Hamas demonstrates its humanity again
Greetings from London Heathrow. I'm on my way home.
Hamas executed three '
murderers' at dawn on Tuesday. Two were executed by firing squad, while the third, a 'policeman' was hanged.
Last week, Amnesty International called for the 'attorney general' of Gaza to intervene in these cases.
Of course, Amnesty said nothing of Gaza's 'justice system.' Richard Goldstone of the Goldstone Commission once endorsed Hamas' '
court system,' but it goes without saying that Gaza does not have an 'attorney general' and that Amnesty's call is ludicrous.
Hamas does have Abu Mazen, who is supposed to approve any death sentences, but since Hamas broke Gaza off from the more 'moderate' terrorists of Fatah in 2007, they
no longer ask Abu Mazen to approve their death sentences.
But just give them a 'state' and they'll sort it all out....
Labels: Abu Mazen, Amnesty International, executions, Gaza, Goldstone Commission, Hamas, Hamas courts, Richard Goldstone
Richard Kemp tells the UN to lay off Israel
Richard Kemp, the former commander of British forces in Afghanistan, has made a lengthy submission to the United Nations 'human rights council's
investigative commission kangaroo court regarding
Israeli actions to minimize civilian casualties during last summer's Operation Protective Edge. It's very much worth it to read the whole thing. Here's the conclusion.
In conclusion, in my opinion the IDF took exceptional measures to adhere to the Laws of Armed Conflict and to minimise civilian casualties in Gaza. During the conflict many politicians, UN leaders, human rights groups and NGOs called on the Israelis to take greater action to minimise civilian casualties in Gaza. Yet none of them suggested any additional ways of doing this. I conclude that this was because Israel was taking all feasible steps. I believe Israel to be world leaders in actions to minimise civilian casualties; and this is borne out by the efforts made by the US Army, the most sophisticated and powerful in the world, to learn from the IDF on this issue.
In my opinion Israel is also making strenuous efforts to investigate incidents where civilians were apparently unlawfully killed, wounded or ill-treated, and where civilian property was unlawfully damaged or stolen. I am not aware of any nation that has conducted more comprehensive or resolute investigations into its own military activities than Israel during and following the 2014 Gaza conflict.
On the other hand, Hamas and other groups in Gaza took the opposite approach to that of the IDF. Their entire strategy was based on flouting the Laws of Armed Conflict, deliberately targeting the Israeli civilian population, using their own civilian population as human shields and seeking to entice the IDF to take military action that would kill large numbers of Gaza civilians for their own propaganda purposes. There was and is of course no accountability or investigation of any allegations against Hamas and other extremist groups in Gaza.
I strongly urge the Commissioners to condemn Hamas and the other groups for their actions during this conflict. Failure to do so would be tantamount to encouraging a repeat of such actions in the future, by Hamas and other Gaza groups and by extremist groups around the world who would wish to emulate the actions in Gaza. This would undoubtedly result in further loss of life in Gaza, in Israel and elsewhere.
Similar encouragement is given to extremist groups by the lamentable tendency of some international actors to afford moral equivalence to Hamas, an internationally proscribed terrorist organization, and Israel, a liberal democratic state.
I also urge the Commissioners to give fair consideration to Israel’s actions during this conflict and not simply to jump on the over-burdened bandwagon of automatic condemnation. Where the actions of the IDF were genuinely wrong then of course the Commission should criticise them, call upon them to bring the perpetrators to justice where appropriate and to adjust future procedures as necessary. But false accusations of war crimes, as were made by the Commissioners that investigated the 2008-09 Gaza conflict (the ‘Goldstone Report’), will do nothing to advance the cause of peace and human rights. Instead, such accusations will encourage similar action by Hamas and other groups in the future, leading to further violence and loss of life.
