The Osterley Times

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Israel may face UN court ruling on legality of Gaza conflict.

The UN is to consider seeking an advisory opinion from the International Court of Human Justice on the legality of Israel's attack on Gaza. The ICJ has already given the opinion that the wall Israel built was a violation of it's obligations under international law, an opinion which the Israelis simply dismissed.

But there is a strong case to be made that Israel is in serious violation of international law with her current attacks.

"There is a well-grounded view that both the initial attacks on Gaza and the tactics being used by Israel are serious violations of the UN charter, the Geneva conventions, international law and international humanitarian law," said Richard Falk, the UN's special rapporteur on the Palestinian territories and professor emeritus of international law at Princeton University.

"There is a consensus among independent legal experts that Israel is an occupying power and is therefore bound by the duties set out in the fourth Geneva convention," Falk added. "The arguments that Israel's blockade is a form of prohibited collective punishment, and that it is in breach of its duty to ensure the population has sufficient food and healthcare as the occupying power, are very strong."

Israel is, of course, arguing that she is no longer an occupying power in Gaza and claims that she left the territories in 2005. But, as she continues to control the borders, the air space, and what goes in and out of the area, it is very hard to take Israel's claims seriously. She is clearly still in charge of what happens in the Gaza strip, as her blockade of that area makes abundantly clear.

And it is that blockade which many of us think violates international law.

Collective punishment is illegal and the blockade on Gaza is a form of collective punishment.

"The blockade of humanitarian relief, the destruction of civilian infrastructure, and preventing access to basic necessities such as food and fuel are prima facie war crimes," a group of leading QCs and academics, including Michael Mansfield QC and Sir Geoffrey Bindman, wrote in a letter to the Sunday Times.

One can only hope that Barack Obama takes international law more seriously than the man he is replacing, as we are all used to Israel - and the previous American administration - treating international law as if it were something which can be ignored.

If Obama recognises that serious violations have taken place, and if he decides not to veto any condemnation of Israel's behaviour, then Israel will have no choice other than to take these accusations seriously.

In the dying days of the Bush administration Israel acts as if world opinion can be safely ignored as she is guaranteed the backing of the world's superpower. The UN will only have teeth if Obama signals that he intends to make sure that it's findings are adhered to.

We won't know anything until Obama comes to power and actually starts to make decisions, but there are many of us who hope that he is going to, at last, act as an honest broker in this dispute rather than as the person holding Israel's coat whilst she violates international law and batters a people without an army, navy or air force.

I am sick of watching war crimes on my television, I am sick of hearing the pathetic justifications for what I am seeing, the attempt to pass the blame on to the people being bombed.

Ninety per cent of the targets attacked are civilian. Of nearly 900 confirmed dead, 32% are children. More than 40% of the 4,000 wounded are children, while medical centres and 13 ambulances have been destroyed.

And the stories coming out of Gaza are simply getting worse by the day:

At least three Palestinians in Gaza were shot dead yesterday after Israeli soldiers fired on a group of residents leaving their homes on orders from the military and waving white flags, according to testimony taken by the Israeli human rights group B'Tselem.

The Israelis, of course, denied this after "a preliminary investigation" but we are used to Israel issuing such denials only to later have to admit that they were true.

What is taking place in Gaza is simply a disgrace. But only Obama will be able to force Israel to take international law seriously. And only time will tell whether or not he is willing to do so.

Click title for full article.

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Israel admits: "No Hamas rockets were fired during ceasefire".

Mark Regev, in a rare moment of honesty, admits that Hamas honoured the ceasefire until the Israelis broke it.

Still Bush After All These Years.

The unmitigated failure is heading for the door and, as we have long become accustomed to, he does so without apology and without any understanding of the damage he has caused.

His final appearance before the White House press corps could not even muster a full house. The door into the White House briefing room - which will be bulging next week for the first briefing under Barack Obama's administration - opened to reveal a sombre-looking president who quickly switched on a smile for the cameras.

Bush, who is said to privately detest journalists, was ill-at-ease throughout, and at times emotional, introspective and melancholic.

He made a few jokes, often at his own expense, but he also revealed how much he has been hurt by the criticism that he was the worst president in recent US history. He admitted to some disappointments, but was generally unapologetic.

Most of the 48 minutes of what Bush described as the "ultimate exit interview" was spent trying to persuade his audience, both in the room and the public watching on television, that he did not deserve to be labelled the worst president in recent US history.

He thanked reporters, many of whom had followed him since he was on the campaign trail in 2000, even though sometimes he had not liked what they had written. Reviving one of his famous verbal stumbles, he said: "Sometimes you misunderestimated me."

He admitted there had been disappointments, and singled out Abu Ghraib, Iraq's non-existent weapons of mass destruction and his "mission accomplished" claim, only a month after the Iraq invasion. "I don't know if you want to call those mistakes, but things did not go according to plan," he said.

Although he said he did not believe in self-pity, he returned again and again to those who had opposed and ridiculed him: the journalists and political elite and the needless name-calling culture in Washington. He twice mentioned the antagonism from Europe, in particular the lack of support over the Iraq war from France and Germany, though he did not name those countries. Showing an unexpected level of bitterness, he warned Obama to expect people he regarded as friends to turn against him.

He expressed hope that history would prove kinder to him than his contemporaries had.

I don't know if he was the worst president ever, but he was - without doubt -the worst president in my lifetime. I don't expect ever to see such a hugely unqualified, incurious, and intellectually and morally bankrupt individual hold that office again in my lifetime.

Demonstrating just how much the hostility from Europe had irritated him, he screwed up his face when asked about it. "I strongly disagree with the assessment that our moral standing has been damaged," he said, while acknowledging that it might be the case among elites in Europe. People he had met in Africa, India and China did not share that judgment, Bush claimed.

