It’s 7:40 Sunday evening. My friend and I are driving, and we have just entered Beirut’s Southern Suburb (a.k.a. Dahiyé). Smoggy “air” fills the atmosphere, making it impossible to see much farther. There’s traffic slowly moving around, and there’s nothing different from were we left off 40 days ago … Except for the dust…and the visible destruction that we have finally started to see.
We drive past a bombed bridge, and a building that’s become a pile of stones except for the remains of a few hanged clothes, and some glimpses of furniture. For a moment I fantasize that the building was abandoned, and the left-to-dry laundry – along with many other items – was left behind. But the rotten stench of human decay which is creeping even through the closed windows of the car tells me otherwise.
We pass by another collapsed building…
…and another one with huge holes in it…
…here’s another hole in the bridge…
In summary, there’s a collapsed building on every lane. And the smell is everywhere.
People are walking past the traffic looking like they always have; they are the residents of the area. Women in headscarves hold handkerchiefs to their noses, perhaps to muzzle the odor or to keep the dust from their lungs. Most probably both.
The dark has set in for quite some time now, and the lights are back on, many shining from the remaining buildings and others from the shops and the lampposts on the streets.
Above the ruins, fireworks are blasting in shimmers, celebrating victory. As we drive slowly underneath them, I wonder who really won beneath the face of our victory. It’s too soon to tell, because this was not the conventional State-to-State war as we know it, but a war of another kind. Still, I ponder, even if we didn’t win, we didn’t let them win either. And that’s a victory in itself…albeit a small one, I add to myself as I glance back down to the ruins by my side, slowly drifting back to the moment.
But one thing’s for sure: in this land of contradictions, where people celebrate their victory above the debris despite the losses, there’s no mistaking that life goes on even more fervently…
Wednesday, August 23, 2006
Thursday, August 17, 2006
Israel Must Finally Be Held to Account For Its Criminal Acts
Israel's crimes so far have gone unchallenged because most world leaders have supported them overtly or tacitly. In so doing, these leaders and other officials are guilty criminal accomplices under Article 6 of the Nuremberg Charter that states: "Leaders, organizers, instigators and accomplices participating in the formulation or execution of a common plan or conspiracy to commit any of the....crimes (listed in Articles 6b or 6c of the Charter) are responsible for all acts performed by any persons in execution of such plan." By this standard, the entire US Senate and all but eight members of the US House are also criminal accomplices by result of their votes during the week of July 17 to unconditionally support Israel's "supreme international crime" of illegal aggression against Lebanon and Palestine unjustifiably claiming Israel has the right of self-defense guaranteed it under Article 51 of the UN Charter.
It's long past time that Israel no longer be allowed to get away with its crimes and for its officials responsible for them to be held to account for them. Since world leaders on their own won't act (especially as they're guilty co-conspirators), mass worldwide public protest and action must do it for them and demand either the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague indict and prosecute Israeli officials responsible for what they've inflicted on Lebanon and the OPT or the UN General Assembly must act in its stead to establish an International Criminal Tribunal for Israel. It has the authority to do it under Article 22 in the UN Charter and twice before used it for Yugoslavia and Rwanda.
The ICC was established in 2002 in accordance with the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court in 1998. It's authorized by its signatories to act as a permanent tribunal to prosecute individuals for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity as defined by the 1945 Numerberg Charter drafted by the US and its main WW II allies to try Nazi war criminals. The court was established to adjudicate in the kinds of cases Israeli officials should be brought to book for. However, while Israel signed the final act of the Rome conference creating the ICC, it voted against the statute to remain free of its authority. People demanding justice thus may have no other recourse than to have the UN General Assembly act to establish a special International Tribunal for Israel that will use its authority to prosecute culpable Israeli officials in the Hague if they can be brought there or in absentia if they're not.
Israel has a long history of criminal and abusive acts. Long before the June 25 incident near Kerem Shalom crossing that began the current conflict, the UN Human Rights Commission held that Israel had violated nearly all 149 articles under the Fourth Geneva Convention that governs the treatment of civilians in war and under occupation and in so doing is guilty of war crimes according to international law. The Commission also determined Israel as an occupier in the OPT has committed "crimes against humanity" as defined under the 1945 Nuremberg Charter. By its actions since June 25 against the Palestinians and especially after July 12 in Lebanon, Israel has compounded its crimes by committing many more of them.