Many people believe that your findings are a foregone conclusion, as the findings of the 2008-09 Commission regrettably proved to be. They believe that you will roundly and without foundation condemn Israel for war crimes while at best making only token criticism of Hamas and other Gaza extremist groups. If you genuinely want to contribute to peace and to improve human rights for the people of Gaza and of Israel then you must have the courage to reject the UN Human Rights Council’s persistent and discriminatory anti-Israel programme and produce a balanced and fair report into these tragic events.
Read the whole thing. And don't expect the unexpected.
Labels: civilian casualties, Gaza, Goldstone Commission, Hamas, IDF, IDF rules of engagement, Operation Protective Edge, United Nations Human Rights Council
William Schabas on why William Schabas should be disqualified from heading Gaza inquiry
Daniel Edelman, the brother of one of my childhood friends, uses William Schabas' own words to explain why
William Schabas should be disqualified from chairing the United Nations fact-finding committee on Gaza.
Whether Professor Schabas thinks he can adjudicate the accusations
against Israel fairly and independently has no bearing on the question
of impartiality. Judicial disqualification is not dependent on the
judge’s subjective assessment of impartiality but is based on an
objective test of whether the reasonable person aware of the facts and
circumstances might consider the judge to be biased. For example, the
Rome Statute authorizing the International Criminal Court provides: “A
judge shall not participate in any case in which his impartiality might
reasonably be doubted on any ground.” Even more directly, the Rules of
Procedure and Evidence applicable to the Rome Statute establishes as a
“ground[] for disqualification of a judge” the “[e]xpression of
opinions, through the communications media in writing or in public
actions, that objectively, could adversely affect the required
impartiality of the person concerned.”
...
Moreover, Professor Schabas himself instructs that war crimes’ tribunal
judges should be disqualified where there is even the appearance of
bias under the objective test. In his book on the UN War Crime
Tribunals, Professor Schabas wrote: “A judge may be disqualified in any
case in which he or she has a personal interest, or some other
association which might affect his or her impartiality. The test is one
of ‘reasonable apprehension of bias.’”
Professor Schabas must concede that UN fact-finding commissions are
subject to these same standards of judicial impartiality. In various
interviews, Professor Schabas has emphasized that he and others
conducting the fact-finding are obliged to be as impartial as any
judge. Professor Schabas is also likely aware of Professor Thomas
Franck’s seminal article relevant to UN fact-finding entitled Procedural Due Process in Human Rights Fact-Finding By International Agencies in
which “choice of fact-finders” is one of the “key indicators of
procedural probity.” As Professor Franck wrote: “impartiality. . .
certainly implies that persons conducting an investigation should be,
and should be seen to be, free of commitment to a preconceived outcome.”
...
Perhaps Professor Schabas considers there to be only a few expert
scholars with the necessary knowledge and skills to function as UN
fact-finders investigating Israel. Such elitism, however, should never
be rationalized as an excuse for suppressing the fundamental due process
protections safeguarding judicial impartiality. If Professor Schabas
genuinely cares about the integrity and fairness of UN fact-finding, he
should immediately recuse himself from the commission. Otherwise,
Professor Schabas and the Human Rights Council have only themselves to
blame for discrediting this commission as legally invalid.
Read the whole thing.
More of Schabas' words about Israel and Binyamin Netanyahu
here,
here,
here and
here. And for good measure,
here's one from 2009.
Labels: Binyamin Netanyahu, Gaza, Goldstone Commission, Hamas, IDF, Operation Protective Edge, William Schabas
Civilian to combatant casualty ratio in Gaza around 1:1
Despite ongoing 'Palestinian' efforts to create civilian casualties in Gaza through the use of human shields, the IDF reports that the civilian to combatant casualty ratio in Operation Protective Edge is
around 1:1.
Israel has
evidence that almost half of Palestinians killed in the 25-day-old Gaza
war were combatants, its deputy foreign minister said on Saturday,
pushing back against international allegations of a lopsidedly heavy
civilian death toll.
