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Alarm Spreads Over Use of Lethal New Weapons
GAZA CITY - Eighteen-year-old Mona Al-Ashkar says she did not immediately know the first explosion at the United Nations (UN) school in Beit Lahiya had blown her left leg off. There was smoke, then chaos, then the pain and disbelief set in once she realized it was gone - completely severed by the weapon that hit her.
Medics wheel a wounded Palestinian youth into al-Shifa hospital following an Israeli military strike in Gaza City. Israel is responsible for "large and indiscriminate human atrocities" in Gaza, and the world medical establishment is a silent accomplice in the bloodshed, The Lancet charged on Wednesday. (AFP/Mehdi Fedouach) Mona is one of the many patients among the 5,500 injured that have international and Palestinian doctors baffled by the type of weaponry used in the Israeli operation. High-profile human rights organizations like Amnesty International are accusing Israel of war crimes.
Mona's doctors at Gaza City's Al-Shifa hospital found no shrapnel in her leg, and it looked as though it had been "sliced right off with a knife."
"We are not sure exactly what type of weapon can manage to do that immediately and so cleanly," said Dr. Sobhi Skaik, consultant surgeon general at Al-Shifa hospital. "What is happening is frightening. It's possible the Israeli army was using Gaza to experiment militarily."
Both international organizations and human rights groups, including the UN, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, have condemned Israel's use of unconventional weapons in civilian areas of the Gaza Strip.
Amnesty International's chief researcher for Israel and the Palestinian Territories, Donatella Rovera, told IPS in Beit Lahiya that Israel's use of white phosphorus and other "area weapons" on civilian populations amounted to war crimes.
"The kind of weapons used and the manner in which they were used indicates prima facie evidence of war crimes," she said.
Israel announced Wednesday it would be launching its own probe into reported use of white phosphorus, but has so far refused to comment further.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN's nuclear watchdog, said it would look into a claim made by the ambassadors of a number of Arab nations that Israel used depleted uranium in its recent attacks on Gaza.
Local doctors say a number of both widespread and unusual injuries may indicate that new types of weapons were used on the Gaza population during the war. Health officials are seeing wounds they have never seen before, or at least not on such a massive scale.
"There has been a significant loss of life here in Gaza for reasons that are unexplainable medically," said Dr. Skaik.
Mona's injury is characteristic of Dense Inert Metal Explosives (DIME). DIMEs are munitions that, packed with tungsten powder, produce an intense explosion at about the level of the knee, with signs of severe heat at the point of amputation.
"If you ask a patient how it happened, how their leg was removed, they won't know," Dr. Skaik said. "They'll say that a rocket or missile exploded and took only their lower limbs off."
Once in the body, tungsten is both difficult to detect and extremely carcinogenic, and can produce an aggressive form of cancer, according to both military experts.
Dr. Skaik says the Al-Shifa hospital alone has seen between 100 to 150 patients with this type of injury. Over 50 patients at Al-Shifa had two or more limbs severed, he says.
But because Gaza's hospitals are so poorly equipped, it has been nearly impossible so far to test properly for the substances and count accurately how many wounded Palestinians may have been hit with this weapon.
The Norwegian doctor Mads Gilbert who worked at Al-Shifa hospital during the siege confirmed to journalists that the injuries were aligned with those produced by DIME explosives.
Human rights groups say Israel used the weapon for the first time in Lebanon in 2006.
What is worrying health officials even more, however, is that some of the patients' organs are being ruptured with little or no sign of a shrapnel entry point.
This is something they have never seen before, they say, and also something they do not know how to treat.
"Normal shrapnel has a clear path, with both an entry and an exit point," said Dr. Mohamed Al-Ron, another surgeon at Al-Shifa hospital.
"But someone's entire abdomen will be ripped open, and only after searching will we find a miniscule hole in the skin. Then we will find small black dots all over the organ, but we don't know what they are."
It is an indication, he continued, that whatever is entering the body is exploding and doing the damage once it is inside. Multiple organs will fail, and will continue to fail even after surgery removes any shrapnel.
"We are consulting with international colleagues, and they are confirming that there is something unusual going on with these cases," said Dr. Skaik.
"We have seen plenty of nails, of metal shrapnel and foreign metallic parts, but there was never violence of this character or something that continued to damage even after the parts of the weapon were removed. What is being intentionally created is a population of handicapped people."
