Showing posts with label Gaza. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Gaza. Show all posts
Monday, March 23, 2009
Pat Buchanan and Mosquito Find Common Ground
Buzz....Buzz....I actually agree with Pat Buchanan on this one!!
Hope some of you were able to attend the Naro event with Kathy Kelley. Kathy humbly demonstrates how to live a loving peaceful life.
Clifford May makes many false statements...among them the outright lie that the Palestinians could walk out tomorrow (you will notice this produces a big laugh from Pat Buchanan). Note that Clifford May's response to the statement that "They (the Israelis) continue to steal their (the Palestinians') land is so irrational....Because they want all of Jerusalem. Such a lie.
We have corresponded with a 26 year old Palestinian man with a business degree who has been frantically trying to escape Israel's open air prison system....He "thought" he was finally going to be able to get a job and a visa in England. But that fell through. The fellow is beside himself with frustration, depression. To live in an environment where a rogue government is involved in war crimes and alleged ethnic cleansing.....
How can Americans allow their tax dollars to be spent in attacking civilians with horrific munitions that are "war crimes" when used in civilian areas?
Why does our government allow such madness? Why is Obama continuing to support Israel's alleged war crimes? Now that I think about it why isn't Obama seeing to it that an independent special prosecutor investigate the alleged war crimes of the Bush Administration? More than a million Iraqi's have died (the majority are civilians) and more than 4000 American soldiers have died to enrich our VP Dick Cheney and Bush cronies....
This is the sort of thing that continues to make us a target of terrorists.
Sunday, March 22, 2009
Bearing Witness in Gaza: An Evening with Kathy Kelly in Three Parts
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
This event was presented by the Tidewater Peace Alliance and
the Hampton Roads Chapter of Amnesty International on March 18, 2009:
Author and activist Kathy Kelly returned to the Naro Cinema in Norfolk, Virgina with stories from her recent travels to Egypt and Gaza during the Israeli invasion. Circumventing the Israeli blockade, Kathy was able to enter Gaza from Egypt during the Israeli siege, on the sixteenth day of the 22 day duration.
Twice nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, Kathy founded Voices in the Wilderness and is executive director of Voices for Creative Nonviolence. She has traveled twenty-four times to Iraq and was in southern Lebanon in summer 2006 during and after the Israel-Hezbollah war. (see: http://vcnv.org/speaker-bio/kathy-kelly)
Part 2
Part 3
This event was presented by the Tidewater Peace Alliance and
the Hampton Roads Chapter of Amnesty International on March 18, 2009:
Author and activist Kathy Kelly returned to the Naro Cinema in Norfolk, Virgina with stories from her recent travels to Egypt and Gaza during the Israeli invasion. Circumventing the Israeli blockade, Kathy was able to enter Gaza from Egypt during the Israeli siege, on the sixteenth day of the 22 day duration.
Twice nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, Kathy founded Voices in the Wilderness and is executive director of Voices for Creative Nonviolence. She has traveled twenty-four times to Iraq and was in southern Lebanon in summer 2006 during and after the Israel-Hezbollah war. (see: http://vcnv.org/speaker-bio/kathy-kelly)
Sunday, March 15, 2009
Bearing Witness in Gaza: An Evening with Kathy Kelly
Wednesday, March 18 at 7:15pm at the
NARO Cinema in Ghent
1507 Colley Ave, Norfolk, VA 23517
757-625-6276
An Evening with Kathy Kelly
Presented by the Tidewater Peace Alliance and
Author and activist Kathy Kelly returns to the Naro with stories from her recent travels to Egypt and Gaza during the Israeli invasion. Circumventing the Israeli blockade, Kathy was able to enter Gaza from Egypt during the Israeli siege.
Twice nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, Kathy founded Voices in the Wilderness and is executive director of Voices for Creative Nonviolence. She has travelled twenty-four times to Iraq and was in southern Lebanon in summer 2006 during and after the Israel-Hezbollah war. (see:http://vcnv.org/speaker-bio/kathy-kelly)
Included in the evening will be the premiere of the new documentary.
YOUNG FREUD IN GAZA Against the violent backdrop of armed clashes between Hamas and Fatah factions and Israeli missile attacks, a young psychotherapist for the Palestinian Authority's Clinic for Mental Health struggles to provide for his many patients who need therapy and medication for depression, anxiety attacks and suicidal tendencies. Filmed in Gaza during 2006-2008, this new documentary premiered at the recent New York Jewish Film Festival. (60 mins)
Admission is $8 at the door.
Note: Reception for Kathy Kelly at Azar's (20th & Colley Ave) at 6:00pm.
Friday, March 13, 2009
CODE PINK IN GAZA FOR INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY
CLICK HERE FOR FABULOUS SLIDE SHOW ON THE CODE PINK DELEGATION TO GAZA
TWO MESSAGES FROM CODE PINK ABOUT GAZA AND THE STRUGGLE FOR PEACE:
Six years ago, 10,000 CODEPINKers converged on Washington D.C. with a rally that encircled the White House in vibrant PINK. Three years later, and more than a 100,000 stronger, we called on women around the world to form our new global campaign: Women Say no to War.
TWO MESSAGES FROM CODE PINK ABOUT GAZA AND THE STRUGGLE FOR PEACE:
Six years ago, 10,000 CODEPINKers converged on Washington D.C. with a rally that encircled the White House in vibrant PINK. Three years later, and more than a 100,000 stronger, we called on women around the world to form our new global campaign: Women Say no to War.
This year, we gathered yet another international delegation to deliver aid to the women of Gaza and to expose the horrendous costs of war, weapons and occupation. Women now have to care for the physical and emotional wounds in their families and communities, while dealing with their own broken hearts. They face shortages of water, electricity, food, medicine, heat, fuel, and shelter. Some neighborhoods have been almost totally destroyed; and over 100,000 people displaced from their homes.
