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Israel Won't Cooperate With UN Probe of Gaza War
JERUSALEM - Israel has informed the United Nations it will refuse to cooperate with a probe of war crimes allegedly committed during the military offensive in the Gaza Strip, a senior official said.
"Israel has informed the UN Human Rights Council it will not cooperate with an investigation based on a biased resolution," the official, who asked not to be named, told AFP.
Palestinian children sit amid the rubble of destroyed houses at Tel al-Sultan neighbourhood in the southern Gaza city of Rafah. Israel has informed the United Nations it will refuse to cooperate with a probe of war crimes allegedly committed during the military offensive in the Gaza Strip, a senior official has said. (AFP) He said a letter to this effect was sent last week.
Israel had claimed earlier the probe sought to tarnish Israel's reputation.
"The investigation has no moral ground since it decided even before it started who is guilty and of what," foreign ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor said earlier this month.
Six days before the 22-day Gaza offensive ended, the UN council voted on January 12 to investigate "grave" human rights violations by Israeli forces against the Palestinians.
Some Western countries said the resolution put forward by Arab and African states was too one-sided and failed to clearly recognise the role of rocket attacks launched by Palestinian militants in triggering the offensive.
Former international prosecutor Richard Goldstone has been named to head the probe.
- Posted in
83 Comments so far
Show All"'The investigation has no moral ground since it decided even before it started who is guilty and of what,' foreign ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor said earlier this month."
"Some Western countries said the resolution put forward by Arab and African states was too one-sided and failed to clearly recognise the role of rocket attacks launched by Palestinian militants in triggering the offensive."
In other words, the council should have decided before it started that the Palestinians are the guilty ones.
q
In other words, the UN ignored evidence and demanded a witch hunt. Israel told them to f-off.
One small correction. It's not the UN, but the UN Human Rights Council.
Typical zionist reaction.
q
Once enough Americans find out that we are committing genocide and supporting genocide on behalf of a foreign nation, there will be a backlash. It's going to take years more, because the media and the Zionist lobby will continue to blackmail our politicians and hide the truth from us.
MEDIA CONTROL IS RESPONSIBLE FOR ALL OUR TROUBLES.
www.meetyourworld.com
Again, look up the definition of genocide then call us back.
Please do not argue the merits of the case. As Dori said, "Just keep sneering, just keep sneering..."
So what else is new? Israel is protected from international law by the Imperial veto on the UNSC. If the US was not protecting and arming Israel, they would have had economic sanctions and possibly military action against them decades ago. Obama has made it clear that Jerusalem is Israel's capital and Palestinians have no rights, only Israel has rights. The Palestinians are just poor indigenous folk who must be ethnically cleansed and eliminated so Jewish folks from Europe, who are part of "Western Civilization" can replace them and make the place safe for democracy. Avigdor Lieberman has made this very clear.
The resolution "failed to recognise the role of rocket attacks launched by Palestinian militants in triggering the attacks". What about those Palestinian boys throwing rocks at the Israeli military forces that are occupying the Palestinian land? Aren't they to blame for all that violence and destruction?
Palestinian rockets may possibly go twenty miles. Twenty miles from Gaza it is still Palestine. Where are the borders of Israel?
The death toll is for every one Israeli soldier killed four hundred men, women and children of Gaza were killed. Looks like the Israeli military is making good use of the weapons we send them.
I'm not proud of the genocide we are funding in Palestine. Nor do I like the apartheid in Israel. If you share my concerns, you must contact your Representatives in Congress and tell them to STOP U.S. FUNDING FOR THE ISRAELI ARMY. We need that money here at home.
Do you own a dictionary? Look up the words 'genocide' and 'apartheid' then apologize.
Maybe you could read the following, and then maybe YOU will want to apologize:
Applicability of the Crime of Apartheid to Israel
by Karine Mac Allister
http://www.badil.org/al-majdal/2008/summer/articles02.htm
I think I would stick with the dictionary's definition of Apartheid, and not with Karine Mac Allister.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/%20Apartheid%20
According to Karine Mac Allister's definition of Apartheid - Any country who legally discriminate citizens over non-citizens - is "Apartheid". (Meaning that all the countries on the planet are Apartheid at some level) Which makes me wonder why the she analyze only Israel, the most progressive and the least "Apartheid" country in the Middle-East, as the only "Apartheid" example.