Some of the injuries, including multiple organ failure, mutilation and severed limbs, are so debilitating that Dr. Karim Hosni, an Egyptian doctor volunteering at the Al-Naser hospital in Khan Younis, says he wishes he could just end his patients' misery.
"Sometimes I wish my patients would just die," he said. "Their injuries are so horrifying, that I know they will now have to lead terrible and painful lives."
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65 Comments so far
Show AllStates are the biggest murderers, with the best, most lethal weapons; they need to be disarmed -- or at least have their ability to make war disabled. All too often, wars kill the innocent and the uninvolved, and they cynically call it "collateral damage".
Did Israel have fun using these weapons?
Using such weapons require a mind that is trully horrific.
The sight of these injured people will be a reminder for generations of the mercy less people living among them.
toophat for you!
What you do to another,you do to yourself. No one is exempt from universal law. It simply will happen, one way or another.
Warmongers arrogantly claim self righteous "realism." Really though, Machiavelli and these others are fatalists, not a true realists. They see war as necessary, but also effective, a kind of final solution, ongoing. Thus those countries with weapons of mass destruction have done so little to eliminate these arms races.
The "megamachine," "megatechnics" (Lewis Mumford, The Myth of the Machine) will save us. And indeed it is an incredibly powerful technology, and indeed they can win decisively over and over. Building giant power complexes can create powerful technologies rapidly. But they are inherently authoritarian, they generate their own demise, and they cannot bring lasting peace. Megamachines have risen and fallen throughout human history spreading oppression and war far and wide. Megamodern, megaindustrial, megawestern, megacivilized. We must advance beyond these systems of contradiction, "manufactured consent," and failure.
But we know long term, from military history, that for every action there is a reaction. Each new defense generates a new offense. Each new offense generates a new defense. The overwhelming lesson of military history is that the status quo won't last. Our leaders live in a dark naivete, a dark romanticism called utopia, in which, they fantasize, the megamachine can finally control destiny. This is not rational. It is not realistic. It is not sane. It is not consistent with the plain lessons of history. At times fortifications were vulnerable. At other times they were impenetrable. We've seen the trenches vs. the machine guns, (WWI) against the tanks outflanking the Maginot line (WWII), tanks against air power that quickly takes out 5,000 tanks (Israel 1973) versus hand held antiaircraft weapons that helped drive the Russians out of Afghanistan.
Make no mistake about it, you darkly naive, utopian warmongers. Smoked glass is no less imaginary than rose colored glasses. You fail to "give up your childish ways" (for real reality) in vain. Green zones and capital cities will not always be defensible, nor will unmanned drones survive long term under your utopia. Airport security will not last, as new undetectable methods are devised. Your paradigm brings no security, but rather creates ever more deeply entrenched evils. There is no guarantee that we will survive as you push us ever farther into utopia (the power complex: Mumford, Interpretations and Forecasts, 1922-1972, "Utopia, the City and the Machine"). Short of that, there is no guarantee that freedom and democracy can survive (Mumford: "Authoritarian and Democratic Technics"). As the science fiction writers have expressed symbolically, against their own conscious intentions: "No good can come of it!" (Mumford, Pentagon of Power, "Progress as Science Fiction")
May the adults rule once again!
Whatever you do, try to remember this:
All the bombs are in the hands of terrorists
that is the absolute truth
What they have done is the height of depravity. Did someone rename Palestine to Auschwitz II? I hope that is offensive, because that is what I think of the people who could even do this. Even with all the psychological explanations it is beyond comprehension, if they don't deal with the underlying problems, which they don't seem to want to solve, this is what some people in the world think of them.
note the reference to the Lancet in the caption for the attached photo.
I can't find the news release in whole but here is a summary of the statement
The prestigious Lancet issued the following statement:
"We find it hard to believe that an otherwise internationally respected, democratic nation can sanction such large and indiscriminate human atrocities in a territory already under land and sea blockade. The heavy loss of civilian life and destruction of Gaza's health system is unjustified and disproportional....The collective punishment of Gazans is placing horrific and immediate burdens of injury and trauma on innocent civilians." These acts are lawless, and we deplore "the silence of national medical associations and professional bodies worldwide....Their leaders....are complicit in a preventable tragedy"
from http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=11920
I hope CD's editors can get a copy and publish the statement in whole.
The Devil is loose in Jerusalem.
Depleted Uranium
Dense Inert Metal Explosives
Cluster Bombs
The USS Liberty, an Attack on America by Israel
9-11 well, who was set up BEFORE, AHEAD of time to film the Impacts? The Mossad i.e who had prior knowledge? The Mossad agents who were apprehended=ISRAEL. Who had motivation and the ability to bring the three buildings down? Cheney and ISRAEL and the ISI.
