It's the small courtesies . . . . . .

Don't bomb our stuff, and we won't talk about all those kids you killed. Gotta love the UN's spine.

Blue Ibis
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UN kindly requests Israel not to fire on its premises during future slaughters of Palestinians

Press TV
Wed, 06 May 2009 12:32 UTC

A UN probe into the Israeli offensive against Gaza finds Israel guilty of intentionally shelling a UN-run school and killing three people seeking shelter there.

The raid was one of eight occasions where the Israeli army targeted UN personnel or facilities, prompting the international body to launch an inquiry into the war crimes committed during the weeks-long onslaught in which more than 1,350 Palestinians were killed.

The three-member UN board of inquiry declared Israel had repeatedly breached the inviolability of UN premises and exhibited "reckless disregard for the lives and safety" of civilians in a separate strike on an elementary school, which took the lives of two children and injured 13 others.

The inquiry board dismissed Israel's defense with its confirmation that there was no evidence that Palestinian fighters had used UN facilities to launch military attacks against Israeli troops.

United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said he would pressure Israel to pay compensation in excess of the $11 million in damages caused to UN property.

The UN chief, however, rejected the board's recommendation to expand the investigation into other examples of war crimes during the conflict and to hold perpetrators accountable.

"I would emphasize that a board of inquiry is not a judicial body or court of law," said Ban in a 27-page summary he released of the 184-page report. "It does not make legal findings and does not consider questions of legal liability."

Instead, Ban said the UN and Israel would begin negotiations to determine how they can improve their lines of communication to avoid such incidents.

Israeli spokeswoman Mirit Cohen welcomed Ban's assurances but labeled the UN board's report as "tendentious" and "patently biased".

In its report, the board rejected allegations that the three young men killed by an Israeli airstrike against Gaza's Asma elementary school were engaged in military activities, concluding that "it is more probable that they were going out to use the toilets" when they were killed.

They also demanded Israel to publicly withdraw assertions that Palestinians had fired from within the premises of a UN-run school and a UN relief office.

IDF in Gaza: The Fallout Continues

Israel's Dirty Secrets in Gaza: It Was Pure Murder

Donald Macintyre
The Independent
Sat, 21 Mar 2009 10:53 UTC

Army veterans reveal how they gunned down innocent Palestinian families and destroyed homes and farms.

Israel confronted a major challenge on Thursday night over the conduct of its 22-day military offensive in Gaza after testimonies by its own soldiers revealed that troops were allowed and, in some cases, even ordered to shoot unarmed Palestinian civilians.

The testimonies - the first of their kind to emerge from inside the military - are at marked variance with official claims that the military made strenuous efforts to avoid civilian casualties and tend to corroborate Palestinian accusations that troops used indiscriminate and disproportionate firepower in civilian areas during the operation. In one of the testimonies shedding harsh new light on what the soldiers say were the permissive rules of engagement for Operation Cast Lead, one soldier describes how an officer ordered the shooting of an elderly woman 100 metres from a house commandeered by troops.

Another soldier, describing how a mother and her children were shot dead by a sniper after they turned the wrong way out of a house, says the "atmosphere" among troops was that the lives of Palestinians were "very, very less important than the lives of our soldiers."

A squad leader said: "At the beginning the directive was to enter a house with an armoured vehicle, to break the door down, to start shooting inside and - I call it murder - to shoot at everyone we identify. In the beginning I asked myself how could this make sense? Higher-ups said it is permissible because everyone left in the city [Gaza City] is culpable because they didn't run away."

The accounts, which also describe apparently indiscriminate destruction of property, were given at a post-operation discussion by graduates of the Yitzhak Rabin pre-military course at the Oranim Academic College in northern Israel. The transcript of the session in front of the head of the course - details from which were published by the newspaper Haaretz - prompted the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) military advocate general Avichai Mendelblit yesterday to announce a military police investigation into the claims. Haaretz said the airing of the "dirty secrets" would make it more difficult for Israelis to dismiss the claims as Palestinian propaganda. The course principal, Danny Zamir, told the newspaper that after being "shocked" by the testimonies on 13 February he told the IDF chief of staff Gabi Ashkenazi he "feared a serious moral failure" in the IDF.