It remains for an international court of law to name those individuals culpable for these crimes and to state the specific charges. But the one accusation above all others should be that Israel violated the most important of all binding international laws under the UN Charter to which Israel is a signatory. The Charter authorizes a nation to use force only under two conditions: when authorized to do it by the Security Council or under Article 51 that allows the "right of individual or collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs against a Member....until the Security Council has taken measures to maintain international peace and security." In other words, necessary self-defense is permitted.
Israel's extreme responses following the capture of three of its soldiers, known in both cases to have been planned well in advance awaiting only convenient pretext to initiate them, are no acts of self-defense. They're acts of premeditated illegal aggression and, as such, are what the Nuremberg Tribunal that tried the Nazis called "the supreme international crime." The Nazis found guilty of it were hanged and justice was served. Under Article 6b of the Nuremberg Charter, Israel also committed the flagrant war crimes of "plunder of public (and) private property, wanton destruction of cities, towns or villages, (and) devastation not justified by military necessity." Under Article 6c, it's guilty of the "crimes against humanity (of) murder..., deportation and other inhumane acts committed against (the Lebanese and Palestinian) civilian population(s), before (and) during the war."
The Nuremberg Tribunal set a high standard which it followed based on the principles of the 1928 Kellogg-Briand Pact signed by 63 nations after WW I to renounce war as an instrument of foreign policy. The Pact didn't prevent WW II, but what it stipulated formed the basis for "crimes against peace." The Nuremberg Charter described those crimes as "the planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a premeditated war of aggression or a war in violation of international treaties." It prosecuted the Nazis for what they did including the ones charged with this supreme crime. The UN is surely authorized to act to establish an international criminal court just as the victorious US, UK and USSR allies acted on their joint authority during and after WWII to establish the Nuremberg Tribunal to try Nazi war criminals.
Israel also has a long and disturbing record of flagrantly violating or ignoring international laws and norms. In its past conflicts as well as the current ones, besides committing "the supreme international crime" of illegal aggression, it's using weapons banned under the Hague Convention of 1907, the 1925 Geneva Protocol and succeeding Geneva Weapons Conventions that outlaw the use in war of chemical, biological or any other "poison or poisoned weapons. In the 1973 war and currently, Israel is using depleted uranium (DU) weapons that are radioactive and chemically toxic and thus clearly fit the definition of poisonous weapons banned under the 1907 Hague Convention.
It's also suspected of using other illegal weapons including chemical agents, white phosphorous bombs and shells against civilian targets that burn flesh to the bone and can't be extinguished by water that only makes the burning worse when used, cluster bombs, and a terror weapon called "flashettes" which explode and shoot out 1000s of nails in all directions. In addition, the IDF is reportedly testing in real time some new terror weapons (using the helpless Lebanese and Palestinians as their lab rats) including a thermobaric solid fuel-air explosive bomb able to penetrate buildings, underground shelters and tunnels creating a blast pressure great enough to suck all the oxygen out of spaces struck and the lungs of all those in the vicinity. All these weapons are either questionable or illegal under Hague and/or Geneva international law.
All the above actions clearly warrant Israel's criminal prosecution by an international court. Yet there are still others to be added to them. Israel ignored the World Court in the Hague that ruled 14 - 1 in 2004 that the annexation/separation wall it's building is "contrary to international law" because it "destroyed and confiscated" property, greatly restricts Palestinian movement, and "severely impedes the exercise by the Palestinian people of (the) right to self-determination." As a result, the Court ordered construction to end at once, the existing portion of it built to be taken down, and Palestinians adversely affected by its construction to be compensated for their losses. Israel ignored the ruling, continues building the wall, and thus is violating international law. In addition, over the last half century, Israel has been a serial abuser of UN resolutions flagrantly and willfully ignoring over five dozen of them that condemned or censured it for its actions against the Palestinians or other Arab people, deplored it for committing them or demanded the Jewish state end them.