He could easily have won popularity in Europe, he said, but had instead opted to do what he thought was right. "In certain quarters of Europe, you can be popular by blaming every Middle Eastern problem on Israel. Or you can be popular by joining the International Criminal Court. I guess I could have been popular by accepting Kyoto," he said.

Damn those pesky Europeans with their demands that international law should apply to Israel, or that there should even be such a thing as international law, and especially with their demands that a trifling little thing like global warming should ever be taken seriously.

Even as he exits he proves that he never, ever, got it. He has no counter argument, he simply finds Europeans annoying.

His legacy is presiding over the worst terrorist attack ever on US soil, entering into two unwinnable wars of choice in Afghanistan and Iraq, the catastrophe of Katrina and the possible collapse of the entire world financial system. And that's before we add extraordinary rendition, torture and the suspension of Habeas Corpus.

His verdict:

"We had fun."

Click title for full article.

Demands grow for Gaza war crimes investigation.

Nothing will ever come from this. The Americans will see to that. It is, nevertheless, unusual that the UN even consider the actions currently on the table.

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.

With the death toll from the 17-day Israeli assault on Gaza climbing above 900, pressure is increasing for an independent inquiry into specific incidents, such as the shelling of a UN school turned refugee centre where about 40 people died, as well as the question of whether the military tactics used by Israel systematically breached humanitarian law.

The UN's senior human rights body approved a resolution yesterday condemning the Israeli offensive for "massive violations of human rights". A senior UN source said the body's humanitarian agencies were compiling evidence of war crimes and passing it on to the "highest levels" to be used as seen fit.

I don't think that one can even pretend that the case could be made that Israel have sought to avoid civilian casualties in her recent conflict with the Palestinians. Indeed, the Israelis have placed the blame for civilian casualties on Hamas - for hiding amongst the civilian population - so she exonerated herself in her own mind before the indiscriminate attacks even began.

Having decided that Hamas are to blame for every civilian death has left Israel free to bomb at will, even going as far as to bomb a school housing refugees, and then claiming that gun fire was emanating from the school; only to later retract that claim.

This has been a truly disgusting spectacle. Watching a state unleash the full power of it's military might against a civilian population without an army, navy or air force.

And the attempts to place the blame for civilian casualties away from the people dropping the bombs has been cynical in the extreme.

Some human rights activists allege that the Israeli leadership gave an order to keep military casualties low no matter what cost to civilians. That strategy has directly contributed to one of the bloodiest Israeli assaults on the Palestinian territories, they say.

John Ging, head of the UN Palestinian refugee agency in Gaza, said: "It's about accountability [over] the issue of the appropriateness of the force used, the proportionality of the force used and the whole issue of duty of care of civilians.

We must never forget that this campaign is being fought by people seeking re-election, therefore they calculated that casualties amongst their own side were to be avoided at all costs, even if that meant an indiscriminate amount of Palestinian civilians were killed.

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.

If Barack Obama wants to restore world confidence in American leadership he would do well to begin with ending the American practice of vetoing any UN resolution which condemns Israel's behaviour.

Israel's recent behaviour, even by her own standards, has been appalling. Just imagine reading this about any other army in the world:

Israeli military actions prompted an unusual public rebuke from the International Red Cross after the army moved a Palestinian family into a building and shelled it, killing 30. The surviving children clung to the bodies of their dead mothers for four days while the army blocked rescuers from reaching the wounded.

Substitute Saddam or Ahmadinejad for the Israeli army and imagine how the US would be reacting to these undeniable atrocities.

Two leading Israeli human rights organisations have separately written to the country's attorney general demanding he investigate the allegations.

But critics remain sceptical that any such inquiry will take place, given that Israel has previously blocked similar attempts with the backing of the US.

Amnesty International says hitting residential streets with shells that send blast and shrapnel over a wide area constitutes "prima facie evidence of war crimes".

"There has been reckless and disproportionate and in some cases indiscriminate use of force," said Donatella Rovera, an Amnesty investigator in Israel. "There has been the use of weaponry that shouldn't be used in densely populated areas because it's known that it will cause civilian fatalities and casualties.

"They have extremely sophisticated missiles that can be guided to a moving car and they choose to use other weapons or decide to drop a bomb on a house knowing that there were women and children inside. These are very, very clear breaches of international law."

There have been "very clear breaches of international law", but only the most naive amongst us would ever believe that anything will ever be done about it.

The Israelis operate outside of international law, knowing that nothing will ever be done about it.

American subservience to Israel guarantees that. War crimes have been committed here and we all know that they will go unpunished.

Even within Israel itself there are calls for an examination of what has taken place here.

Israel's most prominent human rights organisation, B'Tselem, has written to the attorney general in Jerusalem, Meni Mazuz, asking him to investigate suspected crimes including how the military selects its targets and the killing of scores of policemen at a passing out parade.

"Many of the targets seem not to have been legitimate military targets as specified by international humanitarian law," said Sarit Michaeli of B'Tselem.

The most astonishing aspect of all of this for me is how we have all become inured to it. Israel kills Palestinian policemen at a passing out parade and no-one is outraged. Imagine what would happen were that to be replicated on the streets of New York. If someone were to kill hundreds of New York's finest as they stepped up to graduate.

There would, rightly, be outrage.

And yet, in this instance, there has been almost no reaction. Because one only has to attach the word "terrorist" to any enemy to make any action one takes admissible.

These are war crimes, and they have been committed because the Israelis know nothing will ever be done about them. And, make no mistake, they have been committed with American complicity. And that same complicity will ensure that they are never punished.

Click title for full article.

Monday, January 12, 2009

Obama on Investigating Bush Crimes: "Need to Look Forward."

Although he doesn't rule out investigations - and appears to be passing the baton to his Attorney General - it's hard listening to Obama talking of "looking forward" and not to conclude that he's going to pass on this.

However, the rest of the planet will not forgive or forget what the Bush regime engaged in: Torture.