According to the United Nations, "Children are hungry, cold, without electricity and running water, and above all, they're terrified. Women are at greater risk of maternal death and or injury as maternity wards are being used as surgical facilities to treat the wounded."
*******
We hope you had an inspiring and meaningful International Women's Day. We've been so moved to see how our International Women's Day delegation in Gaza and other women around the world used the day to honor and support our Gazan sisters. Through grassroots efforts on our website, Facebook cause, and over 25 house parties, we raised over $60,000 for Gazan women. Click here to view a deeply affecting slideshow of photos from our delegation and other Gaza actions around the country.
In our effort to continue to build bridges and learn from each other, we will gather women for our 2nd 24-hour Mother's Day vigil in front of the White House, May 9-10. Save the date--we hope you will be able to join us! Our vigil will honor all mothers and women who live in war zones; we want to recognize the price they pay with their bodies, loved ones, homes and future, and honor their courage and power. We will stand with them in solidarity to not only tell their important stories but model what women-centered community looks and acts like. Click here to find out how to join us for this beautiful and powerful event. Thank you again for all you do to honor our sisters around the world and in your community! In solidarity, P.S. We are marking the 6th anniversary of the war next week with rallies and marches around the country; click here to find or create one in your area and order your Obama's Promises ribbons to pass out at events here.
| ACTION ALERT: Watch our moving Gaza slideshow |
Our historic 
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Gaza Television Ad
Check out the TV ad of the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation about Israel's actions in the Gaza Strip that DIRECTV censored. Take action to protest DIRECTV's censorship by clicking here: http://endtheoccupation.org/article.php?id=1817
Check out the full End the Occupation webpage by clicking here:
http://endtheoccupation.org/article.php?id=1826
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Interview with Colonel Ann Wright, Retired, on Trip to Gaza
From Grit TV:
Retired US army colonel Ann Wright talks about her recent trip to Gaza. Throughout Israel's intensive war in Gaza, reporters and international observers have been barred from entering the region. Wright says that the damage is extensive and Israel's disproportionate response "criminal." During her visit to Egypt and Gaza, Philip Rizk, a 26 year old student of Middle Eastern Studies at the American University in Cairo was detained after participating in a rally in support of Gazans. Rizk has been an outspoken critic of the Israeli invasion and of the Egyptian government's feeble response to the suffering of Palestinian civilians. His whereabouts remain unknown and no formal charges have been issued. A demonstration in support of his release will take place on Wednesday, February 11 at 11:30 in front of the Egyptian Consulate in New York.
Tuesday, February 03, 2009
Guest Editorial: Under the Black Flag by Uri Avnery
Guest Editorial from OpEdNews.com by Uri Avnery, Israeli writer, ex-Israeli soldier and now peace activist with Gush Shalom:
Israeli War Crimes
Under the Black Flag
(Click here for original article.)
By URI AVNERY
A Spanish judge has instituted a judicial inquiry against seven Israeli political and military personalities on suspicion of war crimes and crimes against humanity. The case: the 2002 dropping of a one ton bomb on the home of Hamas leader Salah Shehade. Apart from the intended victim, 14 people, most of them children, were killed.
For those who have forgotten: the then commander of the Israeli Air Force, Dan Halutz, was asked at the time what he feels when he drops a bomb on a residential building. His unforgettable answer: “A slight bump to the wing.” When we in Gush Shalom accused him of a war crime, he demanded that we be put on trial for high treason. He was joined by the Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, who accused us of wanting to “turn over Israeli army officers to the enemy”. The Attorney General notified us officially that he did not intend to open an investigation against those responsible for the bombing.
I should be happy, therefore, that at long last somebody is ready to put that action to a judicial test (even if he seems to have been thwarted by political pressure.) But I am sorry that this has happened in Spain, not in Israel.
* * *
ISRAELI TV VIEWERS have lately been exposed to a bizarre sight: army officers appearing with their faces hidden, as usual for criminals when the court prohibits their identification. Pedophiles, for example, or attackers of old women.
On the orders of the military censors, this applies to all officers, from battalion commanders down, who have been involved in the Gaza war. Since the faces of brigade commanders and above are generally known, the order does not apply to them.
Immediately after the cease-fire, the Minister of Defense, Ehud Barak, promoted a special law that would give unlimited backing by the state to all officers and soldiers who took part in the Gaza war and who might be accused abroad of war crimes. This seems to confirm the Hebrew adage: “On the head of the thief, the hat is burning”.
* * *
I DO NOT object to trials abroad. The main thing is that war criminals, like pirates, should be brought to justice. It is not so important where they are caught. (This rule was applied by the State of Israel when it abducted Adolf Eichmann in Argentina and hanged him in Israel for heinous crimes committed outside the territory of Israel and, indeed, before the state even existed.)
But as an Israeli patriot, I would prefer suspected Israeli war criminals to be put on trial in Israel. That is necessary for the country, for all decent officers and soldiers of the Israeli army, for the education of future generations of citizens and soldiers.
There is no need to rely on international law alone. There are Israeli laws against war crimes. Enough to mention the immortal phrase coined by Justice Binyamin Halevy, serving as a military judge, in the trial of the border policemen who were responsible for the 1956 massacre in Kafr Kassem, when dozens of children, women and men were mown down for violating a curfew which they did not even know about.
The judge announced that even in wartime, there are orders over which flies “the black flag of illegality”. These are orders which are “manifestly” illegal – that is to say, orders which every normal person can tell are illegal, without having to consult a lawyer.
War criminals dishonor the army whose uniform they wear – whether they are generals or common soldiers. As a combat soldier on the day the Israeli Defense Army was officially created, I am ashamed of them and demand that they be cast out and be put on trial in Israel.