Like its US ally, Israel is also know to be a serial abuser of torture as a means of inflicting punishment or trying to elicit information from the 10,000 or more Palestinian and Lebanese prisoners it forcibly abducted and now holds in its prisons. According to Amnesty International, Israel is the only country in the world to effectively legalize torture (now, of course, the US has as well). Many of those Israel holds in custody are political prisoners held administratively without charge, and Israeli human rights monitoring group B'Tselem reports Israel's use of torture is flagrant, widespread and routinely used against them. Such practice is clearly a violation of international law that bans the use of torture or degrading treatment under any circumstances. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights outlawed it in 1948. The Fourth Geneva Convention then did it in 1949 banning any form of "physical or mental coercion" and affirming detainees must at all times be treated humanely. The European Convention followed in 1950. Then in 1984, the UN Convention Against Torture became the first binding international instrument dealing exclusively with the issue of banning torture in any form for any reason. Israel ignores these and all other international laws and norms but has never yet been held to account for its actions. It's way past time that injustice be addressed and corrected. World public opinion overwhelmingly demands it.
It now remains for an international court to place Israeli officials on trial, have them answer for their past and present crimes, and see to it they pay the price for them if found guilty. That must happen if those harmed by them are ever able to achieve the justice they seek and deserve. It's also crucial this action be taken soon to send a clear message to Israeli officials that world public opinion no longer will tolerate this behavior and that it forced the UN to act in its behalf to demand justice in a world court of law. Even if Israel doesn't accept the court's authority, as will likely happen, its establishment alone may send a message to the Jewish state strong enough to make it cease further aggression against its current victims. It may also deter it and the US from committing further acts of aggression against Syria and Iran now in their plans based on credible reports quoting high-level officials in both countries. If it happens, it's part of the US and Israeli grand plan to destroy Iran's legal commercial nuclear capability, redraw the map of the Middle East, remove the Iranian, Syrian and Hamas independent leaderships in it (as well as destroy the legitimate Hezbollah resistance), and replace them with new regimes henceforth acting as subservient and reliable client states. Neither the US nor Israel must any longer be allowed to get away with their current wars of aggression or have world leader's support their right to extend them further in the region as they likely have in mind to do.
It's long past time that Israel no longer be allowed to get away with its crimes and for its officials responsible for them to be held to account for them. Since world leaders on their own won't act (especially as they're guilty co-conspirators), mass worldwide public protest and action must do it for them and demand either the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague indict and prosecute Israeli officials responsible for what they've inflicted on Lebanon and the OPT or the UN General Assembly must act in its stead to establish an International Criminal Tribunal for Israel. It has the authority to do it under Article 22 in the UN Charter and twice before used it for Yugoslavia and Rwanda.
The ICC was established in 2002 in accordance with the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court in 1998. It's authorized by its signatories to act as a permanent tribunal to prosecute individuals for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity as defined by the 1945 Numerberg Charter drafted by the US and its main WW II allies to try Nazi war criminals. The court was established to adjudicate in the kinds of cases Israeli officials should be brought to book for. However, while Israel signed the final act of the Rome conference creating the ICC, it voted against the statute to remain free of its authority. People demanding justice thus may have no other recourse than to have the UN General Assembly act to establish a special International Tribunal for Israel that will use its authority to prosecute culpable Israeli officials in the Hague if they can be brought there or in absentia if they're not.
Israel has a long history of criminal and abusive acts. Long before the June 25 incident near Kerem Shalom crossing that began the current conflict, the UN Human Rights Commission held that Israel had violated nearly all 149 articles under the Fourth Geneva Convention that governs the treatment of civilians in war and under occupation and in so doing is guilty of war crimes according to international law. The Commission also determined Israel as an occupier in the OPT has committed "crimes against humanity" as defined under the 1945 Nuremberg Charter. By its actions since June 25 against the Palestinians and especially after July 12 in Lebanon, Israel has compounded its crimes by committing many more of them.
It remains for an international court of law to name those individuals culpable for these crimes and to state the specific charges. But the one accusation above all others should be that Israel violated the most important of all binding international laws under the UN Charter to which Israel is a signatory. The Charter authorizes a nation to use force only under two conditions: when authorized to do it by the Security Council or under Article 51 that allows the "right of individual or collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs against a Member....until the Security Council has taken measures to maintain international peace and security." In other words, necessary self-defense is permitted.