In one account, an infantry squad leader describes how troops released a family who had been held in a room of their house for several days. He said: "The platoon commander let the family go and told them to go to the right. One mother and her two children didn't understand and went to the left, but they forgot to tell the sharpshooter on the roof they had let them go and it was okay... The sharpshooter saw a woman and children approaching him. He shot them straight away. I don't think he felt too bad about it, because, as far as he was concerned, he did his job according to the orders he was given. And the atmosphere in general, from what I understood from most of my men who I talked to, the lives of Palestinians, let's say, is something very, very less important than the lives of our soldiers."

A second squad leader, who described the killing of the elderly woman, says he argued with his commander over loose rules of engagement that allowed the clearing out of houses by shooting without warning residents beforehand. After the orders were changed, soldiers had complained that "we should kill everyone there [in the centre of Gaza]. Everyone there is a terrorist." The squad leader said: "To write 'death to the Arabs' on walls, to take family pictures and spit on them, just because you can. I think this is the main thing: To understand how much the IDF has fallen in the realm of ethics."

Ehud Barak, Israel's Defence Minister, said: "I say to you that from the chief of staff down to the last soldier, the most moral army in the world stands ready to take orders from the government of Israel. I have no doubt that every incident will be individually examined."

But Israeli human rights organisations, including B'Tselem and the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, called for an independent investigation and complained that the military police inquiry had only been announced after Haaretz published the story, "three weeks after the relevant materials reached the Chief of the General Staff. This tardiness follows a pattern of failures to investigate suspicions of serious crimes".

Amos Harel, the paper's respected military correspondent who broke the story, wrote that Mr Zamir was sentenced in 1990 for refusing to guard a settlers' ceremony at Joseph's tomb in the West Bank. But he added that a reading of the transcript shows that Mr Zamir "acts out of a deep concern for the spirit of the IDF".

In their own words: Soldiers' stories

Squad leader Aviv

"At the beginning the directive was to enter a house with an armoured vehicle, to break the door down, to start shooting inside and to ascend floor by floor and - I call it murder - to go from floor to floor and to shoot at everyone we identify. In the beginning I asked myself how could this make sense? Higher-ups said it is permissible because everyone left in the city [Gaza City] is culpable because they didn't run away. This frightened me a bit. I tried to influence it as much as possible, despite my low rank, to change it. In the end the directive was to go into a house, switch on loudspeakers and tell them 'you have five minutes to run away and whoever doesn't will be killed'."

Soldier Ram

"There was an order to free the [confined] families. The platoon commander set free the family and told them to turn right. A mother and two children didn't understand and turned left. [Officers] had forgotten to tell the sniper on the roof that they were being set free and that everything was okay and he should hold fire. You can say that he acted as he was supposed to, in accordance with the orders. The sniper saw a woman and children approaching him, past lines that no one was to be allowed to cross. He fired directly at them. I don't know if he fired at their legs but in the end he killed them."

The REAL Cost in Gaza

Confirmed figures reveal the true extent of the destruction inflicted upon the Gaza Strip; Israel's offensive resulted in 1,434 dead, including 960 civilians, 239 police officers, and 235 fighters.

Palestinian Centre for Human Rights
uruknet.info
Thu, 12 Mar 2009 22:56 UTC

The Israeli offensive launched on the Gaza Strip between 27 December 2008 and 18 January 2009 resulted in extensive death, injury and destruction throughout the Gaza Strip. Only now is the true extent of the devastation becoming apparent.

The offensive took place in the context of an ongoing international armed conflict and belligerent occupation. International humanitarian law (IHL) lays down stringent, legally-binding, obligations regulating the conduct of hostilities. Of primary relevance is the principle of distinction, which obliges all Parties to the conflict to distinguish between combatants and non-combatants (including civilians). Civilians and civilian objects must be spared the effects of any hostilities to the greatest extent possible. This is the core premise on which IHL is founded. Consequent to this fundamental obligation, IHL also regulates the methods and means used in an attack. In short, all precautions must be taken to restrict any damage and destruction beyond that absolutely required by military necessity.

