More voices join a rising chorus: Israel is perpetrating war crimes by deliberately targeting civilians in Lebanon. The latest group to raise the issue is Human Rights Watch which recently documented similar charges against the Bush administration in Iraq. The organization joins Louise Arbour, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, who said earlier that "...war crimes may have been committed in Lebanon" by Israel. UN Commissioner Arbour had warned that war crimes liability is not limited to military personnel; it applies equally to the politicians who decide, direct and approve military operations.A New York-based human rights group says the Israeli military is fully responsible for its air strike that killed nearly 60 civilians in Lebanon, calling such attacks a "war crime."
In a statement released in Beirut Sunday, Human Rights Watch said Sunday's air strike in the village of Qana was a product of an indiscriminate bombing campaign amounting to a war crime.
The statement calls on the U.N. secretary-general to establish an International Commission of Inquiry to investigate violations of international humanitarian law during the conflict.
Meanwhile, the Organization of the Islamic Conference is preparing for an emergency meeting this week on the need for an immediate cease fire in the Middle East and deployment of a U.N. peace keeping force.
The specific international principles are the 1949 Geneva Conventions sought to prohibit, by international law, attacks which mainly target civilians. Article 51 of the First Protocol to the 1949 agreements (updated in 1977) states
Article 51: Protection of the Civilian PopulationUN Commissioner Arbour is a former justice of Canada's Supreme Court and a chief prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunals for Rwanda.
- The civilian population and individual civilians shall enjoy general protection against dangers arising from military operations. To give effect to this protection, the following rules, which are additional to other applicable rules of international law, shall be observed in all circumstances.
- The civilian population as such, as well as individual civilians, shall not be the object of attack. Acts or threats of violence the primary purpose of which is to spread terror among the civilian population are prohibited.
- Civilians shall enjoy the protection afforded by this Section, unless and for such time as they take a direct part in hostilities.
- Indiscriminate attacks are prohibited. Indiscriminate attacks are:
- those which are not directed at a specific military objective;
- those which employ a method or means of combat which cannot be directed at a specific military objective; or
- those which employ a method or means of combat the effects of which cannot be limited as required by this Protocol; and consequently, in each such case, are of a nature to strike military objectives and civilians or civilian objects without distinction.
The Organization of the Islamic Conference [O.I.C] —an organization of Muslim-majority nations —will meet in an emergency, one-day session Thursday in Malaysia. The group will discuss an immediate cease fire and a U.N. deployment of peace keeping force.
A round up of the latest developments with regard to war crimes:
A War Crimes Tribunal May be the Only Deterrent to a Global War
The United Nations General Assembly must immediately establish an International Criminal Tribunal for Israel (ICTI) as a "subsidiary organ" under U.N. Charter Article 22. The ICTI would be organized along the lines of the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia (ICTY), which was established by the Security Council.The purpose of the ICTI would be to investigate and prosecute Israeli war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide against the Peoples of Lebanon and Palestine--just as the ICTY did for the victims of international crimes committed by Serbia and the Milosevic Regime throughout the Balkans.
The establishment of ICTI would provide some small degree of justice to the victims of Israeli war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide against the Peoples of Lebanon and Palestine--just as the ICTY has done in the Balkans. Furthermore, the establishment of ICTI by the U.N. General Assembly would serve as a deterrent effect upon Israeli leaders such as Prime Minister Olmert, Defense Minister Peretz, Chief of Staff Halutz and Israel's other top generals that they will be prosecuted for their further infliction of international crimes upon the Lebanese and the Palestinians.
Without such a deterrent, Israel might be emboldened to attack Syria with the full support of the Likhudnik Bush Jr. Neoconservatives, who have always viewed Syria as "low-hanging fruit" ready to be taken out by means of their joint aggression.
The Israeli press has just reported that the Bush Jr administration is encouraging Israel to attack Syria. If Israel attacks Syria as it did when it invaded Lebanon in 1982, Iran has vowed to come to Syria's defense.
And of course Israel and the Bush Jr administration very much want a pretext to attack Iran. This scenario could readily degenerate into World War III.
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The Existentialist CowboyHow can 'terrorism' be condemned while war crimes go without rebuke?
Washington's partners in this hypocritical war on terror are given free rein to wreak their own brutal, illegal violenceDavid Clark
As if we didn't know it already, the conflict in Lebanon shows that truth and war don't mix. All parties to the tragedy of the Middle East resort to disinformation and historical falsification to bolster their case, but rarely has an attempt to rewrite the past occurred so soon after the fact. Israeli ministers and their supporters have justified the bombardment of Lebanon as "a matter of survival". Total war has been declared on Israel, so Israel is entitled to use the methods of total war in self-defence. This would be reasonable if it were true, but it isn't. It's completely false. ...
Monday July 31, 2006
The GuardianLebanon alleges war crimes
Published: Monday, 31 July, 2006, 12:53 PM Doha Time
BEIRUT: The Lebanese government yesterday accused Israel of war crimes and crimes against humanity following the deadly raid on the village of Qana, saying the US was covering up the Jewish state’s attacks on the country."These aggressions are crimes against humanity and war crimes in all senses of the words," Information Minister Ghazi Aridi said, reading a statement after an emergency cabinet session.