That's a lot more Dead Americans than the USS Liberty. I watched a video last night about that. NSA intercepts show Israel first identified the ship as American, 100%, THEN bombed it, then torpedoed it. Ship was abandoned. Then Israel machine gunned the Americans swimming in the ocean. Same Bravery Courage and Humanity I saw in Gaza.
When America did nothing. It told that Terrorist Country that anything goes. And it has. From Lebanon to Gaza to Manhattan, where the "catalyzing event" Israel/Cheney/the neoCons (a code-word friends) needed to propel us into war was engineered.
Means
Motive
Opportunity. 9-11. The Mossad. azjoe.
Hey azjoe, are you down on Jewish People? Hell No. I think countries sometimes take paths which hi-jack the souls and mindsets of their people. South Africa. Germany. The United States. Israel.
What was and is needed is the Rabid Nationalism to end. If Peace was achieved, a righteous one for Palestinians, the collective Jewish consciousness could get back to the business of Joy and Love, given and received.
Germany and South Africa's souls healed. The U.S.'s and Israels could too.
Peace to my Jewish Brothers and Sisters who Speak Out For Peace, azjoe.
azjoe it is certainly clear by now that Jews, Israelis and zionists are Not all one and the same.
Jews like Albert Einstein certainly would not have anything to do with zionists, and there are many non-Jewish Israelis who feel much the same way. For many examples follow this link http://www.alternativenews.org/component/option,com_news_portal/Itemid,471/
zionists are the perpetrators of the rabid nationalism you speak of to get a better handle on what they are about I recommend Lenni Brenner's work found here http://www.marxists.de/middleast/brenner/index.htm
Sophie Scholl-The Final Days
White Rose. Hello. For certain. And as Israeli/Zionist crimes against humanity escalate, it will be critical for good people to always take a moment to elucidate the distinction between Israel's crimes and those distinctly different Jewish Voices who support AND oppose these crimes.
I feel the only slim hope for changing Israeli policy would be a strong Chorus of Jewish Voices demanding an end to the crimes, the intl. alienation this produces, the anti-Semitism it foments, and the Islamic extremism it cultivates.
No boycott, no international pressure, no nothing but the Voice of Jewish Consciousness demanding peace will ever produce it.
azjoe.
"No boycott, no international pressure, no nothing but the Voice of Jewish Consciousness demanding peace will ever produce it."
Why limit it to one? Let's do all of the above. I've already had my opinion published in my local paper and have made my views known to friends. But boycotts and international pressure are also needed. Let's not cut our nose off to spite our face. Let's throw the whole thing at them.
"All Nature's difference keeps all Nature's peace." Alexander Pope
OR, there are peacemakers, people who don't give a sh*t, and bullies. Doesn't matter what church/synagogue/mosque you go to (or not) or what country you live in, there are some of every kind everywhere.
I thought this long, but rather amusing, quote appropriate.
Stan: He was right. You DID cause 9/11.
Bush: Yes. Quite simple to pull off, really. All I had to do was have explosives planted in the base of the towers. Then on 9/11 we pretended like four planes were being hijacked when really we just rerouted them to Pennsylvania, then flew two military jets into the World Trade Center filled with more explosives, then shot down all the witnesses of Flight 93 with an F-15 after blowing up the Pentagon with a Cruise missile. It was only the world's most intricate and flawlessly-executed plan ever, ever.
Kyle: ...Really??
Stan: Why?!
Bush: Oldest reason in the world. Money. The towers fell and the American sheeple all waved their flags. [walks by Dick Cheney, who's got a crossbow and is dressed to hunt] Finally we could invade Iraq, and get the oil which made us all richer than before.
Rumsfeld: [rubs his hands together greedily] Beauutiful money, hahahaha!
Kyle: ...Really??
Stan: Is the whole government in on this?
Bush: We are all-knowing and all-powerful. Good-bye, boys. [steps aside as Dick Cheney takes aim at them. Cheney fires an arrow at them, but the arrow hits a marble vase on a table behind the boys. The arrow bounces off the vase and hits fire alarm, which sets off the sprinkler system. Everyone does his best not to get wet]
Cheney: Dangit I missed again!
Bush: For Christ's sake, Cheney!
waterproofla, Hi. How did al-Queda get Norad to stand down?
How did the Mossad know to set up cameras to film the impacts AHEAD OF TIME?