Gazan human rights groups say
at least 80 percent of the 1,669 Palestinians killed have been
non-combatants, including hundreds of children. The U.N. Human Rights
Council last week accused the Israelis of "disproportionate and
indiscriminate attacks" and launched an inquiry into possible war
crimes.
...
"There is research being done in the military,
very professionally and reliably, (whose) conclusion is that at least
47% of the fatalities are terrorists, with photographs and names,"
Tzachi Hanegbi told Israel's Channel Two television, adding that the
data would be presented to investigators.
He
did not elaborate. Israel rejected the U.N. Human Rights Council's
probe announcement, describing the forum as biased, but usually conducts
its own combat inquiries.
Israel
says Hamas and other Palestinian guerrillas in Gaza are terrorists and
in past conflicts has used broad definitions of combatants - including,
for example, Palestinian policemen working for the Hamas administration.
Other significant factors in the count include:
1. The statistics from the 'Palestinian Health Ministry' in Gaza come from Hamas and are therefore not reliable.
2. The statistics from the 'human rights council' counted anyone under the age of 18 as a civilian, whereas Hamas uses 16 and 17-year olds (and sometimes even younger children) as combatants. and even uses
babies as human shields.
3. The more significant statistic in determining whether civilians or combatants are being killed is the male to female casualty ratio. The numbers I have seen for Operation Protective Edge put that at 3:1.
4. Israel's record is actually comparable or better than
other Western countries.
According to a 2010 assessment by John Sloboda of Iraq Body Count,
a United Kingdom-based organization, American and Coalition forces had
killed at least 28,736 combatants as well as 13,807 civilians in the Iraq War, indicating a civilian to combatant casualty ratio inflicted by coalition forces of 1:2.[24] However, overall, figures by the Iraq Body Count
from 20 March 2003 to 14 March 2013 indicate that of 174,000 casualties
only 39,900 were combatants, resulting in a civilian casualty rate of
77%.[25]
The civilian casualty ratio for U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan
is notoriously difficult to quantify. The U.S. itself puts the number
of civilians killed from drone strikes in the last two years at no more
than 20 to 30, a total that is far too low according to a spokesman for
the NGO CIVIC.[26] At the other extreme, Daniel L. Byman of the Brookings Institution
suggests that drone strikes may kill "10 or so civilians" for every
militant killed, which would represent a civilian to combatant casualty
ratio of 10:1. Byman argues that civilian killings constitute a
humanitarian tragedy and create dangerous political problems, including
damage to the legitimacy of the Pakistani government and alienation of
the Pakistani populace from America.[27] An ongoing study by the New America Foundation
finds non-militant casualty rates started high but have declined
steeply over time, from about 60% (3 out of 5) in 2004-2007 to less than
2% (1 out of 50) in 2012. The study puts the overall non-militant
casualty rate since 2004 at 15-16%, or a 1:5 ratio, out of a total of
between 1,908 and 3,225 people killed in Pakistan by drone strikes since
2004.[28]
By the way, Britain's civilian-combatant ratio in Afghanistan was
3:1.
After Operation Cast Lead, Israel produced a
500-page report which, among other things, showed that it had killed mostly combatants (make sure to watch the video at that link). Subsequently, former Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations
demolished the 'human rights council's investigation chairman, Richard Goldstone, in a
debate (videos at this link) at Brandeis University, which I
live-blogged. After that debate, Goldstone refused to debate anyone else (including
Alan Dershowitz) about his report, and eventually he
recanted the major accusations in the report - far too late.
Labels: civilian casualties, Dore Gold, Gaza, Goldstone Commission, Goldstone Report, Hamas, human shields, IDF, Operation Cast Lead, Operation Protective Edge, Richard Goldstone
Foreign reporters threatened on Twitter for reporting on Hamas rocket fire
On Wednesday night, I reported that foreign journalists have begun to quietly acknowledge that Hamas is using hospitals and mosques to store and fire rockets and is
using the civilian population generally as human shields for its activities. Unsurprisingly, we now have word that some foreign journalists have been
threatened for their reporting.