Nor has Bush shown the slightest regret for his actions. Indeed, he recently argued that Obama must use the same techniques as he did:

Bush says two things here which are important. He claims that he checked the legality of his actions, which is simply laughable. What he actually did was engage John Yoo to tell him that these actions were legal, despite the fact that the US has previously prosecuted people for the very actions Bush indulged in.

The second important thing he says is that members of Congress were consulted. This more than anything else accounts for Pelosi and others scrambling to give immunity to the telecoms. There are people in the Democratic party who were consulted and, I suspect, are up to their eyeballs in this.

And that, as much as anything else, might be why Obama is reluctant to pursue this issue.

UPDATE:

Cheney chips in with his personal definition of torture; it's pulling people's toenails out. Drowning people simply doesn't meet the Cheney definition of torture.

It's astonishing to witness an American Vice President advocating torture on national television, whilst insisting that it's not what we think it is.

870 Dead in Gaza.

The Palestinian death toll now exceeds 870 and there is no sign that international pressure is going to stop Olmert from his killing spree.

Olmert said the war in Gaza, now in its third week, would continue and he spoke out defiantly against the growing international criticism of Israel's killing of hundreds of Palestinians, many civilians. A UN security council resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire late last week did nothing to halt the conflict and diplomacy has moved only haltingly since.

"No decision, present or future, will deny us our basic right to defend the residents of Israel," Olmert told a cabinet meeting in Jerusalem.

I suppose in his mind he has to keep going as he has set various standards for victory, neither of which has yet been achieved and, I suspect, neither of which will ever be achieved by what he is doing.

At first he was going to destroy or topple Hamas, then the aim of the war became stopping the firing of Palestinian rockets. And, as he employs Israeli reservists, one is left hearing him talk of goals being achieved whilst wondering just what goals he is talking about.

The rockets are still flying into Israel and there is no sign whatsoever that Olmert has destroyed Hamas.

The only outcome I can see after Israel's ill thought out attack is that a ceasefire is negotiated which lifts the siege on Gaza, the very condition which Israel refused to grant Hamas as the previous ceasefire ran out. It's hard not to see Hamas declaring that as a victory.

And there's worse news for Olmert and Livni. Barack Obama has promised to restore America's reputation in the world and he cannot be unaware that, even in the city's of some of his best allies, George Bush's image is being burned alongside Israeli flags as outrage against Olmert's actions turn to violence.

Israel's assault is being seen - rightly - as happening because George Bush has given the green light.

Yesterday, Obama finally broke his silence on this conflict:

The US president-elect, Barack Obama, described the death of civilians in the conflict as heartbreaking after being asked if his silence over the crisis could be interpreted as callousness.

"When you see civilians, whether Palestinian or Israeli, harmed, it's heartbreaking. Obviously what that does, it makes me much more determined to try and break a deadlock that has been going on for decades," he said on ABC television.

He vowed to act quickly after his inauguration to position the US as a trusted third party that could act as an interlocutor between the Israelis and Palestinians.

A determined Obama would have to give up the pro-Israeli bias which haunted both the Bush and Clinton administrations and finally engage the US in this dispute as an honest broker.

If Obama is serious about restoring America's image then this is the area in which most work needs to be done.

And if the worldwide outrage at Israel's actions inspires Obama to take a much fairer stance on this dispute than either of his predecessors, then Olmert and Livni may very well regret that they didn't simply lift the siege rather than indulge in this orgy of violence.

Click title for full article.

Sunday, January 11, 2009

Bill Moyers on Mideast Violence.

Moyers is eloquent and on the money. As is the article by Aaron David Miller which he references:

Don't get me wrong. Barack Obama—as every other U.S. president before him—will protect the special relationship with Israel. But the days of America's exclusive ties to Israel may be coming to an end. Despite efforts to sound reassuring during the campaign, the new administration will have to be tough, much tougher than either Bill Clinton or George W. Bush were, if it's serious about Arab-Israeli peacemaking.

The departure point for a viable peace deal—either with Syria or the Palestinians—must not be based purely on what the political traffic in Israel will bear, but on the requirements of all sides.

One of the reasons I supported Obama was because he made noises which led me to believe he understood that this conflict cannot be ended until the US stop following the Likud party line.

Israel will not enter any peace deal willingly. She will have to be pressured to accept a state of Palestine. Bush tried the "softly, softly" pro-Israeli approach and they simply saw out his time in office as they have seen off other peace makers in the past.

Obama has to change the way the US address this conflict.

Obama will have to maintain his independence and tactical flexibility to play the mediator's role. This means not road testing everything with Israel first before previewing it to the other side, a practice we followed scrupulously during the Clinton and Bush 43 years. America must also not agree to every idea proposed by an Israeli prime minister.

Obama must push for peace, not for what the Israelis find acceptable.

Read Aaron David Miller's article here.

Obama Will Put His Ego Aside And Listen To New Ideas.

I heard Obama make these comments yesterday and I had the exact same reaction as Cenk. When he states that, "This is not an intellectual exercise and there is no pride of authorship", he really is breaking down the way Washington has always worked.

He wants what works, and he doesn't care who brings it to him.

That's change.

Lord Blair of Kut al-Amara speaks on Gaza.

Dear God, he's popped up like some ugly blast from the past to remind us that there is never going to be, "a long term solution to this... until there is unity on the Palestinian side." That's Blair-speak for Hamas must be removed from the process.

For, as Blair makes clear, Hamas can only be included in the process if they accept Israel's "right to exist."

And that's a phrase the Israelis insist upon because they know Hamas will never be able to accept it.

Welcome to Hell: Gaza's unending misery.

Considering the fact that Gaza is one of the most densely populated areas on Earth - and is a prison from which the Israelis have made sure there is no escape by sealing off the borders, - one has to wonder what is behind this message sent from the IDF to the occupied population?