And just for fun, why did the Five Israeli Agents "Cheer and High-Five" each other upon the plane's impact as Americans were burning and jumping to their deaths?
Any thoughts on those questions waterproofla? azjoe
Probably too late for this, but I've been gone all weekend...
My thoughts- I have no evidence of any Mossad camera emplacements, NORAD standing down, of "Five Israeli Agents" other than your say so. If you can send me some sort of evidence of this (a link would be an excellent start) then I would investigate further.
Planes. Radars. Communications. Making sure NORAD stood down. (Not that it would need to- NORAD wasn't prepared to cold-bloodedly shoot down loaded airliners until they were SURE it needed doing. And by then it was too late.) Months or years of planing and preparation, infiltrating the right people in the right places. Months or years of time for one person to slip up, or one communication to get intercepted, to blow the whole thing.
I weigh the probability that an intelligance agency would take such a HUGE risk against the probability that this conspiracy is all an urban legend. Consider the difficulty in pulling the attacks off (high but not too high) with the astronomical difficulty of MAKING SURE NO ONE EVER FINDS OUT. The odds favor urban legend.
experimenting militarily on human beings is the worst idea i have ever heard. EVERYONE HAS THE RIGHT TO LIVE!
Agreed, but unfortunately, it's not a new idea. Old as war.
"All Nature's difference keeps all Nature's peace." Alexander Pope
zionism has spread from Israel. It has established a colony in the USA and is threatening Canada now as well. zionism must be contained and it's teeth drawn. Boycott, embargo and blockade are the appropriate tools.
USA must do it's part by revising huge junks of it's foreign policy, junking the spy programs on civilians, restoring and strengthening civil rights and by standing down it's enormous military. This is Planet Earth, not a sandbox for quarrelsome covetous children.
Weapons and money flow to the state of Israel must not be permitted until Israel has been accepted once again into the community of United Nations.
All dual citizen IDF soldiers returning to USA, Canada or European ports should be interred for de-zionification, they should not be allowed clearance to return until Israel has been accepted once again into the community of United Nations.
All proclaimed zionists outside Israel should be given an opportunity to repudiate their zionism, those that do not, while not being subject to harassment be monitored by civil authorities to prevent any future Jonathon Pollards.
Learn the history of zionism here: http://www.marxists.de/middleast/brenner/index.htm
Remember the USS Liberty!
Sophie Scholl-The Final Days
As an American, I once had some sympathy toward Isreal. No longer. This horror must be stopped.
DEATH TO ISREAL!
Referring to the three-week long offensive against the people of the Gaza Strip - which killed at least 1,300 Palestinians, including more than 400 children - Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said "We seek out the terrorists, and it can happen that civilians are sometimes hurt in the fight against terror ...We had to carry out this operation. I am at peace with the fact that we did it."
All this suffering experienced by the Palestinians has been caused by the 'duo of evil' - the two countries who rulers MUST be tried by the The International Criminal Court for genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. The Court should issue public arrest warrants for Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, Former President George W. Bush, the 390 congresspersons who supported this offensive and the voice-voting senators who approved.
Current President Barack Obama of the U.S. should be put on notice that if he continues to ignore the ongoing atrocities in the region, and continues to allow the shipment of military weapons and financial aid to Israel, that he will also be subject to arrest.
But, after all, we live in the real world. The American Empire (which includes Israel) is untouchable ...and the majority of Americans go about their daily lives without much concern.
or go on with their lives with much concern, but to no affect. Alas, which is better? or worse?
experimenting militarily on human beings is the worst idea i have ever heard.
**i hope you dont think the answer is testing them on pigs, goats and dogs. Which they still do. The US military has used American citizens for experiments in the past-in US hospitals.
I highly recommend the documentary Animals At War, narrated by Ian Holm. It shows the TRUE victims of war--the ones who take no sides.
I think military scientists should be given lobotomies and put in care homes so they dont cause any more trouble. Should have happened to the atomic scientists in both the US and Germany. Da Vinci made a blueprint for a submarine but knew enough about human nature not to develop it. Jonathan Swift had the scientists of Laputa build the ultimate peace weapon-a bomb that kills everyone. Mental defectives like Oppenheimer(lacked a common sense gene) took it seriously.
I used to be a fence sitter but its clear that Israel as a jewish state must cease to exist.
Hopefully its recent actions with hasten that--but you can bet more innocents will suffer.
Jews arent the problem with the world-humans are.
