Louise Arbour, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, says that "...war crimes may have been committed in Lebanon" by Israel. Her comments clearly target Tel Aviv, warning that war crimes liability is not limited to military personnel; it applies equally to the politicians who decide, direct and approve military operations. In my opinion, there is no reason to exempt either Israel in Lebanon or the US in Iraq from liability. Her warning, therefore, was most certainly heard in Israel by backers in the Bush administration and the British government of Tony Blair. One hopes her words will resonate among people of goodwill throughout the world.
According to the BBC, Ms. Arbour is a former justice of Canada's Supreme Court. She was a chief prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, indicted the former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic. "
International humanitarian law is clear on the supreme obligations to protect civilians during hostilitiesShe says that the same obligation exists in international criminal law, which defines war crimes and crimes against humanity. It is my position that these principles, likewise, apply to George W. Bush and various members of his administration with regard to the attack, the invasion, and the disastrous, illegal occupation of Iraq.-Louise Arbor, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights
Arbour stresses the "supreme obligation" of states to protect civilians and refers to the "scale of killings" in Lebanon, where the Israeli reaction is clearly seen to have been massive and disproportionate. The 1949 Geneva Conventions sought to prohibit, by international law, attacks which mainly targeted civilians as the Israeli bombardment seems to have done. Article 51 of the First Protocol to the 1949 agreements (updated in 1977) states:
Article 51: Protection of the Civilian PopulationArticle 52 adds: "Attacks shall be limited strictly to military objectives..." Therefore, there is a war crime if civilians are specifically attacked as civilians. However, it is different if they are killed as a result of a strike against a military or a "dual-use" target. More about that in a moment.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.
I venture to say that there is no reason to believe hat the government of Ehud Olmert has taken prudent measures to reduce civilian causalities. So far, Lebanese deaths have topped 300. In a mounting humanitarian crisis some 700,000 Lebanese civilians have become displaced refugees -by some estimates about 1/7 of the entire population. The reality on the ground is thus summed up: the entire nation of Lebanon is under attack and faces utter destruction of infrastructure and basic services.
In the meantime, Robert Fisk notes the significant difference between the "pin-point accuracy" of Israeli technology on the attack and the antiquated Hezbollah defense. Israel can and does target precisely. If civilian targets are disproportionately destroyed, it would appear to be by design. In other words, Israel can -if it wishes -avoid the mass murder of innocent civilians. But as Fisk points out: "...they continue to fill Lebanon's body bags with infants, women and children." At what point does deliberate targeting become "ethnic cleansing". Chillingly, Israel's prosecution of these attacks bears an increasing resemblance to the systematic destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto by Nazis in World War II.
This is a war crime! The American people must demand of our illegitimate Bush administration that we join the rest of the entire world in demanding an immediate cease fire.
Aside from US culpability in Iraq, the US -Israel's top ally -has obstructed a cease fire. Condoleeza Rice resorted to double talk about the status quo and, even here, she is wrong. Holding out hopes of a lasting but unlikely peace, her words are but a red herring -indeed, it is Rice who holds out the mirage, the "false promise" of "lasting peace". A status quote ante is preferable to the ongoing slaughter. Her "talks", therefore, are doomed to failure. One cynically suspects, that the Bush administration knows this full well. It is increasingly difficult not to believe that Condoleeza Rice has departed for the Middle East to "negotiate" in bad faith. It is also difficult not to believe that this cynical administration deliberately seeks to exploit this issue to split the "progressive" movement.
An update and commentary from the Washington Post:
Hunker Down With History
By Richard Cohen
Tuesday, July 18, 2006; Page A19The greatest mistake Israel could make at the moment is to forget that Israel itself is a mistake. It is an honest mistake, a well-intentioned mistake, a mistake for which no one is culpable, but the idea of creating a nation of European Jews in an area of Arab Muslims (and some Christians) has produced a century of warfare and terrorism of the sort we are seeing now. Israel fights Hezbollah in the north and Hamas in the south, but its most formidable enemy is history itself.
This is why the Israeli-Arab war, now transformed into the Israeli-Muslim war (Iran is not an Arab state), persists and widens. It is why the conflict mutates and festers. It is why Israel is now fighting an organization, Hezbollah, that did not exist 30 years ago and why Hezbollah is being supported by a nation, Iran, that was once a tacit ally of Israel's. The underlying, subterranean hatred of the Jewish state in the Islamic world just keeps bubbling to the surface. The leaders of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan and some other Arab countries may condemn Hezbollah, but I doubt the proverbial man in their street shares that view. ...
An update from Maureen Dowd:
Condi doesn't want to talk to Hezbollah or its sponsors, Syria and Iran — "Syria knows what it needs to do," she says with asperity — and she doesn't want a cease-fire. She wants "a sustainable cease-fire," which means she wants to give the Israelis more time to decimate Hezbollah bunkers with the precision-guided bombs that the Bush administration is racing to deliver.The Existentialist Cowboy
Torture
Atrocities
Israel
War Crimes
49 comments:
The American people must demand of our illegitimate Bush administration that we join the rest of the entire world in demanding an immediate cease fire.
The Bush administration has already responded to that demand:
U.S. Speeds Up Bomb Delivery for the Israelis.
Meanwhile, while everyone have their eyes turned on Lebanon:
More Troops to Be Deployed in Baghdad, General Says
Another good article:
'War on terror' cost hits $430bn
The US and Great Britain are the only countries NOT calling for an immediate ceasefire, with Condy Rice delivering the most tranparently false reasons for this criminal policy decision. Dante points out the real reason: the US military-industrial complex sees a window of profit opportunity, and doesn't want to see it slammed shut. Israel will destroy $Millions worth of Lebanese infrastructure in the next 72 hours or so, and expend a comparable amount on munitions to do it. Then Halliburton will bid on the contracts to rebuild it. Cheney will profit on both sides of the deal. Sickening. I'd like to see international war crimes amended to include the weapons manufacturers.