The tens of thousands of leaflets, dropped on parts of Gaza City, the northern Gaza town of Beit Lahiya and the south of the territory, warned residents: "The Israeli Defence Force will soon escalate its operations against tunnels, weapons warehouses, terrorist infrastructure and terrorists all over the Gaza Strip. To keep yourself and your families safe, you are ordered not to be close to terrorists, weapons warehouses and the places where the terrorists operate."

The implication of this is that, should the Israelis kill innocents, please remember that it is your own fault as you were warned "not to be close to terrorists".

The Palestinian death toll rose above 820, including about 235 children and young people.

No doubt those 235 children were hanging around "close to terrorists". But, of course, we know that some of them were actually sheltering in UN compounds in schools when they were killed.

And the reason for all this death and destruction?

Support for his Labour party has risen dramatically ahead of next month's general election because of Barak's handling of the conflict, but it could slump again if there are a significant number of Israeli casualties or the army pulls out without having stopped Hamas rockets.

A family of nine people were amongst the latest casualties.

In the day's bloodiest incident, an Israeli tank shell landed outside a home in the northern Gaza town of Jabaliya, killing nine people as they sat in their garden. They were all from the same clan, and, said health administrator Adham Hakim, their bodies were so mangled they were brought to hospital in the boot of a civilian car. Two were women and two were children.

I know that Israel's supporters reject "the numbers game", and they do so with very good cause:

In the perversely disproportionate mathematics of this conflict, 13 Israelis have been killed – four of them by militant rockets. According to the Hamas-run Palestinian health ministry, the overall death toll now exceeds 800, more than a third of them children. The United Nations corroborates this, a report two days ago from the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs putting the number of children killed at 265. The Israelis respond that Hamas often uses schools and homes, and therefore are the ones bringing down fire on Gaza's children. Last week, an Israeli attack outside a UN school killed nearly 40 people. Israel and Palestinian witnesses said militants carried out an attack from the area moments earlier. But it is Israeli fire, Israeli weapons and Israeli military that do the aiming – and Palestinian women and children being killed at a rate that is sickening world opinion, if not yet world leaders.

The notion that Israel can portray the civilian death toll as the fault of Hamas is an obscenity. Dropping silly offensive notes which attempt to blame people for their own deaths because they might be "close to terrorists" - in one of the most densely populated regions on the globe - does not remove Israel's responsibility for the gross civilian death count.

Nor are people only in danger from Israeli firepower:

Death from the skies is not the only threat facing Gaza's children. Medical facilities are stretched almost to breaking point, and no one can vouch for this better than Dr Al-Jarou. He is at the Shifa, Gaza's biggest hospital, where about 70 patients are in intensive care, among them his daughter Yasmine. They cling to life through four generators working round the clock at a hospital which has been without power for the past seven days because Gaza's sole power plant has stopped working due to lack of fuel. "How terrible it would be," Dr Hassan Khalaf, the hospital's director, said, "if our patients survive attacks – and then die because of a lack of electricity."

And all of this is occurring after a UN resolution demanding a ceasefire. But Hamas are insisting that the Israelis stop their attempt to starve the Palestinians into submission, which the Israelis are loathe to do.

Israel says any ceasefire must include assurances that Hamas will halt attacks and end the smuggling of weapons into Gaza through the porous Egyptian border. Hamas has said it won't accept any ceasefire deal that does not include the full opening of Gaza's border crossings. The UN resolution emphasised the need to open all crossings, which Israel and Egypt have kept sealed since Hamas militants seized control of the territory 18 months ago. Israeli leaders oppose that step because it would allow Hamas to strengthen its hold on Gaza.

I hardly need remind anyone that Hamas were the democratically elected representatives of the Palestinian people.

At a time when Bush is telling us of the need to support the exportation of democracy to the Middle East, we are witnessing this carnage because the US, Europe and Israel refused to accept the decision which the Palestinians made in free and fair elections.

It's enough to make you weep.

Click title for full article.

Saturday, January 10, 2009

McCain: GOP Must Work With Obama.

John McCain has resumed his role as the Maverick of the GOP with a Fox News interview that is bound to enrage the wingnuts:

"There are not many times in history," he said, "that a president has come to office with as many challenges as the president-elect does and that's incumbent then upon all of us to try and do all we can to work with him."

Appearing on Fox News for one of the few times since losing the election, McCain offered a supportive assessments of the president-elect's agenda. He acknowledged the need to pass a stimulus, but said he would reserve judgment until he saw the final package.

"All I can say to you is that I want to see the stimulus package I want to see what it does, I want to see what kind of provision it has in it," he told Neil Cavuto. "I think the president-elect is going to marshal public opinion. Right now his approval ratings and hopes of the American people are very high," he later added.

He also called Obama's national security team "excellent," and saved special praise for CIA Director nominee Leon Panetta.

"I think that Leon Panetta is highly qualified, and in all due respect I think it is not bad from time to time to have somebody from outside of the intelligence community but with strong managerial experience as Chief of Staff of the White House, to be head of one of these agencies. I think there is some good balance there."

Bill O'Reilly and others have already fulminated over the appointment of Panetta, claiming that America is in danger thanks to his appointment. Bill's greatest complaint appears to be that, by appointing Panetta, Obama is promising that the US will stop the practice of torture.

It seems astonishing that a commentator would publicly argue that torture is necessary, but we are used to such rantings from O'Reilly.

Now it seems that even McCain can't remain on board as the Republican juggernaut trundles even further towards the insane radical right.

And there are few more insane that Ann Coulter:

"I don't think the Republicans should be taking advice from John McCain," Coulter said. "I don't really know much about what is going on right now because this came out Tuesday, so I don't know the details of the stimulus plan. But I think it is pretty clear from the last election the voters want Republicans to be Republicans."

Get that? Ann's saying that the Republicans lost the last election because they are not right wing enough. I argued shortly after the election that they would go down this route, and they have not disappointed.

