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US Urges Israel to Probe Gaza Crimes to Boost Peace
GENEVA - The United States called on its close ally Israel on Tuesday to conduct credible investigations into allegations of war crimes committed by its forces in Gaza, saying it would help the Middle East peace process.
An explosion is seen after an Israeli air strike in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip January 13, 2009. (REUTERS/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa) Michael Posner, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State, said that Hamas leaders also had a responsibility to investigate crimes and to end what he called its targeting of civilians and use of Palestinian civilians as human shields in the strip.
The U.N. Human Rights Council was holding a one-day debate on a recent report by Richard Goldstone, a South African jurist and former U.N. war crimes prosecutor.
His panel found the Israeli army and Palestinian militants committed war crimes and possibly crimes against humanity during their December-January war. Israel did not cooperate with the U.N. inquiry and has rejected the report as biased.
"We encourage Israel to utilize appropriate domestic (judicial) review and meaningful accountability mechanisms to investigate and follow-up on credible allegations," Posner said in a speech to the Geneva forum.
"If undertaken properly and fairly, these reviews can serve as important confidence-building measures that will support the larger essential objective which is a shared quest for justice and lasting peace," he said.
The United States joined the Council, set up three years ago, for the first time earlier this year.
Posner reiterated Washington's view that the Council paid "grossly disproportionate attention" to Israel, but said that the U.S. delegation was ready to engage in balanced debate.
Earlier, Goldstone said a lack of accountability for war crimes committed in the Middle East has reached "crisis point," undermining any hope for peace in the region.
"CULTURE OF IMPUNITY"
"A culture of impunity in the region has existed for too long," Goldstone told the Council.
"The lack of accountability for war crimes and possible war crimes against humanity has reached a crisis point; the ongoing lack of justice is undermining any hope for a successful peace process and reinforcing an environment that fosters violence."
Israel says its offensive was intended to stop militants firing rockets at Israel. Israeli human rights group B'Tselem says 773 of 1,387 Palestinians killed were civilians. Israel says 709 combatants and 295 civilians were killed. Thirteen Israelis, 10 soldiers and three civilians, died.
Goldstone's report urges the U.N. Security Council to refer the allegations to the International Criminal Court in the Hague if either Israeli or Palestinian authorities fail to investigate and prosecute those suspect of such crimes within six months.
"Our primary recommendation is that Israel and the authorities in Gaza should carry out good-faith, transparent investigations. International courts are courts of last resort, not first resort," he said on Tuesday.
Israel's ambassador Leshno Yaar rejected the report as "shameful" and "one-sided." It was "based on carefully-selected incidents, cherry picked for political effect."
Israel had opened more than 100 investigations, including damage inflicted on U.N. centers and medical facilities in Gaza, 23 of which had resulted in criminal proceedings, he said.
It faced "an enemy that intentionally deploys its forces in densely populated areas, stores its explosives in private homes and launches rockets from crowded school yards and mosques."
Ibrahim Khraishi, ambassador of the Palestinian delegation, urged the Council to adopt the report which he called objective.
"My people will not forgive the international community if the criminals are left without punishment," he said.
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30 Comments so far
Show AllCD forgot to insert the laugh track after the headline to this piece.
Or maybe add in brackets after the title - "Same old , same old, move along nothing to see here".
This really is an insult to people's intelligence, if they really wanted to attract a bit of attention then the story should have been "US insists that Israel adheres to every previous UN resolution".
Yeah, and it is a pretty sad joke. We, who manufacture the weapons of mass destruction and give them to our 'good ally' to kill civilians living in the Gaza strip, are asking that our partner in crime 'fess up'?
Wipe away your tears and do something to change things in the policies of our nation. We, the taxpaying working people of this nation, are seeing our Congress use these funds for death and destruction -- instead of for taking care of the problems of our ecomomic collapse. We need those funds for creating jobs to rebuild our failing infrastructure, to feed the hungry, shelter the homeless and educate our children.
Instead of doing this, our Congress has voted to give the Wall St. banksters trillions, give the military industrial complex more trillions; but our Congress and President will not commit funds to creating a new health care system in this nation that would kick the for profit insurance companies out of the system.
We need to kick the corrupt out of Congress in the next elections and send some people with ethics to Congress. These new representative could vote to use our tax funds to meet the needs of our society.
