Category Archives: war crimes

#Hamas pushes Abbas to join #ICC

David Hearst reports: Hamas has decided to demand that President Mahmoud Abbas sign the Rome Statute which will allow Palestine to join the International Criminal Court as a full member, even though the militant movement itself could be subject to prosecution, sources told the Middle East Eye.

Hamas’s deputy chairman and chief negotiator in Cairo, Moussa Abu Marzouk has been instructed to sign the document supporting the State of Palestine as a member of the ICC in The Hague, the MEE has learned. The decision comes after a top level meeting between the Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat and Khaled Meshaal, the leader of Hamas.

The document already contains the signatures of the PLO executive committee, Fatah Central Committee and other PLO organisations such as the Popular Front and the Democratic Front. But Abbas himself is resisting, as a result of the forceful opposition of the United States and the European Union.

A tape in which Erekat criticised Abbas’s refusal to join the ICC was leaked recently. In it, Erekat is alleged to have criticised Abbas for stalling on the question of the ICC. Since then, Erekat has been at the forefront of a campaign to force Abbas’ hand. The PLO held a meeting recently in which all Palestinian factions put their name to joining the ICC. [Continue reading…]

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How the #Israeli discourse on terrorism seeks to justify blatant #WarCrimes

Rémi Brulin writes: Appearing on CNN a few days into the current offensive in Gaza, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described Hamas as “the worst terrorists, genocidal terrorists.” He said they want to “pile up as many civilian dead as they can,” and, he added, to “use telegenically dead Palestinians for their cause.”

By contrast, Israeli strikes are said to be aimed at the “terrorists,” who are by definition legitimate targets. Any civilian casualties that may result from such uses of force are unintentional, and in fact should be blamed squarely on Hamas. Indeed, Netanyahu explained, not only do they target civilians but they also “hide behind civilians,” thus committing “a double war crime.”

According to this narrative, often embraced in toto by elected officials and political commentators in the United States, “terrorism” is a very clear, non-controversial concept. “Terrorism” is the use of violence against civilians for political purposes.

This discourse on “terrorism” is a deeply moral discourse, one that makes important normative claims about a given conflict and the parties to it.

It draws its power from a simple claim: what separates “us” from “them” is a fundamental conception of the value of innocent life. “We” respect innocent lives, demonstrated by our refusal to target civilians. In stark contrast, not only are “the terrorists” more than willing to hurt our civilians, but they also hope that we will kill theirs too.

The discourse on “terrorism” is thus an essentialist discourse: it claims to say something about the very essence of “the enemy” (cue recurring references to “barbarism”) and, consequently, about us (and our “civilized” values.)

On closer inspection however, this discourse fails precisely where it claims to be strongest. Israel’s actual practices, informed by its combat doctrine, are fundamentally at odds with how international law defines the concept of “civilian.” In actual fact, the discourse on “terrorism” and the practices it informs and justifies drastically erode the distinction between civilian and combatants as commonly understood in International Humanitarian Law. [Continue reading…]

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International criminal court urged to investigate #Gaza ‘crimes’

The Guardian reports: Senior British lawyers have written to the international criminal court (ICC) in The Hague, urging it to investigate “crimes” committed in Gaza, including the destruction of homes, hospitals and schools.

The letter was sent by Kirsty Brimelow QC, the chair of the Bar Council’s human rights committee, and was signed by a host of senior British barristers and law professors.

Addressed to the ICC prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, it calls on the court to launch a preliminary inquiry into abuses committed during the conflict.

“The initiation of an investigation would send a clear and unequivocal message to those involved in the commission of these crimes that the accountability and justice called for by the United Nations on the part of victims are not hollow watchwords,” the letter states.

“It would bring about an end to the impunity which has prevailed in the region to date, fuelling ever increasingly brutal cycles of violence. The international community cannot continue to act simply as witness to such bloodshed and extreme civilian suffering.”

The lawyers say that it is within the ICC’s jurisdiction to act because the government of Palestine made a declaration in 2009 accepting the court’s role and the UN has since acknowledged Palestine as a non-member observer state. [Continue reading…]

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Top 5 ways the U.S. is #Israel’s accomplice in war crimes in #Gaza

Juan Cole writes: Here are the ways that the US is actively helping Israel in its war on Gaza:

1. The US shares its raw signals intelligence directly with Israeli intelligence, enhancing Israeli eavesdropping and surveillance capabilities, as Glenn Greenwald shows in a new article for Firstlook. Israel somewhat ungratefully repaid the favor by collaborating with Russia to spy on John Kerry during his failed peace negotiations.