Israel's extreme responses following the capture of three of its soldiers, known in both cases to have been planned well in advance awaiting only convenient pretext to initiate them, are no acts of self-defense. They're acts of premeditated illegal aggression and, as such, are what the Nuremberg Tribunal that tried the Nazis called "the supreme international crime." The Nazis found guilty of it were hanged and justice was served. Under Article 6b of the Nuremberg Charter, Israel also committed the flagrant war crimes of "plunder of public (and) private property, wanton destruction of cities, towns or villages, (and) devastation not justified by military necessity." Under Article 6c, it's guilty of the "crimes against humanity (of) murder..., deportation and other inhumane acts committed against (the Lebanese and Palestinian) civilian population(s), before (and) during the war."
The Nuremberg Tribunal set a high standard which it followed based on the principles of the 1928 Kellogg-Briand Pact signed by 63 nations after WW I to renounce war as an instrument of foreign policy. The Pact didn't prevent WW II, but what it stipulated formed the basis for "crimes against peace." The Nuremberg Charter described those crimes as "the planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a premeditated war of aggression or a war in violation of international treaties." It prosecuted the Nazis for what they did including the ones charged with this supreme crime. The UN is surely authorized to act to establish an international criminal court just as the victorious US, UK and USSR allies acted on their joint authority during and after WWII to establish the Nuremberg Tribunal to try Nazi war criminals.
Israel also has a long and disturbing record of flagrantly violating or ignoring international laws and norms. In its past conflicts as well as the current ones, besides committing "the supreme international crime" of illegal aggression, it's using weapons banned under the Hague Convention of 1907, the 1925 Geneva Protocol and succeeding Geneva Weapons Conventions that outlaw the use in war of chemical, biological or any other "poison or poisoned weapons. In the 1973 war and currently, Israel is using depleted uranium (DU) weapons that are radioactive and chemically toxic and thus clearly fit the definition of poisonous weapons banned under the 1907 Hague Convention.
It's also suspected of using other illegal weapons including chemical agents, white phosphorous bombs and shells against civilian targets that burn flesh to the bone and can't be extinguished by water that only makes the burning worse when used, cluster bombs, and a terror weapon called "flashettes" which explode and shoot out 1000s of nails in all directions. In addition, the IDF is reportedly testing in real time some new terror weapons (using the helpless Lebanese and Palestinians as their lab rats) including a thermobaric solid fuel-air explosive bomb able to penetrate buildings, underground shelters and tunnels creating a blast pressure great enough to suck all the oxygen out of spaces struck and the lungs of all those in the vicinity. All these weapons are either questionable or illegal under Hague and/or Geneva international law.
All the above actions clearly warrant Israel's criminal prosecution by an international court. Yet there are still others to be added to them. Israel ignored the World Court in the Hague that ruled 14 - 1 in 2004 that the annexation/separation wall it's building is "contrary to international law" because it "destroyed and confiscated" property, greatly restricts Palestinian movement, and "severely impedes the exercise by the Palestinian people of (the) right to self-determination." As a result, the Court ordered construction to end at once, the existing portion of it built to be taken down, and Palestinians adversely affected by its construction to be compensated for their losses. Israel ignored the ruling, continues building the wall, and thus is violating international law. In addition, over the last half century, Israel has been a serial abuser of UN resolutions flagrantly and willfully ignoring over five dozen of them that condemned or censured it for its actions against the Palestinians or other Arab people, deplored it for committing them or demanded the Jewish state end them.