This is a joke! The genocidal monsters that we support are above the law.
Exactly right, this has to be the Obama character trying again to prove that he isn't in bed all nice an cosy and warm with Israel. And oh yeah, since when do the accused investigate themselves. Besides should he - the Obama character - be just stressing the bright rosy future, only fools and idiots look at the past. Hey someone should tell Israel this: get over the near extinction of Jews in the '30's and 40's, eh.
Of course the report was one sided - Israel would not co-operate with the investigations. They cannot cry foul after the fact. Israel broke the truce and Hamas responded with their rockets.
"Israel says its offensive was intended to stop militants firing rockets at Israel."
Maybe they shouldn't have broken the truce?
And how can anyone say that Hamas is intentionally targeting civilians when they don't have any targeting systems on their crude rockets? If Israel with their advanced weaponry can kill so many civilians and claim that it was an accident, can't Hamas do the same? Just asking...
"If Israel with their advanced weaponry can kill so many civilians and claim that it was an accident, can't Hamas do the same?"
That's worth repeating!
What happened to AIPAC on this one?
Chet- A.I.P.A.C is busy handing out talking points to all members of the US Congress and the White House. Both my Senators believe that Iran is working on building a nuke. They did not get that information from the CIA.
While certainly not dismissing the idea that Israeli War crimes need to be tried in a court of law, just who is the USA to suggest another country probe war crimes committed by their own?
The only Peace Plan that would work is for the Ashkenazis to return to Europe, the Khazars to return to Russia & Hungary, and reparations paid to the Sephardic Jews, Palestinians, Lebanese, Syrians, and Iraqis... Before this illegal occupation conflagrates into a "pre-emptive strike" on Iran... And Russia responds by turning "Israel" into a "Sea of Glass"...
Of course... It will never happen... As the Zionists would rather excercise the "Samson Option" before admitting defeat...
"Shameful" and "one-sided."
Interesting words for an Israeli official to use in connection with its military actions in Gaza.
There is no secret that Israel's actions in Gaza had much to do with the fallout from its previous, failed, military activity in Lebanon. (TIME even ran an article anticipating what would happen "next time.")
And it was widely known that many supporters of the military activity, including some vocal ones in the U.S., had openly stated that Israel would be justified for punishing the people of Gaza after they elected a government led by Hamas.
Did it matter that, if I am not mistaken, polls showed people supported Hamas despite, not because of, its historic failure to recognize Israel's right to exist? Or that -- again, if I am not mistaken (I wish I knew more certainly) -- Hamas itself was seen to be moderating its long-held stance? Apparently, not to these supporters.
Does anyone doubt we have yet to learn the full extent of the atrocities, which certainly appear to have been "shameful" and "one-sided?" I support Israel's right to self-defense, but is "self-defense" what we saw in Gaza? (Even many Israelis don't believe it was.)
Of course, U.S. fire-bombing burned to death 100,000 civilians in Tokyo. (Robert McNamara said some 900,000 Japanese civilians died in all.) Wasn't that a terrible war crime? Was it necessary to win the war, or a wise thing to do have done?
Or was it just more needless suffering?
Nothing to be proud of, that much is certain.
Any Israeli report will be more Grossly Arrogant Spin.
Somehow, the brilliant pigs in Washington have become confused into thinking that if one is circumcised then they are circumspect.
My dumocratic congressman (finally) responded recently that my expressed outrage and concerns over the horrific attacks on Gaza were understandable, but he believed Israel was more than justified.
Apparently, trapping people within an enclosed area and then slaughtering them indiscriminately, is just another day at the trough for our pigs.
Gaza And The Warsaw Ghetto
same place
different time
while the world stood by
genocide
live
Have the US tell Israel to investigate it's war crimes is like having Al Capone tell Frank Nitti to question the mob enforcers why so many people are getting their legs broken.
Walk in peace.
Well, another wishy-washy request by the United States that Israel probe Gaza crimes in the interests of peace.
I'm sure Benjamin Netanyahu will take this request to heart immediately, even though in his recent United Nations’ speech he, as usual, shamelessly decried any kind of call for Israel's accountability as some kind of persecution. He recently objected vehemently to findings by Investigative Judge Richard Goldstone that Israel was culpable of "overkill," let's call it, in bombing and killing civilians in Gaza and creating miserable conditions for the Gazan civilian population. So what else is new? Goldstone cited Hamas' indiscriminate rocket firing as a war crime also.
