war, the Korean war. In fact it was in the first half of the last century.
The perpetrators were hanged. The same should happen to to-days perpetrators. They should be arrested anywhere they go in the world. Like the Serb leaders.
The brand name holocaust has been handed to the people of Gaza
The holocaust to-day is Gaza where war crimes with illegal weapons have murdered and maimed over 3000 people. After the cease fire Israel was the first to break it as they did in most other cases. Gaza reacted with a few harmless rockets that killed no-one. We would do the same. It is called pride.
Moshe Yaalon Israelli Chief of Staff in 2002 said "The palestinians must be forced to understand in the deepest recesses of their consciousness that they are a defeated People"
Boycott and picket all stores who sell israeli goods and all goods and services of all child murder supporters.
This is just one of many instances of Israeli leaders' comments about the attack on Gaza openly stating that it is an ATTACK ON THE POPULATION OF GAZA:
"
According to The Jerusalem Post, Israeli President Shimon Peres spoke to an AIPAC mission in Israel on Wednesday and said that "Israel's aim [in attacking Gaza] was to provide a strong blow to the people of Gaza so that they would lose their appetite for shooting at Israel." If (as Tom Friedman suggested) that really is Israel's principal aim -- to deal "a strong blow to the people of Gaza" -- then it's easy to understand why Peres is so happy with how things have proceeded: "Implementation of the current operation had gone 90 percent according to plan, he said." "
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/01/16/noor/
These people need to be tried in the world court for crimes against humanity. We must remember that they have persisted and insisted on their brutal tactics despite outcry after outcry from the international community, even though the international community has pleaded with them to stop, and not just in this instance. The Lebanon war was nearly the same, and then there was the blockade. It seems all too evident at this point that they will not stop until they are stopped.
The UN Secretary-General's surname is Ban.
Nuclear Israel's Foreign Minister and PM candidate Livni denies her gov't mechanized killing of Gaza civilians is intentional - just a sad side effect of 'surgical' targeting. Yet she publically endorses continued bombing of Gaza cities, and the efficacy of lethal community punishment.
Her Gaza infowar is similar to the open Israeli use of nuclear threats against Iran, without ever being held accountable for possession and threatened use of plutonium weapons on 'enemy' populations.
Let's launch PaxPAC now and raise a strategic medical relief / legal defense fund for Gazans. Carefully document the scale and nature of illegal imprisonment/homicide/maiming, and pursue civil reparation (loss of life, injury, property damage, false imprisonment, criminal negligence) in US, Israeli or international courts.
Livni says Nuclear Israel's war on Gaza is in compliance with international law and Jewish values. Let's test that, in medical, financial and legal terms.
As Arlo Guthrie once told us, to stop war and fight for peace, justice and stuff like that, we have to be willing to sing loud, and keep on singing.
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