BTW, Louise Arbour is very accomplished and well respected in the world community. Hand over Bush and Cheney, and she can be trusted to treat them humanely, refrain from waterboarding either of them, and respect their legal rights. And then find them both guilty, of course.
Thanks Dante and thanks Sadbuttrue.
This is especially difficult for me. I have always defended Israel's "right to exist" but am now rethinking the very concept of creating a "Jewish" state in the middle of Arab lands. What WAS the world thinking?
Secondly, I don't know of anyone who has been more critical of Hitler, the Nazis, the persecution of the jew, the Holocaust, all of which are abhorrent!!
And, isn't it interesting that the most Nazi-like of all our "Presidents" —George W. Bush has apparently struck up a Satanic bargain with Ehud Olmert?
I remember reading an interesting quote during the famous "Six Day War". An Israeli was quoted as having said: "Every day we fight the Arab and win but every night we fight the Nazis and lose!"
But it was Pogo who said: "We have seen the enemy and it is us!" Tragically, the regime of Ehud Olmert threatens to become his old enemy of nightmare.
This is especially difficult for me. I have always defended Israel's 'right to exist'..."
I hear you on that score Len. Last night I spent a while on a thread at sans-culotte.org (a very good blog, BTW: http://leenrage.blogspot.com ) trying to pour a little cold water on some very inflammatory anti-Israeli rhetoric. One paradigm we have to abandon; the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Sure, I hate BushCo™, and BushCo™ supports Israel. So what? Is that supposed to make me forget the hundreds of suicide bomb attacks that Israelis have had to endure over the last several decades, the airline hijackings, the Achille Lauro incident etc., etc.? When all is said and done, I still find the PLO, Hamas, and Hezbollah to be pursuing the more objectionable course. Of course, Israel's new hardline attitude, and events in the next few days or weeks may change that. Defending Israel's 'right to exist' should never be mistaken for giving them a carte blanche to do whatever they wish.
Bush opposes Islamic fundamentalism too, but I don't see my dislike of Bush as requiring me to embrace Islamic fundamentalism. As much as I hate the narrow-minded simplicity of the Jerry Falwell/Pat Robertson brand of conservative Christianity, these guys are obviously much worse. Given a choice between a brand of theocracy that kills people at the drop of a hat and dresses its women in shapeless sacks, and another brand of theocracy where women can wear bikinis, I will opt for the latter.
With regard to Bush and radical Islam, my attitude can be found in Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet": "A pox o' both your houses!"
Unfortunately for Israel, Lebanon —as a state —was the Middle East's best hope for Democracy. Even Pat Buchanan, with whom I almost never agree, said that Lebanon is innocent and that Israel's response is disproportionate. I have to believe that Israel not only found precedent in Bush's attack and invasion of Iraq but also encouragement from Bush himself. Even some of the conservative blogs are saying that Buscho gave Israel a green light.
In the end, real terrorism will have been made much, much worse by both Bush and Olmert. I am not a pacifist. If attacked, I will kick ass. But Bush is no cowboy and we already know what meaningless, ill considered bluster has gotten us into. In fact, Buchanan has said 1) Bush is an ineffective leader; 2) he was AWOL on the Middle East, having withdrawn from dialogue shortly after taking office; and 3) that Israel has already lost it's war with Lebanon.
You know times are strange when you find yourself quoting Buchanan. He is a weird duck who is not always wrong. His position on "American empire" is not entirely unlike that of Gore Vidal, often thought to be a "liberal". I think that on the three points above, Buchanan is close to the mark.
Writing recently in the Washington Post, Richard Cohen stated:
The greatest mistake Israel could make at the moment is to forget that Israel itself is a mistake.
Cohen can write that. Being a "Hart", I could not. Something to think about.
I can only add: it is no coincidence that the world seems on the brink of falling apart. In 500 years, the middle east debacle over which Bush presided will be called the "Adrianople" of the American empire. It's all downhill from here.
Len, there are enough 'mistakes' to go around -- one of them being the great, helping hand extended by Arab countries to their displaced brethren, in the late 1940's. (The hand was only a finger; and it was a middle finger.)
And one wonders, had Resolution 1559 actually been carried through -- and Hezbollah disarmed as mandated.... Let's put a bunch of militant, rocket-firing Mexicans on the Texas border -- after all, you guys took their land -- and see the response.
wonderful aritcle.... check out mine...at khalid3.blogspot.com
it was sent to me through an E-mail.
Tiredofitall:
... nor Islam has any heart
Such a great essay you wrote and you found a way to kill it at the very last line. Is your real Name Zinedine Zidane?
You sounded so smart, You sounded like you knew the situation well... and then your intolerance slipped out.
You are right all along about the cowardness and cruelty of Hamas & Hezbollah.
But the passage I quoted from you is the very thing that will fuel the anger of their sure to come successors.
Yeah, laws are nice and ok, but who's going to make them stand trial?
They say, evil prevails when just men fail to act. What they ought to say is...
See the movie "Lord of War".
From its inception, Israel has been one huge land-grab, stealing land from its rightful owners. Israel has been treating Palestinians the way Nazis treated Jews, and the only thing holding back Israel from a "final solution" with regard to Palestinians is the fact that should they do that, they would completely lose all financial support from the USA (and any shred of support and sympathy from the world) - a financial support which basically is the only thing that keeps Israel in existence.
There is no difference between the Gaza Strip/West Bank and the Warsaw and Prague Ghettoes save for the difference in size. People so easily forget that for every Israeli killed by Palestinians, some 40 Palestinians have been killed by Israel. Israel has been using Palestinians for slave-labor, much as Republicans in the USA use illegal immigrants for slave-labor.
Great Britain and the USA created Israel because nobody wanted Jews on their lands after World War II - I remember that during that war, the USA turned back shiploads of Jews trying to escape Germany. Israel was born of a sense of guilt mixed with a wish to get rid of Jews. It was created on land that belonged to the Palestinian people, and millions of Palestinians were chased from their lands. Bush and others proclaim that Israel has the right to defend itself, but who is proclaiming that the Palestinians have a right to defend themselves from the predators, thieves and murderers that Israelis have been for decades?
