Israel was set to face an avalanche of war crimes lawsuits from Palestinian lawyers who accused Tel Aviv of dozens of crimes five months after its three week assault on the Gaza Strip, the German daily Der Spiegel reported Saturday.
A group of Palestinian lawyers filed 936 lawsuits against Israel's Defense Forces (IDF) and the cases will soon be heard in Spain's National Court under universal jurisdiction, Iyad al-Alami, head of the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR), said.
PCHR's attorneys are collecting evidence of human rights violations and war crimes committed against unarmed civilians.
Accusations ranged fromshooting children and women at close range to the illegal use of white phosphorus bombs on civilians as well as attacks on ambulances and razing civilians' houses.
Hundreds of lawsuits were filed against Israel for war crimes against civilians including children Structural damage in Gaza was estimated at $ 1.6 billion.
Other than PCHR, there are dozens of attorneys from Britain, Norway, New Zealand, the Netherlands and Spain working on lawsuits against Israel andwhich will be filed under the principle of universal jurisdiction, which studies cases of war crimes, genocide, torture and crimes against humanity.
Six attorneys in Norway filed a lawsuit for human rights violations against Israel and are seeking a European arrest warrant against senior Israeli officials, one of whom is former prime minister Ehud Olmert.
June 5th, 2009 by William Blum www.killinghope.org The great, international, demonic, truly frightening Iranian threat
The United States is "facing a nuclear threat in Iran" — article in Chicago Tribune and other major newspapers, May 26
"the growing missile threat from North Korea and Iran" — article in the Washington Post and other major newspapers, May 26
"Iran's threat transcends religion. Regardless of sectarian bent, Muslim communities need to oppose the attempts by Iran ... to extend Shia extremism and influence throughout the world." — op-ed article in Boston Globe, May 27
"A Festering Evil. Doing nothing is not an option in handling the threat from Iran" — headline in Investor's Business Daily, May 27, 2009
This is a very small sample from American newspapers covering but two days.
"Fifty-one percent of Israelis support an immediate Israeli strike on Iran's nuclear sites" — BBC, May 24
After taking office, on Holocaust Memorial Day, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said: "We will not allow Holocaust-deniers [Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad] to carry out another holocaust." — Haaretz (Israel), May 14, 2009
Like clinical paranoia, "the threat from Iran" is impervious to correction by rational argument.
Two new novels have just appeared, from major American publishers, thrillers based on Iran having a nuclear weapon and the dangers one can imagine that that portends — "Banquo's Ghosts" by Rich Lowry & Keith Korman, and "The Increment" by David Ignatius. "Bomb, bomb, bomb. Let's bomb Iran," declares a CIA official in the latter book. The other book derides the very idea of "dialogue" with Iran while implicitly viewing torture as acceptable.1
On May 12, in New York City, a debate was held on the proposition that "Diplomacy With Iran Is Going Nowhere" (English translation: "Should we bomb Iran?"). Arguing in the affirmative, were Liz Cheney, former State Department official (and daughter of a certain unindicted war criminal) and Dan Senor, formerly the top spokesman for Washington's Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad. Their "opponents" were R. Nicholas Burns, former undersecretary of state, and Kenneth Pollack, former National Security Council official and CIA analyst and author of "The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq", a book that, unsurprisingly, did not have too long a shelf life.2
This is what "debate" on US foreign policy looks like in America in the first decade of the 21st century AD — four quintessential establishment figures. If such a "debate" had been held in the Soviet Union during the Cold War ("Detente With The United States Is Going Nowhere"), the American mainstream media would unanimously have had a jolly time making fun of it. The sponsor of the New York debate was the conservative Rosenkranz Foundation, but if a liberal (as opposed to a progressive or radical leftist) organization had been the sponsor, while there probably would have been a bit more of an ideological gap between the chosen pairs of speakers, it's unlikely that any of the present-day myths concerning Iran would have been seriously challenged by either side. These myths include the following, all of which I've dealt with before in this report but inasmuch as they are repeated on a regular basis in the media and by administration representatives, I think that readers need to be reminded of the counter arguments.
* Iran has no right to nuclear weapons: Yet, there is no international law that says that the US, the UK, Russia, China, Israel, France, Pakistan, and India are entitled to nuclear weapons, but Iran is not. Iran has every reason to feel threatened. In any event, the US intelligence community's National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) of December 2007, "Iran: Nuclear Intentions and Capabilities", makes a point of saying in bold type and italics: “This NIE does not assume that Iran intends to acquire nuclear weapons.” The report goes on to state: "We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program ." * Ahmadinejad is a Holocaust denier: I have yet to read of Ahmadinejad saying simply, clearly, unambiguously, and unequivocally that he thinks that what we know as the Holocaust never happened. He has instead commented about the peculiarity and injustice of a Holocaust which took place in Europe resulting in a state for the Jews in the Middle East instead of in Europe. Why are the Palestinians paying a price for a German crime? he asks. And he has questioned the figure of six million Jews killed by Nazi Germany, as have many other people of all political stripes. * Ahmadinejad has called for violence against Israel: His 2005 remark re "wiping Israel off the map", besides being a very questionable translation, has been seriously misinterpreted, as evidenced by the fact that the following year he declared: “The Zionist regime will be wiped out soon, the same way the Soviet Union was, and humanity will achieve freedom.”3 Obviously, he was not calling for any kind of violent attack upon Israel, for the dissolution of the Soviet Union took place peacefully. * Iran has no right to provide arms to Hamas and Hezbollah: However, the United States, we are assured, has every right to do the same for Israel and Egypt. * The fact that Obama says he's willing to "talk" to some of the "enemies" like Iran more than the Bush administration did sounds good: But one doesn't have to be too cynical to believe that it will not amount to more than a public relations gimmick. It's only change of policy that counts. Why doesn't Obama just state that he would not attack Iran unless Iran first attacked the US or Israel or anyone else? Besides, the Bush administration met with Iran on several occasions.
