Posts
since Wed, 26 Dec 2007 20:04:17.
Whither America? Law or Jewish Privilege
Jerome Slater concludes the following op-ed with this paragraph:
What accounts for Obama’s reversals? The most obvious explanation is that Obama is giving priority to his ambitious domestic agenda and rightly fears that real pressure on Israel would backfire in Congress, where it is likely that some key members would, in effect, hold their support for Obama’s domestic programs hostage to his Israeli policies. While this is understandable, the consequences for a negotiated settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are dim indeed.I have been tracking and discussing the intertwining of the issues of health care, financial reform and the Middle East conflict for a long time now: Health Care, Obama, Israel Lobby.
The Jewish kleptocracy, whose public face is the Israel Lobby, depends on health care price gouging and financial corruption for a large chunk of its wealth.
There is no chance for meaningful reform in either the medical or finance sector until the vastly powerful corrupt Jewish social networks are scorched throughout the world.
Because Jewish Zionist subversives have penetrated into the core of the US government, only an oblique approach that attacks the basis of kleptocratic cohesion has any chance of saving the USA.
The State of Israel is the keystone or linchpin of the Zionist system.
Abolishing the State of Israel is the first step to breaking the Jewish kleptocracy, putting its leadership in jail and clawing back the trillions of which the kleptocrats have defrauded Americans.
In the above videoclip Norman Finkelstein identifies the key to breaking the Zionist criminal syndicate.
The Goldstone Report is explicit in the section entitled Summary of legal findings: Actions by Israel in Gaza in the context of the military operations of 27 December 2008 to 18 January 2009, paragraph 1921:
The Mission found numerous instances of deliberate attacks on civilians and civilian objects (individuals, whole families, houses, mosques) in violation of the fundamental international humanitarian law principle of distinction, resulting in deaths and serious injuries. In these cases the Mission found that the protected status of civilians was not respected and the attacks were intentional, in clear violation of customary law reflected in article 51 (2) and 75 of Additional Protocol I, article 27 of the Fourth Geneva Convention and articles 6 and 7 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. In some cases the Mission additionally concluded that the attack was also launched with the intention of spreading terror among the civilian population. Moreover, in several of the incidents investigated, the Israeli armed forces not only did not use their best efforts to permit humanitarian organizations access to the wounded and medical relief, as required by customary international law reflected in article 10 (2) of Additional Protocol I, but they arbitrarily withheld such access.The IDF and the government it serves are terrorist entities.
Either the Jewish supporters of Zionism must be treated in exactly the same way under US, EU, and international law as Muslim supporters of Jihadism, or the international system has no claim to a foundation of law but serves only to bolster and expand Jewish exemption and privilege throughout the world.
Jewish disrespect for universal legal norms in politics and finance is longstanding.
The finance industry, in which Jews are disproportionately represented has achieved similar privilege and exemption from the rule of law as the videoclip below indicates.
Matt Taibbi was subjected to accusations of anti-Semitism for a critical article about Goldman Sachs even though it did not mention Jews at all.
Enforcing the law equally on Jews and Muslims or non-Jews is as critical to ending the War on Terror as it is to fixing the US finance industry.
Glenn Greenwald writes in Ex-Islamic radicals on what motivates -- and impedes -- extremism:
In other words, the very policies the U.S. has been pursuing in the name of combating Terrorism -- invading, occupying, and bombing Muslim countries; locking them up without trials; torturing them; violating the values we've been preaching to the world -- have been the most potent instruments for fueling Islamic radicalism and terrorism. By contrast, those who have been continuously accused of being "soft on Terrorism" and even being allied with the Terrorists -- those who opposes our various wars, who demanded and provided basic human rights protections and equal liberties to Muslims, who objected to their own governments' oppressive and belligerent policies -- have done more to diffuse and impede Muslim radicalism than virtually anyone else in the world.The critical word in the above paragraph is "equal." Not just Muslim radicals but all Americans and in fact all human beings should be enraged at the impunity that Jewish Zionists have achieved in national and international legal systems.
Obama will only make progress domestically and internationally by putting the State of Israel, Zionist organizations, and their supporters in the category of Specially Designated Terrorist Enties. Then it would become possible to purge the US government of Zionist subversives and to free America from the Zionist imperial system that is sucking each and every non-Jewish citizen dry.
Mideast peace prospects dim
Obama is embracing failed policies of past, making two-state solution unlikely
It seems evident President Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize because of what he hopes to do on behalf of peace—especially in the Middle East, the most dangerous region to U. S. national security and regional peace—rather than for what he has actually accomplished.
The contentious Iranian issue aside, there are currently two main threats to peace in the Middle East: the Taliban/al-Qaida threat in Afghanistan and Pakistan, which almost certainly is not amenable to a peaceful solution, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which might be, but only with strong U. S. leadership.
It is widely agreed that the only hope for a stable settlement of that conflict is a “two-state solution,” meaning the creation of an independent and viable Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem, living side by side with a secure Israel. The primary obstacle to such a settlement is not the Palestinian government of Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank, which desperately wants an agreement. The central problem is that Israel directly occupies or otherwise controls all the territory that would be allotted to a Palestinian state.