2. The US continually replenishes Israel’s ammunition. If Washington were actually so distressed about the UNRWA school shelling, it could just stop sending the shells for a while. It did this to Egypt after the massacre at Rabi`a al-Adawiya last summer.

3. The US State Department actively helps Israel to economically blockade the civilians of Gaza. It even pressures Egypt to uphold the blockade (which is why it is silly to say that Egypt is also responsible for the siege of Gaza; Egypt doesn’t have a choice in this policy that is made from Tel Aviv and promulgated from Washington). [Continue reading…]

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#Syrian defector: #Assad poised to #torture and murder 150,000 more

The Daily Beast reports: The regime of Syrian President Bashar al Assad is holding 150,000 civilians in custody, all of whom are at risk of being tortured or killed by the state, the Syrian defector known as “Caesar” told Congress on Thursday.

According to a senior State Department official, his department initially asked to keep this hearing—in which Caesar displayed new photos from his trove of 55,000 images showing the torture, starvation, and death of over 11,000 civilians—closed to the public, out of concerns for the safety of the defector and his family. Caesar smuggled the pictures out of Syria when he fled last year in fear for his life. Caesar’s trip had been in the works for months.

There was no audio or video recording allowed at the hearing; the House Foreign Affairs Committee said that decision was made in consideration of Caesar’s safety. He sat at the witness table disguised in a baseball cap and sunglasses, with a blue hoodie over his head. “We recommended to Congress a format for today’s briefing that would have allowed press access while addressing any security concerns,” said Edgar Vasquez, a State Department spokesman. A committee staffer alleged State had tried to prevent the hearing from happening at all.

The packed committee room sat in silent horror as new examples of Assad’s atrocities were splashed on the large television screens on the wall and displayed on large posterboards littered throughout the hearing room. Caesar spoke softly to his translator, Mouaz Moustafa, the executive director of the Syrian American Task Force, a Washington-based organization that works with both the Syrian opposition and the U.S. State Department.

“I am not a politician and I don’t like politics,” Caesar said through his translator. “I have come to you honorable Congress to give you a message from the people of Syria… What is going on in Syria is a genocidal massacre that is being led by the worst of all the terrorists, Bashar al Assad.” [Continue reading…]

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Amnesty demands U.S. stop arms transfers to #Israel amid growing evidence of #warcrimes in #Gaza

Amnesty: The US government must immediately end its ongoing deliveries of large quantities of arms to Israel, which are providing the tools to commit further serious violations of international law in Gaza, said Amnesty International, as it called for a total arms embargo on all parties to the conflict.

The call comes amid reports that the Pentagon has approved the immediate transfer of grenades and mortar rounds to the Israeli armed forces from a US arms stockpile pre-positioned in Israel, and follows a shipment of 4.3 tons of US-manufactured rocket motors, which arrived in the Israeli port of Haifa on 15 July.

These deliveries add to more than US$62 million worth of munitions, including guided missile parts and rocket launchers, artillery parts and small arms, already exported from the USA to Israel between January and May this year. [Continue reading…]

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UN chief: #Israel responsible for ‘reprehensible’ school attack

Colum Lynch reports: U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon directly accused Israel of shelling a U.N.-protected shelter housing more than 3,000 Palestinians in Gaza as part of what he said was an “outrageous” and “unjustifiable” strike that left at least 16 civilians dead and lent urgency to the need for an “immediate, unconditional cease-fire.”

In a scorching rebuke from the normally mild-mannered diplomat, Ban charged that Israel’s action constituted a “reprehensible” assault on civilians and demanded that those responsible for the strike be held accountable. The shelling of the Jabalia Elementary Girls School marked the fifth time since the conflict began on July 8 that a U.N.-protected shelter has been hit with incoming fire, but the incident is the first time that Ban has directly blamed Israel. That leaves open the possibility that some of the other facilities were hit by Hamas rockets. Israeli officials have said the militant group stores weapons in U.N. facilities and uses them to fire rockets into the Jewish state.