My list of suspects includes politicians, soldiers, rabbis and lawyers.
* * *
THERE IS not the slightest doubt that in the Gaza war, crimes were committed. The question is to what extent and by whom.
Example: the soldiers call on the residents of a house to leave it. A woman and her four children come out, waving white handkerchiefs. It is absolutely clear that they are not armed fighters. A soldier in a near-by tank stands up, points his rifle and shoots them dead at short range. According to testimonies that seem to be beyond doubt, this happened more than once.
Another example: the shelling of the United Nations school full of refugees, from which there was no shooting – as admitted by the army, after the original pretexts were disproved.
These are ”simple” cases. But the spectrum of cases is far wider. A serious judicial investigation has to start right from the top: the politicians and senior officers who decided on the war and confirmed its plans must be investigated about their decisions. In Nuremberg it was laid down that the starting of a war of aggression is a crime.
An objective investigation has to find out whether the decision to start the war was justified, or if there existed another way of stopping the launching of rockets against Israeli territory. Without doubt, no country can or should tolerate the bombing of its towns and villages from beyond the border. But could this be prevented by talking with the Gaza authorities? Was our government’s decision to boycott Hamas, the winner of the democratic Palestinian elections, the real cause of this war? Did the imposition of the blockade on a million and a half Gaza Strip inhabitants contribute to the launching of the Qassams? In brief: were the alternatives considered before it was decided to start a deadly war?
The war plan included a massive attack on the civilian population of the Strip. The real aims of a war can be understood less from the official declarations of its initiators, than from their actions. If in this war some 1300 men, women and children were killed, the great majority of whom were not fighters; if about 5000 people were injured, most of them children; if some 2500 homes were partly or wholly destroyed; if the infrastructure of life was totally demolished – all this clearly could not have happened accidentally. It must have been a part of the war plan.
The things said during the war by politicians and officers make it clear that the plan had at least two aims, which might be considered war crimes: (1) To cause widespread killing and destruction, in order to “fix a price tag”. “to burn into their consciousness”, “to reinforce deterrence”, and most of all – to get the population to rise up against Hamas and overthrow their government. Clearly this affects mainly the civilian population. (2) To avoid casualties to our army at (literally) any price by destroying any building and killing any human being in the area into which our troops were about to move, including destroying homes over the heads of their inhabitants, preventing medical teams from reaching the victims, killing people indiscriminately. In certain cases, inhabitants were warned that they must flee, but this was mainly an alibi-action: there was nowhere to flee to, and often fire was opened on people trying to escape.
An independent court will have to decide whether such a war-plan is in accordance with national and international law, or whether it was ab initio a crime against humanity and a war-crime.
This was a war of a regular army with huge capabilities against a guerrilla force. In such a war, too, not everything is permissible. Arguments like “The Hamas terrorists were hiding within the civilian population” and “They used the population as human shields” may be effective as propaganda but are irrelevant: that is true for every guerrilla war. It must be taken into account when a decision to start such a war is being considered.
In a democratic state, the military takes its orders from the political establishment. Good. But that does not include “manifestly” illegal orders, over which the black flag of illegality is waving. Since the Nuremberg trials, there is no more room for the excuse that “I was only obeying orders”.
Therefore, the personal responsibility of all involved - from the Chief of Staff, the Front Commander and the Division Commander right down to the last soldier - must be examined. From the statements of soldiers one must deduce that many believed that their job was “to kill as many Arabs as possible”. Meaning: no distinction between fighters and non-fighters. That is a completely illegal order, whether given explicitly or by a wink and a nudge. The soldiers understood this to be “the spirit of the commander”.
* * *
AMONG THOSE suspected of war crimes, the rabbis have a place of honor.
Those who incite to war crimes and call upon soldiers, directly or indirectly, to commit war crimes may be guilty of a war crime themselves.
When one speaks of “rabbis”, one thinks of old men with long white beards and big hats, who give tongue to venerable wisdom. But the rabbis who accompanied the troops are a very different species.
In the last decades, the state-financed religious educational system has churned out “rabbis” who are more like medieval Christian priests than the Jewish sages of Poland or Morocco. This system indoctrinates its pupils with a violent tribal cult, totally ethnocentric, which sees in the whole of world history nothing but an endless story of Jewish victimhood. This is a religion of a Chosen People, indifferent to others, a religion without compassion for anyone who is not Jewish, which glorifies the God-decreed genocide described in the Biblical book of Joshua.
The products of this education are now the “rabbis” who instruct the religious youths. With their encouragement, a systematic effort has been made to take over the Israeli army from within. Kippa-wearing officers have replaced the Kibbutzniks, who not so long ago were dominant in the army. Many of the lower and middle-ranking officers now belong to this group.
The most outstanding example is the “Chief Army Rabbi”, Colonel Avichai Ronsky, who has declared that his job is to reinforce the “fighting spirit” of the soldiers. He is a man of the extreme right, not far from the spirit of the late Rabbi Meir Kahane, whose party was outlawed in Israel for its fascist ideology. Under the auspices of the army rabbinate, religious-fascist brochures of the ultra-right “rabbis” were distributed to the soldiers.
This material includes political incitement, such as the statement that the Jewish religion prohibits “giving up even one millimeter of Eretz Israel”, that the Palestinians, like the Biblical Philistines (from whom the name Palestine derives), are a foreign people who invaded the country, and that any compromise (such as indicated in the official government program) is a mortal sin. The distribution of political propaganda violates, of course, army law.
The rabbis openly called upon the soldiers to be cruel and merciless towards the Arabs. To treat them mercifully, they stated, is a “terrible, awful immorality”. When such material is distributed to religious soldiers going into war, it is easy to see why things happened the way they did.
