Mohamed Khodr
Bring Israel to the International Court of Justice
."In the name of justice there cannot be subjection and in the name of peace there cannot be impunity."
–Alvaro Uribe Velez
Total to Day 18 in Gaza (January 13, 2009): about 971 Dead, more than 4,418 Injured
–More than half women and children, with over 360 with critical injuries
"I sometimes worry if there will be enough space to bury the dead."
—Hatem Shurrab, Islamic Relief aid worker in Gaza
If such a massive genocide of a trapped civilian population by air, sea, and land was committed by any other nation the world would launch a massive investigation into this crime against humanity and hold the leaders of such a nation accountable in the International Court of Justice. In a just world Israel would be charged with crimes against humanity as was Serbia and Rwanda.
From the Guardian paper, January 13, 2009
"Israel is facing growing demands from senior UN officials and human rights groups for an international war crimes investigation in Gaza over allegations such as the "reckless and indiscriminate" shelling of residential areas and use of Palestinian families as human shields by soldiers.
The Israeli military are accused of:
* Using powerful shells in civilian areas which the army knew would cause large numbers of innocent casualties;
* Using banned weapons such as phosphorus bombs;
* Holding Palestinian families as human shields;
* Attacking medical facilities, including the killing of 12 ambulance men in marked vehicles;
* Killing large numbers of police who had no military role."
In reality Israel will never face any such charges as Israel is the sole "untouchable" nation on earth.
Israel has always used the U.N. Security Council to its advantage, with America's help, whenever it deems it appropriate to charge the Palestinians, Arab nations and Iran with what it calls war crimes and threats to its "existence".
But when the same Council passes Resolution 1860 on January 9, 2009 to demand a "ceasefire" in Gaza, Israel resumes its defiance of the U.N. as a "biased" organization as it's done for over 60 years with hundreds of U.N. Resolutions.
According to the Jerusalem Post, January 12, 2009, when Ehud Olmert received word that Condoleezza Rice was planning to support the Security Council's "ceasefire" resolution he immediately called Bush and "demanded" to get him on the phone despite Bush giving a lecture at the time in Philadelphia. Bush sheepishly interrupted his lecture to answer Olmert's call.
Israel's prime minister told the President of the United States that he must not support such a yes vote and in true requisite Presidential fashion when it comes to Israel's "demands" Bush called Rice immediately to tell her to abstain from the vote, thereby embarrassing Rice in front of the world body.
America, when will you accept the answer to "why they hate us"—it is Israel and its iron grip of our government, national interest, and foreign policy. If Americans continue to die abroad, blame Israel, not Al Qaeda.
No people in the entire Muslim world conjures up as much pain, anger, and visceral passion in the heart and minds of Muslims more than the issue of Palestine, its theft, its ethnic cleansing, the decades long suffering of Palestinians under Israel's Nazi like occupation, and Israel's annexation of East Jerusalem, the third holiest site in Islam. In 1948 and again in 1967 millions of Palestinians have been forcefully expelled from their homes and lands and now live in the most dire existence in dozens of refugee camps in and out of Palestine. Their refugee camps streets are filled with sewage, but now in Gaza, blood has overtaken the sewage.
"To robbery, butchery, and rapine, they give the lying name of "government"; they create a desolation and call it peace." –Tacitus, First Century Roman Senator and Historian
Israel's modus operandi of unleashing its preemptive massive military bombardments, invasions of neighboring Arab nations as well as the ethnic cleansing of 1948 Palestine, and now the Palestinian territories, was always preplanned even prior to the 1948 war that led to the catastrophic establishment of the State of Israel, an international "crime against humanity" in itself.
"We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it any employment in our own country …. expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly." – Theodore Herzl, father of Zionism,(Rafael Patai, Ed. The Complete Diaries of Theodore Herzl, Vol I)
"We should prepare to go over to the offensive with the aim of smashing Lebanon, Trans-jordan and Syria… The weak point in the Arab coalition is Lebanon [for] the Moslem regime is artificial and easy to undermine. A Christian state should be established… When we smash the [Arab] Legions strength and bomb Amman, we will eliminate Transjordan, too, and then Syria will fall. If Egypt still dares to fight on, we shall bomb Port Said, Alexandria, and Cairo." –David Ben-Gurion, May 1948, to the General Staff. From Ben-Gurion, A Biography, by Michael Ben-Zohar, Delacorte, New York 1978.
The pro Israel U.S. media compliant as usual (Why? See who owns the Media) refuses to show any photos of the carnage of Gaza's children preferring to focus on Obama's choice of a dog for the White House.
The most important element of Gaza's genocide akin to the genocide in Lebanon in 2006 was that both genocides were Pre Planned by Israel and Bush.