On Wednesday, Peter Stefanovic of Australia’s Channel Nine News
tweeted: “Hamas rockets just launched over our hotel from a site about
two hundred metres away. So a missile launch site is basically next
door.”
An account called @ThisIsGaza said this was Stefanovic’s fourth time
“passing and fabricating information to Israel... from GAZA” and
threatened to sue him.
Another account, @longitude0 wrote: “You are a cretin. Are you working for the IDF” and “in WWII spies got shot.”
Financial Times Jerusalem Bureau Chief John Reed reported seeing “two
rockets fired toward Israel from near al-Shifa hospital, even as more
bombing victims were brought in.”
Shifa, in Gaza City, is the main medical facility in the Strip [and is where the Hamas leadership is hiding out. CiJ].
In response, @Saritah_91 tweeted: “We’ll hold you responsible if Israel
uses your tweet to bomb the hospital & then justify it.”
Another twitter user, @ Faysal_FreeGaza, said he’s “subtly justifying
and encouraging IDF attacks on hospitals,” and @Maysara_ ara wrote:
“Get out of Gaza u informant.”
...
Harry Fear, a journalist from the UK reporting from Gaza for RT
(formerly Russia Today) television, tweeted last week: “Early morning
Gaza rockets were fired into Israel. A well-known site in W. Gaza City,
near my hotel, was among the origins, confirm locals.”
Fear then took on the critics, tweeting soon after that he rejects
“loaded complaints that I ‘informed’ Israel about the specifics of Gaza
military sites... These sites are well-known among locals and
internationals here.”
“Should a journalist only report the noise and ferocity of Israel’s
attacks & not the sounds of Gaza’s rockets? Both terrify people,”
he tweeted.
Later that day, Fear tweeted: “Al-Wafa hospital has been hit in the
last while; injuries reported – this is the hospital with human
shields.”
While a Goldstone 2 is unlikely to be any less biased than the
Goldstone Commission after Operation Cast Lead, these tweets should be filed away for future reference. If a future inquiry (there's already one in the making - more on that later) is biased against Israel, these tweets can be used to show that Israel acted justifiably.
Labels: Gaza, Goldstone Commission, Goldstone Report, Hamas, Hamas rockets, human shields, Operation Cast Lead, Operation Protective Edge, United Nations Human Rights Council
Goldstone Commission member appointed special rapporteur on “Israel’s violations of the bases and principles of international law.”
Deciding that the vetting committee's choice for the UN’s next special rapporteur on “Israel’s violations of the bases and principles of international law,” the United Nations 'human rights council' has decided to appoint
Goldstone Report co-author Christine Chenkin to the position, replacing Richard Falk. The Arab group at the 'human rights commission' decided that the vetting committee's choice was not anti-Israel enough.
The only power that can yet stop these outrageously partisan and problematic appointments before tomorrow’s plenary decision is the Obama Administration.
When council president Baudelaire Ndong Ella tomorrow moves the nominations, the U.S. — if it is to live up to its pledge to use its UNHRC membership to fight bias, politicization and double standards — must take the floor, call a vote, and vote No.
Because the UN desperately seeks to make such appointments by consensus, the president may change his mind if he knows in advance and for certain that the U.S would challenge these two objectionable nominations.
If the U.S. fails to call a vote and stand up for what is right, it will have forfeited its moral justification for serving on a council that just elected Putin, the Castro regime, the Chinese Communist Party, and the House of Saud.
More on Chenkin's anti-Semitic background
here.
Labels: Christine Chenkin, Goldstone Commission, Goldstone Report, Richard Falk, United Nations Human Rights Council
Goldstone's kapos
Operation Cast Lead ended in mid-January 2009, right before President Obama's inauguration (Israel was
ordered not to spoil the party). The Goldstone Commission was appointed on
April 3, 2009. On September 15, 2009, the Commission issued a 600-page report that included 'findings of fact and conclusions of law' and accused Israel of systematically destroying Gaza's civilian infrastructure in an attempt to starve and torture its people (Goldstone himself has retracted that accusation; the other commission members stand by it). How did they produce such a huge report so quickly? A lot of it was cutting and pasting - but how did they know what to cut and paste? Noah Pollak
explains.
