| Topic: |
Politics > Politics-USA |
| User: |
"Garrick H Olafsen" |
| Date: |
23 Jul 2006 09:55:16 AM |
| Object: |
Re: What is the impact of Middle East violence? BBC |
"torresD" <torresd30@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:H5vwg.1581$gF6.409@newsread2.news.pas.earthlink.net...
http://newsforums.bbc.co.uk/nol/thread.jspa?threadID=2593&&edition=2&ttl=20060722203152
Help the none directly involved countries' economy and
satisfy various religious zeolets' fantasies?
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| User: "john fernbach" |
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| Title: Re: What is the impact of Middle East violence? BBC |
23 Jul 2006 05:28:15 PM |
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Garrick H Olafsen wrote:
"torresD" <torresd30@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:H5vwg.1581$gF6.409@newsread2.news.pas.earthlink.net...
http://newsforums.bbc.co.uk/nol/thread.jspa?threadID=2593&&edition=2&ttl=20060722203152
Help the none directly involved countries' economy and
satisfy various religious zeolets' fantasies?
Jewish Voice for Peace Media Statement
July 17 Protest at Israeli Consulate in SF To
Urge Israel To End Military Attacks on Gaza and Lebanon
War crimes will not bring peace, security and justice to Palestinians,
Israelis or to Jews anywhere.
(San Francisco, July 17) - Members of Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP),
one of the nation's largest grassroots Jewish peace groups, are
organizing public actions in major cities across the country to help
bring an end to the current conflict. Many of us have friends and
family in Gaza, Lebanon and Israel.
JVP believes that all parties in this horrifying escalation of violence
must be held accountable to international law. However, Israel's
refusal to negotiate and its decision to act with overwhelming
force-using weapons supplied by the United States-- have escalated
this situation to war. Far from bringing peace, Israel's actions only
empower extremists.
First in Gaza and now in Lebanon, Israel has responded to attacks on
military targets by targeting civilian, not military infrastructure. As
a result, Gaza -where 64 elected members of Parliament were arrested
by the IDF and where Palestinians now lack proper access to
electricity, water, fuel, hospital care and essential foodstuffs--is on
the verge of a humanitarian crisis. Lebanon is being devastated. Now
Israeli citizens have become targets.
It is essential to understand that this entire sequence of events did
not begin with recent Hamas and Hezbollah attacks on Israeli targets.
It must be traced to Israel's continuing 39-year illegal, immoral and
unjustified occupation of the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem.
Israel can never know peace as long as they occupy another people.
Israel, like any other country, including Lebanon and the Palestinians
living under Israeli occupation, has the right to defend itself.
Hizbullah's attack on an IDF post within Israel's borders was a
clear violation of international law, and its subsequent missile
strikes on Israeli cities and civilians doubly so.
But Israel's response to attack has been to punish the civilian
population of Lebanon with enormous force, and this is both illegal and
intolerable. As with Gaza, Israel has employed the most blatant form of
collective punishment, and they have completely refused to talk.
By taking this tactic, Israel has endangered not only Palestinian and
Lebanese citizens, but also their own people. We call on Hizbullah to
immediately release the two Israeli soldiers they are holding and for
Israel to immediately cease its military operations in both Lebanon and
the Gaza Strip. We call on our government in the US to act immediately
to bring about a cease-fire and to commence negotiations between Israel
and the duly elected Palestinian Authority aimed at resolving the fate
of the soldier being held by Palestinians; at ending all attacks by
Israelis and Palestinians against each other; and at ending the 39-year
old Israeli occupation and finally bringing a just peace to the region.
About Jewish Voice for Peace
Founded in 1996, Jewish Voice for Peace is a national grassroots peace
organization dedicated to promoting a US foreign policy in the Middle
East based on peace, democracy, human rights and respect for
international law. With over 13,000 supporters and members, JVP's
board of Jewish American and Israeli advisors includes Pulitzer and
Tony award winner Tony Kushner, actor Ed Asner, poet Adrienne Rich as
well as other respected rabbis, artists, scholars and activists. JVP
has chapters in Boston, Philadelphia, Washington DC, Seattle, Chicago,
Sacramento and San Francisco.
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| User: "john fernbach" |
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| Title: Re: What is the impact of Middle East violence? BBC |
23 Jul 2006 05:25:47 PM |
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http://www.juancole.com
Informed Comment
Thoughts on the Middle East, History, and Religion
Juan Cole is President of the Global Americana Institute
Thursday, July 20, 2006
2 Arab-Israeli Boys Killed by Hezbollah in Nazareth
Chemical Stores Moved from Haifa
Hizbullah fired many katyusha rockets into Israel again on Wednesday,
killing two Arab-Israeli boys in Nazareth and lightly wounding 9 others
with shrapnel.
Hizbullah's katyushas are extremely imprecise, so that in firing them
at Israel the fighters are engaging in indiscriminate fire on civilian
populations, which is a war crime.