"To be humane is to be cruel, vicious and unrestrained, like humans.
To be inhumane is to be compassionate, restrained, moderate, like non humans."
It seems to me the Israelis have pretty much used up their "Holocaust capital" by now. Sad, awful, situation for all.
Karma's a bitch.
One would think that the Israeli government would have learned from the Warsaw ghetto that oppressed peoples fight back, regardless of the odds or the horror of the oppressors. Instead, they seem to have learned only from the Nazis. If you can kill enough of them, you can end the problem by sending any survivors to a death camp, and that "if you keep telling a big enough lie, often enough, it becomes the truth." (Goebbels)
Remember, Israel, if you have no hope, life becomes cheap. The Gazan youth of today have little or no hope. They have no jobs, no chance at an education, little chance of keeping a roof over the heads of their families, no voice in their future. They have lost relatives and friends to random air attacks, snipers and shelling. Their homes have been bulldozed, they are walled in, there is little or no medical care, food, fresh water, and what little there is is only obtained by the world and the Palestinians groveling and kow-towing to the IDF.
Under such circumstances, it is a small thing to strap on a gelignite vest and take a few of the "enemy" with you.
The only way this will ever end peacefully is for people to lay down their arms and begin to talk, to develop some empathy and be able to put themselves in another's place, to understand their pain and terror and to try to alleviate it.
Sadly, I do not see this coming in the foreseeable future, so the horror goes on.
presicely.
¡Prefiero morir de pie que vivir siempre arrodillado!
(It's better to die upon your feet than to live upon your knees!)
Zapata
Are we still supposed to be worried about the 'good, old' ABC-weapons with stuff like this being developed by - I guess - the US and Israel? The UN should start an independent investigation into this and it's about time people are going to be indicted for war crimes.
America/Israel need war in order to test new weapons ...
We're way behind having had the delay in the call-off of our war on Vietnam--!!!
Just got started again in Greneda and Panama -- and lots of reports from there
about strange new weapons.
Bush delivered us from the "Vietnam Syndrome" and created new war in Iraq I --
After 20 years of bombing Iraq, all of these corrupt leaders should be in prison.
Violence only breeds more violence. Do we feel better now that we've revenged
3,000 dead in WTC by killing 100,000's of Iraqis???? The WTC families themselves
begged that our government not use "their suffering to make war."
War is a dinosaur which only benefits the ruling class war-profiteers.
And creates a fascist state -- look at Patriot Act, Homeland Security, Blackwater!
"According to all myth, the female - not the male -- gives life"
Can the gas chambers be far behind?
I hate Israeli Fascists. The have become what they have always professed to hate.
If their is an afterlife, I expect 6 million Jewish ghosts are disgusted with what their ancestors have become.
"The only means of strengthening one's intellect is to make up one's mind about nothing, to let the mind be a thoroughfare for all thoughts." - John Keats
Maybe once upon a time there was a God, but now there is only the Devil, the force of evil. Everywhere we look in the World, violent, greedy, evil people are succeeding. They are forcing people into poverty, they are finding ever more ingenious methods of killing and injuring.
There is no doubt in my mind, that the people who perpetrated this disgusting carnage on Gaza are evil, and that all of the people who support them and give them weapons and aid are evil.
What is happening in the World at the moment is the ultimate example of the "alpha male" dominating through aggression.
There are roughly thirteen million Jews living in the World at the moment, they have to stand up and be counted - do they agree with Israel's actions or don't they? If they do, then something has to be done to stop their evil ways.
This does not just apply to Israel and sympathetic Jews, it applies to any group of fundamentalist barbarians who want to keep attacking other people, from the Congo to Sudan to Afghanistan, this is the 21st century we are living in, and violence based on religious/tribal/ethnic differences has no place in this era.
It's a cop out to blame "the Devil." Humans are responsible for this. Humans must take responsibility.
Ding, ding, ding, we have a winner.
Where have all the apologists gone?
Sorry to interrupt the little Aryan Nations discussion here. The weapon that is described in the article is actually quite progressive. It was specifically designed to be used against thugs (Hamas) that hide close to civilian targets (innocent kids).
The round was probably designed after years of experience and liberal whining to minimize civilan losses, and it is probably a lot more expensive than a standard mortar round that kinda blasts everyting within 50 yards.
Anyway, I have seen some comments here that reminded me of professor Ward Churchill, talk about little Eichmanns.
Oh look a Hasbara shill, yeah White Phosphorus that painfully burns women and children to death sure is "progressive," so is DIME that lodges tungsten particles in peoples bodies.