“This morning, yet another United Nations school sheltering thousands of Palestinian families suffered a reprehensible attack. All available evidence points to Israeli artillery as the cause,” Ban said during a stop-off in Costa Rica. “Nothing is more shameful than attacking sleeping children.” [Continue reading…]

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‘The world stands disgraced’ as Israel bombs another UN school

UNRWA Commissioner-General Pierre Krähenbühl said: Last night, children were killed as they slept next to their parents on the floor of a classroom in a UN designated shelter in Gaza. Children killed in their sleep; this is an affront to all of us, a source of universal shame. Today the world stands disgraced.

We have visited the site and gathered evidence. We have analysed fragments, examined craters and other damage. Our initial assessment is that it was Israeli artillery that hit our school, in which 3,300 people had sought refuge. We believe there were at least three impacts. It is too early to give a confirmed official death toll. But we know that there were multiple civilian deaths and injuries including of women and children and the UNRWA guard who was trying to protect the site. These are people who were instructed to leave their homes by the Israeli army.

The precise location of the Jabalia Elementary Girls School and the fact that it was housing thousands of internally displaced people was communicated to the Israeli army seventeen times, to ensure its protection; the last being at ten to nine last night, just hours before the fatal shelling. [Continue reading…]

Amnesty International says the attack should be investigated as a possible war crime.

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Bibi = Bashar

When Bashar al-Assad proceeded to destroy Homs and other Syrian cities, President Obama and other Western leaders declared, “Assad must go.”

Homs

Homs, Syria

When Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the IDF to destroy Shujaiyah while killing hundreds of Palestinians across the Gaza Strip, President Obama and other Western leaders declared, “Israel has the right to defend itself.”

Shujaiyah, Gaza

Shujaiyah, Gaza

Shujaiyah, Gaza

Shujaiyah, Gaza

Shujaiyah, Gaza

Shujaiyah, Gaza

In its response to the suffering of the people in Gaza and in Syria, the West has once again shown its impotence and moral bankruptcy.

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I do not want to be a number

Atef Abu Saif writes: Despite a long night of bombing, I woke early Tuesday morning to the sound of voices drifting through the window of my room, newly displaced people taking refuge in the United Nations Relief and Works Agency school across the street. In the last two weeks thousands have been forced to leave their homes on the coastal side of Beit Lahia and Beit Hanoun to avoid being killed by a shell from a tank or a warship. They have brought with them little but their desire to survive and have traveled toward Jabalia, the neighborhood I have lived in all my life. Jabalia is itself a refugee camp, established after the 1948 Nakba when thousands of were forced to leave their villages and towns across the country that was Palestine. Already the most densely populated camp in the Gaza Strip, Jabalia is now receiving a new wave of refugees after 66 years.

From my window, which overlooks the school, I can see old women, exhausted, sitting down on the little steps in front of the playground, their children clinging to them, many of them crying; old men are looking nervously up to the sky where drones are still hovering, making a noise that they will not forget in the years they have left. The UNRWA man is trying to organize everything in this chaos. Monday night was a terrible chapter in the history of Gaza—especially for the eastern part of Beit Hanoun. Tanks moved in from the border toward the residential areas, destroying everything in their paths, erasing every building, every school, every orchard. You do not know whether the next shell will fall on your head. When you will be reduced to another number in the news. You think about what it means to disappear from the world, to evaporate like a drop of water, leaving no sign of your existence, and the thought drives you mad.

A shell killed a family of six people three days ago. Cousins of my neighbor Eyad. They were sitting around their food waiting for the prayer to break their fast. The four children were killed instantly, and the parents were mortally injured. Eyad told me that one of the dead girls vanished completely; they found no sign of her body. No bones, no arms, no legs. Nothing that might suggest it belonged to her, that a little girl of 9 years existed in this place just a few seconds ago. Apparently the rocket hit her body directly. [Continue reading…]

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Israel may have committed war crimes in Gaza, says UN human rights chief

The Guardian reports: Navi Pillay, the UN high commissioner for human rights, has warned that Israel may have committed war crimes in its offensive against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, where hundreds of Palestinian civilians have been killed in the past two weeks.

Pillay told an emergency debate at the UN human rights council (UNHRC) in Geneva that Israel had not done enough to protect civilians.