The following should also be kept in mind: The Washington Post, March 5, 2009, reported: "A senior Israeli official in Washington" has asserted that "Iran would be unlikely to use its missiles in an attack [against Israel] because of the certainty of retaliation." This was the very last sentence in the article and, according to an extensive Nexis search, did not appear in any other English-language media in the world.
In 2007, in a closed discussion, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said that in her opinion "Iranian nuclear weapons do not pose an existential threat to Israel." She "also criticized the exaggerated use that [Israeli] Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is making of the issue of the Iranian bomb, claiming that he is attempting to rally the public around him by playing on its most basic fears." This appeared in Haaretz.com, October 25, 2007 (print edition October 26), but not in any US media or in any other English-language world media except the BBC citing the Iranian Mehr English-language news agency, October 27.
By an Anonymous Reviewer: Such views are usually censored
I highly recommend reading the book "Jewish history, Jewish Religion". Its author, Israel Shahak, a professor at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, engages in deep introspection about Jewish religion and practices.
He seems deeply toubled by the rigidity, and intolerance of Jewish religion. Shahak quotes from the Talmud and points out a pervasive Jewish racism and haughtiness toward non-Jews.
He believes that anti-semitism may have its roots in this historic Jewish mindset. Shahak also points out a wide-spread practice of deception and double-speak.
In writing this book, he hopes that other Jews will engage in similar introspection to estabish a more harmonious relationship with Goyims.
By joe.baker@virgin.net (London, England) A guide to understanding Israel
In his most illuminating and disturbing book Professor Shahak takes the lid off previously hidden Orthodox Jewish beliefs and practices. He explains how these beliefs are at the heart of the Zionist adventure and constitute a major influence upon Israeli government policies and actions. We are made aware of the paradox of a largely secular state basing its raison d'etre and future direction upon biblical text. The depth of Orthodox Jewish antipathy toward the gentile, and especially toward Christianity (and Jesus) will come as an unsettling surprise to the many millions of American evangelical Christians who uncritically accept a fawning admiration of all things Israeli repeatedly displayed by the TV evangelists. Frightening, too, is the near-total control of most Jewish organizations now in the hands of Zionists; it is now almost impossible for a Jew to openly disassociate him or herself from, let alone be critical of, the state of Israel or the aims of Zionism. Whereas the critical gentile must be an 'anti-Semite' so must the critical Jew be 'self-hating'. Whatever your point of view on the situation in Israel, whatever your religion or philosophical perspective, however deeply you hold your convictions, you cannot fail to be challenged by this marvelous book.
By an Anonymous Reviewer: A paradigm shattering book
Shahak, a Holocaust survivor himself, is willing to acknowledge Polish suffering at the hands of the German Nazis in the same breath as the mass murder of Jews. Other aspects of his book are equally "revolutionary". For the longest time, the ruling paradigm has been the following: Christians are solely responsible for the negative aspects of Jewish-Christian relations, and Christians are 100% responsible for past anti-Semitism. This book is paradigm-shattering in that it dares imply that Jewish attitudes and conduct are ALSO responsible for anti-Semitism. Of course, the information presented in this book is not new. For instance, when Martin Luther wrote his infamous tract about Jews, he raised many of the same themes raised by the Jewish author Shahak: Jews taught to spit whenever they passed by a church, the Talmud misrepresenting and slurring the Christian religion, the use of the word Jesus as a curse word, Jews thanking God in prayer that they are not gentiles, Jewish males thanking God in prayer that they are not women, the overall condescending attitude Jews were imbued with against gentiles, etc. To this we can also add that Jews were taught that it is OK to cheat gentiles, as well as the aforementioned tendency for Jews to think that their suffering is to be exalted above the sufferings of all other peoples. Shahak is also skillful in pointing to ways that the Talmud had been deliberately mistranslated at times in order to soften or conceal these aspects from gentiles. Personally, whatever residual anti-Jewish feelings I have are weakened, rather than reinforced, by seeing a Jewish author willing to own up to the faults emanating from the Jewish side. Shahak, you have done a true mitzvah!
Ezra Nawi is seen trying to stop a military bulldozer from destroying the homes of Palestinian Bedouins from Um El Hir in the South Hebron region. These Palestinians have been under Israeli occupation for almost 42 years. They still live without electricity, running water and other basic services, and are continuously harassed by the Jewish settlers and the military who are working hand-in-hand in order to seize their land. Notwithstanding the evidence in the film, Nawi has been found guilty by an Israeli court of assaulting an officer. Please support Nawi by sending emails protesting his imminent imprisonment to the Israeli embassy in your country: http://mfa.gov.il/MFA/Sherut/IsraeliA...