Click title for full article.

Hard Not To Be Angry With Israel.

The Democratic party might still be falling over itself to proclaim every Israeli action legal and understandable, but the American left wing in general is finding Israel's recent actions "indefensible" to quote Cenk Uygur.

I remember the day when very few US left wingers would ever speak out against Israel, but this recent assault seems to have been a PR disaster for the Israelis.

Cenk seems horrified that punishing the Palestinians might be the point of Israel's actions. Perhaps he has not been following the statements of Dov Weisglass, an adviser to Ehud Olmert:

'The idea is to put the Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger.'

Starving the Palestinians has actually been official Israeli policy for more than eighteen months now.

Cenk then gives his reaction to Jimmy Carter's recent article in The Washington Post and admits, "Had you told me this stuff two weeks ago, I wouldn't have believed it."

Carter: We knew that the 1.5 million inhabitants of Gaza were being starved, as the U.N. special rapporteur on the right to food had found that acute malnutrition in Gaza was on the same scale as in the poorest nations in the southern Sahara, with more than half of all Palestinian families eating only one meal a day.

Cenk concludes he has been naive in the way he has viewed this dispute up until now. When left wing American commentators start talking in this way, it is safe to say that this is a PR disaster on an unprecedented scale for the Israelis.

Will Obama Go After Bush & Cheney For Torture?

John Dean makes the point that the issue of the US torturing prisoners is not simply going to go away, no matter how much even the Obama administration might want it to. If the US doesn't take action then other country's will and that would be embarrassing for a man who claims that he is going to restore America's standing in the world.

Joe the Plumber Heads for Israel.

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Burger at 1600

Barack Obama Interview
John McCain Interview

Sarah Palin Video
Funny Election Video

Jon Stewart on the absurdity of Joe the Plumber being asked to cover the Israel/Palestine dispute.

Stewart: Yes your interviewing there will be very helpful. Also while you're over there in Gaza they haven't had water for ten days. So you know what they could actually use. A PLUMBER!!

McCain has a lot to answer for.

UN human rights chief accuses Israel of war crimes.

International law is very powerful when people like Milosovic or Saddam Hussein are found to have breached it. However, it's simply ignored if the transgressor is George Bush or one of America's allies. It's the ultimate victor's justice as it currently operates, which is why the United Nations' most senior human rights official, Navi Pillay, is very brave to state that he thinks Israel may have committed war crimes during the recent conflict with Hamas, as he will only be dismissed as anti-Semetic, he certainly won't see the perpetrators brought to anything resembling justice.

He has called for "credible, independent and transparent" investigations into possible violations of international law, which we all know - like the proposed investigation into what took place in Jenin - Israel will simply refuse to comply with.

Pillay has singled out an incident this week in Zeitoun, south-east of Gaza City, where up to 30 Palestinians in one house were killed by Israeli shelling.

The IDF apparently evacuated about 100 Palestinians to a house in Zeitoun for their safety, about half of whom were children. The IDF later shelled the house and refused to allow medical teams to enter the area to evacuate the wounded.

Pillay, a former international criminal court judge from South Africa, told the BBC the incident "appears to have all the elements of war crimes".
It was "one of the gravest incidents" since Israel's offensive began two weeks ago, the UN office for the co-ordination of humanitarian affairs said yesterday.

"There is an international obligation on the part of soldiers in their position to protect civilians, not to kill civilians indiscriminately in the first place, and when they do, to make sure that they help the wounded," Pillay told Reuters. "In this particular case these children were helpless and the soldiers were close by," she added.

An Israeli military spokeswoman, Avital Leibovich, said the incident was still being examined. "We don't warn people to go to other buildings, this is not something we do," she said. "We don't know this case, we don't know that we attacked it."

Among the dead were nine members of the Samouni family; a picture of three of the family's children in blood-stained clothing laid on a morgue floor and in front of their grieving father was shown in the Guardian on Tuesday. The father, Wael Samouni, said dozens of people had been sheltering in the house after Israeli troops ordered them and neighbours to stay inside.
"Those who survived, and were able, walked two kilometres to Salah Ed Din road before being transported to the hospital in civilian vehicles," the UN said.
Rescuers from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the Palestinian Red Crescent Society said they were able to reach the area on Wednesday only after being allowed safe passage by Israel.
The ICRC issued a statement on the incident yesterday, accusing the Israeli military of "unacceptable" delays in allowing medics safe access to injured Gazans.

But no matter what took place here, the very fact that this incident involves an American ally means that no action will ever be taken.

It will be the same as when Olmert dropped cluster bombs into Lebanon during the final days of that conflict, when everyone knew a peace deal was coming, an act which horrified even some commanders in the IDF:

"What we did was insane and monstrous, we covered entire towns in cluster bombs," the head of an IDF rocket unit in Lebanon said regarding the use of cluster bombs and phosphorous shells during the war.

Quoting his battalion commander, the rocket unit head stated that the IDF fired around 1,800 cluster bombs, containing over 1.2 million cluster bomblets.

In addition, soldiers in IDF artillery units testified that the army used phosphorous shells during the war, widely forbidden by international law. According to their claims, the vast majority of said explosive ordinance was fired in the final 10 days of the war.

Olmert was not even rebuked for that act. So, Pillay is brave to point out these most recent transgressions, but I have no faith that any effective investigation will ever be carried out, and am positive that no-one will ever be punished.

Related Articles:

Massacre of a family seeking sanctuary.

UPDATE:

Ron Paul talks great sense by reminding us that Israel actually helped to form Hamas, the group that they now tell us they can't deal with.

Click title for full article.

Friday, January 09, 2009

President-elect Obama Economic Recovery Plan - Speech Highlights.

Reversing the Reaganite logic that government is the source of all problems, Obama announces that, "only government can provide the short term boost necessary to life us from a recession this deep and severe".