* * *
THE PLANNERS of this war knew that the shadow of war crimes was hovering over the planned operation. Witness: the Attorney General (whose official title is “Legal Advisor to the Government”) was a partner to the planning. This week the Chief Army Attorney, Colonel Avichai Mandelblut, disclosed that his officers were attached throughout the war to all the commanders, from the Chief of Staff down to the Division Commander.
All this together leads to the inescapable conclusion that the legal advisors bear direct responsibility for the decisions taken and implemented, from the massacre of the civilian police recruits at their graduating ceremony to the shelling of the UN installations. Every attorney who was a partner to the deliberations before an order was given is responsible for its consequences, unless he can prove that he objected to it.
The Chief Army Attorney, who is supposed to give the army professional and objective advice, speaks about “the monstrous enemy” and tries to justify the actions of the army by saying that it was fighting against “an unbridled enemy, who declared that he ‘loves death’ and finds shelter behind the backs of women and children”. Such language is, perhaps, pardonable in a pep-talk of a war-drunk combat commander, like the battalion chief who ordered his soldiers to commit suicide rather than be captured, but totally unacceptable when it comes from the chief legal officer of the army.
* * *
WE MUST pursue all the legal processes in Israel and call for an independent investigation and the indictment of suspected perpetrators. We must demand this even if the chances of it happening are slim indeed.
If these efforts fail, nobody will be able to object to trials abroad, either in an international court or in the courts of those nations that respect human rights and international law.
Until then, the black flag will still be waving.
Israeli War Crimes
Under the Black Flag
(Click here for original article.)
By URI AVNERY
A Spanish judge has instituted a judicial inquiry against seven Israeli political and military personalities on suspicion of war crimes and crimes against humanity. The case: the 2002 dropping of a one ton bomb on the home of Hamas leader Salah Shehade. Apart from the intended victim, 14 people, most of them children, were killed.
For those who have forgotten: the then commander of the Israeli Air Force, Dan Halutz, was asked at the time what he feels when he drops a bomb on a residential building. His unforgettable answer: “A slight bump to the wing.” When we in Gush Shalom accused him of a war crime, he demanded that we be put on trial for high treason. He was joined by the Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, who accused us of wanting to “turn over Israeli army officers to the enemy”. The Attorney General notified us officially that he did not intend to open an investigation against those responsible for the bombing.
I should be happy, therefore, that at long last somebody is ready to put that action to a judicial test (even if he seems to have been thwarted by political pressure.) But I am sorry that this has happened in Spain, not in Israel.
* * *
ISRAELI TV VIEWERS have lately been exposed to a bizarre sight: army officers appearing with their faces hidden, as usual for criminals when the court prohibits their identification. Pedophiles, for example, or attackers of old women.
On the orders of the military censors, this applies to all officers, from battalion commanders down, who have been involved in the Gaza war. Since the faces of brigade commanders and above are generally known, the order does not apply to them.
Immediately after the cease-fire, the Minister of Defense, Ehud Barak, promoted a special law that would give unlimited backing by the state to all officers and soldiers who took part in the Gaza war and who might be accused abroad of war crimes. This seems to confirm the Hebrew adage: “On the head of the thief, the hat is burning”.
* * *
I DO NOT object to trials abroad. The main thing is that war criminals, like pirates, should be brought to justice. It is not so important where they are caught. (This rule was applied by the State of Israel when it abducted Adolf Eichmann in Argentina and hanged him in Israel for heinous crimes committed outside the territory of Israel and, indeed, before the state even existed.)
But as an Israeli patriot, I would prefer suspected Israeli war criminals to be put on trial in Israel. That is necessary for the country, for all decent officers and soldiers of the Israeli army, for the education of future generations of citizens and soldiers.
There is no need to rely on international law alone. There are Israeli laws against war crimes. Enough to mention the immortal phrase coined by Justice Binyamin Halevy, serving as a military judge, in the trial of the border policemen who were responsible for the 1956 massacre in Kafr Kassem, when dozens of children, women and men were mown down for violating a curfew which they did not even know about.
The judge announced that even in wartime, there are orders over which flies “the black flag of illegality”. These are orders which are “manifestly” illegal – that is to say, orders which every normal person can tell are illegal, without having to consult a lawyer.
War criminals dishonor the army whose uniform they wear – whether they are generals or common soldiers. As a combat soldier on the day the Israeli Defense Army was officially created, I am ashamed of them and demand that they be cast out and be put on trial in Israel.
My list of suspects includes politicians, soldiers, rabbis and lawyers.
* * *
THERE IS not the slightest doubt that in the Gaza war, crimes were committed. The question is to what extent and by whom.
Example: the soldiers call on the residents of a house to leave it. A woman and her four children come out, waving white handkerchiefs. It is absolutely clear that they are not armed fighters. A soldier in a near-by tank stands up, points his rifle and shoots them dead at short range. According to testimonies that seem to be beyond doubt, this happened more than once.
Another example: the shelling of the United Nations school full of refugees, from which there was no shooting – as admitted by the army, after the original pretexts were disproved.
These are ”simple” cases. But the spectrum of cases is far wider. A serious judicial investigation has to start right from the top: the politicians and senior officers who decided on the war and confirmed its plans must be investigated about their decisions. In Nuremberg it was laid down that the starting of a war of aggression is a crime.
An objective investigation has to find out whether the decision to start the war was justified, or if there existed another way of stopping the launching of rockets against Israeli territory. Without doubt, no country can or should tolerate the bombing of its towns and villages from beyond the border. But could this be prevented by talking with the Gaza authorities? Was our government’s decision to boycott Hamas, the winner of the democratic Palestinian elections, the real cause of this war? Did the imposition of the blockade on a million and a half Gaza Strip inhabitants contribute to the launching of the Qassams? In brief: were the alternatives considered before it was decided to start a deadly war?