Al-Bawaba says, "Katyushas also hit Nahariya in the late afternoon.
Some 70 Katyushas were fired at Israel within the space of an hour.
Earlier Wednesday, two rockets hit Haifa and others fell in the Western
Galilee."
Most of the katyushas appear to produce few casualties and do little
damage, though some have hit buildings.
Xinhua reports, "Haifa, Tiberias, Karmiel, Acre as well as a number of
communities in the Galilee in northern Israel were pounded by a salvo
of rockets, which totalled about 70 within an hour, said the reports,
adding residents were instructed to stay inside. According to the
reports, injuries were reported in Tiberias . . . Meanwhile, four
people were also wounded, one seriously, when a Katyusha rocket landed
near Safed on Wednesday afternoon. "
In Haifa, a katyusha hit a bus and lightly wounded the driver, and
another damaged the home of an Arab Israeli family. Some residents of
Haifa seem to be blaming the Olmert government for its all-out war on
Lebanon. Hezbollah did not fire its rockets until Israel began
bombarding Lebanon. Haifa is known for having a significant Arab
population and for relatively good Arab-Israeli relations in the city.
Reports say that Haifa as a city is paralyzed and its commerce has
ground to a halt, with streets deserted and shops closed up. An Israeli
in Canada described the situation of her elderly parents in Haifa: '
"They're forced to dash to a local grocery store and then dash back and
must stay shut into their apartment all day watching television, "which
isn't easy," she said. "There hasn't been much damage to the city
physically, but there's been huge damage spiritually. Everything has
changed now that they're living in war." '
The Israeli Army has removed most of the dangerous chemicals from Haifa
Port. The chemicals had become a hazard once Haifa began taking rocket
fire. On Sunday, Hizbullah leader Shaikh Hasan Nasrallah said that he
could have hit the chemical stores with rockets if he had wanted to,
and implied that he could yet take this [monstrous] step.
Although the conflict is costing Israel an estimated $112 million per
day, mainly in lost tourism and lost factory time, economists do not
expect it to have a substantial economic impact. Israel's economy has
been experiencing robust growth, and the fighting is not forecast to
detract from it in a major way.
posted by Juan @ 7/20/2006 06:30:00 AM 7 comments
Israel Kills 57 in Lebanon
Arbour Warns War Crimes are Prosecutable
The Daily Star reports,
' Israeli fighter-bombers also destroyed nearly 20 residential homes
and buildings in Lebanon in the early morning hours of Wednesday and
continued air raids in the South, the Bekaa and Beirut's southern
suburbs. At least 12 Lebanese, including children, were killed and 30
wounded in an Israeli air strike that destroyed several homes in the
Southern village of Srifa, residents said. '
In fact, Israel "flattened" several Lebanese villages in the south with
indiscriminate air strikes. One entire village section of 15 homes was
destroyed, with a high civilian death toll. It is not possible that all
15 civilian residences were legitimate military targets. This is just
state terror.
Food and medicine are running low for the vast displaced population,
some 500,000 persons, raising the specter of a vast humanitarian
crisis.
Israeli troops and armor fought with Hezbollah inside Lebanese
territory on Wednesday. Hezbollah claimed to have destroyed two Israeli
tanks.
The Lebanese government says that the Israelis have now killed more
than 300 persons, all but a handful innocent civilians. Some of the
military personnel killed were Lebanese army troops hundreds of miles
from the Hizbullah positions in the South, who were not doing anything
that threatened Israel. In fact, Israeli officials keep saying that
want the help of the Lebanese army to curb Hizbullah. But then they
bomb the Lebanese army. Say what?
Israeli war planes fired on two parked trucks in the Christian
Ashrafiyah district of Beirut. These innocuous trucks in a Christian
area were clearly not legitimate military targets in a struggle against
Hizbullah. The message the Israeli air force is trying to send with
such actions is that Lebanese should stop driving trucks for a while,
or else they will be targets.
And this is my problem with Israel's war on Lebanon. The Olmert
government wants to clean Hizbullah's katyusha rocket emplacements out
of the area above its northern border with Israel. That may or may not
be a realistic goal. Larry Cohler-Esses at the Jewish Week reports that
a lot of military experts think Israel's military plan is impossible to
accomplish. But it is legitimate for the Israeli government to fight
Hizbullah and to attempt to destroy the missiles, once Hizbullah
showered Israel with missiles (and even thought the missiles have
mostly failed to hit anything).
But the Israeli military from the beginning of this conflict did not
limit itself to fighting Hizbullah or to hitting its arsenal. The
Israeli air force bombed Beirut airport (and bombed it again on
Wednesday), and bombed the sea ports of Tripoli, Jounieh, Beirut, Sidon
and Tyre. It bombed civilian neighborhoods and villages and killed
whole families.