It's long overdue that someone boldly stated this. The Republican mantra which states that the government is the problem is something which ignores the fact that there are times of national emergency when only the government have the levers of power necessary to take action. Katrina was a case in point as is the current economic disaster.

US abstains as UN security council backs Israel-Gaza ceasefire resolution.

An apt reminder of how much a new US approach to the Israel/Palestine problem is desperately needed came yesterday when the UN passed a resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire in the region; and the US abstained.

This is so typical of the way the Bush administration approached this conflict, wary at all times of ever appearing even remotely critical of the Israelis, no matter how shocked the rest of the planet has been by any Israeli action.

The vote was passed by 14 votes to nil, though the US, represented by secretary of state Condolleeza Rice, abstained. It came after three days of intense Arab pressure at the UN's headquarters in New York and in the face of stiff Israeli opposition.
The resolution, largely drafted by the UK, "stresses and calls for an immediate, durable and fully respected ceasefire, leading to the full withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza". The clause "calls for" was added to the original draft after Arab delegations demanded the wording to be strengthened.
David Miliband, foreign secretary, said consensus had been reached as a result of the "gravity of what has happened in the Middle East on the ground".
After the security council vote, he said: "We are all very conscious that peace is made on the ground while resolutions are written in the United Nations. Our job here is to support the efforts for peace on the ground and to help turn the good words on paper into changes on the ground that are desperately needed."
When discussions first began at the UN last Saturday, Washington blocked even a press statement, the weakest form of UN communique.

What stuns me is that this is being reported in the Guardian as the Bush administration wanting "to end on a positive note" and wanting to show that they were willing "to incur the displeasure of the Israeli government."

By abstaining? It really says a lot about how little the Bush administration were willing to deal fairly with this conflict that refusing to veto a resolution calling for a ceasefire - and deciding instead to abstain - is seen as something which might, "incur the displeasure of the Israeli government" and is, therefore, an act of bravery on their part which we are supposed to applaud.

The Obama camp are hinting that he is willing "to adopt a policy that is tougher, fairer and smarter than both of his predecessors." When one looks at what the Bush administration thinks of as them being "tough" with the Israelis, Obama's change of policy is long overdue.

Click title for full article.

Obama camp 'prepared to talk to Hamas'.

The Obama camp have signaled that they are prepared to end the stupidity of the Bush style of non-negotiation with Hamas and have hinted that they are prepared to have some sort of negotiation with the people who the Palestinians have elected as their democratic representatives.

The incoming Obama administration is prepared to abandon George Bush's doctrine of isolating Hamas by establishing a channel to the Islamist organisation, sources close to the transition team say.

The move to open contacts with Hamas, which could be initiated through the US intelligence services, would represent a definitive break with the Bush presidency's ostracising of the group. The state department has designated Hamas a terrorist organisation, and in 2006 Congress passed a law banning US financial aid to the group.

The Guardian has spoken to three people with knowledge of the discussions in the Obama camp. There is no talk of Obama approving direct diplomatic negotiations with Hamas early on, but he is being urged by advisers to initiate low-level or clandestine approaches, and there is growing recognition in Washington that the policy of ostracising Hamas is counter-productive. A tested course would be to start contacts through Hamas and the US intelligence services, similar to the secret process through which the US engaged with the PLO in the 1970s. Israel did not become aware of the contacts until much later.

The Bush doctrine of never negotiating with people you disagreed with, or only agreeing to negotiate - as in the case of North Korea and Iran - once your adversary had agreed to every humiliating term you had laid down in advance, has been an abysmal failure.

This is a brilliant start to Obama's approach to the Middle East in general and the Israeli/Palestine problem in particular. As John Major showed in his dealings with the IRA, which eventually resulted in Blair's historic peace deal, it is only by talking to people that one can actually make the bombs stop.

The mantra that one "never negotiates with terrorists", made popular by Thatcher in the eighties, was simply a dumb policy, as the Bush administration have amply reminded us during eight years in which diplomacy became a dirty word and problems stagnated and festered with no dialogue of any kind taking place.

Obama promised change and this is certainly a significant one.

Bush and Cheney's policy of non-negotiation led nowhere. It's time to try something new.

"Secret envoys, multilateral six-party talk-like approaches. The total isolation of Hamas that we promulgated under Bush is going to end," said Steve Clemons, the director of the American Strategy Programme at the New America Foundation. "You could do something through the Europeans. You could invent a structure that is multilateral. It is going to be hard for the neocons to swallow," he said. "I think it is going to happen."

But one Middle East expert close to the transition team said: "It is highly unlikely that they will be public about it."

The two weeks since Israel began its military campaign against Gaza have heightened anticipation about how Obama intends to deal with the Middle East. He adopted a strongly pro-Israel position during the election campaign, as did his erstwhile opponent and choice for secretary of state, Hillary Clinton. But it is widely thought Obama would adopt a more even-handed approach once he is president.

Obama could do wonders if he reverses the Bush administrations habit of acting as if the US is practically a client state of Israel, there to rubber stamp and give approval to every Israeli action no matter how much the rest of the planet objects.

However, if yesterday's non binding resolution in the US Senate is any indication, he'll have as much trouble with his own side as he will with the Republicans if he tries to adopt an even handed approach to this situation.

But that's the only way he is going to have any success here. The stupid and immoral Bush mantra of constantly siding with the occupier and attacking the occupied people for their reaction to the occupation has resulted in abject failure.

His main priority now, in the remaining days before his inauguration, is to ensure the crisis does not rob him of the chance to set his own foreign policy agenda, rather than merely react to events.

"We will be perceived to be weak and feckless if we are perceived to be on the margins, unable to persuade the Israelis, unable to work with the international community to end this," said Aaron David Miller, a former state department adviser on the Middle East.