And you you aren't fit to even kiss Ward Churchill's little toe Zionist apologist.
well, hootowl, glad you took some time to respond. Now hurry put on that nice black uniform and the red swastika armband. you gonna be late for the meeting. I heard there's gonna be a nice performance of the Horst Wessel song at the beginning. Don't wanna miss that.
I am hard left asshole, you know the people who crushed the skulls of Nazis on the streets of Berlin in street fights in the 20s and 30s. And you as a hard right winger apologist for burning women and children and death? Well I rest my case....
i figured you were hard left. the tone of your post gave that away.
Then you lied when you called me a black shirt, eh? Nice to see you are man enough to admit your lying ways in front of thousands here on a public forum, don't get stage fright now that everyone is looking at you though, keep hanging yourself with your own rope.
Nice hootowl. You're WAY to deft for this TIRED old vamp.
Cool, you get bored, I'll gladly fill in for a few.
Because CD is about Common Dreams..not Colonialism & Death...,azjoe.
wasn't lying. just jerking your chain. seems to have worked.
btw, you far lefties did a pretty good job in eastern europe and asia. guess you were trying to beat the nazis, who can kill more. then again you had a lot more time and leeway to do it.
Anarchists didn't kill people in eastern Europe state capitalist communists did, guess who the crony capitalist state capitalists are now? Israel and the U.S. thus you are wrong again Chameleon.
Funny how these so -called "progressive" killed more women and children than the militants. Is this a new name for "precision" weapon? Or "surgical" strike? I guess that makes you a "progressive" Nazi huh?
I am a Jewish person, so don't you dare call me a Aryan Nations type! I am deeply, deeply against this slaughter by Isreal.. How can you not call it slaughter? Have you no compassion? Are you drugged by your own lies?
Giyus called them home, now they are salivating over which SUV to buy with their trust fund.
When the Nazis carried out all kinds of medical experiments on prisoners they received worldwide condemnation.
In Gaza, American munitions manufacturers have carried out experiments on the civilian population, aided and assisted by the IDF. The horrors that were inflicted are almost too grotesque to see.
American and Israel must be held to account for these atrocities and those responsible tried and executed.
www.dangerouscreation.com
When the Israeli culture of racism considers Palestinians less than animals, then experimenting new weapons on them is nowhere in their moral compass. They have lost their sense of humanity and have become monsters. 80% of the citizens of Israeli voted in favor of this massacre! I hold them all responsible for this attempt at genocide!
And the rulers and military leadership should all be tried at the Hague for crimes against humanity.
BOYCOTT ISRAEL!!!!
"80% of the citizens of Israeli voted in favor of this massacre! I hold them all responsible for this attempt at genocide!"
Dangerous position, horrified. Better than 50% of Gazans voted for Hamas. Does that mean Israel is right to hold ALL of them responisble for what Hamas does?
Of course, if they (Israelis or Gazans) SHOULDN'T be held responsible for the choices that a majority of them make, how can any democratic people be deterred from electing governments which will harm their neighbors? When their bloody, angry neighbors show up, they will say, "Leave us be! It was our government, not us!"
A supranational criminal court to punish governments isn't a true solution, it just creates another layer to the problem, creating a super-government to govern lesser governments. Who will be responsible for abuse by the ICC? (It's a human institution, it will happen.) And what if, when it renders its judgment, the judged government refuses to accept the sentence? The ICC is then in the same boat as the angry neighbors, most likely unable to attack the leaders without punishing the People as well. Heck, if the people elected the offending leaders, they may rally to their defense. To look to this very conflict, Israel, trying to punish Hamas' leaders, often found the people crowding around those leaders to protect them. Is it not likely that that the ICC or a similar institution seeking to execute a warrant for an Israeli leader might find itself in a similar situation?
(To those who say that Israel wasn't trying to punish leaders buit the whole of Gaza; quite possibly true. However, when they DID attack Hamas leaders, oftimes people did rally to protect them.)
The point I am attempting to make is that any world court attempting to punish only leaders would be hard pressed to do so without harming "innocent" voters. Which makes my initial aversion to holding civilians responsible for the acts of their leaders possibly in error, and Horrified possibly correct. The problem is, if he is correct that civilians are responsible for the acts of their government, Israel's error in Gaza was not in harming civilians, but merely harming them in a bad cause. Had Israel been the one attacked, they would have been well justified in their attack on Gaza. Scary thought.