Although I am matrilinearly a Jew myself, I strongly believe that Israel is an illegal state and should never have been created in the first place. Some of the above posts say that Israel has been the victim of Hezbollah and Hamas bombings - the authors forget that neither would exist had Israel not slaughtered countless Palestinians and continued its illegal land-grabs in its efforts to keep stealing the arable lands and the aquifers that happen to lie in the occupied territories, destroying homes and farmlands and olive groves in the process. Israel is the guilty party throughout. Israel loves to play the poor victim while inflicting untold harm on its victims. Israel should never have been created in the first place. It is simply the fruit of plain antisemitism. Rather than deal with their racism, the creators of Israel have only tried to hide their racism by creating an illegal state and giving it to the Jews it wanted to get rid of. Bad policy, the worst imaginable of all.
Don't forget that Israel was also created by Zionist terrorists who used the same methods that Israel whines about when their victims use these methods against the opressor Israel.
In order to get a better understanding of what is really happening, you need to get a better perspective of the mindset of Israel's leaders. Here is an article that does just that, which I post in its entirety:
Who is Ariel Sharon? Interview by Amos Oz in 1982
The Middle East is living a nightmare, notably because of a man of Russian origin who became Prime Minister of Israel: Ariel Sharon. What is the profound thought of this man? This is what Amos Oz, an Israeli writer, help us to discover through an interview published by the Israeli daily Davar in December 17, 1982."
[Note that the interview took place after Sharon had committed many atrocities, including engineering the massacres of Palestinian men, women and children at Sabra and Shatila refugee camps.]
He was indicted for war crimes at the Hague. The three chief witnesses against him were assassinated.
This is the outlook and the context in which the actions of the Israeli government need to be seen. The layers of PR torrenting onto the American people have as a purpose to smother information from the occupied territories and to present the actions of Israel in a manner acceptable to American sensitivies and values. Gradually those sensitivies and values were changed over a period of time under this barrage of propaganda to the point that nearly any atrocity committed by this state could be made to sound acceptable to a fairly large section of the American public.
However they are presented and spun, certain actions remain atrocities and crimes against humanity, but as long as the spin machine can keep throwing up dust, action to address the situation is delayed and this can only be to the benefit of a state which holds its citizens as superior to all others, and which is the last remaining colonial apartheid state.
This interview illustrates the underlying ideology that lies at the heart of many of this state's actions.
The interview of Ariel Sharon by Amos Oz
[Sharon]: "You can call me anything you like. Call me a monster or a murderer. Just note that I don't hate Arabs. On the contrary. Personally, I am much more at ease with them, and especially with the Bedouin, than with Jews. Those Arabs we haven't yet spoilt are proud people, they are irrational, cruel and generous. It's the Yids that are all twisted. In order to straighten them out you have to first bend them sharply the other way. That, in brief, is my whole ideology".
"Call Israel by any name you like, call it a Judeo-Nazi state as does Leibowitz. Why not? Better a live Judeo-Nazi than a dead saint. I don't care whether I am like Ghadafi. I am not after the admiration of the gentiles. I don't need their love. I don't need to be loved by Jews like you either. I have to live, and I intend to ensure that my children will live as well. With or without the blessing of the Pope and the other religious leaders from the New York Times. I will destroy anyone who will raise a hand against my children, I will destroy him and his children, with or without our famous purity of arms. I don't care if he is Christian, Muslim, Jewish or pagan. History teaches us that he who won't kill will be killed by others. That is an iron law".
"Even if you'll prove to me by mathematical means that the present war in Lebanon is a dirty immoral war, I don't care. Moreover, even if you will prove to me that we have not achieved and will not achieve any of our aims in Lebanon, that we will neither create a friendly regime in Lebanon nor destroy the Syrians or even the PLO, even then I don't care. It was still worth it. Even if Galilee is shelled again by Katyushas in a year's time, I don't really care. We shall start another war, kill and destroy more and more, until they will have had enough. And do you know why it is all worth it? Because it seems that this war has made us more unpopular among the so-called civilised world".
"We'll hear no more of that nonsense about the unique Jewish morality, the moral lessons of the holocaust or about the Jews who were supposed to have emerged from the gas chambers pure and virtuous. No more of that. The destruction of Eyn Hilwe (and it's a pity we did not wipe out that hornet's nest completely!), the healthy bombardment of Beirut and that tiny massacre (can you call 500 Arabs a massacre?) in their camps which we should have committed with our own delicate hands rather than let the Phalangists do it, all these good deeds finally killed the bullshit talk about a unique people and of being a light upon the nations. No more uniqueness and no more sweetness and light. Good riddance."
"I personally don't want to be any better than Khomeini or Brezhnev or Ghadafi or Assad or Mrs. Thatcher, or even Harry Truman who killed half a million Japanese with two fine bombs. I only want to be smarter than they are, quicker and more efficient, not better or more beautiful than they are. Tell me, do the baddies of this world have a bad time? If anyone tries to touch them, the evil men cut his hands and legs off. They hunt and catch whatever they feel like eating. They don't suffer from indigestion and are not punished by Heaven. I want Israel to join that club. Maybe the world will then at last begin to fear me instead of feeling sorry for me. Maybe they will start to tremble, to fear my madness instead of admiring my nobility. Thank God for that. Let them tremble, let them call us a mad state. Let them understand that we are a wild country, dangerous to our surroundings, not normal, that we might go crazy if one of our children is murdered - just one! That we might go wild and burn all the oil fields in the Middle East! If anything would happen to your child, God forbid, you would talk like I do. Let them be aware in Washington, Moscow, Damascus and China that if one of our ambassadors is shot, or even a consul or the most junior embassy official, we might start World War Three just like that!"