If anything, Israeli policies, behavior and attitudes have hardened in the last few years. Consequently, in the absence of sustained and serious pressure by the United States— the only country taken seriously by Israel—there is no chance Israel will end the occupation and agree to Palestinian independence in the context of a two-state settlement.
Obama either does not understand these realities or is unwilling or unable to pay the domestic price that serious U. S. policy changes would assuredly entail. To be sure, in the early days of Obama’s presidency there were some promising signs—his apparent commitment to strong U. S. leadership to bring about a two-state settlement, his appointment of the highly respected George Mitchell as his representative in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations and his Cairo speech last March, in which he not only reached out to the Muslim world but specifically criticized Israeli policies in the occupied territories.
Since that promising beginning, however, Obama has been in full retreat from any political confrontation with Israel and its U. S. supporters— the consequence of which assuredly will be the collapse of his efforts to bring about peace in the Middle East.
There are a number of signs that Obama is essentially continuing the failed policies of Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and other previous presidents. First, most of his appointments
have gone to down-the-line supporters of Israeli policies, including Vice President Biden and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, whose future political ambitions make it unlikely that she will want to take on the “pro-Israel” forces.
Second, despite Obama’s repeated campaign rhetoric about the need to engage in diplomacy with one’s adversaries, he is following Israel’s lead in refusing to talk to Hamas. Not only is it the case that there can be no Israeli-Palestinian settlement without the concurrence of Hamas, there is evidence and expert opinion that the organization — in practice, though not always in rhetoric—is moderating its positions and will accept, de facto at least, a two-state settlement.
Third, it appears that the administration has given up on its efforts to get Israel even to take the first step toward peace-ending settlement expansion, let alone removing the existing settlements. The government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has stonewalled Obama, and won. Indeed, it is stepping up new construction in the occupied territories, especially in Arab East Jerusalem, which it bluntly states will never be turned over to the Palestinians. If not, there is no chance for a two-state solution.
Finally, the administration has rejected out of hand the factual findings, conclusions and recommendations of the Goldstone Commission, which recently issued a long report (bitterly contested by Israel’s supporters) that blisteringly criticized Israeli behavior in its attack on Gaza last December and January, and called on the United Nations to consider taking Israeli “war crimes” to the International Criminal Court. Effectively stopping any international action, Obama’s U. N. representative termed the Goldstone Commission Report “unbalanced, one-sided and basically unacceptable.” Israel’s ambassador to the United States was pleased, saying that the American position “could have been drafted in Tel Aviv, it was so wonderful.”
What is the Goldstone Report? After last year’s attack on Gaza, the U. N. Human Rights Commission appointed Richard Goldstone to head an investigation. Goldstone is one of the world’s most prestigious jurists, who had led the legal fight against apartheid in his native South Africa and later was the chief prosecutor for the U. N. International Criminal Tribunal in the war crimes trials against leading Serbian and Rwandan officials. In addition, Goldstone is Jewish, regards himself as “a Zionist who loves Israel” and has a number of ties with that country, including service as a trustee of Hebrew University — where in 2000 he gave a speech pointing out that “bringing war criminals to justice stems from the lessons of the Holocaust.”
The concept of the “just war” is the dominant Western philosophy concerning the complicated efforts to subject warfare to moral constraints. The theory distinguishes between just causes to go to war — principally, self-defense — and just methods in warfare. Contrary to repeated charges in Israel and the United States, the commission in no way challenged Israel’s proclaimed cause, its right to respond to Hamas rocket or suicide attacks, but focused exclusively on its methods of “self-defense.”
The commission heard extensive testimony, conducted 188 interviews with officials, witnesses and victims in Gaza, examined thousands of pages of documents and photographs, held many public hearings, reviewed the extensive reports and findings of other international — and Israeli — human rights groups and made numerous on-site field visits in Gaza. As the commission noted, it also sought to learn the Israeli side of the story, but the Israeli government refused to meet with it or cooperate in the investigation.
Here are the commission’s main findings about actions in Gaza:
• It estimated that between 1,300 and 1,400 Palestinians were killed in the attack; it accepted the general assessment of various Israeli and international human rights groups that at least half of them were civilians, up to 40 percent of whom were women and children. Most of these casualties, the report found, were the consequence of “systematically reckless” and indiscriminate attacks (artillery barrages, white phosphorous antipersonnel shelling, etc.) in densely populated areas of Gaza.
Prior to the attack on Gaza, top Israeli military officials had publicly announced a revised military doctrine that, in the Goldstone Commission’s words, “explicitly admits the intentional targeting of civilian targets as part of the Israeli strategy.” The commission’s conclusion: “Statements by political and military leaders prior to and during the military operations in Gaza leave little doubt that disproportionate destruction and violence were part of a deliberate policy.”
Still, one might argue, the demonstrable fact that Israel deliberately chose disproportional or indiscriminate military methods does not demonstrate that civilians were deliberately targeted. Sadly, though, even that argument is problematic: the commission provided highly detailed and convincing discussions of 11 incidents in which Israeli forces launched attacks that intentionally killed a number of civilians.