The report was largely compiled from material provided by what is often referred to as Israel’s “human rights community.” This vague euphemism refers to a coterie of groups and individuals that has evolved over the past decade into a highly politicized movement of dozens of nongovernmental organizations that operate in Israel and subject its government, military, laws, and people to relentless scrutiny and accusation. And, as first pointed out by NGO Monitor, the Goldstone Report relied most heavily on the largest and most prominent among them: the group known as B’Tselem. More footnotes in the report, 56 in all, cite B’Tselem as a source than any other. Indeed, as Jessica Montell, B’Tselem’s executive director, has said, B’Tselem “provided extensive assistance to the UN fact-finding mission headed by Justice Goldstone—escorting them to meet victims in Gaza, providing all of our documentation and correspondence, and meeting the mission in Jordan.”
B'Tselem is supported by European (mostly) and American funds. Those funds have an agenda, and it's not a pro-Israel agenda.
Read the whole thing (payment required).
Labels: B'Tselem, Goldstone Commission, Goldstone Report, New Israel Fund, Understanding the Goldstone Report
'They just made it up'
Professor Avi Bell concludes that there was no Goldstone investigation to back the infamous report.
They just made it up.
Inadvertently, Goldstone highlighted what a casual reader might overlook: the Goldstone Report's anti-Israel charges were just unproven partisan allegations masquerading as investigative conclusions.
A careful reading of the Report shows that the Goldstone Mission "investigated" by collecting accusations against Israel. The Report dismissed contrary physical, photographic, documentary, and testimonial evidence as unreliable, then rewrote the accusations in narrative form and "concluded" that they were true. Where necessary, the Report made up additional facts in place of missing evidence.
Consider the Report's "finding" that Israel criminally destroyed Gaza's al-Bader flour mill with air-launched missiles "for the purpose of denying sustenance to the civilian population." The Report cited as evidence only a Mission walk-around and the accusations of several Gazans who were not present at the time of the alleged attack. Two Israeli investigations concluded that the flour mill was never struck or targeted by Israeli missiles; in fact, Israel released aerial photos showing the roof of the mill intact several days after the alleged air strikes. Yet the Report not only concluded that the event happened, it even concluded that Israel's motivation for the imaginary attack "could only have been to destroy the local capacity to produce flour"? The evidence? The Report simply made it up.
Read the whole thing.
I did an extensive post on the al-Bader flour mill
here.
Labels: Desmond Travers, Goldstone Commission, Hina Jilani, Operation Cast Lead
Woman to woman: Let's talk about this
Phyllis Chesler
writes an open letter to Hina Jilani, one of the three non-recanting members of the Goldstone Commission.
Hina, please understand: The lies and slander that have been generated against Israel are every bit as false and unjust as the lies told to justify the honor killing of girls and women.
I once worked at the United Nations. In my opinion, it is completely ineffective save in two areas:
It has legalized Jew-hatred with a vengeance and it has provided a High Life for many Third World/developing world professionals who wish to be well paid to live in the West and yet also wish to retain or achieve reputations as champions of justice. Therefore, I understand the price you would have to pay if you broke with UN-Think or with Third World Think which is so intensely anti-American, anti-Western, and anti-Israel—the convenient scapegoats for all the crimes and ills of the Arab and Muslim world.
Nevertheless, please think about the implications of my analogy.
Like an honor killing victim, Israel is being slandered so that the terrorist violence against it will be seen as justified and legitimate. When Israel exposes the Big Lies or tries to defend its civilian citizens against such pitiless violence, like the raped girls and women in Pakistan and other Muslim-majority countries, Israel is blamed. She provoked it. She knew the rules. She knew she was meant to die if she stepped out of line by a millimeter; surely she knew that being born female was a capital crime, a death sentence.