The war plan included a massive attack on the civilian population of the Strip. The real aims of a war can be understood less from the official declarations of its initiators, than from their actions. If in this war some 1300 men, women and children were killed, the great majority of whom were not fighters; if about 5000 people were injured, most of them children; if some 2500 homes were partly or wholly destroyed; if the infrastructure of life was totally demolished – all this clearly could not have happened accidentally. It must have been a part of the war plan.
The things said during the war by politicians and officers make it clear that the plan had at least two aims, which might be considered war crimes: (1) To cause widespread killing and destruction, in order to “fix a price tag”. “to burn into their consciousness”, “to reinforce deterrence”, and most of all – to get the population to rise up against Hamas and overthrow their government. Clearly this affects mainly the civilian population. (2) To avoid casualties to our army at (literally) any price by destroying any building and killing any human being in the area into which our troops were about to move, including destroying homes over the heads of their inhabitants, preventing medical teams from reaching the victims, killing people indiscriminately. In certain cases, inhabitants were warned that they must flee, but this was mainly an alibi-action: there was nowhere to flee to, and often fire was opened on people trying to escape.
An independent court will have to decide whether such a war-plan is in accordance with national and international law, or whether it was ab initio a crime against humanity and a war-crime.
This was a war of a regular army with huge capabilities against a guerrilla force. In such a war, too, not everything is permissible. Arguments like “The Hamas terrorists were hiding within the civilian population” and “They used the population as human shields” may be effective as propaganda but are irrelevant: that is true for every guerrilla war. It must be taken into account when a decision to start such a war is being considered.
In a democratic state, the military takes its orders from the political establishment. Good. But that does not include “manifestly” illegal orders, over which the black flag of illegality is waving. Since the Nuremberg trials, there is no more room for the excuse that “I was only obeying orders”.
Therefore, the personal responsibility of all involved - from the Chief of Staff, the Front Commander and the Division Commander right down to the last soldier - must be examined. From the statements of soldiers one must deduce that many believed that their job was “to kill as many Arabs as possible”. Meaning: no distinction between fighters and non-fighters. That is a completely illegal order, whether given explicitly or by a wink and a nudge. The soldiers understood this to be “the spirit of the commander”.
* * *
AMONG THOSE suspected of war crimes, the rabbis have a place of honor.
Those who incite to war crimes and call upon soldiers, directly or indirectly, to commit war crimes may be guilty of a war crime themselves.
When one speaks of “rabbis”, one thinks of old men with long white beards and big hats, who give tongue to venerable wisdom. But the rabbis who accompanied the troops are a very different species.
In the last decades, the state-financed religious educational system has churned out “rabbis” who are more like medieval Christian priests than the Jewish sages of Poland or Morocco. This system indoctrinates its pupils with a violent tribal cult, totally ethnocentric, which sees in the whole of world history nothing but an endless story of Jewish victimhood. This is a religion of a Chosen People, indifferent to others, a religion without compassion for anyone who is not Jewish, which glorifies the God-decreed genocide described in the Biblical book of Joshua.
The products of this education are now the “rabbis” who instruct the religious youths. With their encouragement, a systematic effort has been made to take over the Israeli army from within. Kippa-wearing officers have replaced the Kibbutzniks, who not so long ago were dominant in the army. Many of the lower and middle-ranking officers now belong to this group.
The most outstanding example is the “Chief Army Rabbi”, Colonel Avichai Ronsky, who has declared that his job is to reinforce the “fighting spirit” of the soldiers. He is a man of the extreme right, not far from the spirit of the late Rabbi Meir Kahane, whose party was outlawed in Israel for its fascist ideology. Under the auspices of the army rabbinate, religious-fascist brochures of the ultra-right “rabbis” were distributed to the soldiers.
This material includes political incitement, such as the statement that the Jewish religion prohibits “giving up even one millimeter of Eretz Israel”, that the Palestinians, like the Biblical Philistines (from whom the name Palestine derives), are a foreign people who invaded the country, and that any compromise (such as indicated in the official government program) is a mortal sin. The distribution of political propaganda violates, of course, army law.
The rabbis openly called upon the soldiers to be cruel and merciless towards the Arabs. To treat them mercifully, they stated, is a “terrible, awful immorality”. When such material is distributed to religious soldiers going into war, it is easy to see why things happened the way they did.
* * *
THE PLANNERS of this war knew that the shadow of war crimes was hovering over the planned operation. Witness: the Attorney General (whose official title is “Legal Advisor to the Government”) was a partner to the planning. This week the Chief Army Attorney, Colonel Avichai Mandelblut, disclosed that his officers were attached throughout the war to all the commanders, from the Chief of Staff down to the Division Commander.
All this together leads to the inescapable conclusion that the legal advisors bear direct responsibility for the decisions taken and implemented, from the massacre of the civilian police recruits at their graduating ceremony to the shelling of the UN installations. Every attorney who was a partner to the deliberations before an order was given is responsible for its consequences, unless he can prove that he objected to it.
The Chief Army Attorney, who is supposed to give the army professional and objective advice, speaks about “the monstrous enemy” and tries to justify the actions of the army by saying that it was fighting against “an unbridled enemy, who declared that he ‘loves death’ and finds shelter behind the backs of women and children”. Such language is, perhaps, pardonable in a pep-talk of a war-drunk combat commander, like the battalion chief who ordered his soldiers to commit suicide rather than be captured, but totally unacceptable when it comes from the chief legal officer of the army.
* * *
WE MUST pursue all the legal processes in Israel and call for an independent investigation and the indictment of suspected perpetrators. We must demand this even if the chances of it happening are slim indeed.
If these efforts fail, nobody will be able to object to trials abroad, either in an international court or in the courts of those nations that respect human rights and international law.