Unlike her, a non biased research on the subject, would list all the countries in the world based on their Apartheidhood.
(In Mecca, no non-Muslim can enter, even for a visit. In Iran, gays are executed. In Jordan, selling property to a Jew is a crime punishable by death, in Iraq a Sunni in a Shi'ite neighborhood would be executed, etc.)
Yeah, um, Karine Mac Allister needs a dictionary.
Did you find any poorly written, convoluted, and foolish articles that come up with creative new definitions for genocide?
hmm, compare
The resolution failed to recognise the role of rocket attacks launched by Palestinian militants in triggering the attacks.
and
the rapist complained that the jury failed to recognise the role the short skirt had in triggering the rape.
Some crimes are unjustifiable regardless of the supposed trigger, no?
More like, "The accused pointed out to the lynch mob that the deceased, who had attempted murder many times before, had threatened murder then attacked with a knife, so the accused felt it necessary to pull out a gun kill the deceased IN SELF DEFENSE."
But it's OK, you can call the Jews rapists and any other name you want. We know where your heart lies.
More "like" the serial rapist
who had long relied on his polished and manufactured reputation ( 729 ), to escape detection and prosecution,
was caught flagrant delecti with hundreds of dead children's bodies loosely covered in dirt
while also still wrapped around "his" bloody tool, wearing the Israeli flag as a condom …
Was totally outraged at the "unfounded accusations" of mass serial murder, rape, necrophilia, and pedophilia.
The prosecution was worried that the asymmetric evidence was too damning, and totally disproportionate for the minor crimes of using Palestinians as mere targets, so 99.9999999999 % of the forensic evidence was ruled as illegitimate fruit of the poisoned fig tree, which mysteriously matched the fact that all living witnesses disappeared …
adamantly, Post Of The Day.
Thank you. I'm just powerful true and worded now
My once stone face weeps for the demise of justice and fairness on CD
Namaste
CD is fair enough to allow you zionist bigots to post your nonsense here.
q
methinks you step too quickly
Fair enough. Please show us some examples of what you consider to be unfair or unjust articles on CD.
q
Perhaps if you consider the context of my posting, which was about being b@nned again, you might understand that my weeping for CD had to do with their censorship of bloggers -- and not in any manner disparaging what you call the "unfair or unjust articles on CD".
My comparison of Israel raping Palestine ( above at adamantly so April 16th, 2009 7:29 pm ) is not within the nominal Zionista envelope.
Namaste
Perhaps you should work on the clarity of your writing a bit more. I see no discussion such as that which you seem to be describing.
I take it that English is not your first language.
q
Now you're no longer are just too quickly stepping, but
____ quick sand stepping into it.
I take it that your apparent inability to do a text search for time-stamp for "7:29 pm" demonstrates that perhaps you're new to use of a computer ?
Ignoble or contrite in your petty mired perceptions, I happen to enjoy a good battle of wits, except when the other is laboring under the disability of being defenseless.
Namaste
Dear TheMiddleRoad--
You write, "...you can call the Jews rapists and any other name..."
Who has been talking about Jews? This discussion has focused on the war crimes of Israel, a terrorist state that is also the only country in the Middle East with nuclear weapons. Most Israelis are Jews, and they want Israel to be an all- "Jewish" state so badly that they are willing to commit any kind of human rights outrage in order to eliminate the indigenous people from the land of Palestine.
When criticized, Israel's defense is always to call attention to the slaughter of the Jews in the Holocaust, and to claim the critics are antisemitic. Most Jews do NOT live in Israel. Conflating "Jewish" and "Israel" is a cynical strategy that puts Jews at risk all over the world.