Like its US ally, Israel is also know to be a serial abuser of torture as a means of inflicting punishment or trying to elicit information from the 10,000 or more Palestinian and Lebanese prisoners it forcibly abducted and now holds in its prisons. According to Amnesty International, Israel is the only country in the world to effectively legalize torture (now, of course, the US has as well). Many of those Israel holds in custody are political prisoners held administratively without charge, and Israeli human rights monitoring group B'Tselem reports Israel's use of torture is flagrant, widespread and routinely used against them. Such practice is clearly a violation of international law that bans the use of torture or degrading treatment under any circumstances. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights outlawed it in 1948. The Fourth Geneva Convention then did it in 1949 banning any form of "physical or mental coercion" and affirming detainees must at all times be treated humanely. The European Convention followed in 1950. Then in 1984, the UN Convention Against Torture became the first binding international instrument dealing exclusively with the issue of banning torture in any form for any reason. Israel ignores these and all other international laws and norms but has never yet been held to account for its actions. It's way past time that injustice be addressed and corrected. World public opinion overwhelmingly demands it.
It now remains for an international court to place Israeli officials on trial, have them answer for their past and present crimes, and see to it they pay the price for them if found guilty. That must happen if those harmed by them are ever able to achieve the justice they seek and deserve. It's also crucial this action be taken soon to send a clear message to Israeli officials that world public opinion no longer will tolerate this behavior and that it forced the UN to act in its behalf to demand justice in a world court of law. Even if Israel doesn't accept the court's authority, as will likely happen, its establishment alone may send a message to the Jewish state strong enough to make it cease further aggression against its current victims. It may also deter it and the US from committing further acts of aggression against Syria and Iran now in their plans based on credible reports quoting high-level officials in both countries. If it happens, it's part of the US and Israeli grand plan to destroy Iran's legal commercial nuclear capability, redraw the map of the Middle East, remove the Iranian, Syrian and Hamas independent leaderships in it (as well as destroy the legitimate Hezbollah resistance), and replace them with new regimes henceforth acting as subservient and reliable client states. Neither the US nor Israel must any longer be allowed to get away with their current wars of aggression or have world leader's support their right to extend them further in the region as they likely have in mind to do.
>>From "Israel Must Be Held Accountable For Its International Law Violations" by Steve Lendman
http://sjlendman.blogspot.com
http://sjlendman.blogspot.com
Saturday, August 12, 2006
After One Month
31 days. More than a thousand dead. More than 4000 injured. And dying. Homelessness. Hunger. Poverty. Displacement. Disease. And the list of what describes the aftermath of a war goes on.
What has been accomplished? What has been achieved that couldn’t have been attained with diplomacy and negotiations? The fatalities? The destruction of what took 30 years to build?
Perhaps there was accumulation of some bombs and weapons that Israel didn’t know what to do with anymore.
Perhaps it needed to test them and see how harmful they can prove to be.
Or perhaps it thought it can perform all these inhuman acts against a much less militarily prepared and unprotected country and get away with it. And it is. Like it could in 1967, 1982 and 1996. But then isn’t that always what encouraged the Israeli government to act so recklessly all the time? While so many rulings and punishments went for so many countries after violating international resolutions put forth by UNSC, nothing ever threatened Israel.
Perhaps as much as Israel is bearing the trauma of being a genocide victim, the whole world (or at least US and Europe) seems to be putting up with the trauma of being a perpetrator. Well, Israel is not the victim anymore.
Who’s going to feel guilty now? Who’s going to pay for all this mess? Who is going to bow its head before all the dead?
I do not know how many more wars have to be waged before some punishment sets in the formula. Lebanon is over now, but there’s still Palestine. I just know I can’t stomach the thought of all those victims’ and martyrs’ blood being shed like an offered sacrificial animal’s at some altar. At least when an offering is made, something is expected in return.
What has been accomplished? What has been achieved that couldn’t have been attained with diplomacy and negotiations? The fatalities? The destruction of what took 30 years to build?
Perhaps there was accumulation of some bombs and weapons that Israel didn’t know what to do with anymore.
Perhaps it needed to test them and see how harmful they can prove to be.
Or perhaps it thought it can perform all these inhuman acts against a much less militarily prepared and unprotected country and get away with it. And it is. Like it could in 1967, 1982 and 1996. But then isn’t that always what encouraged the Israeli government to act so recklessly all the time? While so many rulings and punishments went for so many countries after violating international resolutions put forth by UNSC, nothing ever threatened Israel.
Perhaps as much as Israel is bearing the trauma of being a genocide victim, the whole world (or at least US and Europe) seems to be putting up with the trauma of being a perpetrator. Well, Israel is not the victim anymore.