–Lebanon's invasion in 2006 to eliminate Hezbollah. Justification Hezbollah's kidnapping of 2 Israeli soldiers:
But:
According to Ha'aretz, March 8, 2007, "PM: War Planned Months in Advance."
"Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told the Winograd Commission that his decision to respond to the abduction of soldiers with a broad military operation was made as early as March 2006, four months before last summer's Lebanon war broke out"
The Guardian (March 9, 2007) also reported Olmert's admission of the preplanned attack on Lebanon in 2006.
"Preparations for Israel's war in Lebanon last summer were drawn up at least four months before two Israeli soldiers were kidnapped by Hizbullah in July, Ehud Olmert, the prime minister, has admitted. contradicted the impression at the time that Israel was provoked into a battle for which it was ill-prepared. Mr. Olmert told the Winograd commission."
The hatred and racism of Israeli political (see below) and military officials become publicly apparent from time to time as they plan to annihilate Arab civilians, preemptively bomb Syrian installations, or plan to bomb Iran, although the usual mad bomber Bush nixed that for the time being.
Here are some quotes from Israeli soldiers prior to invading Lebanon as reported by ABC, July 25, 2006.
"Another soldier put it plainly: "We're going to shoot anything we see."
Such racism and hatred is a reflection of the same vile outlook by Israeli officials and Rabbis (see quotes below).
On the same invasion, Haim Ramon, Israeli's Justice Minister on July 27 said:
"All those now in south Lebanon are terrorists who are related in some way to Hezbollah".
–Gaza's current Genocide: 2008 - 2009
According to the Guardian (Dec. 29, 2008) Israel was pre planning the genocide against Gaza for 6 months.
This was also reported in the Israeli Haaretz paper.
"Sources in the defense establishment said Defense Minister Ehud Barak instructed the Israel Defense Forces to prepare for the operation over six months ago, even as Israel was beginning to negotiate a ceasefire agreement with Hamas." (Haaretz 12/31/08)
Israel's dehumanization and racism against all gentiles, not just Palestinians, is a basic religious belief that is based on the Rabbinic teaching of the Babylonian Talmud itself.
Israeli Prime Ministers have described Palestinians as less worthy than Israeli lives, as "beasts", "cockroaches", "crocodiles"; that they should be crushed like grasshoppers". Golda Maier even denied their very existence.
Israel's Past President Moshe Katsav said of Palestinians (Jerusalem Post, May 10, 2001)
"There is a huge gap between us (Jews) and our enemies ¬not just in ability but in morality, culture, sanctity of life, and conscience. They are our neighbors here, but it seems as if at a distance of a few hundred meters away, there are people who do not belong to our continent, to our world, but actually belong to a different galaxy."
While Rabbis uttered these racist statements against all gentiles, Christians and Muslims:
The body of a Jewish person," Schneerson bragged, "is of a totally different quality from the body of members of all other nations of the world. Bodies of the Gentiles are in vain. An even greater difference is in regard to the soul…A non-Jewish soul comes from three satanic spheres, while the Jewish soul stems from holiness." –Rabbi Mendel Schneerson
"The difference between a Jewish soul and souls of non-Jews - all of them in all dlfferent levels - is greater and deeper than the difference between a human soul and the souls of cattle." –"Jewish Fundamentalism", by Israel Shahak and Norton Mezvinksy, p. ix
Throughout Israel's bloody history no weapons are off limits against civilians and no life is sacred be it an Arab, an American or any citizen of the world.
The children of Gaza are being killed, burned, maimed, and orphaned because their parents had the audacity to believe in the democratic free process to choose their government, Hamas, which infuriated America and Israel despite their support for free elections.
Thus Gaza's children are paying the ultimate price for Bush's "export of democracy" to the Middle East. While Israel is killing Palestinian children it is politically killing the will of the entire world that demands Israel stop its genocide against innocent youngest citizens of Gaza. Israel can defy the world and all its International organizations for one reason: It has America's government in its pocket.
During the debate in the U.N. Security Council on January 6, 2009 the Israeli Ambassador Gabriela Shalev delivered a speech that can only be described as masterfully crafted lies, myths, and spin to defend the indefensible in Israel's "genocide du jour" against the Palestinians that began in 1944.
She said:
"For Israel, every civilian death — Israeli, as well as Palestinian — was a tragedy. Israel had, therefore, taken steps to show respect for all human life. It had taken every measure to limit civilian casualties. The Israel Defense Forces had dropped tens of thousands of leaflets and made thousands of phone calls to Palestinian civilians, beseeching them to leave areas of terrorist operation to avoid harm."