Consider these words of Ariel Sharon:
“Even today I am willing to volunteer to do the dirty work for Israel, to kill as many Arabs as necessary, to deport them, to expel and burn them, to have everyone hate us, to pull the rug from underneath the feet of the Diaspora Jews, so that they will be forced to run to us crying. Even if it means blowing up one or two synagogues here and there, I don’t care. And I don’t mind if after the job is done you put me in front of a Nuremberg Trial and then jail me for life. Hang me if you want, as a war criminal. Then you can spruce up your Jewish conscience and enter the respectable club of civilised nations, nations that are large and healthy. What you lot don’t understand is that the dirty work of Zionism is not finished yet, far from it. True, it could have been finished in 1948, but you interfered, you stopped it. And all this because of the Jewishness in your souls, because of your Diaspora mentality. For the Jews don’t grasp things quickly. If you open your eyes and look around the world you will see that darkness is falling again. And we know what happens to a Jew who stays out in the dark. So I am glad that this small war in Lebanon frightened the Yids. Let them be afraid, let them suffer. They should hurry home before it gets really dark. So I am an anti-Semite? Fine. So don’t quote me, quote Lilienblum instead [an early Russian Zionist - ed.]. There is no need to quote an anti-Semite. Quote Lilienblum, and he is definitely not an anti-Semite, there is even a street in Tel Aviv named after him”.
Dear petrkrop,
petrkrop: "Who has been talking about Jews? This discussion has focused on the war crimes of Israel, a terrorist state that is also the only country in the Middle East with nuclear weapons."
Who has been talking about nuclear weapons? (Except for promoting some hate agenda against Israel, I can't see why you've even brought this unrelated subject to the topic at hand.) The discussion here is whether or not the UN Human Rights Council, the most anti-Israeli UN body, could be trusted to judge Israel fairly.
There is nothing wrong with criticizing anyone, (Israel should not be immune), as long as you judge everyone with the same criteria, under the same set of rules. The UN Human Rights Council has clearly and indisputably proven time and again to be biased against Israel.
http://www.unwatch.org/site/c.bdKKISNqEmG/b.1518297/k.7483/Human_Rights_Council.htm
"... has condemned Israel in 80% of its country censures, in 20 of 25 resolutions. The other 5 texts criticized North Korea once, and Myanmar four times. The Council has ignored the UN’s other 189 countries, including the world's worst abusers."
petrkrop: "When criticized, Israel's defense is always to call attention to the slaughter of the Jews in the Holocaust,"
Have you even read the article? In case you haven't, I'll give you a short summary.
Israel refused to be judged by the UN Human Rights Council, because Israel claim this UN body is biased against it.
There was nothing within the article or within TheMiddleRoad's comment regarding the Nazi Holocaust. Invoking the Holocaust happened only in your head, petrkrop.
Your response completely avoids petrkrop's point that trying to identify the political entity that is the State of Israel with Jewishness is the smelliest kind of red herring.
Please show me one specific piece of evidence that the UN Human Rights Council is anti-Israel.
q
And my response was that invoking the Holocaust and the Nuclear issues by petrkrop is just as red herring as the Jewish issue, if not more.
I'm not TheMiddleRoad, I can't answer for him. All I was trying to say is that one should not judge others for crimes he himself commiting regularry.
L.
Does "One should not judge others for crimes he himself commiting regularly. "
include Israeli terrorist attacks on Gaza and West Bank ?
All I was saying is that someone who brought two red herrings into the discussion, should not blame others for bringing red herring.
No, I beg to differ -- your own words cut to the quick of what Israel itself does all the time, you just cannot stomach the reality -- wake up.
"Hoisted by your own petard"
poof !
Obviously, we're not in agreement. Which is fine, since we don't have to agree on everything.
That's just the point. The actions committed by the State of Israel do NOT constitute a "Jewish issue."
The crimes of some Palestinians do not excuse those of Israel.
q
Then discussion here was not about the question of Israel or some Israelis or Palestine or some Palestinians committed crimes or not.
The question at hand was: Should the UN Human Right Council be the one conducting the investigation, and whether Israel was right to refuse to cooperate with UNHRC.
I say that based on UNHRC's record, Israel is doing the right think for refusing to cooperate with this biased unfair anti-Israeli council. Asking Israel to be trialled by the UNHRC is like asking an African American to agree to be trialled by known KKK jurors.
As for the Jewish red herring, please ask TheMiddleRoad.
L.
". . . based on UNHRC's record, . . ."
You have failed to characterize that record by providing the examples which I have requested.
I have noticed a strong tendency among zionist apologists to try to argue purely in conclusionary statements and broad, unsupported generalizations such as those which you have used.
Again, please document some examples of anti-Israel actions by the UNHCR.
q
quickstepper April 17th, 2009 1:52 pm: "You have failed to characterize that record by providing the examples which I have requested"
I've not failed, I've just replied to your request far below. Please check the following comment, which was published 43 minutes before yours.