"Let me tell me [sic] what is the most important thing, the sweetest fruit of the war in Lebanon: It is that now they don't just hate Israel. Thanks to us, they now also hate all those Feinschmecker Jews in Paris, London, New York, Frankfurt and Montreal, in all their holes. At last they hate all these nice Yids, who say they are different from us, that they are not Israeli thugs, that they are different Jews, clean and decent. Just like the assimilated Jew in Vienna and Berlin begged the anti-Semite not to confuse him with the screaming, stinking Ostjude, who had smuggled himself into that cultural environment out of the dirty ghettos of Ukraine and Poland. It won't help them, those clean Yids, just as it did not help them in Vienna and Berlin. Let them shout that they condemn Israel, that they are all right, that they did not want and don't want to hurt a fly, that they always prefer being slaughtered to fighting, that they have taken it upon themselves to teach the gentiles how to be good Christians by always turning the other cheek. It won't do them any good. Now they are getting it there because of us, and I am telling you, it is a pleasure to watch."
"They are the same Yids who persuaded the gentiles to capitulate to the bastards in Vietnam, to give it in to Khomeini, to Brezhnev, to feel sorry for Sheikh Yamani because of his tough childhood, to make love not war. Or rather, to do neither, and instead write a thesis on love and war. We are through with all that. The Yid has been rejected, not only did he crucify Jesus, but he also crucified Arafat in Sabra and Shatila. They are being identified with us and that's a good thing! Their cemeteries are being desecrated, their synagogues are set on fire, all their old nicknames are being revived, they are being expelled from the best clubs, people shoot into their ethnic restaurants murdering small children, forcing them to remove any sign showing them to be Jews, forcing them to move and change their profession.
"Soon their palaces will be smeared with the slogan: Yids, go to Palestine! And you know what? They will go to Palestine because they will have no other choice! All this is a bonus we received from the Lebanese war. Tell me, wasn't it worth it? Soon we will hit on good times. The Jews will start arriving, the Israelis will stop emigrating and those who already emigrated will return. Those who had chosen assimilation will finally understand that it won't help them to try and be the conscience of the world. The 'conscience of the world' will have to understand through its arse what it could not get into its head. The gentiles have always felt sick of the Yids and their conscience, and now the Yids will have only one option: to come home, all of them, fast, to install thick steel doors, to build a strong fence, to have submachine guns positioned at every corner of their fence here and to fight like devils against anyone who dares to make a sound in this region. And if anyone even raises his hand against us we'll take away half his land and burn the other half, including the oil. We might use nuclear arms. We'll go on until he no longer feels like it..."
"...You probably want to know whether I am not afraid of the masses of Yids coming here to escape anti-Semitism smearing us with their olive oil until we go all soft like them. Listen, history is funny in that way, there is a dialectic here, irony. Who was it who expanded the state of Israel almost up the boundaries of the kingdom of King David? Who expanded the state until it covered the area from Mount Hermon to Raz Muhammad? Levi Eshkol. Of all people, it was that follower of Gordon, that softie, that old woman. Who, on the other hand, is about to push us back into the walls of the ghetto? Who gave up all of Sinai in order to retain a civilised image? Beitar's governor in Poland, that proud man Menahem Begin. So you can never tell. I only know one thing for sure: as long as you are fighting for your life all is permitted, even to drive out all the Arabs from the West Bank, everything."
"Leibowitz is right, we are Judeo-Nazis, and why not? Listen, a people that gave itself up to be slaughtered, a people that let soap to be made of its children and lamp shades from the skin of its women is a worse criminal than its murderers. Worse than the Nazis ... If your nice civilised parents had come here in time instead of writing books about the love for humanity and singing 'Hear O Israel' on the way to the gas chambers, now don't be shocked, if they instead had killed six million Arabs here or even one million, what would have happened? Sure, two or three nasty pages would have been written in the history books, we would have been called all sorts of names, but we could be here today as a people of 25 million!"
"Even today I am willing to volunteer to do the dirty work for Israel, to kill as many Arabs as necessary, to deport them, to expel and burn them, to have everyone hate us, to pull the rug from underneath the feet of the Diaspora Jews, so that they will be forced to run to us crying. Even if it means blowing up one or two synagogues here and there, I don't care. And I don't mind if after the job is done you put me in front of a Nuremberg Trial and then jail me for life. Hang me if you want, as a war criminal. Then you can spruce up your Jewish conscience and enter the respectable club of civilised nations, nations that are large and healthy. What you lot don't understand is that the dirty work of Zionism is not finished yet, far from it. True, it could have been finished in 1948, but you interfered, you stopped it. And all this because of the Jewishness in your souls, because of your Diaspora mentality. For the Jews don't grasp things quickly. If you open your eyes and look around the world you will see that darkness is falling again. And we know what happens to a Jew who stays out in the dark. So I am glad that this small war in Lebanon frightened the Yids. Let them be afraid, let them suffer. They should hurry home before it gets really dark. So I am an anti-Semite? Fine. So don't quote me, quote Lilienblum instead [an early Russian Zionist - ed.]. There is no need to quote an anti-Semite. Quote Lilienblum, and he is definitely not an anti-Semite, there is even a street in Tel Aviv named after him". (C. quotes from a small notebook that was lying on his table when I arrived:)
'Is all that is happening not a clear sign that our forefathers and ourselves ... wanted and still want to be disgraced? That we enjoy living like gypsies.' That's Lilienblum. Not me. Believe me. I went through the Zionist literature, I can prove what I say".
"And you can write that I am disgrace to humanity, I don't mind, on the contrary. Let's make a deal: I will do all I can to expel the Arabs from here, I will do all I can to increase anti-Semitism, and you will write poems and essays about the misery of the Arabs and be prepared to absorb the Yids I will force to flee to this country and teach them to be a light unto the gentiles. How about it?"
These were the interviewer's thoughts at the end of the interview:
It was there that I stopped C.'s monologue for a moment and expressed the thought passing through my mind, perhaps more for myself than for my host. Was it possible that Hitler had not only hurt the Jews but also poisoned their minds? Had that poison sunk in and was still active? But not even that idea could cause C. to protest or raise his voice. After all, he is said to have never shouted under stress, even during the famous operations his name is associated with.
Source
And Sharon was called a "man of peace" by Bush....