Never in its history has Israel ever given a damn about killing anyone who stands in its way on any issue. From the 1948 ethnic cleansing and genocide against Palestinians, to the hundreds of U.N. documented terrorist attacks against the British army and Palestinian civilians (including the bombing of the King David Hotel, and the massacre of the entire Palestinian village of Deir Yassin), to Jewish terrorists on January 4, 1948 driving a truck loaded with explosives detonating it in the middle of the city of Jaffa killing 26 civilians (Israel was first to use car/truck bombs in the MidEast); to its assassination of the U.N. peace envoy Count Folke Bernadotte in 1948 for recommending the return of the expelled Palestinian refugees, assassination of the British Lord Moyne for his stance against increased Jewish immigration to Palestine; on December 12, 1954 Israel committed the first airline hijacking in the MidEast by hijacking a civilian Syrian airliner and forcing it to land in Israel. This incident prompted Israel's Foreign Minister Moshe Sharett to write in his diary:
"They (military leaders) seem to presume that the state of Israel may-or even must-behave in the realm of international relations according to the laws of the jungle" Till this day Israel still lives by those laws. –Donald Neff, "Fifty Years of Israel", page 117
To count the ways Israel from its inception has done nothing but "harm" civilians would need an encyclopedia, but here are a few indisputable facts of how Israel wishes to live in Peace with its Palestinian Neighbors while claiming to protect civilian lives.
1. Israel's many Preemptive Wars on Arabs:
–Israeli Wars on Arabs, including Palestinians: 1948, 1956, 1967, 1978, 1982, 1996, 1987, 2000, 2008
–Arab Wars on Israel: 1973
1982: Israel's Genocide against Lebanon: 20,000 civilian deaths (plus 2,000 massacred civilians in Sabra and Shatila camps). Over a dozen U.N. Security Council Resolutions were ignored by Israel during that summer.
1996: Israel deliberately and knowingly shelled a U.N. compound where civilians took shelter in Qana killing over 100 civilians. U.N. Secretary General Butros Butros Ghali was denied a second term by the U.S. due to his release of the U.N.'s investigation of this horrific massacre showing Israel deliberately bombed the U.N. compound.
2006: Israel again launched a massive genocide against Lebanon devastating the nation's infrastructure and killing over 1,300 civilians many in Red Cross and U.N. convoys escaping the indiscriminate bombing. Over the last 72 hours of the genocide Israel dropped over 2 million Cluster Bombs to ensure the death, injury, and maiming of civilians, especially the children. Israel still refuses to cooperate with the U.N. as to where the locations of these deadly bombs are.
Illegal Annexation of the Golan Heights and East Jerusalem in defiance of U.N. Security Council Resolutions
2. Israel's Terrorism against Palestinians massacring more Palestinians in 6 years than all terrorism related Israeli deaths in 86 Years:
–Total Israeli Terrorism Deaths 1920 - 1999: 2,580 (Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs).
–Total Excess Mortality Deaths Post 1967 among Palestinians in Occupied Territories: 300,000
With the Post 1967 under 5 years excess deaths: 183,000 (90% were avoidable: United Nations)
–Total Israeli Terrorism Deaths Sept. 2000 - April 2006: 1,133: Injured 12,594
–Total Palestinian deaths by Israel's military: Sept. 2000 - April 2006: 5,144 (Including 952 children) Injured 57,100
–Total Israeli Deaths from Terrorism in 86 years: 1920 - 2006: 3,713
–Total Palestinian Deaths due to Israel's Genocide in Gaza in 17 days: About 1,000
3. Illegal Settlements built on Occupied Palestinian Lands. Deemed illegal and an obstacle to peace by all U.S. Presidents since 1967, including by George W. Bush
The construction of illegal Settlements in the Golan Heights, Sinai, and the Occupied Palestinian territories began within days of Israel's capture of these territories after Israel's1967 Preemptive War in total defiance of U.N. Security Council Resolutions, the International Court of Justice, U.S. policy, and International Law.
"Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, are illegal and an obstacle to peace and to economic and social development [... and] have been established in breach of international law." –International Court of Justice Ruling, July 9, 2004
Currently there are 121 settlements and approximately 102 Israeli outposts built illegally on Palestinian land occupied by Israel in 1967 inhabited by 462,000 Israeli settlers. In Arab East Jerusalem there are 191,000 Israeli settlers. Immediately after Bush's Annapolis Conference that demanded a halt to settlement construction, Ehud Olmert returned to Israel to give orders to expand settlement construction by another 9,000 units around East Jerusalem and another 2,600 new units in the West Bank. America expressed its "concern"
4. Illegal Demolitions of Palestinian Homes creating more Palestinian refugees.
While no Israeli home has been demolished, since 1967 Israel has demolished 18,147 Palestinian homes displacing another 100,000 Palestinians to become refugees living in tents. During the Al Aqsa Intafada alone which began in September 2000, Israel committed mass demolition of 4,170 Palestinian homes.