"It is to hide their failure in achieving their military objectives," he said.
Asked about the US position concerning the continued Israeli attacks on Lebanon, Aridi said Washington "is covering up these aggressions."
Qana, War Crimes, and the Pending UN Resolution on Lebanon
JURIST Guest Columnist Anthony D'Amato of Northwestern University School of Law says that the Israeli air strike on Qana that killed over 60 Lebanese civilians has set the stage not only for possible war crimes prosecutions but also for a potentially-robust UN Security Council resolution imposing a UN peacekeeping force on the parties in an effort to stop the violence...Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was meeting with Israeli Defense Minister Amir Peretz in Jerusalem on Sunday morning July 30th when news came in of a two-missile strike on a house in Qana, Lebanon. So far, over 60 bodies of civilians have been recovered, the majority of them children. A father of five who managed to escape lost his wife, sister, aunt, and all his children, including a two-year-old. The pinpoint accuracy of the Israeli missiles is not disputed. ...
Israel
Air Attacks
Iraq
War Crimes
6 comments:
"Israel is perpetrating war crimes by deliberately targeting civilians in Lebanon."
With Israel using precision weapons enthusiastically supplied by the American military industrial complex, (MIC) how can they ever argue that this attack that killed 37 Lebanese children was not intended to do precisely that? What in the hell could they be trying to accomplish? Following last week's precision attack that took out a UN observation post the Israelis, acting as proxy for the MIC, are sending a deadly and hateful message to the world. Bush again declares that American exceptionalism, as interpreted by warped neocon values, trumps all other concerns. Humanitarianism, international cooperation, peace, regional stability, even sanity itself have all become 'quaint' along with the Geneva convention and the Bill of Rights. Like an overly aggressive pitcher in a baseball game, the US is throwing 'chin music', particularly at the UN, in an attempt to brush them back from the plate.
This can have no effect other than serving as a recruitment device throughout the Islamic world for more fundamentalist fanatics to attack western interests. The number of Arab fanatics will greatly increase. More worrisome, they will now be joined in large numbers by Asian Muslims from Indonesia, the Phillipines, and Malaysia.
"UN Commissioner Arbour had warned that war crimes liability is not limited to military personnel; it applies equally to the politicians who decide, direct and approve military operations."
One welcomes the involvement of the UN High Commission, but would it be too much to ask that the inquiry extend to the CEOs of the weapons manufacturers who benefit financially from these horrendous acts? Toss in the lobbyists they hire and the congresscritters accepting bribes from those lobbyists.
"War against a foreign country only happens when the moneyed classes think they ar goig to profit from it." -- George Orwell
Like an overly aggressive pitcher in a baseball game, the US is throwing 'chin music', particularly at the UN, in an attempt to brush them back from the plate.
A great sentence and it's all true.
This can have no effect other than serving as a recruitment device throughout the Islamic world for more fundamentalist fanatics to attack western interests.
Bush and Ehud have created more terrorists than Bin Laden could have ever dreamed of. Terrorism is simply monsters of our own creation. Monsters from the ID
One welcomes the involvement of the UN High Commission, but would it be too much to ask that the inquiry extend to the CEOs of the weapons manufacturers who benefit financially from these horrendous acts? Toss in the lobbyists they hire and the congresscritters accepting bribes from those lobbyists.
Indeed! All are culpable under the law in my opinion. Having lost —industry by industry —our pre-eminence in world exports, the US is reduced to peddling death and destruction for profit. The MIC is our chief industry. We have become the merchants of death and destruction.
"...the US is reduced to peddling death and destruction for profit. The MIC is our chief industry. We have become the merchants of death and destruction."
Well, after all, Bush did say to Bob Woodward that "...we shall bring death and destruction to the four corners of the world." It appears that he meant every word...
And there's our neocon stalwart Michael Ledeen to consider. Recently, in an address entitled "Time to Focus on Iran -- The Mother of Modern Terrorism," for the policy forum of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA) on 30 April 2006, he declared: "the time for diplomacy is at an end; it is time for a free Iran, free Syria and free Lebanon."
It seems "we are all Ledeenites now."
As a slogan it's not as catchy as the "Central Banker for Terror" that Condi Rice was pushing like cocaine for awhile, as if hoping it would catch on like....well, like a smoking gun mushroom cloud. Still, it's got a good beat, and you can dance to it.
In a just world, Michael Ledeen would be warily watching his cellmate making eyes at him, and wondering how he was going to do eighteen to life sleeping on his back. By his multiple falsehoods shall ye know him. I suppose that being a serial liar is an asset in that administration.
Thing is, if YOU even lie about what time you got to work, somebody'll make it their business to find out if you're telling the truth. Just because it's expected these people will lie doesn't mean they shouldn't be held to account for it.
“…the voice of protest is never more needed than when the clamor of fife and drum bid all men obey in silence the tyrannous word of command…”
Charles Eliot Norton
"...I bet they're asleep in New York. I bet they're asleep all over America..."
Humphrey Bogart, in "Casablanca"
great link, amenaidy. I think Israel has not merely "...failed to distinguish between combatants and civilians", they have deliberately targeted civilians. The article also says that such attack constitute war crimes. Indeed!
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