• The Goldstone Report concluded that the Israeli attack was deliberately designed to “inflict collective punishment” on the people of Gaza, by striking at the economy and “the foundations of civilian life.”
After the free election of a large Hamas majority in parliamentary elections in Gaza in January 2006, Israel began what has widely been termed “the siege of Gaza.” It radically cut Gazan trade and commerce with the outside world and repeatedly bombed and shelled Gaza’s roads, bridges, factories, electrical networks, farms and olive orchards. In early November 2008, Israel drastically intensified the siege and (as one expert put it) “sealed all crossing points into Gaza, vastly reducing and at times denying food supplies, medicines, fuel, cooking gas and parts for water and sanitation systems.”
During the attack that began on Dec. 27, the Goldstone Commission reported, Israel “deliberately and systematically” engaged in extensive and “wanton” attacks, destroying private homes, schools, police stations, government institutions (among others, the Gaza Parliament was leveled), hospitals and ambulances, factories and industrial facilities, fuel depots, water and sewage plants, water storage tanks and various food production systems including orchards, greenhouses and fishing boats—all “for the specific purpose of denying them for their sustenance to the population of Gaza.”
After the attack, Israel continued its blockade of Gaza. Consequently, according to a number of international reports, unemployment is at least 50 percent, 80 percent are estimated to live below international poverty lines and 75 percent suffer from malnutrition.
• Goldstone accepted his appointment only after being assured that his mandate included an investigation into violations of international law and possible war crimes by Hamas, as well as by Israel. Accordingly, the commission’s report does discuss and condemn “the impact on civilians of rocket and mortar attacks by Palestinian armed groups on southern Israel,” as well as Hamas’ repression and violence against internal Palestinian opponents of its rule over Gaza.
These sections of the report are far briefer than those that deal with Israel, and there is no doubt that the commission considered Israeli policies and behavior to be far worse than those of Hamas. Moreover, the commission found “no evidence” that Hamas combatants deliberately exposed Palestinian civilians to attack or used them as “human shields,” or that they used hospitals and ambulances for military activities.
The overall conclusion was that the “systematic and deliberate nature of the activities described in this report leave the mission in no doubt that responsibility lies in the first place with those who designed, planned, ordered and oversaw the operations” — meaning the Israeli government and military leadership. The commission recommended that unless the Israelis (and Palestinians) carry out serious internal investigations within six months, the U. N. Security Council should consider referring the matter to the International Criminal Court for possible criminal proceedings against those who committed (in the commission’s words) “war crimes” or possibly even “crimes against humanity.”
How credible is the report? The conclusions, language and recommendations of the Goldstone Commission are, by the usually bland international standards, unsparing or even harsh. Even so, if its report is factually accurate, it is hard to see what else the commission could have concluded. As the award-winning Israeli journalist Amira Hass wrote, “The Goldstone Commission’s findings are in line with what anyone who didn’t shut his or her eyes and ears already knows.”
That is, its report confirmed previous reports by leading European, U. S. and Israeli journalists and newspapers before, during and after the Israeli attack, as well as the investigations and reports of international human rights organizations (including the Red Cross, CARE, Oxfam, Physicians for Human Rights, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and a number of U. N. agencies) and those by a number of Israeli human rights organizations, including B’tselem and Israeli Physicians for Human Rights. Finally, since the end of the attack some 30 Israeli soldiers who participated in it have confirmed and provided new details of the Israeli violations of international law and accepted moral restraints, as published in the appropriately named Israeli document, “Breaking the Silence.”
So, what now? There is little chance that the commission’s
recommendations will be implemented. The Israeli government and military already have “investigated” their own actions and concluded that they were appropriate, indeed that they have “the most moral army in the world.” To be sure, there is talk in Israel of a new investigation, if only to fend off facing an international criminal tribunal. However, the likelihood that the government will accuse itself of war crimes seems small.
Nor, in light of U. S. opposition, will the United Nations be able to act, let alone the International Criminal Court. In essence, then, Obama is rapidly returning to traditional U. S. policies, which amount either to essentially unconditional U. S. support of whatever Israel does or, at most, weak hand-wringing — for example, “the settlements are an obstacle to peace” — unaccompanied by any firm measures and therefore routinely disregarded by Israel. Indeed, Obama already has made it known that U. S. diplomatic and military aid to Israel will not be used as leverage to get the Netanyahu government to agree to end the occupation and allow the creation of a Palestinian state. Therefore, there is no chance that it will.
What accounts for Obama’s reversals? The most obvious explanation is that Obama is giving priority to his ambitious domestic agenda and rightly fears that real pressure on Israel would backfire in Congress, where it is likely that some key members would, in effect, hold their support for Obama’s domestic programs hostage to his Israeli policies. While this is understandable, the consequences for a negotiated settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are dim indeed.
Jerome Slater, professor emeritus of political science at the University at Buffalo, has taught and written professionally about Israeli policies for more than 40 years. He has close personal ties with Israel and is a former Fulbright lecturer at Haifa University. In 1970, following three years as an anti-submarine warfare officer on a U. S. destroyer, he offered to serve on an Israeli destroyer should war break out with Egypt, but Israel declined.