Well, canuck - if one is to follow your logic, I guess Israel does have a right to defend itself against its victim's self-defenses, just as a wife-beater has a right to defend himself against his battered wife, and a child abuser has a right do defend himself the children he tortures...
...defend himself against the children he tortures...
...and a burglar has a right to defend himself against those he is burglaring, too.
...so its ok for hizbollah to fire rockets into israel but its not ok for israel to defend itself?
No one said that! In fact, I've not found anyone in the progressive blogosphere taking that position.
Some advice: if you will persist in attributing positions to this forum not taken by anyone, peddle your cheap and obvious fallacies elsewhere.
laws are nice and ok, but who's going to make them stand trial?
In this case, the biggest war criminals are those inside the US to include the President himself. When the US is as financially bankrupt as it is morally, the trials will proceed apace. Even Rome fell.
canuck-
What is "creepy" is people that form simplistic opinions with nothing to offer in debate except one or two vague sentences. Not that anyone on this blog needs defending on one side of an issue or another, but if you are to engage in name calling, by all means back up your assertions. You evidently did not read all the comments through, or you would not have made the statement about Israel’s right to exist. This is a convoluted and complex issue, and has not been relegated to one phrase or statement.
For the most part, that is not what is at issue here anyway. But, in typical conservative fashion you seem to have reframed the subject of the issue by side stepping the debate on the evolving degree and escalation of Israeli militarism and its varying negative effects on the region. By merely stating that if one side lobs a bomb, then as if it is by proxy for the other to do so. That mentality has gone on for so long now, it is not an reasonable talking point. And generally speaking it is taken for granted by this point in time, and everyone knows that.One must peel the onion back to seek analysis and construct a base for thesis.
Also, I do not know of any nation who has been involved in the economics of the region either through oil resource use or arms sales that is not culpable for the current situation. And that issue has also been addressed on many levels by rationalists that tend to absorb the larger picture. By no means has the total onus for this geo-political quagmire been laid only at the door of Israel by what I have read on this blog, including other posted discussions found here. Please read the texts in their entirety before you cast dispersions. You may find that in which you disagree...or do not understand, but you also could learn something and expand your ability to form constructed opinion for positive debate.
Re: Vierotchka
In order to get a better understanding of what is really happening, you need to get a better perspective of the mindset of Israel's leaders
Great article!
He was indicted for war crimes at the Hague. The three chief witnesses against him were assassinated. This is the outlook and the context in which the actions of the Israeli government need to be seen.
That's why I had hopes for Clinton's efforts prior to Sharon's regime. But, alas, the combination of intifada and Sharon finished off hopes for peace. But Condi claims that she might achieve a "lasting peace" in but one short visit. Delusions, delusions, delusions.
I have come to believe that Cohen is correct. The whole thing has been a terrible, tragic mistake. Israelis, themselves, have come to the same conclusion. The population of Israel is in decline due to emigration.
DoctorBoogaloo:Let's put a bunch of militant, rocket-firing Mexicans on the Texas border -- after all, you guys took their land -- and see the response.
"Mexican-Ameicans" are already the largest minority throughout the SW. Interestingly, it is the right wing that has demogogued the immigration issue even as right wing biased big corporations benefit most from the effect on wages. That has been so ever since "Mexicans" were literally imported into California and Texas to work the farms and groves. They were not paid living wages. Needless to say, the GOP position vis a vis these workers was and continues to be crassest hypocrisy.
To address your issue more directly, the territory now called Texas belonged to the Mexican republic and before that it was a possession of the Spanish Empire in North America. In 1836, Texas won its independence at the battle of San Jacinto near present-day Houston. Mexico never recognized the Republic of Texas. Now here is where things get interesting. According to the Virtual Museum of San Francisco:
In fact, at the very moment of annexation [by the US], the Mexican government, at the suggestion of England, had agreed to recognize the independence of Texas, on condition that the republic should not join itself to the United States.
But, in fact, Texas was annexed by the US —an act soundly denounced by abolitionists who feared the spread of slavery westward. Should the US collapse financialy (and it will), it is not hard to imagine much of the SW rejoining Mexico. California may have ambitions of independence, but given the demographic make up of the American SW, a reunion with Mexico is not out of the question.
Although I am matrilinearly a Jew myself, I strongly believe that Israel is an illegal state and should never have been created in the first place.
The outright theft of land is, in itself, an act of aggression. I think Cohen, himself a "jew", may be correct.
I want to repeat: no one has denounced Nazism more vociferously than I have. Yet, because I have dared to call Israel's current bombing campaign which CLEARLY targets the civilian population in a disproportionate manner a war crime, I have received flaming emails calling me an "anti-simite" among more colorful language.
It is, of course, cowardly to hurl ad hominems and eptithets in an email.
Whatever one's views on the situation in Israel and Lebanon, it has distracted everyone from the horrendous carnage still escalating daily in Iraq, and it has revealed a serious rift in the progressive movement. I have never seen such vituperative contention in the liberal blogosphere. Bush, in spite of playing the game as poorly as could be imagined, seems to be reaping a dividend from this. We should all fervently hope that it blows up in his face.
Whatever one's views on the situation in Israel and Lebanon, it has distracted everyone from the horrendous carnage still escalating daily in Iraq.
Thank you, sadbuttrue. It appears anyway that every time brings the Israel issue, traffic jumps and passions get unleashed.
Man, i wish people would give the same amount of energy for Darfour or East Timor!
Indeed, SadButTrue, even conservatives have said that Bush gave Ehud a "greenlight". The timing and the disproportionate response smack of conspiracy between Israel and the US —a recipe for disaster. Whatever peace had been eked out in the past had been done so only because the US played the role of "honest broker". Thanks to Bush, we may never be seen in that role again.
If there is a conspiratorial overtone to this unfolding disaster, it means also that Bush hopes to divide the progressive movement. That I am called "anti-semite" is just a minor case in point. Once again, Bush exploits fear, hate, and prejdudice in order to maintain his dictatorship.