"Unless he is prepared to adopt a policy that is tougher, fairer and smarter than both of his predecessors you might as well hang a closed-for-the-season sign on any chance of America playing an effective role in defusing the current crisis or the broader crisis," he said.

A policy that is "tougher, fairer and smarter than both of his predecessors" is exactly what is needed. I, for one, am simply delighted that the Obama camp are sending out these signals. This is exactly what I hoped he would do.

Click title for full article.

Rafah razed.

Every time I think I can't be more shocked, the Israelis pull it off. Here we see the suburbs of Rafah razed to the ground.

Wanton destruction is a war crime. And this looks very much like wanton destruction to me. Are they seriously going to argue that they thought Hamas were operating in every single one of these houses?

It's beyond disgraceful.

Thursday, January 08, 2009

Why Some Democrats Are Upset Over Obama's CIA Pick.

I love Cenk's take on this.

Israel admits rocket fire was not from within school.

I spoke yesterday about my astonishment at Mark Regev's appearance on Newsnight and the shameful lack of any apology for Israel bombing a UN school. At the time Regev was claiming that rocket fire was emanating from the school, a claim which the UN denied.

Israel have now admitted that there was, in fact, no rocket fire coming from the school.

Israel told foreign diplomats Wednesday that Palestinian militants had not fired rockets from within a United Nations' school, a UN official said. Israeli military officials said on Tuesday that militants had fired rockets from within the school, and that attack provoked Israeli artillery fire which landed near the school and killed more than 40 Palestinians in the Jabalia refugee camp, many of whom were seeking refuge from fighting.

"The Israeli army is briefing diplomats privately that the militant fire from Jablia yesterday did not come from inside the UNRWA school compound, but from the outside," said Chris Gunness, a spokesman for the UN Relief Works Agency, which aids Palestinian refugees.

Gunness said the claim was a "major allegation against a neutral UN development agency" which "within a day turns out to be completely baseless."

UNRWA's Gaza director, John Ging, had said earlier that to the best of his knowledge no rockets were fired from within the school.

Human Rights Watch are calling for a full UN investigation into the incident.

I find it staggering that Regev could have immediately appeared on TV insisting that rocket fire emanated from the school only for Israel to withdraw this claim so soon afterwards.

But this is not the first time Israel have behaved in such a manner. Robert Fisk laid out Israel's propensity to lie after such outrages in the Independent the other day:

The Sabra and Chatila massacre was committed by Israel's right-wing Lebanese Phalangist allies while Israeli troops, as Israel's own commission of inquiry revealed, watched for 48 hours and did nothing. When Israel was blamed, Menachem Begin's government accused the world of a blood libel. After Israeli artillery had fired shells into the UN base at Qana in 1996, the Israelis claimed that Hizbollah gunmen were also sheltering in the base. It was a lie. The more than 1,000 dead of 2006 – a war started when Hizbollah captured two Israeli soldiers on the border – were simply dismissed as the responsibility of the Hizbollah. Israel claimed the bodies of children killed in a second Qana massacre may have been taken from a graveyard. It was another lie. The Marwahin massacre was never excused. The people of the village were ordered to flee, obeyed Israeli orders and were then attacked by an Israeli gunship. The refugees took their children and stood them around the truck in which they were travelling so that Israeli pilots would see they were innocents. Then the Israeli helicopter mowed them down at close range. Only two survived, by playing dead. Israel didn't even apologise.
Twelve years earlier, another Israeli helicopter attacked an ambulance carrying civilians from a neighbouring village – again after they were ordered to leave by Israel – and killed three children and two women. The Israelis claimed that a Hizbollah fighter was in the ambulance. It was untrue. I covered all these atrocities, I investigated them all, talked to the survivors. So did a number of my colleagues. Our fate, of course, was that most slanderous of libels: we were accused of being anti-Semitic.

And now, yet again, we find that what Regev was saying as he refused to apologise for a disgraceful atrocity was completely untrue.

The school attack appears to have been too much for even the US to defend with movement taking place, at long last, at the UN.

Miliband spoke the most sense when he called the situation in Gaza "an indictment of our collective failure [...] to bring about the two state solution that offers the only hope of security and justice for Israelis and Palestinians alike."

Barack Obama has promised to fully engage with the Israel/Palestine problem as soon as he is inaugurated which, after the disgraceful inaction of the Bush years, will be long overdue.

Click title for full article.

UPDATE:

Just when you think it can't get any more appalling, we are hit with this:

The Red Cross has accused Israel of failing to fulfil its obligation to help wounded civilians in Gaza.

ICRC staff found four weak and scared children beside their mothers' bodies in houses hit by shelling in Zeitoun.

The Israeli military has not yet responded to the accusation, but said it worked closely with aid groups so that civilians could get assistance.

And to cap it all:

Meanwhile the UN said it was suspending aid operations in Gaza because of the danger to staff from Israeli attacks.

"We have suspended our operations in Gaza until the Israeli authorities can guarantee our safety and security," said Chris Gunness, spokesman for the United Nations relief agency Unwra.

"Our installations have been hit, our workers have been killed in spite of the fact that the Israeli authorities have the co-ordinates of our facilities and that all our movements are co-ordinated with the Israeli army.

"It is with great regret that Unwra has been forced to make this difficult decision."

It really is like their army is utterly out of control. I mean it's not as if the Red Cross and Unwra are unused to war zones.

Kucinich: U.S. Weapons Used Illegally To Kill Children.

Thank God people like Kucinich are telling the truth, even if they are only given one minute with which to state it.

Gaza conflict fuelling anger in UK, Muslims warn Brown.

Gordon Brown is to be warned today that he should distance himself from Bush's White House and their deluded stance on what is taking place between Israel and the Gaza Strip as Britain's Muslim community's are reaching "acute levels of intensity" that could have an effect on national security because of Israel's actions.