Israel dares to live. It exists surrounded by Arab and Muslim countries that believe she has no right to exist and who have sworn to kill her.
Read the whole thing.
The picture at the top is
Asma al-Ghoul.
Labels: Goldstone Commission, Hina Jilani, Phyllis Chesler
NGO Monitor rips Goldstone Commission members
In response to Thursday's Comment is Free piece by
members of the Goldstone Commission in al-Guardian, NGO Monitor has issued a statement.
“From the beginning, it was clear that all the members of the so-called ‘fact finding’ exercise lacked the qualifications necessary to asses the events of the Gaza war, as well as demonstrating conflicts of interest and biases. It is also not surprising to see how closely their defense of the report reflects Amnesty International’s own statements,” said Professor Gerald Steinberg, president of NGO Monitor. “Chinkin had been a consultant to Amnesty, while Jilani and Travers signed a highly biased letter spearheaded by Amnesty accusing Israel of “war crimes” before their appointment to the UN body. Now they are again joining forces with Amnesty’s ideologues to counter Goldstone’s belated retraction. Morally, they have an obligation to follow the courageous example of Goldstone, and admit they were wrong.”
NGO Monitor also notes that among the non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that provided the allegations included in this discredited report, Amnesty was particularly influential. At a UNHRC-run townhall meeting for NGOs in Geneva in May 2009, representatives from Amnesty International gave a detailed outline for the report’s contents to the Goldstone mission members. Indeed, Amnesty’s recommendations closely corresponded to the final report.
Steinberg added, “It took two years, but Judge Goldstone has now acknowledged the obvious – that the UN Human Rights Council is totally biased, and therefore, the mandate, mission and report lack any moral or substantive validity. The fact that Hila Jilani, Christine Chinkin, and Desmond Travers cling to the anti-human rights agenda set by Libya, Iran, Cuba, China, and other core violators at the UNHRC serves to highlight their moral blindness.”
Goldstone's acknowledgment is too little, too late, and Chinkin, Jilani and Travers are determined to spearhead the effort to make sure it stays that way.
Labels: Christine Chenkin, Desmond Travers, Goldstone Commission, Hina Jilani
Other members of Goldstone Commission defend report
It should surprise no one that the members of the Goldstone Commission other than Goldstone himself are
still defending the report We concur in our view that there is no justification for any demand or expectation for reconsideration of the report as nothing of substance has appeared that would in any way change the context, findings or conclusions of that report with respect to any of the parties to the Gaza conflict. Indeed, there is no UN procedure or precedent to that effect.
The report of the fact-finding mission contains the conclusions made after diligent, independent and objective consideration of the information related to the events within our mandate, and careful assessment of its reliability and credibility. We firmly stand by these conclusions.
Also, it is the prerogative of the UN to take cognisance of any evidence subsequently gathered under domestic procedures that it finds credible and in accordance with international standards. Over 18 months after publication of the report, however, we are very far from reaching that point.
The mandate of the mission did not require it to conduct a judicial or even a quasi-judicial investigation. The mission and the report are part of a truth-seeking process that could lead to effective judicial processes. Like all reports of similar missions of the UN, it provided the basis for parties to conduct investigations for gathering of evidence, as required by international law, and, if so warranted, prosecution of individuals who ordered, planned or carried out international crimes.
In the case of the Gaza conflict, we believe that both parties held responsible in this respect, have yet to establish a convincing basis for any claims that contradict the findings of the mission's report.
Given what we know about the
biases of the other
group members, this is not at all surprising. They were more than willing to put their prestige behind this report. And now, it is they who will try to keep it in the public domain.
By the way, please let me know if you find the word "Hamas" anywhere in their statement.
What could go wrong?
Labels: Christine Chenkin, Desmond Travers, Goldstone Commission, Hina Jilani