Until then, the black flag will still be waving.
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Riz Khan Interviews Daniel Barenboim on the Gaza Debacle - Jan 26
Why isn't Daniel Barenboim running for office in Israel? He has more sense in his baton hand than there is in the entire Israeli cabinet.
Sidebar for this video:
Riz is joined by Daniel Barenboim and Stephen Hawking, two geniuses of their respective fields who are calling for a solution on Gaza - from outside the political system.
Thursday, January 22, 2009
Strange weapons by the Israelis in Gaza!.... an Interview with French doctor inside Gaza
Has Israel been using diabolical new weapons on Gazans. Was the assault on Gaza used for new weapons experiments. This must be investigated Big Time!
Sidebar for this video:
Dr. Jan Brommundt talks on Aljazeera TV about the use of strange weapons in Gaza against the civilians. You can see the images of devastation by the Israeli army in Gaza, as well as the people who are trying to recover dead bodies from under the rubble.
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Rachel Maddow Show: Richard Engel Reporting From Gaza
This Rachel Maddow video discusses Israel's media planning and strategy to time and spin the war on Gaza, planning that began well before the ceasefire between Hamas and Israel was put into effect in later June, 2008, according to reporter Richard Engel, who has been talking to Israeli officials and states that Israel planned the Gaza operation for about a year. This means that for Israel, the ceasefire was only a Machiavellian tactic, not an end goal. Massive damage to Gaza was the end goal, and this was achieved, at the costs of thousands of deaths and injuries. The Lords of Karma are not pleased.
Buzz--Gazan Doctor wants answers from Israeli Military
This doctor is known for living a life of peace and reconciliation between Gaza and Israel. He lives in Gaza and work in an Israeli hospital. The Doctor says that his home has never harbored any fighters or terrorists. He is asking the Israeli military to tell him why Israeli tanks fired on his home and killed three of his daughters. He held a press conference and here's some footage.
If you go here you will see footage of the doctor in the hospital waiting room where one daughter and another niece are critically wounded and being treated.
The tensions remain very high and the ceasefire is fragile.
If you go here you will see footage of the doctor in the hospital waiting room where one daughter and another niece are critically wounded and being treated.
The tensions remain very high and the ceasefire is fragile.
Gaza, War Aftermath Toll...
Welcome to Hell, compliments of the State of Israel, a state in the grip of the Shadow Archetype, to borrow a term from Carl Jung. 1.5 million Gazans have just been put through psychological, physical and mental Hell for 23 days, with well over a thousand dead, thousands more injured, many critically. This is a testament to the innate cruelty and sadism of homo normalis, to paraphrase another psychiatrist's terminology. The worst of it is that now the laws of Karma are kicking in. No one escapes the consequences of their actions in this universe, no matter how rich, how wealthy, how powerful, how vain.
Here is the sidebar for this video:
The Gaza Aftermath, Facts and Statistics.....
As of January 18, 2009.
اللهم انصر اهلنا في غزه
Breath Taken Images....
After 23 Days of Air, Land and Sea Attacks on The Gaza Strip the Death Toll is
1300 (Martyrs)
"Of Which"
417 Children
108 Women
120 Elders
14 Press Personal
The Number of the Injured so far is 5320.
Israel's fierce assaults on The Gaza Strip has destroyed over $2.1 Billion worth of Buildings, Roads, Pipes, Power Lines and other Infrastructure...
And the numbers are rising....
GAZA SHALL OVERCOME!...
Sunday, January 18, 2009
A Poem for Gaza by Remi Kanazi
This poem was just written in response to the assault on Gaza by the prominent Palestinian-American poet Remi Kanazi, whose website is Poetic Injustice (http://www.poeticinjustice.net/)
GAZA (Ceasefires) Tenuous but Holding, Both Sides Speak
Israel declared a ceasefire unilaterally early Sunday morning, Jan 18, which Hamas did NOT sign, so they did not cease their own hostilities for several more hours before declaring their own. Was there posturing going on. Yes, without a doubt.
So now we have two unilateral ceasefires, which is not exactly reassuring, since neither side is under compulsion to honor the other's. So forces for peace must act to firm peace up. Simultaneously, peace with JUSTICE must be sought, and that means investigating charges of war crimes on both sides, but even more importantly, the elephant in the living room must be confronted, and that is the Occupation. Until the Occupation is ended and Palestinians allowed a free and open state to exist in, there will never be peace.
Here is the sidebar for this video:
ITN (UK) - (Independent Television News)
Sunday 18 January 2009
Hamas announces ceasefire on Israel
Palestinian militant group Hamas has announced a ceasefire with Israel, giving the Jewish state one week to pull troops out of the Gaza strip.
It comes hours after the Israeli leaders voted to halt the offensive in region that has killed nearly 1,200 people.
A spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said earlier that if a ceasefire held in the Hamas-ruled enclave, Israel could start the process of withdrawing its forces.
A Hamas official in Cairo, Ayman Taha, said: "Hamas and the factions announce a ceasefire in Gaza starting immediately and give Israel a week to withdraw."
The Islamist group said previously it would not stop its attacks as long as Israeli soldiers remained in the Gaza Strip.
Taha said Hamas was demanding the opening of all Gaza border crossings for the entry of "all materials, food, goods and basic needs".
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Gordon Brown has touched down in the Middle East for an international summit on the crisis.
International leaders are holding a summit at the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm el Sheikh which is to be co-chaired by Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and French President Nicolas Sarkozy.
Also attending are United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and senior politicians from Germany, Italy, Spain, Turkey and Jordan.
As he arrived in Egypt, Mr Brown announced an additional £20 million of British humanitarian aid and called for renewed efforts to find a lasting peace in the region.