Who’s going to feel guilty now? Who’s going to pay for all this mess? Who is going to bow its head before all the dead?
I do not know how many more wars have to be waged before some punishment sets in the formula. Lebanon is over now, but there’s still Palestine. I just know I can’t stomach the thought of all those victims’ and martyrs’ blood being shed like an offered sacrificial animal’s at some altar. At least when an offering is made, something is expected in return.
>>Daisy
Tuesday, August 08, 2006
The Propaganda War So Far
In 1982, shortly after Israel's invasion of Lebanon and bombardment of Beirut, the Israeli government began the "Hasbara Project," which sought to influence public opinion in the US in ways ranging from lobbying journalists to having Israeli high school students visit their US counterparts to say how cool they were (our experience) - all with talking points designed to counter the impressions left by the destruction of Beirut and the massacres at Shabra and Shatila. Now that history is repeating itself (with Hezbollah in the PLO role) and worldwide opinion is reeling from images of dead women and children in Qana and elsewhere ("war crimes," says Human Rights Watch), the propaganda wars are intensifying - and not just from Israel. On the internet, the big news is a piece of software called Megaphone, promoted by a website called giyus.org ("Give Israel Your United Support"). Megaphone identifies comment boards and anti-Israel articles and asks users to flood them with counterpoints (the software has also been used by opponents to find the same cyber battlefields). From both sides, as many as 10,000 government, commercial, and military websites have been hacked in cyber attacks, including NASA, Microsoft (eh... why not?), and a live hacking of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah during a televised speech. Other "PSYOPS" campaigns include flooding south Lebanon with leaflets, text messages, and voice mail. Despite these efforts, however, most non-Shia Lebanese are slowly drifting towards sympathy - if not outright support - for Hezbollah's resistance. For Muslims (at least the ones so influenced), Al Qaeda's late show of support has done little to hide the eclipsing they have felt under Hezbollah's persistent rocket barrages. For non-Muslims, the fierce questioning of stone-faced Israeli spokesman by increasingly incensed non-American journalists have made some observers feel they are watching "two different wars." But, most dangerously, propaganda has veered into conspiracy as photographers in south Lebanon have been accused of complicity with Hezbollah, staging events for "shock value." Other theories take the situation in Qana further, asserting that the entire episode was staged. Though these have been proven false by Human Rights Watch and others, they have been flouted by those trying to bolster Israel's case in the conflict - often armed with Megaphone and an increasing sense of desperation. One proponent's claim that a frequently published picture of a Lebanese relief worker in Qana was a "Hezbollah official" could only state that "all I have to go on is gut instinct." In this war, as in all others, truth is often the first casualty.
>>http://www.altmuslim.com/
>>http://www.altmuslim.com/
Friday, August 04, 2006
Scattered Links of a Broken Chain of Thoughts
Another bomb
Burning fires
Tattered roads
Torn bridges
Demolished homes
Stench of death
Chaos and disarray
Another bomb
Sleepless night
Startled and alert
Restless nerves
Edgy tempers
Raging hearts
Devastated lives
Another bomb
Destroyed hopes
Shattered dreams
Ambitions lost
Trapped inside
Falling victims
Of tall tale politics
“Welcome aboard F-16,
We wish you a pleasant flight.
You should do everything
To make your stay in your destination
A most terrifying and unpleasant one.
During take off, landing, and in between
You are required to show no mercy.
Thank you for flying with us,
We hope to see you again soon!”
>>Daisy Tchiftjian
Burning fires
Tattered roads
Torn bridges
Demolished homes
Stench of death
Chaos and disarray
Another bomb
Sleepless night
Startled and alert
Restless nerves
Edgy tempers
Raging hearts
Devastated lives
Another bomb
Destroyed hopes
Shattered dreams
Ambitions lost
Trapped inside
Falling victims
Of tall tale politics
“Welcome aboard F-16,
We wish you a pleasant flight.
You should do everything
To make your stay in your destination
A most terrifying and unpleasant one.
During take off, landing, and in between
You are required to show no mercy.
Thank you for flying with us,
We hope to see you again soon!”
>>Daisy Tchiftjian
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