5. Illegal building of the Apartheid Wall.
The Illegal Apartheid Wall that snakes around the West Bank annexes more Palestinian land including in Bethlehem, separating families, villages, and farmers from their land. The United Nations and International Court of Justice declared the wall illegal. A United Nations report finds that 12,000 Palestinians could be cut from their land, work and essential social services.
6. Israel's Talking Points and narrative adopted and parroted blindly by the U.S. media and Government
That Israel has an enormous rapid media response propaganda machine that bombs the world with the same talking points has been demonstrated for over sixty years.
Again, Israeli Ambassador Gabriela Shalev's speech to the Security Council:
"'The residents of those towns (Israeli) generally had 15 seconds to rush, with their children and elderly, for cover." This speech was delivered on January 6, 2009 in New York City.
However, On January 9, 2009, the Israeli Ambassador to Ireland, Zion Evrony, wrote an op-ed (Israel's actions necessary so our citizens can live in peace) in the Irish Times defending Israel's genocide with the same "15 second' canard. He was responding to a very passionate courageous article written by Fintan "O'toole
Ambassador Evronv writes:
"I hope O'Toole will never have the awful experience of running with his children to reach a bomb shelter within15 seconds"
Here's a quote from Mr. O'Toole's Article:
"When does the mandate of victimhood expire? At what point does the Nazi genocide of Europe's Jews cease to excuse the state of Israel from the demands of international law and of common humanity?….The words that emerged from Auschwitz - "Never Again" - are the most powerful protection we have from moral hypocrisy, from racism, and from the twisted language that defends the indefensible….It is a great historic tragedy that those words must now be spoken against the Jewish state." –Fintan O'Toole, "Israel Must Be Held To Account over Gaza Action", Irish Times, January 6, 2008
Mr. O'Toole went on to say that Israel has adopted two Nazi policies, the first is "collective punishment" of an entire population, and second that of "profound racism".
Before, during, and after Israel commits another genocide the all powerful Israel Lobby goes into full active mode to control, spin, and manipulate the genocide narrative to defend Israel as having been forced to defend itself against the Arab Muslim "terrorists" while presenting Israel as the "victim" of terrorism. The White House, Congress, Pro Israel Academia, and the mainly Jewish owned media overwhelm and indoctrinate America with the talking points du jour in favor of Israel.
In the cowardly "Little Knesset" we call Congress both houses passed, as they're required to do, resolutions supporting Israel's genocide in Gaza. Thus between Bush's undying love for Israel during his farewell days and Congressional support of Israel, Barack Obama's hands are shackled when he takes office on this issue. Not that he wasn't already paid and bought for by his rich "Jewish friends" and his mass appointments of Jews in his administration as well as the closet Jew, Hilary Clinton.
Congressional democrats and republicans went on multiple television shows to utter the talking points AIPAC provided; mainly asking rhetorically, what if Mexico or Canada attacked a U.S. city with rockets—wouldn't we respond? Obama while visiting Israel said the same but coined it as to what if his 2 daughters were attacked by rockets, he would have to respond.
Some of the talking points emanating from our indoctrinated politicians are:
1. Israel has the right to defend itself. Which means the Lebanese and Palestinians have no such right when Israel invades, kills, and occupies their land.
2. To teach the "terrorists" a lesson not to resist their subjugation and keep quiet.
3. Remove "terrorist" regimes and establish pro democracy, i.e. Pro Israel regimes. By any sense of justice these "terrorist" regimes are legitimate resistance movements internationally sanctioned to remove the yoke of colonial occupation of their lives and land.
4. Kill enough civilians to cause them to overthrow their existing regimes.
5. "Terrorist" groups are to be blamed for heavy civilian casualties since they use civilians as human shields.
See discussion on human shields further down the article.
7. Israel's Violation of International Law and Human Rights.
Every international body from the U.S. State Department, to the United Nations, the E.U., International Court of Justice and every International Human Rights Organization has condemned Israel for its decade's long violations of International Law and Human Rights for its illegal occupation of Palestinian territories and massive abuses of their human rights.
From the U.S. State Department Country Human Rights Report 2007.
"Both Israeli and Palestinian NGOs reported that the Israeli authorities used excessive force, abused civilians and detainees, tortured Palestinian detainees, failed to take proper disciplinary actions, improperly applied security internment procedures, maintained austere and overcrowded detention facilities, imposed severe restrictions on freedom of movement, and limited cooperation with NGOs."