"Letto April 17th, 2009 1:09 pm"
I checked your references. They are unacceptable for the reasons which I have listed below.
q
quickstepper "I checked your references. They are unacceptable for the reasons which I have listed below."
I'm a Jew myself.
I found your comment of not accepting a source as valid just because the author is Jewish, to be a racist comment. What's your point? Jews can't tell the truth just because they're Jews?
I would suggest you do your own research on the UNHRC, instead of relying on a Jew like me for information.
The JEWISH L.
"I found your comment of not accepting a source as valid just because the author is Jewish, to be a racist comment. What's your point? Jews can't tell the truth just because they're Jews?"
Ah! The old reliable fallback for the zionist propagandists. When you can't win the argument, accuse your opponent of hating Jews.
Your sources are not reliable because they are zionist sources. Whether or not a particular author is a Jew is comepletely irrelevant to this discussion.
Trying to hide behind your Jewishness just makes you a coward.
q
I would like to clarify one thing, quickstepper.
I didn't say your are racist. You seems like an honest person who only seek the truth. I only regret that you automatically and throutfully discredit any source affiliated with a Jewish organization. I found that concept disturbing. Nevertheless, there are plenty of non-Jewish resources which will prove the UNHRC has an anti-Israeli bias. Including the UN web site itself.
http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2007
/sgsm11053.doc.htm
on 20 June 2007, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon issued a statement that read: "The Secretary-General is disappointed at the council's decision to single out only one specific regional item given the range and scope of allegations of human rights violations throughout the world."
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is not a rabi, not a Zionists, and the UN web site is not Wikipedia.
I hope the non Jewish UN source is kosher enough for your taste.
L E T T O,
With all of your non-stop maneuvering, you have yet to establish that this disproportional opinion of Israel is consistent or not consistent with Israel's actual demonstrable record of human rights abuses.
You see, having a calibrated rule to measure the bend of the pipe is not part of an arbitrary abstract reality, in some pristine universe w/o real people and history.
Your above quotation speaks about being "disappointed", but doesn't prove your assertion in the least.
And why is singling out Israel in a specific region, given it's "high" regard in the position of one of the world's democracies, while also with respect to the "given the range and scope of allegations of human rights violations throughout the world"?
Your logic might be better than your spelling and grammar, but you do shoot yourself in the foot acting all superior while shoveling too quickly out, an inferior product.
Have you no sense of shame ?
Namaste
P . S .
Even a kosher hot dog is still made up of asshole meat of cows,
they just leave out the asshole meat of pigs.
In a class filled with naughty kids, when the teacher, again and again and again, punished only one kid, (while most other kids which demonstrate much worth behavior goes unpunished) I would say the problem is with the teacher.
Have you no shame being such a teacher powerfully_true?
Name even one other baby killed with DIME, anywhere in the world, besides those that the Israelis climb hillsides to watch die in Gaza.
You have the nerve to talk of shame to me, as "being such a teacher " ?
And what exactly do you teach:
'one shot, two kills' ?
You appear to be an oblivious pathetic waste of skin to relish in apologizing and justifying for the most atrocious modern day democracy ( besides the USA of course ).
¿ For you this, Israel is just being naughty ?
Even most Americans after decades of propaganda, can see and understand outright murder of Palestinians, but psychopaths respond much as you do.
I pray for your immortal soul, as it's obvious you have no use for it. And although I'm certain you lick your lifeless chops at having gotten to me, the reward of your life is exactly that.
You are dead to me, I will NOT be baited by your trash talking again, but don't let that stop you in the least. Please do grow a larger audience and breakthrough your inhibitions -- we want ALL to be able to see the real teacher in you.
Namaste
"Name even one other baby killed with DIME, anywhere in the world, besides those that the Israelis climb hillsides to watch die in Gaza.
You have the nerve to talk of shame to me, as "being such a teacher " ?"
The war in Gaza could easily be avoided if the Hamas wouldn’t have fired rockets on Israeli civilians (A war crime.) But let’s put the reasons / justification behind, and examined the number of people killed.
In Congo and Rwanda, since 1994, more than 5 million died because of their ethicality. Today, 45,000 die every month. That's 60 years of Israeli-Palestinian conflict every month, the recent Gaza war every day.