What is the seemingly psychopathic leader of the Zionist government, Benjamin Netanyahu going to say?: Yes, we ... Israel broke the ceasefire with Hamas and in retaliation ... again ... they shot off some homemade rockets without any kind of targeting devices ... but which actually in a two-year period may or may not have killed four to six of our people? Well, so ... what if more than a thousand Palestinians died in Gaza? We're at war. No, I guess it wasn't nice to bulldoze down homes or hold Gazan families hostage in a room in their homes while our Israel soldiers pooped on their beds and smeared feces on the walls, defecated on the floor, and put a bowl of excrement in their refrigerator. But boys, even in uniform, will be boys.
No, I guess it wasn't too nice to bomb schools or buildings where we knew Gazan civilians had been directed to take shelter. No, I guess it wasn't nice when that little girl was shot and a dog began to eat her and the soldiers wouldn't let the parents go to her. Yes, unfortunately, when they and a few neighbors tried, they were shot dead. ... Well, this is a war, you know, and those Hamas are dangerous, hiding weapons and all that and sniping at us from rooftops, and trying to get us with surprise attacks.
And, no, maybe using White Phosphorous as we bombed Gaza was a bit much. Yes, it is like napalm and burns the skin off, like that little Vietnamese girl covered with napalm running naked down the road to try to get away from the pain. Well, that was a war too. And besides, even if it is illegal, the United States supplied us with White Phosphorous along with the fighter planes, and they must know something we don't. And well, even if we withheld medical supplies and food from the Gazans, well, you know, millions of our own people starved and were tortured, hurt and killed in the Holocaust ... so ...
+++++++
In May of 2002, the U.S. and Israel, renounced their respective signatures affixed at the end of the Clinton Administration, affirming acceptance of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, allowing for individual prosecutions for Crimes Against Humanity. The body of law of the Rome Statute was years in the making and is recognized by the United Nations and provides the ICC much wider latitude in prosecuting many types of crimes.
George W. did his best, between May and June of 2002 to pressure countries to renounce the Court and the Statute, which was to go into effect July 1, 2002. The timing was so convenient. Almost immediately after 9-11 the false arrests and incarcerations without trial began, and torture began right along with them. Despite the pressure by George W., some of it very direct, no other countries denounced their Rome Statute signatures.
There are approximately upwards of 80 resolutions against Israel filed at the UN for its inhumane behavior. As a member of the Security Council, of course the United States never voted to nail Israel to its Wailing Wall, but consistently has given Israel a "Get-Out-of-Jail-Free Card to flash whenever anything unpleasant comes up.
Obama's lukewarm admonitions to Israel about not building further settlements ... has not prevented Israel from stealing more Palestinian land and evicting them from their homes to build settlements. So?
Our President does not seem to be a particularly moral or brave man. Get used to it. He's seems to be a player with those who are destroying this country economically, judicially, legislatively. And I don't believe anymore that he didn't know what he was walking into when he decided to run for president.
If all the nasty secrets of the last few decades came out, including the plans for 9-11 and the demise of the United States as a major economic power, the country would spasm from north to south, east to west, BUT with cleansing could come healing. This nation can never heal with, in the words of John Dean to Nixon: "Mr. President, there is a cancer growing on the Presidency."
Huge, malignant tumors are growing in our government and our financial sector beginning with the Federal Reserve. These tumors have metastasized throughout Wall Street and beyond to financial institutions in other countries and all the way to Israel that has malignant tumors just like ours. These metastasizing tumors have affected and will continue to affect every one of us.
Without surgery and the chemo-therapy of TRUTH we will not survive as a Nation except as a caricature of what it was and what it might have been. It can't. Not anymore, and likely every other country on earth knows it. And I do not believe that Israel will survive either if it does not clean up its act from the top down.
My gratitude to those who step forward and continue to do so, and the more TRUTH each of us knows is our opportunity to inform, as best we can, our fellow citizens that our Nation is in the fight of its life and for its life, and it needs us ... NOW.
And let's not forget to urge the US to probe the unconscionable war crime we visited on the citizens of Falluja.
More US talk and no action. Just like in Honduras.