"The Israeli air strikes on the Gaza Strip represent severe and massive violations of international humanitarian law as defined in the Geneva Conventions, both in regard to the obligations of an Occupying Power and in the requirements of the laws of war…The Israeli air strikes today, and the catastrophic human toll that they caused, challenge those countries that have been and remain complicit, either directly or indirectly, in Israel's violations of international law. That complicity includes those countries knowingly providing the military equipment including warplanes and missiles used in these illegal attacks, as well as those countries who have supported and participated in the siege of Gaza that itself has caused a humanitarian catastrophe." –Professor Richard Falk, "Israeli Violates International Humanitarian Law, U.N. Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, January 2, 2008; "United Nations Human Rights Council.
Professor Falk, a professor of International Law at Princeton University was sent to Israel to investigate Israel's human rights abuses against the Palestinians. Israel detained him at the airport in a small cramped filthy room for 15 hours then expelled him out of the country. No nation but Israel can get away with such humiliation of a U.N. official.
"Hovering above all this is the dark shadow of occupation and the separation regime evermore entrenched in the Occupied Territories. For forty-one years, Israel has denied fundamental rights to four million Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Even the establishment of the Palestinian Authority in the mid-1990s and Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip in the summer of 2005 did not change the fundamental imbalance of power in which Israel controls the lives of the Palestinians, and is responsible for the daily, severe, and ongoing violations of their rights. Under the domination of Israel, which defines itself as a democracy, live several million people who are denied their rights under military occupation in which no rights are guaranteed: not the right to life, personal security, or freedom of movement, not the right to earn a livelihood, to freedom of expression, or to health. In the reality of the Occupied Territories, particularly since the second Intifada in late 2000, most rights have long lost their meaning." – Association for Civil Rights in Israel State of Human Rights Report, 2008
From Amnesty International USA 2008 Annual Report for Israel.
"The human rights situation in the Israeli Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) remained dire… In June, the Israeli government imposed an unprecedented blockade on the Gaza Strip, virtually imprisoning its entire 1.5 million population, subjecting them to collective punishment and causing the gravest humanitarian crisis to date. Some 40 Palestinians died after being refused passage out of Gaza for urgent medical treatment not available in local hospitals. Most Gazans were left dependent on international aid for survival but UN aid agencies complained that the Israeli blockade made it difficult for them to provide the much needed assistance. In the West Bank, the Israeli authorities continued to expand illegal settlements and build a 700-km fence/wall in violation of international law. Impunity remained the norm for Israeli soldiers and Israeli settlers who committed serious abuses against Palestinians, including unlawful killings, physical assaults and attacks on property. Thousands of Palestinians were arrested, most of whom were released without charge."
8. Blaming Hamas for breaking the Six month ceasefire with Israel.
Another Lie from Ambassador Gabriela Shalev's speech to the U.N. Security Council on January 6, 2008 blamed Hamas for breaking the six month ceasefire with Israel.
"In its effort to avoid confrontation, Israel had agreed six months ago to an Egyptian-brokered "situation of calm". Hamas had violated that agreement on a daily basis, as over 350 rockets and mortar shells had been fired into Israel during that period."
Only Israel would have the chutzpah to issue such blatant lies publicly. In its lies it depends on the U.S. media, the only media that matters to Israel, to not investigate such statements, not to show any videos or photos of mutilated Palestinian children but rather focus on the single structure hit by an inerrant small rocket fired by Hamas, and in general simply parrot the amply provided Israeli talking points.
BUT, please view these videos on YOUTUBE to see Israel itself admit that Hamas did not fire rockets during the six month truce.
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=9wv0giW1elo
MUST MUST MUST see Video: ISRAEL ADMITS "NO HAMAS ROCKETS FIRED DURING CEASEFIRE"
The youtube video below shows the same Israeli spokesman, Mark Regev, insist that Israel fired into the 3 U.N. schools in response to Hamas rockets, killing 43 Palestinians, mostly children. Later Israel admitted that there were no Hamas fire from the schools, too late for the dead families and children. After a day's investigation it stated that one of its missiles missed its mark and accidentally hit the schools despite the U.N. having provided the location of the schools long before the Gaza genocide.
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=9wv0giW1elo
In addition, several international media agencies in fact reported that it was Israel that broke the ceasefire.
"The six-month ceasefire started coming apart at the beginning of November after Israeli commandos killed a team of Hamas fighters during a raid on a tunnel they suspected was being dug for kidnapping of Israeli soldiers. That raid set off more Palestinian rocketing.".