“There seems to be a strong possibility that international law has been violated, in a manner that could amount to war crimes,” Pillay said, citing air strikes and the shelling of homes and hospitals. The killing of civilians in Gaza, including dozens of children, raised concerns over Israel’s precautions and its respect for proportionality, she said. [Continue reading…]

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Call for an international military embargo on Israel

Israel has once again unleashed the full force of its military against the captive Palestinian population, particularly in the besieged Gaza Strip, in an inhumane and illegal act of military aggression. Israel’s ability to launch such devastating attacks with impunity largely stems from the vast international military cooperation and trade that it maintains with complicit governments across the world. Over the period 2008-19, the US is set to provide military aid to Israel worth $30bn, while Israeli annual military exports to the world have reached billions of dollars.

In recent years, European countries have exported billions of euros’ worth of weapons to Israel, and the EU has furnished Israeli military companies with research grants worth hundreds of millions. Emerging economies such as India, Brazil and Chile are rapidly increasing their military trade and cooperation with Israel, despite their stated support for Palestinian rights. By importing and exporting arms to Israel and facilitating the development of Israeli military technology, governments are effectively sending a clear message of approval for Israel’s military aggression, including its war crimes and possible crimes against humanity.

Israel’s military technology is marketed as “field-tested” and exported across the world. Military trade and joint military-related research relations with Israel embolden Israeli impunity in committing grave violations of international law and facilitate the entrenchment of Israel’s system of occupation, colonisation and systematic denial of Palestinian rights. We call on the UN and governments across the world to take immediate steps to implement a comprehensive and legally binding military embargo on Israel, similar to that imposed on South Africa during apartheid.

Adolfo Peres Esquivel Nobel Peace Laureate, Argentina, Archbishop Desmond Tutu Nobel Peace Laureate, South Africa, Betty Williams Nobel Peace Laureate, Ireland, Jody Williams Nobel Peace Laureate, US, Mairead Maguire Nobel Peace Laureate, Ireland, Rigoberta Menchú Nobel Peace Laureate, Guatemala, and others.

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Israel intentionally kills civilians; it doesn’t have the courage to talk to Hamas

Jon Snow on Channel 4 News challenges an Israeli government official in a way you will never witness on American television:

Human Rights Watch: Israeli air attacks in Gaza investigated by Human Rights Watch have been targeting apparent civilian structures and killing civilians in violation of the laws of war. Israel should end unlawful attacks that do not target military objectives and may be intended as collective punishment or broadly to destroy civilian property. Deliberate or reckless attacks violating the laws of war are war crimes, Human Rights Watch said.

Israeli attacks in Gaza since July 7, 2014, which Israeli officials said delivered more than 500 tons of explosives in missiles, aerial bombs, and artillery fire, killed at least 178 people and wounded 1,361 as of July 14, including 635 women and children, according to the United Nations. Preliminary UN reports identified 138 people, about 77 percent of those killed, as civilians, including 36 children, and found that the attacks had destroyed 1,255 homes, displacing at least 7,500 people.

“Israel’s rhetoric is all about precision attacks but attacks with no military target and many civilian deaths can hardly be considered precise,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “Recent documented cases in Gaza sadly fit Israel’s long record of unlawful airstrikes with high civilian casualties.” [Continue reading…]

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Amnesty: Israel/Gaza — U.N. must impose arms embargo and mandate an international investigation as civilian death toll rises

Amnesty International is calling for a UN-mandated international investigation into violations committed on all sides amidst ongoing Israeli air strikes across the Gaza Strip and continuing volleys of indiscriminate rocket fire from Palestinian armed groups into Israel.

Since Israel launched Operation “Protective Edge” in the early morning of 8 July, more than 100 Palestinians have been killed in the Gaza Strip, most of them civilians who were not directly participating in hostilities. This includes at least 24 children and 16 women as of Friday morning. More than 600 people have been wounded, many of them seriously. More than 340 homes in Gaza have been completely destroyed or left uninhabitable and at least five health facilities and three ambulances have been damaged. In Israel, at least 20 people have been wounded by rocket attacks and property has been damaged.

“As the violence intensifies there is an urgent need for the UN to mandate an international independent fact-finding mission to Gaza and Israel to investigate violations of international humanitarian law by all parties to the conflict. This is the first crucial step towards ensuring that those who have committed war crimes or other serious violations can be held accountable,” said Philip Luther, Director of the Middle East and North Africa Programme at Amnesty International. [Continue reading…]

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