I wrote not too long ago that Bush was literally "spoiling" for a Constitutional showdown. Bush, unlike Nixon, who when ordered by SCOTUS to turn over the infamous tapes, did the honorable thing and resigned, Bush will defy the high court and Congress. Bush will flout whatever order he may get. At that moment, American democracy is off life support. We will have created an absolute dictatorship in which one man is utterly above the law, rules by decree, and can, upon his whim, deny due process of law, probable cause, and the various protections and rights found in the Bill of Rights.
It's almost over, folks!
Finito!
And please excuse me if i tend to eat words when i type...
You are correct, Dante. Israel is a hot button issue. That emotions run high means that no one thinks clearly about it. It means that I get called "anti-semitic". It means that Bush can divide his opposition and get the disaster in Iraq OFF the front pages.
It also means that Bush can wage a war in Lebanon on the cheap —by proxy. That's why he gave Ehud the green light when he did. While there is still the possibility that Iran and Syria will ally and join the fray, Bush will only exploit that as well. And, if Russia and China ally to protect their common interests in both Iran and Syria —so much the better for Bush. His stock and trade is FEAR. He's never shown himself to be concerned with the consequences.
"We will have created an absolute dictatorship in which one man is utterly above the law, rules by decree, and can, upon his whim, deny due process of law, probable cause, and the various protections and rights found in the Bill of Rights."
The litany of laws that Bush has already gotten away with belies your use of the future tense here, Len. There are still hundreds languishing in Gitmo, Abu Ghraib, and numerous undisclosed locations who have never been afforded the 'various protections and rights' found in the Magna Carta, let alone the Bill of Rights. There are probably dozens in unmarked graves who died under torture after being subject to extraordinary rendition. Even after a SCOTUS decision unambiguously demanding that the remaining prisoners be treated in accordance with the Geneva conventions, have any been released? Even the ones who the military has acknowledged were taken into captivity mistakenly? Even thinking about it literally brings tears to my eyes as I type. Bush, Cheney, Rummy, Gonzales, and the rest of them are monsters. Same with Pat Roberts and Arlen Specter. Traitors, all of them.
The problem with the comparison to Nixon is that it only serves to remind us of the FAILURE of the US political system to respond adequately to malfeasance in high office. Ford's unprecedented pardon of Nixon for crimes with which he had not yet been charged was accepted by the American public, as was Nixon's being allowed to appoint Ford as his successor in the first place. The collective decision to let the matter be swept under the rug of history was made casually and almost without debate. This disastrous decision emboldened successive leaders, leading to the Iran/Contra scandal (many of whose operatives are still involved with the current administration) and the BushCo™ regime, which has been scandalous in its every move since inception. In fact including its inception by the scandalous 2000 Supreme Court ruling on Bush v. Gore.
Don't get me started. I'm likely to get pissed off.
Sad,
I am already pissed. This was MY country...and doubly so. On my mother's side, I am Native American. The lands of my ancestors were stolen and a campaign of genocide against "Native Americans" continues to this day. But that's another article.
The analogy to Nixon points up how moderate Nixon appears by comparison. The Bush admin is made up of old Nixon veterans: Cheney, Rumsfeld, et al. They learned all the wrong lessons of Watergate. In other words, they learned nothing about the rule of law; they learned NOT to get caught.
Bush is worse than Hitler in that Bush has nukes. Even as we post here, Newt Gingrich and Bill O'Reilly —surrogates for Bush —are telling the world that WWIII has already begun. This is a no lose situation for the very worst President in American history. If WWIII is averted, Bush looks like a hero and will don his cod piece and flight suit again. If not, Bush will merely consolidate his power during a protected, perpetual war which he deliberately makes worse.
The timing of Israel's assault is all about keeping the Bush dictatorship in power.
The "people", meanwhile, are left with no choice but revolution.
they learned nothing about the rule of law; they learned NOT to get caught.
Brilliantly said, Len. This is why the Bush admin bash the journalists so much in a way to say: "better not try to pull a 'All The President Men' on me and my boys!"
Thanks, Dante. Bush has already made it clear: he will not be obeying orders from SCOTUS and the media was long ago intimidated.
BTW —I had meant to write "protracted war"...not "protected war".
Don't worry, if we were to judge each other for our english skills in the "comments" section, trust me, ExistentialistCowboy is pure Shakespeare compared to some blogs out there...
And an important point missed among all the Bush propaganda: there is NO EVIDENCE that Israel's disproportionate response has had any effect on Hezbollah, and, secondly, there is no evidence that any member of Hezbollah has been killed.
Like Bush's war of naked aggression in Iraq, it would seem that being civilian of any sort makes you fair game for rogue and ruthless nation states who now make cowardly war upon civilian populations.
Tiredofitall presents the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in terms of terrorists hiding behind civilians. With this interpretation Israeli actions in Lebanon (and Gaza) obtain some legitimacy.
But something is missing in this explanation. Where does the repeated bombing of Gaza's main power supply fit into this? How can the depriving of 700,000 people of electricity for refrigeration, hospitals, sewerage pumping and water filtration be interpreted any other way than as a broad scope targetting of an entire civilian population? It can't. And, as in Lebanon, the Israeli bombings of infrastructure must be seen as serious abuses of the Geneva Convention. All of this for two captured soldiers?
There is also strong reason to believe that, whatever the stated cause, attacks on Lebanon were bound to happen at some stage because of water supply issues.
I reckon that what Israel is doing - with Bushco's blessing and arms supplies - is to try to provoke Iran into "attacking" Israel, so as to have an excuse to nuke Iran to smithereens so as to be able to grab Iran's oil fields and tighten the US' choke-hold around Russia (aiming at Russia's huge oil and gas reserves).
Freeing the kidnapped Israeli soldiers is certainly not what all this carnage and death Israel is carrying out on the Lebanese. After all, these two soldiers are obviously held in some Hezbollah safe-house or hideout somewhere, the very safe-houses and hideouts Israel is hoping to destroy with it bombs... No, this is just a flimsy excuse Israel is using to justify its war crimes. About kidnappings in Israel and surroundings:
Israeli refusenik on "kidnapping"
Submitted by David Bloom on Wed, 07/05/2006 - 10:58.