–U.S. News and World Report, December 30, 2008
–CNN confirms Israel Broke Ceasefire First, December 31, 2008
–Guardian, "Gaza Truce Broken as Israel raid kills six Hamas gunmen", November 5, 2008
–Economist. "The last straw came in November, when Israelis killed six gunmen ", December 30,
Also ignored by our media is that Hamas reached out to Israel to continue the ceasefire.
"Israel has also ignored recent Hamas' diplomatic initiatives to reestablish the truce or ceasefire since its expiration on 26 December Gaza that itself has caused a humanitarian catastrophe." –Professor Richard Falk, "Israeli Violates International Humanitarian Law, U.N. Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, January 2, 2008; "United Nations Human Rights Council.
"Before it falls down the memory hole, we should remember that last week, Hamas offered a ceasefire in return for basic and achievable compromises. Don't take my word for it. According to the Israeli press, Yuval Diskin, the current head of the Israeli security service Shin Bet, "told the Israeli cabinet [on 23 December] that Hamas is interested in continuing the truce, but wants to improve its terms." Diskin explained that Hamas was requesting two things: an end to the blockade, and an Israeli ceasefire on the West Bank. The cabinet - high with election fever and eager to appear tough - rejected these terms." –Johann Hari; "The true story behind this war is not the one Israel is telling", Independent, December 29, 2008
9. Hamas (and Hezbollah) Use Civilians as Human Shields
Another Lie by Israel's Ambassador Gabriela Shalev in her speech to the U.N.S.C. January 6, 2008 is that Hamas uses civilians as human shields. This is the perpetual standing lie whenever Israel deliberate kills civilians. The White House, the subservient Congress, and supportive media repeat this lie constantly until it's become the knee-jerk statement when massive civilian casualties arise from Israel's bombs—blame the victim because Israel is too civilized to wantonly kill civilians. This was used against Hezbollah during Israel's annihilation of Lebanon in 2006. She said:
"Hamas showed similar disdain for the Palestinian people, she said. It had adopted a terrorist tactic — "a coward's tactic" — of using civilians as shields"
It's beyond human comprehension that either of the resistant movements Hezbollah and Hamas who were formed to fight Israel's military occupation and subjugation of their families and peoples would deliberately and knowingly use their own people to protect themselves. Why? Because Israel doesn't give a damn about any Arab Christian or Muslim life be they Lebanese, Palestinian, Syrian or of any other nationality regardless if they're surrounded by fighters or simply sleeping in their beds. Israel's aim is to kill as many civilians as fast as possible before international pressure coalesces to ask them to stop.
According to Human Rights Watch's study: "Fatal Strikes: Israel's Indiscriminate Attacks Against Civilians in Lebanon"; August 2, 2006, HRW reported that it found "no cases in which Hezbollah deliberately used civilians as shields to protect them from retaliatory IDF attack."
Other organizations such as Amnesty International came to the same conclusion.
"A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on."—Winston Churchill
In fact it is Israel that is using Palestinian youths as human shields (see photos in links below)
The Israeli paper Ha'aretz, 9/4/05, "IDF still uses human shields in Violation of High Court Ruling" states:
"The Israel Defense Forces is still using Palestinians as human shields, in defiance of a High Court of Justice ruling forbidding the practice, Haaretz has learned….An IDF force broke into Mahmoud Rajabi's home in the Jabel Johar neighborhood in eastern Hebron at about 4 A.M. last Wednesday and forced three brothers to serve as human shields….At first, the IDF spokesman denied that the three brothers were being held against their will and said they could leave whenever they wanted. But the force's commander told Haaretz that they were holding the three until the operation ended" and it was "normal procedure intended to protect his soldiers' lives".
The Ambassador went on to say:
"There was no similarity between military commanders that worked hard to ensure their operations were carried out in accordance with international law and those that filled homes with missiles."
However the same HRW report, Fatal Strikes, has this sentence in its introduction to the report:
"This report documents serious violations of international humanitarian law (the laws of war) by Israel Defense Forces (IDF) in Lebanon between July 12 and July 27, 2006, as well as the July 30 attack in Qana"
10. The Greatest Lie Ever Told About Israel's Wars and Occupations shamelessly and publicly—that unlike Hamas, Israel Respects U.N. Security Council Resolutions
With incredible chutzpah Ambassador Gabriela Shalev said:
"Was the Council's credibility strengthened if it called for a ceasefire that "effectively equates a terrorist group with a State defending itself against it??" Moreover, did anyone really believe that Hamas would heed the Council's words?
The factual reality here is stunning.
