Israeli Foreign Ministry officials expressed outrage today at the UN Human Rights Council for naming a commission that will probe their ongoing Gaza War, insisting the chairman, Canadian professor and lawyer William Schabas, is unacceptable.
Schabas denied being “anti-Israel,” and insisted his mandate was to probe human rights violations by both sides during the conflict, insisting that they would look into both Israeli attacks on civilians and claims of Hamas using human shields.
Schabas noted he has been to Israel several times as a visiting professor and hoped to meet with Israeli decision-makers during the probe, though he will likely be persona non-grata now that he is charged with probing Israeli war crimes, as has often been the case in the past.
The panel also includes Senegalese lawyer Dr. Doudou Diene, a long-standing UN Special Rapporteur on racism. A third panel member has yet to be named, as the first candidate, George Clooney’s fiancee, turned the post down.
They have it all wrong ! Israel is the victim, don't you know ? Hamas made them fight back. They didn't want to fire up iron dome. Hamas made them ! All hail the mighty Hamas. Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound whilst carrying tiny human shields ! Faster than a speeding bullet, and of course, more powerful than a locomotive as they wend their way through the tunnels outsmarting the brave IDF with a million rockets. ! ! Poor Israel !
Schabas should quit justifying himself and get moving with his investigation. And when he's through he will need to see that not a few of these bastards face an unforgiving peoples' justice, what with the intentional murder of so many little Gazan children. The Israeli leadership and 90% of the Israeli population should fry for what's been done to these kids. Those deaths cannot be allowed to be swept under the rug.
"The Israeli population should fry" – let's not go in that direction. What would be good is if they were all required to walk past the food freezers in Rafah. The ones that are full of children.
Criminals rarely like good judges.
Get to it. Took long enough, didn't it?
It is not about the Canadian professor, its about Israel looking at the gate of truth which the next step is for the panel to find Israel as guilty as German SS were when they were killing working Jewish man and women in Auschwitz, as Israel apartheid/fascism regime is doing to people of Gaza and been doing to people of Palestine for over 50 years.
May the murderous, war criminal Israelis be held accountable, finally.
Now they want to control the investigators? The world is a fucked up place if those zionist criminals are not dealt with immediately and with extreme malice. Being anti-Israel is a badge i will wear with honor.
Mossad will try to murder him.
So the aging adolescent of the world community is having a temper tantrum in aisle 3 of the local supermarket– 66 years old but still functioning at the level of a 5 year old.
Don't see why they're furious, big brother will make sure it stays at the rear of the line, just like everything else.
Israel can scream and protest all it wants. The entire world has witnessed Israeli occupation, genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes committed against the Palestinians. That fact that America continues to support this criminal regime is shameful. America will find itself isolated and condemned right alongside the Israeli butchers of innocents. Israel, in trying to deflect blame on the victims of it's horrendous conduct in Gaza, has been rejected worldwide. These scumbags and lowlifes are even advertising on America TV in a futile attempt to convince the American public that Israel is innocent of these crimes. No one is buying their lies. Instead, they are believing their eyes and ears, not the propaganda being spewed on national TV. Israel must be held accountable before the Criminal Court at Hague. Israel must be forced by U.N. troops to abandon it's illegal occupation of Palestine, abandon it's illegal settler outposts and forced to stay within it's 1967 borders. Israel must be isolated from the world community of nations, an arms embargo must be imposed on Israel and Israel must be forced to pay full financial compensation to the victims of it's criminal conduct.
I've been thinking a lot lately about "hasbara" methods and wondering if the inclusion of "genocide" among recitations of Israeli crimes is one of them.
The alternative explanation is idiocy, which certainly works, but if I was paranoid I'd say to myself "Israel does a lot of bad things, and claims about those things tend to get written off by any even moderately dispassionate observer as soon as the plainly, irrefutably false charge of 'genocide' gets thrown in; per cui bono, anyone throwing around the claim of 'genocide' is probably an Israeli propagandist."
So I guess I need to decide whether or not I am paranoid, and whether the "genocide"-screamers are just idiots or actual Israeli agents.
I'll bite…what would you call the Israelis desire and the actions they've pursued to further those desires of riding themselves of the Palestinians entirely. Considering that as long as the Palestinians hang around, there is the argument that the Palestinians have been grossly wronged. If the Palestinians were no longer relevant then, oh well, nothing here to see. And by blockading the Gaza, and stealing Palestinian lands the Israelis are clear that they want them gone and are not too particular about how it happens. Is there a better word?
Just asking, not judging – everyone is entitled to their opinions.
curmudgeonvt,
"Genocide" is the extermination, or attempted extermination, of a particular group.
There are more Palestinian Arabs today than there were last year. There are more Palestinian Arabs today than there were as of the Nabka. The Palestinian Arab population is growing — and not just growing, but growing faster than Israel's Jewish population.
Therefore, either what the Israelis are doing isn't "genocide," or they are incredibly bad at it and have been for 70 years. Take your pick.
S'truth. "Permanent Pogrom" is more apposite. As in "they can stay if only at the end they will leave".
Whether there are more Palestinian Arabs today than earlier is of course irrelevant to anything.
"Permanent pogrom" is both catchy and, IMO, accurate.
Whether there are more Palestinian Arabs today than earlier is of course entirely relevant to whether or not they are being exterminated, which is what defines whether or not what is going on is "genocide."
OK, genocide is inappropriate. But as long as the Palestinian population is growing it is a problem for Israel. And they know this. Therefore, the Israelis make the problem go away by driving the Palestinians out of Israel, and since the Israelis have already stated they want everything from the Med to the Euphrates, out of Gaza and the WB also. Mission accomplished.
curmudgeonvt,
That's all I was saying — use of the word "genocide" is inappropriate. The question is whether it's used inappropriately because its users are idiots or because they're shills who are trying to cast doubt on other, more credible, allegations against Israel.
Not sure what you mean by "mission accomplished." The Israelis may want everything from the Med to the Euphrates, but so far they've got almost none of that and don't look very likely to.
I recently read an explanation of genocide, which I think is illuminating:
I'm a lawyer. I've looked at genocide. Genocide has two elements. One element is the mental element, the intent to destroy the whole or in part a national or ethnical or racial or religious group. Palestinians are clearly a national and ethnic group. And you don't need to kill them all. You just need to have the mental intent to kill part of them. For example, it would be enough to have the mental intent to kill the leadership of the Palestinians or to kill people in one region. No doubt about that.
Genocide also requires that there be acts of genocide–killing members of the group, causing serious bodily or mental harm, or inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the physical destruction, in whole or part, of the people you're trying to destroy. There's no doubt again here this is "incremental genocide", as Ilan Pappé says. iIt's been going on for a long time, the killings, the incredibly awful conditions of life, the expulsions that have gone on for from Lydda in 1947 and '48, when 700 or more villages in Palestine were destroyed, and in the expulsions that continued from that time until today. It's correct and important to label it for what it is.
"I'm a lawyer."
That explains the high-flying rhetorical attempts to completely re-define "genocide." The next word that a lawyer won't try to turn on its ear will be the first.
"It's correct and important to label it for what it is."
And equally correct and important not to label it for what it isn't.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/un-legitimizes-islam…
"Netanyahu indicates Israel won’t cooperate with UN probe"
"PM says team should look for war crimes in ‘Baghdad and Damascus,’ not democratic Israel, charges UNHRC legitimizes Islamist terror groups"
Why does he hate the freedoms that we bring?