In a letter to the prime minister, representatives of Muslim organisations will say the Israeli government's use of "disproportionate force" to combat threats to its security has "revived extremist groups" and "empowered their message of violence and perennial conflict".

The letter, a copy of which can be read on the Guardian's Comment is Free website, also says that the "current, partisan and simplified narrative" emanating from the White House is of "serious and direct harm" to relations between the UK, North America and Arab countries.

I think he should distance himself from the White House simply because what they are saying is so far removed from reality. The letter speaks of a "partisan and simplified narrative" which is a polite way of saying that we are being sold a lie.

They say it is imperative for the UK to distance itself from the Bush government. The letter goes on: "We urge you to make concerted and successful efforts to convince the US administration of the dangers of its approach and to ensure the incoming Obama administration forges a more enlightened direction. We also believe the UK - bilaterally and as part of the EU - has an important role to demonstrate to Israel that the threshold of acceptable behaviour has been perilously transgressed."

The letter adds: "As you are aware, the anger within UK Muslim communities has reached acute levels of intensity. The Israeli government's use of disproportionate force ... has revived extremist groups and empowered their message of violence and perennial conflict. For Muslims in the UK and abroad, we run the risk of potentially creating a loss of faith in the political process."

In other words Israel's actions are coming dangerously close to inciting terrorist acts within the UK from the Muslim community.

And Brown's traditional stance of parroting whatever nonsense the US might spout on this conflict will only further exacerbate anger within that community.

Israel are, of course, seeking to portray their actions in Gaza as part of George Bush's "war on terror" but the message from the Muslim community is that such action may actually be encouraging terrorism.

Their intervention follows a meeting on Tuesday between Bill Rammell, foreign and commonwealth affairs minister, and 30 people drawn from Muslim organisations such as the Muslim Council of Britain and the Islamic Society of Britain.

In what was said to be a testy meeting, representatives told Rammell the government's position on Gaza could provoke UK terrorist attacks. One of those present was Dr Hany el-Banna, youth worker and co-founder and president of the charity Islamic Relief.

He told the Guardian: "We are all working tirelessly to try and cool them down. I am telling them to change and bring something positive, but they see these images and they trigger extremist thoughts in the simplest individuals. Many millions of people will see these images in the media, what do you think the affect will be?

"The government is responsible for the country and its foreign policy. I don't want something to happen here."

This has been the problem with George Bush's entire "war on terror"; to what degree does it encourage the very thing which it sets out to defeat?

Tony Blair once said that nothing would do more to win the "war on terror" than ensuring a fair settlement between the Israelis and the Palestinians as that dispute is the one which causes most anger amongst the Muslim community.

But the US under Bush have been relentlessly pro-Israeli, ignoring the basic injustice of the Israeli occupation and constant land grabbing in Palestine.

This problem will never be sorted until a peace deal is reached which accords with UN resolution 242.

So Brown is not being warned of anything that we don't already know. Every time I read of this recent Israeli invasion I am flabbergasted that all history is stripped from most reporting. We are asked to believe that Israel is reacting to recent rocket fire from Gaza and are asked to ignore what might be encouraging such rocket fire.

We are supposed to forget a brutal forty year occupation and the most recent eighteen month siege of the people of Gaza and pretend that history began when the first Gazan rocket landed in Israel.

Another participant in the discussion, Khurshid Drabu, said there was widespread concern about radicalisation. "What we are looking for is equality of treatment when international law is breached. When a Muslim country does that the weight of the world is on them, why does Israel have such impunity?"

The only answer ever given to that question is that Israel is an ally of the US, as if international law is somehow malleable when it comes to the US and her allies. It's simply not a good enough answer.

Unfairness causes anger, and what we are witnessing is unspeakably unfair.

Click title for full article.

Wednesday, January 07, 2009

Torturing Democracy.

This is the trailer for a new documentary on the torture policies of the Bush administration. You can watch the whole thing here.

UPDATE:

I really do strongly recommend that readers click on the link and watch the whole thing. The level of lawlessness is breathtaking. It made me so angry to think that the US has been reduced by Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld to betray it's ideals so completely.

This is the description of one prisoners treatment:

NARRATOR: Now, his interrogations would intensify. An hourly log – leaked from Guantanamo - narrates the harsh details.

He is forced to wear a woman’s bra. A thong is draped over his head – sexually taunting and humiliating – a Muslim man.

A leash is tied around his neck.

1115: Began teaching the detainee lessons such as stay, come, and bark to elevate his social status up to that of a dog. Detainee became very agitated.

1300: Dog tricks continued and detainee stated he should be treated like a man.

It makes me think of the pictures of Lynndie England with the prisoner on a dog leash and Bush's pathetic claim to be outraged by Abu Ghraib and the vile pictures which emanated from that place. It infuriates me to think of Bush's claim that this was the work of "a few bad apples". It was not. It was clearly official policy.

Bush, Rumsfeld and Cheney should go to jail for what they have done. But, as the documentary clearly shows, the Democrats always roll over and play dead whenever principle is at stake.

Coulter: Presidential assassins are Obama's base.

Ann Coulter has managed to give a new title to the one theme which she espouses and has produced yet another of her tomes.

Of course, television executives invite her on hoping that she will make the kind of stupid, outrageous comments that she always obliges them with.

Here she states that presidential assassins are always, "anarchists, communists, liberals, [..] some form of basically Obama's base."

And, as proof that Bush is at greater risk of being assassinated than Obama, she brings up the "assault" which occurred two weeks ago, omitting that this latest assassination attempt was carried out with a shoe.

She then embarks on an impassioned defence of the real victims in American society; George Bush, Joe McCarthy and Tom Delay.

This woman is utterly unhinged.

The Young Turks: The Hypocrisy of Israel and America Knows No Bounds.

The fact that people like Cenk Uygur share my sense of outrage at what is happening at the moment is one of the few things which keeps me sane. As he says, the double standards being employed here are breathtaking.