No nation has been as widely condemned by United Nations Resolutions and U.N. Agencies as has Israel. Over 300 United Nations Resolutions (including over 90 U.N. Security Council Resolutions—excluding the additional 45 the U.S. vetoed) have been passed condemning Israel to no avail. All U.N. agencies such as the UN Human Rights Council, World Health Organization, U.N. Economic and Social Council, UNRWA, UNICEF, UNDP, UNESCO have also passed resolutions condemning Israel for its violation of International and Humanitarian Laws. The World Bank, International Court of Justice, all International Human Rights Organizations, including those in Israel, B'tselem, Rabbis for Human Rights, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch; all relief organizations from around the world, and all medical and health organizations; and even the Vatican have condemned Israel for its defiance of U.N. Resolutions and International Law.
Here's what the Vatican Justice and Peace Minister Cardinal Renato Martino said on January 7, 2009, said expressing the Vatican's concern about the dire humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip:
"Let's look at the conditions in Gaza: these increasingly resemble a big concentration camp."
11. Israel always wants peace and this newest genocide is a prerequisite for peace: but for Whom? Certainly not for the over 300 Palestinian infants and children murdered by Israel in Gaza
Again, another lie by Ambassador Shalev:
"It is not enough to speak of peace; we have to confront those who work to destroy it. For this reason, the current campaign is not an obstacle to peace, but a prerequisite for it."
One doesn't know where to begin to refute this lie. Perhaps one should start from the foundation of this criminal state and its ethnic cleansing of two thirds of the Palestinian population during their genocidal campaign 1948-1949.
After President Truman in direct opposition to his foreign policy team supported the creation of Israel in 1948 he was sickened by Israel's criminality against the Palestinian refugees. Thus in the summer of 1949(April -September) along with the United Nations Conciliation Commission for Palestine (UNCCP) the Lausanne Conference (Switzerland) was convened to address the tragedy of the Palestinian refugees. Israel and the Arab states attended the conference.
Ambassador Mark Etheridge was Truman's envoy to the conference. After three months of negotiations Israel refused to take any responsibility for the expelled Palestinian refugees. Ambassador Etheridge wrote this to the State Department:
"Since we gave Israel birth we are blamed for her belligerence and her arrogance and for the cold-bloodedness of her attitude toward refugees…what I can see is an abortion of justice and humanity to what I do not want to be midwife… Israel must accept responsibility….her attitude toward refugees is morally reprehensible….Her position as conqueror demanding more does not make for peace." – Donald Neff, former Time Magazine Jerusalem Correspondent in "Fifty Years of Israel", p.79
The U.N. Commission also declared that
"The Government of Israel is not prepared to implement the part of paragraph 11 of the General Assembly resolution of 11 December 1948 (U.N. Resolution 194 on return of refugees) which resolves that the refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbors should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date".
Contrary to Israel's all powerful propaganda Hamas has offered a peace initiative to accept a Palestinian state along the 1967 border which conforms to U.N. Resolution 242 passed in 1967 and to America's long standing policy. Soon after its free and democratic election in 2006 Hamas' leader Ismail Haniyeh reached out to Bush to seek a peaceful settlement with Israel.
In a Ha'aretz article titled; "In 2006 letter to Bush, Haniyeh offered compromise with Israel", 11/14/08
"A few months after Hamas' 2006 election victory, leader Ismail Haniyeh tried to start a dialogue with U.S. President George W. Bush….. On June 6, 2006, Haniyeh met Dr. Jerome Segal of the University of Maryland in the Gaza Strip…Segal had been involved in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process for many.
Haniyeh laid out the political platform he maintains to this day. "We are so concerned about stability and security in the area that we don't mind having a Palestinian state in the 1967 borders and offering a truce for many years," he wrote…. Haniyeh called on Bush to launch a dialogue with the Hamas government….We are not warmongers, we are peace makers and we call on the American government to have direct negotiations with the elected government," he wrote. Haniyeh also urged the American government to act to end the international boycott "because the continuation of this situation will encourage violence and chaos in the whole region….Segal gave State Department and NSC officials the original letter… Washington did not reply to these messages and maintained its boycott of the Hamas government."
Ha'aretz reported on 4/21/08:
"Hamas' political leader Khaled Meshal on Monday said Hamas would accept a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip along Israel's pre-1967 borders, and would grant Israel a 10-year hudna, or truce, as an implicit proof of recognition if Israel withdraws from those areas.
Meshal's comments were one of the clearest outlines Hamas has given for what it would do if Israel withdrew from the territories it captured in the 1967 Six Day War. He suggested Hamas would accept Israel's existence alongside a Palestinian state on the rest of the lands Israel has held since 1948"
Against Ha'aretz on 11/9/08:
"The Hamas leader in Gaza, Ismail Haniyeh, said on Saturday his government was willing to accept a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders.