The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights' (PCHR) investigations reveal that throughout the course of the assault, Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) used excessive, indiscriminate force, in violation of the principle of distinction. This claim is evidenced by the disproportionately high rate of death amongst the civilian population, when compared to that of resistance fighters. IOF also wilfully violated the principle of distinction as a result of their illegal classification of law enforcement officials as combatants. Uniformed units of law enforcement agencies are not considered members of armed forces (combatants), unless explicitly recognised as such.

Over the course of the 22 day Israeli assault on the Gaza Strip, a total of 1,434 Palestinians were killed. Of these, 235 were combatants. The vast majority of the dead, however, were civilians and non-combatants: protected persons according to the principles of IHL. PCHR investigations confirm that, in total, 960 civilians lost their lives, including 288 children and 121 women. 239 police officers were also killed; the majority (235) in air strikes carried out on the first day of the attacks. The Ministry of Health have also confirmed that a total of 5,303 Palestinians were injured in the assault, including 1,606 children and 828 women.

The excessively disproportionate civilian death toll, and Israel's conduct of hostilities - including, inter alia, indiscriminate attacks, wilful killing, the extensive destruction of property, target selection, the lack of precautions taken in attack, the excessive use of force, and the use of weapons such as in civilian areas - demand effective judicial redress. Many of the cases documented by PCHR constitute grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions, and war crimes. The widespread and apparently systematic violations of customary IHL witnessed in the Gaza Strip may also amount to a crime against humanity.

PCHR call on all States to fulfil their legal obligations, as codified in Article 146 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, to prosecute any persons suspected of committing grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions. All States must enact appropriate legislation to ensure that such persons may be tried in national courts, in accordance with the principle of universal jurisdiction.

Further, PCHR affirm that, if the civilian population are to rebuild their lives and attempt to recover from the devastation wreaked on the Gaza Strip, then borders must be opened: aid and reconstruction material must be allowed into the Gaza Strip. As the Occupying Power, the State of Israel has a legal obligation, codified in the Fourth Geneva Convention, to allow unrestricted humanitarian access. Further, if the resources in the occupied territory are inadequate - as is currently the case in the Gaza Strip - then Article 55 of the Fourth Geneva Convention places a specific obligation on the Occupying Power (Israel) to provide the articles necessary to ensure the safety and wellbeing of the civilian population.

While strongly condemning the actions of the IOF during their offensive on the Gaza Strip, PCHR:

1. Calls for establishing effective international investigation into crimes committed by IOF against Palestinian civilians, and Israel's conduct of hostilities.


2. Calls for the prosecution of all political and military officials who are accused of committing war crimes against Palestinian civilians.


3. Calls for an end to all measures of collective punishment inflicted on the population of the Gaza Strip, including a lifting of the siege, and ensuring the free and safe movement of persons and goods.


4. Calls upon Israel to fulfil its obligations as the Occupying Power to facilitate unrestricted humanitarian access, and to provide those articles necessary to ensure the safety and wellbeing of the civilian population.


5. Calls upon the international community to immediately intervene to prevent impunity for such crimes, and calls upon the High Contracting Parties to the Geneva Conventions to fulfil their obligation under Article 1 of the Convention to ensure respect for the Convention in all circumstances, as well as their obligation under Article 146 of the Fourth Geneva Convention to search for and prosecute those who are responsible for perpetrating grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions.

Gaza Videos - Worth Ten Thousand Words

Video series: Gaza - The Hidden Truth

Youtube
Tue, 17 Feb 2009 22:03 UTC
futurdoc

A series of three video montages from news and interview clips, laying bare the truth of the recent slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza and the hateful ideology that lies behind it.

The Painful Truth In Gaza - The Hidden Truth#1

The Zionist - The Hidden Truth #2

ONE Minute, To See the Truth About Palestine - The Hidden Truth #3