Gaza war crimes till unaccounted for

No 6: You shall not kill.
No 8: Neither shall you steal.
No 9: Neither shall you bear false witness against your neighbour.

No 10: Neither shall you covet your neighbour’s wife. Neither shall you desire your neighbour’s house, or field, or male or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbour. [Deuteronomy 5:17 – 21]


Up till today, the criminality of the American unilateral bombing of Libya in 1986, under the guise of pre-emptive self-defence (against Libya? Who in the world would bloody believe that?) hasn’t yet been determined, for obvious reasons.

It was reputed that in an air trade disagreement between Australia and the USA, an Aussie official was heard to say said “How does one deal with a 500 kg gorilla when locked in a cage with it?”

Like Godzilla, size matters in international politics, unless of course you're Israel.

Thus, during the Israeli invasion of Gaza in January this year, where the Israeli military deliberately attacked UN buildings despite GPS coordinates of the buildings already provided to them prior to the confict, and strafed Red Cross ambulance and facilities, an angry UN Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay told a special session of the Human Rights Council (HRC) that "international human-rights law must apply in all circumstances and at all times."

There was no mistaking the Israeli abhorrent perpetrations of war crimes and miscellaneous uncivilised acts against humanity, in its acts of wanton and criminal bombing and slaughter of Palestinian civilians, especially women, children and infants.

Navi Pillay was so horrified that she strongly urged the parties to the conflict "to allow the deployment of independent human-rights monitors in both Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory to document any violations of international-human rights and humanitarian law", and that "violations of international humanitarian law may constitute war crimes for which individual criminal responsibility may be invoked".

On her suggestion the HRC council sent "an urgent independent international fact-finding mission" to investigate what had happened. The Israeli government is currently ignoring the UN team.

But obviously Israel has to, as the UN findings would make many of its leaders no less (if not more) of a war criminal than President Omar of Sudan or the late Milosovic of Serbia.

Furthermore, the Israeli government have been embarrassed by their own soldiers, those who took part in the assault on Gaza, admitting to such war crimes, ...

... (apart from attacking unmistakenably Red Cross ambulances and identified UN facilities) such as being ordered to shoot and indeed shooting unarmed women and children. There’s also the case of dropping phosphorous bombs in civilian populated areas, an act classified as a war crime.

It swiftly conducted its own military investigations and cleared all of its mummy’s boys as innocent. I blogged on that in The original Taliban - religiously racist!

Israeli military are not new to war crimes. As far back as 1948, in the so-called Israeli War of Independence, the Haganah had a Plan D, which had …

… “… the objective of clearing hostile and potentially troublesome Arabs out of Palestine ….. The aim of the plan was the destruction of rural and urban areas of Palestine. Water supplies were poisoned and massacres were counted in the dozens.”

“Yitzhak Rabin, a 1940 Israeli military officer who would serve twice as its prime minister, later wrote of his part in what the Israeli historian Ilan Pappe ranked with the biggest forced migrations in modern history. It was essential that 50,000 [Palestinian] civilians be driven out of Lod and Ramle, towns near Tel Aviv, Rabin wrote.”

“Palestinians counted more than 500 villages destroyed. By the end of 1948, about 700,000 people, more than 60% of the Arab population of what had been Palestine, were refugees in the West Bank and the Gaza, and in Jordan, Syria and Lebanon.”

Above extracts are from Paul McGeough’s book ‘Kill Khalid’, a true story of the Israeli Mossad’s assassination attempt of Khalid Mishal, then head of Hamas political bureau in Jordan. Thanks to the late King Hussein of Jordan, he caught the Mossad agents and forced Israel to provide the antidote to Khalid or suffer their agents’ fate. Paul McGeough is Australia’s international award winning journalist.

In a synopsis to the book, Michael Sheur, author of 'Imperial Hubris' and a 22-year CIA veteran and its former head of the Osama bin Laden desk wrote of the book, describing Israel’s implacable intent to destroy Palestine by whatever means necessary: starvation, steadily expanding settlements, military force, and/or assassinations, and of the arrogant ignorance of the US and Western diplomats and the fools’ role they play in Palestinian and Israeli hands.

Back to Navi Pillay's warnings about individual criminal responsibility in the Gaza invasion - the Israelis, aware of US protection, couldn't give a stuff and have refused to subject themselves to the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court.

So given the 500 kg gorilla and its smaller size but religious master, Israel, the ICC instead goes after African or Asian tyrants.

But there’s no question that the Israeli government and military have been no different to the Nazi oppressors of their forefathers. No, they aren't victims as they would like to project themselves as, but very evil, brutal and avaricious oppressors.

And the congregation sent thither twelve thousand men of the valiantest, and commanded them, saying, Go and smite the inhabitants of Jabeshgilead with the edge of the sword, with the women and the children.

And this is the thing that ye shall do, Ye shall utterly destroy every male, and every woman that hath lain by man.

And they found among the inhabitants of Jabeshgilead four hundred young virgins, that had known no man by lying with any male: and they brought them unto the camp to Shiloh, which is in the land of Canaan. [Judges 21:10 – 12]