That kind of broad gauge approach is not allowed by the modern laws of
warfare. If you have good reason to think that a truck is carrying
weaponry to Hizbullah, you can bomb it. But just bombing any old
civilian truck is a war crime.
So, the Israelis could have attempted to surveil trucking and where
they had good reason to think that a truck was transporting weapons,
they could have hit it. But just blowing up random trucks is criminal.
Israel has fought a lazy war, both morally lazy and militarily lazy. It
is work to surveil enemy shipments. So, you just blow up the airport
and the ports and roads and bridges, regardless of whether you have
reason to believe that any of them is used by Hizbullah for their war
effort. Just in case. It is a just in case war. You bomb Shiite
villages intensively, just in case they have military significance to
Hizbullah. Maybe they don't, and you've just blown up a civilian
neighborhood and killed whole families. Where blowing up things has no
immediate and legitimate military purpose and harms innocent civilians,
it is a crime. It can be prosecuted, especially in Europe.
Louise Arbour of the UN High Commission on Human Rights made this point
Wednesday, according to the Daily Star story linked to above:
' UN human rights chief Louise Arbour suggested Wednesday that the
military operations being carried out in Lebanon, Israel and the
Occupied Palestinian Territories could be considered war crimes. The
obligation to protect civilians during hostilities is entrenched in
international law, "which defines war crimes and crimes against
humanity," Arbour said in a statement. "The scale of the killings in
the region, and their predictability, could engage the personal
criminal responsibility of those involved, particularly those in a
position of command and control," she added. '
Here are the relevant statutes according to the Big News Network:
' The Fourth Geneva Convention, prohibits "collective penalties and
likewise all measures of intimidation or of terrorism ..." (Article
33). According to Article 147 of the Convention, "extensive destruction
.... not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and
wantonly," hostage-taking and "torture or inhuman treatment" are grave
breaches of the Geneva Conventions and constitute war crimes. All state
parties to the Convention are required to search for and ensure the
prosecution of perpetrators of grave breaches of the said Convention.
Protocol I Additional to the Geneva Conventions codifies the principle
of distinction, a customary rule of international humanitarian law: "In
order to ensure respect for and protection of the civilian population
and civilian objects, the Parties to the conflict shall at all times
distinguish between the civilian population and combatants and between
civilian objects and military objectives and accordingly shall direct
their operation only against military objectives." (Article 48).
International Humanitarian Law strictly prohibits attacks against
civilians and civilian objects. The Rome Statute of the International
Criminal Court (ICC) includes as war crimes: "Intentionally directing
attacks against the civilian population as such or against individual
civilians not taking direct part in hostilities", and "Intentionally
directing attacks against civilian objects" (Article 8 2 (b) (i) and
(ii)). '
But the same article also conveys the Israeli response
' The Israeli chief of staff, Brig.Gen. Dan Halutz, noted in public
remarks that senior Hizbullah leaders live and work in southern Beirut,
and said Beirut could be targeted if Hizbullah continued to fire
rockets into northern Israel. "Nothing is safe [in Lebanon], it's as
simple as that," Halutz said. '
That is collective punishment. It is holding millions of innocents
hostage and threatening them with death. It is state terror. I don't
think the Israelis get it.
Meanwhile Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora had this to say:
' "As I speak, the trauma, the desperation, the grief and the daily
massacres and destruction go on and on. The country has been torn to
shreds.
"Is the value of human life in Lebanon less than that of the citizens
of other countries? Can the international community stand by while such
callous retribution by Israel is inflicted on us?
"Will you allow innocent civilians, churches, mosques, orphanages,
medical supplies escorted by the Red Cross, people seeking shelter or
fleeing their homes and villages to be the casualties of this ugly war?
http://www.dailystar.com.lb
"Is this what the international community calls self-defense?
"Is this the price we pay for aspiring to build our democratic
institutions? Is this the message to send to the country of diversity,
freedom and tolerance?
"Only last year, the Lebanese filled the streets with hope and with
red, green and white banners shouting out: Lebanon deserves life!
"What kind of life is being offered to us now?
"I will tell you what kind: a life of destruction, despair,
displacement, dispossession, and death.
"What kind of future can stem from the rubble?
"A future of fear, frustration, despair, financial ruin and fanaticism.
"Let me assure you that we shall spare no avenue to make Israel
compensate the Lebanese people for the barbaric destruction it has
inflicted and continues to inflict upon us, knowing full well that
human life is irreplaceable.
"You want to support the government of Lebanon? Let me tell you, ladies
and gentlemen, no government can survive on the ruins of a nation.
"On behalf of the people of Lebanon, from Beirut, Baalbek and Byblos,
to Tyre Sidon and Qana, to each and every one of the 21 villages at the
Southern border, declared a no-go zone by Israel, to Tripoli and Zahle,
to every other town, I call upon you all to respond immediately without
reservation or hesitation to this appeal for an immediate cease-fire
and lifting of the siege, and provide urgent international humanitarian
assistance to our war-stricken country. '
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