In an apparent criticism of the scale of the Israeli response to Hamas rocket attacks, Mr Brown said "too many" innocent people had died in the 22-day assault on Gaza.
Mr Brown said the violence in Gaza must not halt the search for a path to peace, but should spur the international community on in its efforts to establish a sustainable two-state solution.
"This conflict has once again demonstrated the urgent need to forge a longer term settlement which gives security to both Israelis and Palestinians," he said.
(source)
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AFP
18/01/2009
At least 1,206 Palestinians, including 410 children, have been killed since the start of Israel's deadliest-ever assault on the territory on December 27, according to Gaza medics, who said another 5,300 people have been wounded.
Those slain in the war also include 109 women, 113 elderly people, 14 paramedics, and four journalists, according to Dr. Muawiya Hassanein, the head of Gaza emergency services.
Since the start of the operation10 Israeli soldiers and three civilians have been killed in combat or in rocket strikes. The army says more than 700 rockets and mortar rounds have been fired into Israel during that period.
Saturday, January 17, 2009
War Crimes du Jour: Another UN School in Gaza Hit by Shells - 17 January 2009)
Yet another UN school in Gaza has been hit by shell fire, and as usual, Israel immediately blames Hamas militants, stating that they were firing from the school. Each time the local UN officials have said there is absolutely no proof of this and that they have repeatedly given the Israeli military their coordinates and warned them that there are hundreds of refugees in their facilities.
How many times will Israel use this canard, I wonder? The world is not buying this. There are increasing calls that Israel be investigated for war crimes.
How many times will Israel use this canard, I wonder? The world is not buying this. There are increasing calls that Israel be investigated for war crimes.
Sidebar for this Video:
UN school in Gaza hit by shells
Jan 17 - Palestinian death toll rises as Israel prepares to decide on a unilateral ceasefire.
At least another six Palestinians have been killed during a wave of Israeli raids on Gaza overnight. The casualties included two boys sheltering at a United Nations school hit by tank fire.
Paul Chapman reports.
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Independent.co.uk
UN condemns shelling of Gaza school
Saturday, 17 January 2009
A United Nations official has condemned an Israeli shelling attack that struck a UN school in the northern Gaza Strip and killed two people.
Spokesman Chris Gunness said the school was crowded with 1,600 people who had sought shelter from Israel's three-week offensive in Gaza.
It was latest incident in which Israeli fire aimed at militants has struck a UN facility during the offensive. Gunness says Israel had the coordinates of the school and knew it was being used as a shelter. He says there should be an investigation into possible war crimes, and that anyone who is guilty should be brought to justice.
The military was investigating the incident and had no immediate comment. But in similar cases, it has accused Hamas militants of staging attacks from schools, mosques and other civilian areas.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/un-condemns-shelling-of-gaza-school-1418531.html
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ITN (UK)
More than 1,150 Palestinians have been killed and 5,100 wounded since Israel began attacking Gaza on December 27 with an air blitz, and then moved in with ground forces a week later. A large majority of the dead are civilians.
OpEdNews Guest Editorial: The Moral Dead Zone by Bob Koehler
Here is another guest editorial from OpEdNews.com. This one will make you think hard.
OpEdNews
Original Content at http://www.opednews.com/articles/The-Moral-Dead-Zone-by-Bob-Koehler-090116-455.html
January 16, 2009
The Moral Dead Zone
By Bob Koehler
Robert Koehler, an award-winning, Chicago-based journalist, is an editor at Tribune Media Services and nationally syndicated writer. You can respond to this column at bkoehler@tribune.com or visit his Web site at commonwonders.com.
OpEdNews
Original Content at http://www.opednews.com/articles/The-Moral-Dead-Zone-by-Bob-Koehler-090116-455.html
January 16, 2009
The Moral Dead Zone
By Bob Koehler
“Mr. Ban said too many people had died and there had been too much civilian suffering.”
That almost bears repeating, but I won’t because I don’t believe it. Too many? In the moral dead zone of the human heart, perennially justified as “war” (evoking honor, triumph, glory), there’s no such thing as too much suffering. There’s no bleeding child or shattered family or contaminated water supply that can’t be overlooked in the name of some great goal or strategic advantage, or converted to fodder for the next round of hatred, revenge and arms purchase.
Ban Ki-Moon, the U.N. secretary general, about to embark on a peace and diplomacy tour of the Middle East, was speaking, of course, about the hellish conditions in the Gaza Strip, pummeled by Israel with modern weaponry and Old Testament fury for the last three weeks. Vengeance is mine, sayeth the coalition government. Close to a thousand have died. Many more thousands have been injured or displaced. Too many?
No. Not even close. If too many had died — if hell had reached its capacity, or some other limit had at last been achieved — something would change. The collective enterprise of human violence would convulse and start malfunctioning. Fear, perhaps, would mutate into courage, anger into forgiveness, hatred into love. Or at least we would start looking at what we’re doing . . . how do I say this? With evolved compassion? With an understanding, with a determination to survive, we now disdain and mock?
Israel’s invasion of Gaza is the world’s spotlight war right now, reaping headlines, global censure, a special endorsement from the U.S. Congress and, apparently, an audiotape hiss from Osama bin Laden, possibly from beyond the grave.
What all of these reactions do, it seems to me, is confer an unwarranted special status on the war, as though it were isolated, without a context any deeper than its accompanying propaganda. This forces us to try to understand the war strictly on its own terms — who started it? who’s the bad guy? who’s innocent? — rather than as an occurrence within a larger, dysfunctional system as deep as human history and as wide as planetary politics.
This war, and the nine or 10 other armed conflicts officially classified as wars that are going on right now — including wars in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (4 million dead since 1997), Darfur-Sudan (500,000 dead since 2003), Somalia (400,000 dead since 1988), Sri Lanka (80,000 dead since 1983), and of course Iraq (possibly a million or more dead) and Afghanistan (35,000 dead) — whatever they are on their own terms, are also symptoms of a human syndrome of self-destruction.