In Iraq, since 2003, 100,000 people were executed because they belong to the wrong religion. 4,000,000 were displaced. (Shiite vs. Sunni)
In Sudan, since 1990, 2,400,000 people were massacred because they were too black and not Arabs enough. That’s 500 times the Israeli Palestinian conflict in the same years.
Other conflicts in the region that had more people killed: Algeria, Syria, Lebanon (Civil war), Jordan, Iran (More people were executed since the revolution), Afghanistan, Chechnya etc.
All these millions upon millions are being massacred, but you, powerfully_true, care more about T-shirts wore after hours by one IDF unit.
Yes, powerfully_true , the discriminating teacher metaphor feats you extremely well.
On the face of it, it seems easy to separate the Jews from the Zionists. For instance, there are Jews who are not Zionists and Zionists who are not Jews. However, in reality, the two are highly interchangeable, like Jews and Israelis, and generally refer to the same groups.
This would not be so much of a problem if it weren't for the one-sided, evil rhetoric aimed at Jews, Zionists, and Israelis. There's a lot of splitting into groups, like, "These are the good Jews and these are the bad ones, the ones who don't want self determination and the ones who do." Add in all the clearly antisemitic crap, like the constant blood libels and twisting of Holocaust history, and it becomes clear that Zionist, Israeli, and Jew generally mean the same thing.
So it's no red herring. It's also a conclusion I came to, not a belief I started with. I've read criticism of Israel that wasn't antisemitic, but most of it is, even unintentionally so. I have heard Jews make antisemitic comments about more devout Jews, and vice versa. They're rarely self-hating Jews; they just hate other Jews who are too Jewish.
What Genocidal Monster would ever want justice?
Palestinian leaders supported Hitler yet have cried for justice.
"U.N. Probe of Gaza War" ???? There was no "Gaza War," any more than there was a "Warsaw Ghetto War" in 1942. Both were MASSACRES of defenseless people in a cage.
Of course Israel won't "cooperate" with the U.N. investigation. Israel has already "investigated" itself and found itself to be innocent.
There has been no pause in Israel's ongoing theft of Palestinian land and water resources, or in Israel's malignant effect on distorting international law. As George Bisharat wrote on April 03, 2009:
"As the former head of Israel’s 20-lawyer International Law Division in the Military Advocate General’s office, Daniel Reisner, recently stated: "If you do something for long enough, the world will accept it. The whole of international law is now based on the notion that an act that is forbidden today becomes permissible if executed by enough countries … International law progresses through violations. We invented the targeted assassination thesis and we had to push it. At first there were protrusions that made it hard to insert easily into the legal molds. Eight years later, it is in the center of the bounds of legitimacy."
"In the Gaza fighting, Israel has again tried to transform international law through violations. For example, its military lawyers authorized the bombing of a police cadet graduation ceremony, killing at least 63 young Palestinian men. Under international law, such deliberate killings of civilian police are war crimes. Yet Israel treats all employees of the Hamas-led government in the Gaza Strip as terrorists, and thus combatants. Secretaries, court clerks, housing officials, judges - all were, in Israeli eyes, legitimate targets for liquidation.
"Israeli jurists also instructed military commanders that any Palestinian who failed to evacuate a building or area after warnings of an impending bombardment was a "voluntary human shield" and thus a participant in combat, subject to lawful attack. One method of warning employed by Israeli gunners, dubbed "knocking on the roof," was to fire first at a building’s corner, then, a few minutes later, to strike more structurally vulnerable points. To imagine that Gazan civilians - penned into the tiny Gaza Strip by Israeli troops, and surrounded by the chaos of battle - understood this signal is fanciful at best.
"Israel has a lengthy history of unpunished abuses of international law - among the most flagrant its decades-long colonization of the West Bank. To its credit, much of the world has refused to ratify Israel’s violations. Unfortunately, our government is an exception, having frequently provided diplomatic cover for Israel’s abuses. Our diplomats have vetoed 42 U.N. Security Council resolutions to shelter Israel from the consequences of its often illegal behavior."
The U.S. has adopted many of Israel's abhorrent tactics, such as extrajudicial assassinations, endless detention without trial, kidnappings and torture. Surely it won't be long until our troops, like Israeli troops, think nothing of blowing up ambulances, shooting women and children in cold blood, and bulldozing homes while the occupants cower inside.
End aid to Israel.
Clear and true demand.
Joe