From Israel's largest daily, Yediot Aharanot, July 5:
Look who's been kidnapped!
Hundreds of Palestinian 'suspects' have been kidnapped from their homes and will never stand trial
by Arik Diamant
It's the wee hours of the morning, still dark outside. A guerilla force comes out of nowhere to kidnap a soldier. After hours of careful movement, the force reaches its target, and the ambush is on! In seconds, the soldier finds himself looking down the barrel of a rifle.
A smash in the face with the butt of the gun and the soldier falls to the ground, bleeding. The kidnappers pick him up, quickly tie his hands and blindfold him, and disappear into the night.
This might be the end of the kidnapping, but the nightmare has just begun. The soldier's mother collapses, his father prays. His commanding officers promise to do everything they can to get him back, his comrades swear revenge. An entire nation is up-in-arms, writhing in pain and worry.
Nobody knows how the soldier is: Is he hurt? Do his captors give him even a minimum of human decency, or are they torturing him to death by trampling his honor? The worst sort of suffering is not knowing. Will he come home? And if so, when? And in what condition? Can anyone remain apathetic in the light of such drama?
Israeli terror
This description, you'll be surprised to know, has nothing to do with the kidnapping of Gilad Shalit. It is the story of an arrest I carried out as an IDF soldier, in the Nablus casbah, about 10 years ago. The "soldier" was a 17-year-old boy, and we kidnapped him because he knew "someone" who had done "something."
We brought him tied up, with a burlap sac over his head, to a Shin Bet interrogation center known as "Scream Hill" (at the time we thought it was funny). There, the prisoner was beaten, violently shaken and sleep deprived for weeks or months. Who knows.
No one wrote about it in the paper. European diplomats were not called to help him. After all, there was nothing out of the ordinary about the kidnapping of this Palestinian kid. Over the 40 years of occupation we have kidnapped thousands of people, exactly like Gilad Shalit was captured: Threatened by a gun, beaten mercilessly, with no judge or jury, or witnesses, and without providing the family with any information about the captive.
When the Palestinians do this, we call it "terror." When we do it, we work overtime to whitewash the atrocity.
Suspects?
Some people will say: The IDF doesn't "just" kidnap. These people are "suspects." There is no more perverse lie than this. In all the years I served, I reached one simple conclusion: What makes a "suspect"? Who, exactly suspects him, and of what?
Who has the right to sentence a 17-year-old to kidnapping, torture and possible death? A 26-year-old Shin Bet interrogator? A 46-year-old one? Do these people have any higher education, apart from the ability to interrogate? What are his considerations? If all these "suspects" are so guilty, why not bring them to trial?
Anyone who believes that despite the lack of transparency, the IDF and Shin Bet to their best to minimize violations of human rights is naïve, if not brainwashed. One need only read the testimonies of soldiers who have carried out administrative detentions to be convinced of the depth of the immorality of our actions in the territories.
To this very day, there are hundreds of prisoners rotting in Shin Bet prisons and dungeons, people who have never been –and never will be – tried. And Israelis are silently resolved to this phenomenon.
Israeli responsibility
The day Gilad Shalit was kidnapped I rode in a taxi. The driver told me we must go into Gaza, start shooting people one-by-one, until someone breaks and returns the hostage. It isn't clear that such an operation would bring Gilad back alive.
Instead of getting dragged into terrorist responses, as Palestinian society has done, we should release some of the soldiers and civilians we have kidnapped. This is appropriate, right, and could bring about an air of reconciliation in the territories.
Hell, if this is what will bring Gilad home safe-and-sound, we have a responsibility to him to do it."
http://ww4report.com/node/2164
Vierotchka, I have every reason to believe your details of the "kidnapping" of IDF "suspects". There is an account here about prisoner Samir-al-Qintar held hostage for 28 years with no family contacts at all. And it appears that a Supreme Court of Israel ruling in 1997 has acknowledged that Lebanese detainees can be held indefinitely without trial as hostages for bargaining purposes.
Claims are emerging that the 2 Israeli soldiers were captured inside Lebanon. This, together with sundry bits of evidence suggest this was far removed from an Israeli response to 2 kidnappings.
Juan Cole has been arguing that Pres.Bush may have been 'out of the loop' on this Lebanon invasion.
"That is why I was so shaken by George W. Bush's overheard conversation with Tony Blair about the war. He clearly thought that it broke out because Syria used Hizbullah to create a provocation. The President of the United States did not know that this war was a long-planned Israeli war of choice.
....What is scary is that Cheney and Rumsfeld don't appear to have let W. in on the whole thing. They told him that Bashar al-Asad of Syria stirred up a little trouble because he was afraid that Iraq the Model and the Lebanese Cedar Revolution might be such huge successes that they would topple him by example (just as, after Poland and the Czech Velvet Revolution, other Eastern European strongmen fell). (Don't fall down laughing at the idea of Iraq and Lebanon as Republican Party success stories; people in Washington, DC, coccoon a lot and have odd ideas about the way the world is.) So, Bush thought, if that is all that is going on, then someone just needs to call al-Asad and reassure him that we're not going to take him out, and get him to rein in Hizbullah. And then the war would suddenly stop. No one told Bush that this war was actually an Israeli war of choice and that al-Asad had nothing to do with it, that, indeed, it could only happen because al-Asad is already irrelevant.
That is why Administration hopes of using the Israeli attempt to destroy Hezbollah as a wedge to convince Syria to give up rejectionism and detach itself from Iran are crazy."
Bushes handlers are making their play.
BTW — the discourse on this blog is excellent especially when there is respectful disagreement.
My compliments to everyone.
However, I just deleted a typical ad hominem attack by a someone obviously of a right wing persuasion.
I welcome debate and give as good as I get. But, honestly folks, the tired old name calling and libelous generalizations that the right wing has gotten away with since McCarthy will just not be tolerated.
When meaningless crap is posted here, I am going to delete it —no apologies.
In the meantime, if anyone —right or left —has a problem with anything I've posted, make your case!