So are the local conflicts on city streets and other jungles that are too small to be called wars. So are the horrific aftermaths of conflicts that have officially ended, including poisoned environments, the ruined health of participants and bystanders, unexploded mines and bombs, the psycho-spiritual traumas that never go away, and the grievances that fester from generation to generation.
What links them in an immediate way is the global arms industry, as corrupt as it is invisible, which does a trillion dollars worth of business annually worldwide, is crucial to every major economy and is therefore served, either with overt collusion or discreet silence, by governments and the mass media.
But the problem is bigger than mere greed. The business of war, like war itself, defies rational control and containment because it is fed by the paradox of human fear. As we arm to protect ourselves and fight back, our enemy also arms, and thus is born, over and over again, the cycle of escalation, from which the cynical can profit handsomely. The industry of war is self-perpetuating.
It should come as no surprise, therefore, that, as Anup Shah noted recently in an essay on the arms industry for GlobalIssues.org, “The top five countries profiting from the arms trade are the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council: the U.S.A., U.K., France, Russia and China.”
Thus world peace — at least the sort of peace that most of us envision, which is sustained by international cooperation and universal disarmament rather than subjugation and the capacity for hair-trigger retaliation — would challenge the status quo of the world’s largest economies, as they have come to constitute themselves.
As long as we stay trapped in the paradox of fear, we can’t even use our intelligence to save ourselves. We have employed it to serve only our self-destruction. The ultimate paradox is that the military industrial complex, that highest of high-tech human endeavors, about which Dwight Eisenhower sounded the alarm nearly half a century ago, is wedded to the most primitive of human emotions. We have become trapped in our collective reptile brain.
Only if we disarm our intelligence do we have a chance to find wisdom. And only wisdom can save us.
- - -
Robert Koehler, an award-winning, Chicago-based journalist, is an editor at Tribune Media Services and nationally syndicated writer. You can respond to this column at bkoehler@tribune.com or visit his Web site at commonwonders.com.
Gaza: Israel War Crimes in Gaza....Part 2
Here are pictures being sent out of Gaza that the Western media are largely not picking up. In fact, in my own local paper, we are lucky to get more than one AP report a day, usually with no photos.
This video shows how extensive the attacks on children have been.
Zionism, for the few of you who do not know, was a concept created by certain European Jews back in the 19th Century to create a Jewish state in the territory of Palestine by emigration and force of arms if necessary, which resulted in the creation of the state of Israel in 1947/48. Zionism has become associated with Israeli colonialism and race ideology and is criticized by many other Jews.
BUZZ--Israel "considers" unilateral ceasefire
Israeli government officials allegedly meeting on Saturday night to consider a "unilateral" withdrawal so that once again they will not be bound to any considerations that benefit the safety and well being of the Gazan civilians.
According to Reuters:
According to Reuters:
The halt would come with all sorts of conditions, being negotiated under the tableJERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israeli leaders are leaning toward declaring a unilateral halt to their offensive in the Gaza Strip instead of entering into a formal, Egyptian-brokered ceasefire with Hamas, Israeli political sources said on Friday.
Such a move could deprive Hamas of political gains from a truce deal that would include the easing of Israel’s blockade on the coastal enclave, home to 1.5 million Palestinians.
Israeli officials said Prime Minister Ehud Olmert would convene a meeting of his security cabinet on Saturday night to decide whether to call a unilateral halt to the offensive, which has killed more than 1,100 Palestinians.
Israel remains committed to controlling the news out of Gaza. The Israeli military refused to abide by the Israeli courts decision to allow journalists to enter Gaza. Now the Israeli military has taken the latest propaganda technique--embedded journalists--from the US military playbook. Now the Israeli military will allow journalists that they approve of to embed with their troops, of course all reports must be "screened" by the military.
[Buzz Buzz...Think about it--if the military had invented the "embedded journalist" concept during the Vietnam war....we'd probably still be there fighting that war.]
Friday, January 16, 2009
The Young Turks: Israel Strikes a UN Facility - Is it Intentional?
The Young Turks YouTube channel tackles another major news item and controversy, the Israeli shelling of the UN with white phosphorus, as well as shelling the local media building in Gaza, and a hospital (or hospitals?) yesterday, January 15.
White Phosphorus in Gaza: Dante's Inferno
More evidence of Israeli use of white phosphorus (WP), Willy Pete, Whiskey Pete. You are seeing flares shot into the air, but also seeing either artillery shells bursting or invisible in the distance helicopters in the night sky firing bursts of WP. I would tend to think artillery shells, with their telltale tendrils shooting down directly into Gaza. These WP volleys directly into Gaza Strip are likely out-and-out war crimes, I would argue, since the only fig leaf you have of legality is the use of WP for smokescreens and illumination. The bursts are of such velocity, however, that it appears that the bulk of the phosphorus and their casings are smashing into the ground before dissipating in mid-air. This means more concentrated levels of WP may be hitting civilians and their homes, creating greater risks of horrific burns and inhalation of caustic toxins for civilians.
The glows you see in the background could well be buildings set on fire from these attacks. This is like a scene out of Dante's Inferno. Pity the humans that have to live under that barrage. Shame on those that are executing this nightmare.
Now one can begin to understand why Israel doesn't want the international media entering Gaza and investigating all this.
It is really a moot point whether Israel is doing air bursts or ground bursts of WP in legal terms, because the bottom line is that you are endangering the civilian population either way with deadly, deadly substances, and this is a breach of the Geneva Conventions to put civilians in harm's way. So no matter how you cut it, WP usage in or over Gaza is worthy of investigation for war crimes.
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