The Hamas leader spoke at a meeting with 11 European parliamentarians who sailed from Cyprus to the Gaza Strip to protest Israel's naval blockade of the territory. Haniyeh told his guests Israel rejected his initiative."
In Conclusion:
Armed resistance against any foreign occupation is an internationally recognized right of all peoples. Hezbollah, Hamas, Iraqis, Afghanis, Chechens, Kashmiris and people around the world who live under the evil yoke of a foreign army must raise their voices and guns to achieve freedom.
Enshrined in the U.N. Charter are the inalienable rights of peoples to self determination, freedom, and right to resistance against foreign occupation. On December 7, 1987 the U.N. General Assembly passed Resolution A/RES/42/159 which reaffirmed these principles in addition to condemning all forms of International Terrorism committed by states, organizations, or persons.
The resolution passed with a 153 - 2 vote: Ironically the two nay votes were: U.S. and Israel.
The Resolution reads:
"Measures to prevent international terrorism which endangers or takes innocent human lives or jeopardizes fundamental freedoms and study of the underlying causes of those forms of terrorism and acts of violence which lie in misery, frustration, grievance and despair and which cause some people to sacrifice human lives, including their own, in an attempt to effect radical changes:
Reaffirming also the inalienable right to self-determination and Independence of all peoples under colonial and racist regimes and other forms of alien domination, and upholding the legitimacy of their struggle, in particular the struggle of national liberation movements, in accordance with the purposes and principles of the Charter and of the Declaration on Principles of International Law concerning Friendly Relations and Co-operation among States in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations,
Noting the efforts and important achievements of the International Civil Aviation Organization and the International Maritime Organization in promoting the security of international air (could 9/11 have been prevented?) and sea transport against acts of terrorism, consistent with General Assembly resolution 40/61,"
Thus the two nations that thrive politically, economically, and militarily on the "war on terror" themselves voted against the resolution that condemns terror and asks for international cooperation to prevent it.
Hypocrisy and Double Standards have always been the hallmarks of empires and imperialism.
Israel thrives on wars and murder. This is the only standard policy of all Israeli governments regardless of party. Israel needs wars not only to expand its territories and fulfill the dream of Zionism but just as importantly to avoid internal strife between the different factions and ethnicities of Jews living in Israel that could easily erupt into a civil war, especially between the Ashkenazi (European Jews) and Sephardic Jews from the Middle East.
Israel is a corrupt moral, spiritual, and economic nation that depends on wars to distract from internal discontent. During election campaigns politicians vie to reach the innermost murderous soul of the populace as to who can commit the greater genocide upon the hapless Palestinians.
"Violence can only be concealed by a lie, and the lie can only be maintained by violence. Any man who has once proclaimed violence as his method is inevitably forced to take the lie as his principle." –Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Nothing can bring internal peace to Israel, not its enormous wealth, the sixteenth richest nation on earth, not its fourth most powerful army in the world (Israel now is the fourth largest exporter of weapons in the world), not its hundreds of nuclear weapons, and not its complete strangle hold on the world's sole superpower and on European governments.
Nothing will ever satisfy a Zionist's heart and soul for it is based on the evil premise of supremacy, racism, arrogance of power, divine selection, and an inherent right that the world is for Jews only and that no one has the right to tell Jews what to do or hold them accountable.
As Ariel Sharon said:
"Israel may have the right to put others on trial, but certainly no one has the right to put the Jewish people and the State of Israel on trial."
For the second time in two years Israel is committing genocide against a civilian population using the latest American made weapons in direct violation of the U.S. Arms Export Act that limits use of American weapons to defensive purposes only. But don't expect Obama or the Congress to raise this issue.
There are only two ways to achieve peace, either by peace or by force.
Somehow someway the world needs to find the courage to end the 60 years of Israeli wars, occupations of Arab and western governments, genocides, lies, myths, propaganda, and a powerful Lobby that instills the fear of organized Jewry into the pocketbook of American politicians. Israel's existence violates divine and all human laws. It's a criminal nation whose thirst for blood is never quenched.
Israel has succeeded in creating a rift, a doubt, even a simmering hatred between the Christian and Muslim worlds. Only Israel benefits from a manufactured conflict between these two worlds who ultimately worship the same God.
To safeguard our humanity and security we all must demand Israel's leaders be brought to face charges of crimes against humanity at the Hague's International Court of Justice.
If we don't, then this genocide too shall pass from our memories as soon as the bombs stop shredding the lives of Gaza's children whose breath and dreams litter the mass graves in Gaza.
May God protect the children of Gaza from Israel, American complicity, Arab impotence, and the silence of good people.
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