If the best you can do to call me a "leftie" or an "anti-semite", you get your sorry ass deleted. Compeche? Go dirty up your own blog!
At least canuck made a point albiet diminished —even self discredited —by typical name calling.
"Creepy".
Now time for a fact check: the dispropotionate Israeli response has nothing whatsoever to do with "defense"!
NOTHING!
Even Israel had said it was in response to the kidnapping of two Israeli soliders.
Nothing else is relevant!
How can we all "sit here and say that"? Simple - because it is true. Only a gullible idiot or a greedy and blind Bush-worshipping carrion eater could possibly see it in any other way.
Furthermore, if you want Hamas or Hezbollah to fight on an equal footing with Israel and not by getting themselves blown-up on buses and other busy venues, supply them with the same weaponry and billion$ in the same quantities that you yearly lavish on Israel.
http://www.blogger.com/profile/4128873
Don't hit me, Len! Don't hit me! LOL!!
How can you all sit here and say that Israel's response has been to harsh.
Read Geneva and Nuremberg. Israel has gone nuts. I no longer support Israel, having defended it for years. In fact, I would wage war against Israel myself right now. There is no doubt whatsoever that Israel has deliberately targeted civilians and now has deliberately targeted representatives of the United Nations. Condi's "mission" is a sham, intended to buy time for Israel.
Not only is this attack on civilians in Lebanon disproportionate it already ranks with the Nazi destruction of Lidice, said to have been in retaliation for the murder of Heinrich Heydrich. I've got news for you: I would have murdered Heydrich myself!
I wonder when and how Israelis became Nazis.
I repeat: there is NO moral justification for the Nazi-like attack by Israel upon the people Lebanon.
Does Israel have to sit back and watch soldier after soldier get kidnapped.
They were NOT kidnapped, they were captured inside Lebanon!
I sit here day after day reading about how Israel is being so unfair in it's response to HEZBOLLAH
Read it and weep. You're on the wrong side, buddy! Thom Friedman asked: What does being right have to do with anything? I suggest that you go to Lebananon and put your money where your mouth is. Nothing you have posted here is based in any way upon ANY observable fact in the Middle East.
There's a further story on where the two Israeli soldiers were captured here.
You're wrong again, tiredofitall.
I wouldn't give a damn if you were "Seventh Day Adventist". I think its wrong to kill folk and more wrong to lie about it.
Like Bush, Israel has lied about what was the CAPTURE of soliders inside Lebanon and upon that pretext they've launched a war of NAZI proportions.
If my own nation had done that I would scream bloody murder and, as the regulars on this board will tell you, I'VE DONE EXACTLY THAT!
My country is not just wrong, it's DEAD WRONG!
What ever claptrap you choose to call "religion" is of no interest to me whatsoever. The events in the Middle East, Texas, and DC have confirmed to me that the world just might be better off without religion of any kind.
When untold millions have died for Christ, the Prophet, or some Pope, then please tell me what good religion has done? Did you ever hear of the Crusades? Remission of sins, my ass!
And don't think for one minute that I hate Jews. In fact, I've produced several documentaries about the Holocaust and I've interviewed Holocaust survivors. My credentials are just fine, thank you! I will not be tarred as a Jew hater because the "nation" of Israel has gone nuts.
Tiredofitall - bin Laden had strictly nothing to do with 9/11, and I don't for a microsecond believe that you're "Islamic", because were it true, you'd never have written it that way. You're simply posturing, and your few errors in English are those that I typically find among semi-educated Bush lovers.
Interesting points, vierotchka. Anyone posing as something that he/she is not for the purpose of making a dubious political point typifies what Sartre called mauvaise foi —bad faith.
I do however support President Bush and all that he has tried to do for the Middle East, if President Carter and President Cllinto would have shown strenght in their administations, we wouldn't be in this shape now.
A complete mis-read of history and current events. Carter and Clinton were the best hopes for peace the middle east. Bush has done NOTHING for peace. He has done everything to destablize the middle east.
Current Isreali war crimes are obviously inspired by Bush's war of aggression in IRaq. In general principle, all war crimes originate at the top.
What amazes me is that anyone would expect that the crimes of Americans in the Middle East can be stopped, since they are an inherent part of every war. We should be more selective in our wars, and not pretend that we can avoid crimes once we are at war and are following the almost universal slogan “no substitute for victory.”
The the present Middle East war, the greatest victory would be to get over our hang up on eliminating the forces of evil, since evil can be overcome only by pursuing justice as a greater good. ...
—Dr. Robert D. Crane
Moreover, Indeed, evil is never defeated when those waging the war agaisnt become evil themselves. You've only doubled it.
That's why the entire world —since Bush stole his first election —seems to have gone nuts. Bush just opened Pandora's box. To wit: things are sooooooo bad for Bush and Bushy that only a catastrophe like the on going war crime by Israel upon the civilians of Lebanon could knock Iraq off the front pages. [Israel is deliberately targeting civilians with cluster bombs!]
Meanwhile, a vast majority of Americans think the nation is on the "wrong track"l that may spell disaster for Bush's criminal, illegitimate regime and for the GOP.
Things are so bad in Iraq (not that it was covered by the news media) that Fareed Zacharias, on ABC This Week, suggested that the US THREATEN Iraq with a withdrawal!
That bears repeating: the US presence in Iraq is such a debacle, such an utter failure, that the US —the chest-beatin' last remaining superower —is REDUCED to THREATENING to withdraw.
Hezbollah cannot be "dismantled" by an armed invasion. This deliberate targeting of the civilian population in Lebanon can, however, destablize not merely the Middle East but the entire world. Even George Will —a conservative —compared the "cascading esclation" to the events which followed the killing of Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo in 1914.
Peace in the Middle East for these schmucks simply means allowing Israel to pound each and every threat, real or incited into the stone-age, that way their enemy’s incapacity will warrant a peace. Not exactly what most would consider or interpret as "sustainable"... touted by Condi & Bush, their new word for the month.
i never know what they thinks about moslem
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