Gee whiz, what a cynical bunch of commenters!
I'm proud to take my place among them!
Although it's quite possible that the Israeli government has an investigation already completed that conclusively and incontrovertibly PROVES that not only were no war crimes committed during Operation Cast Lead, but the IDF behaved impeccably while executing the entirely justified military action.
If push comes to shove, they just dust it off and change the dates, times, and places. The song remains the same.
In any case, I'm pretty sure that the headline was unintentionally truncated; it SHOULD read: "US Urges Israel to Probe Gaza Crimes to Boost Peace-- or Not".
· Yr Obd't Servant
Or, as the BBC would have it, "crimes".
US Urges Iran to Probe Nuclear Program to Boost Peace
I was expecting to see the usual Zionist trolls playing the "poor me" victim card on this board... Then I remembered that it is Yom Kippur and the IDF hacks probably took the day off to attone for their sins...
I recommend folks to google and watch "missing links" about the dual-citizens in high-up US gov't positions that have dubious allegiance to US interests...
Do you think that a competent Israeli investigation of said war crimes would reveal that the US supplied the vast majority of the weapons used to commit the crimes in the first place?
Didn't think so...
Walk in peace.
The U.S. would be shocked, SHOCKED, to find out any such thing. The terms of the military aid packages are clearly spelled out, including "Not to be used to kill little schoolgirls, either in school, or walking to/from school, unless within 30 feet of a known high value terrorist target" in Section 17, Paragraph 3, Part 4.
And the U.S. is NOT kidding about demanding documentation showing the known high value terrorist target within strike range, let me be perfectly clear. The U.S. takes war crimes very seriously.
"The neighborhood bully just lives to survive. Well, he's surrounded by [politicians] who all want peace, they pray for it nightly that the bloodshed must cease. Now, they wouldn't hurt a fly. To hurt one they would weep…Well, the chances are against it and the odds are slim, that he'll live by the rules that the world makes for him, He's the neighborhood bully."-Bob Dylan
In defense of freedom of the press, conscience and speech; I have seized the liberty to counter Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's spinning at the UN on September 24, 2009.
He is "N" and I am "E" and so it begins:
N: Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen
Nearly 62 years ago, the United Nations recognized the right of the Jews, an ancient people 3,500 years-old, to a state of their own in their ancestral homeland. I stand here today as the Prime Minister of Israel, the Jewish state, and I speak to you on behalf of my country and my people.
The United Nations was founded after the carnage of World War II and the horrors of the Holocaust. It was charged with preventing the recurrence of such horrendous events. Nothing has undermined that central mission more than the systematic assault on the truth.
E: In agreement on principal and the brutal truth is:
Israel has been targeted by at least 65 UN resolutions and the Palestinians have been targeted by none. [1]
"Aside from the core issues—refugees, Jerusalem, borders—the major themes reflected in the U.N. resolutions against Israel over the years are its unlawful attacks on its neighbors; its violations of the human rights of the Palestinians, including deportations, demolitions of homes and other collective punishments; its confiscation of Palestinian land; its establishment of illegal settlements; and its refusal to abide by the U.N. Charter and the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War. [2]
"Israel holds the record for ignoring United Nations Security Council resolutions…Since 1968, Israel has violated 32 resolutions that included condemnation or criticism of the governments' policies and actions…The resolutions Israel violated were either about its annexation of East Jerusalem or settlements in the territories. Israel also ignored UN Security Council resolutions that called for Israel to cease using harsh measures against the Palestinian population and to cease expelling Palestinians. [3]
The Rest:Countering Benjamin Netanyahou's Orwellian Spin at the UN
http://www.wearewideawake.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1441&Itemid=224
Sadly, the UN has become a joke. Saudi Arabia, Egypt, China, Iran, Venezuela, and other gross human rights violators cheer on the accusations as they draw fire away from their own systematic abuses.
The question are: Do we want peace or do we want war? What compromises are we willing to make for peace?
I can't understand this strange relationship between the US and Israel. It would seem that Israel needs the US, but hates it at the same time.
And the US is supporting Israel for some strange reason, which I can't figure out. Maybe someone here can explain it better? Is it to have a "presence" in the middle east? Wasn't that why we went into Iraq?
just wondering what percentage of the US population unconditionally supports israel in their war crimes?