Web Letters: Israel's Crimes, America's Silence

Unfortanately, due to historic Jewish persecution, what evolved as the Zionist movement has turned into a Jim Crow society where non-Jewish life, in the most immediate case Palestinian, does not merit. One can see that when the Israeli army investigates the killing of Palestinian civillians there is never any serious consequences. The sophisticated Israel spin machine goes through the motions, but all are exonerated.

This has been the pattern bought hook, line and sinker by most and ramrodded by a strong Israel lobby in Congress.

The horrendous change happened with the last Bush administration. You had double-barrel support. Israel had no restraints. The recent Israel Gaza assault and the latest Lebanon 2006 invasion further dragged the US into Israel's belligerent corner. Previously the US was providing massive financial aid, political cover and arms that Israel used at its discretion and often in violation of US laws against targetting civilians. With the 2006 Lebanon war, millions of dollars of aviation fuel and precision munition were shipped to Israel. That enabled the IDF to pummel Lebanon's infrastructure. This taken out of the Pentagon's stock.

With the Gaza war, the US snuck in a boatload of munitions to replenish Israeli's depleted arms stocks. Many deaths, more animus towards the US. An Israeli recipe for endless bloodshed.

Since the 1950s Israel had been most keen to drag the US into a war with the Muslim world. We are there.

In 1954 the Lavon affair and in 1967 Israel's attack on the USS Liberty: both black-flag operations against US interests, the blame to be pinned on Arabs. Israel does not have to act as covertly as in the past. In PM Netanyahu's recent visit to Washington, he tried hard to convince Obama to attack Iran. Obama did not bite. The previous Israeli PM Sharon was able to sucker former President Bush into the Iraq disaster.

Time to change.

bruce barsoum

New York, NY

Israel is an ethical as well as political millstone around the neck of America.Washington is the enabler of Israel's endless criminality. But because our democracy is broken and the will of the majority is silenced, the abetting of murder, terror, kidnapping, beatings, home demolitions, land theft, war crimes, Geneva Convention violations, and the repellent illicit control of American media, which obscures the realities, continues unabated.

There is not a remote chance that any American politician will stand up to the Jewish lobby in any meaningful way. We are being terrorized by a new McCarthyism that singles out those who take issue with the continued Palestinian holocaust as bigots, fools, closet Jew-haters, as if being outraged by the heinous crimes of Israel is otherwise incomprehensible to its defenders. These defenders of Israel's conduct are either profoundly dishonest and evil, or they are brainwashed into a zombie-like amorality from the perspective of which the destruction of an entire people is little more than grounds for a disingenuous verbal exchange of ad hominem unpleasantries. Jews say that criticism of israel is proof of anti-Semitism because there are so many other evil governments in the world not being picked on that are equal or worse than Israel in their human rights violations. One hardly knows where to begin attacking such a defense, so I will say this: when the Robert Mugabes of the world hold themselves out as the ethical lights unto humanity as the Jews endlessly and shamelessly do, then it will be time to don the cape of Captain Obvious and point fingers at such other bloody monsters as well.

Frank DeVito

Wellesley, MA

John Dugard's Gaza report (Independent Fact Finding Committee on Gaza, April 30, 2009) is defective.

His committee concludes that Hamas rockets are war crimes, but they omit to apply their minds to the law of belligerent reprisals, which prima facie legalizes Hamas's targeting of Israeli civilians in Israel, as a law-enforcement tool, to persuade Israel to terminate its ongoing war crimes against Palestinian civilians, e.g., the blockade of humanitarian supplies.

Targeting civilians in enemy territory, this law of belligerent reprisals, is formally endorsed by members of the UN Security Council and NATO (US, UK, France, Germany, Italy). In light of this law, the rockets are prima facie lawful and, in addition, it's impossible for Hamas to have the criminal intent a "war crime" requires.

Hence, his report is per incuriam. His committee should issue a statement withdrawing their conclusions about the rockets, pending reconsideration in light of the law they overlooked. See my article, "Blockade, targeting, capture, self-defense, reprisals."

Charles Judson Harwood Jr.

Nashville, TN

(1) According to the Guardian, March 24, Palestinian children were used as human shields, and medics, ambulance drivers and more than half of Gaza hospitals were specifically targeted, with indiscriminate attacks on civilians and deliberate obstruction of medics and Red Cross to treat civilians. (There were also reports of emergency rooms refusing to treat the injured unless they spied for Israel). Civilians were hit by fire by unmanned drones (whose engines were supplied by the UK).

(2) Just as in Lebanon where there was a disproportionate response to the capture of two soldiers by Hezbollah, so here too the over-reaction to Hamas rockets motivated by the blockade of starvation and deprivation of water. Three Israeli civilians were killed, as opposed to 850 Palestinian civilians. According to Ha'aretz, an Israeli squad leader is on record saying that "he understood that the Israeli soldiers should kill everyone in Gaza." This report is vital, because it could constitute proof of genocide. Equating Hamas's rockets with Israel's response is like equating the Warsaw Ghetto's response with that of the Nazis.

(3) At least there is now a UN investigation despite the non-cooperation of Israel. A Jewish judge from South Africa is in charge of this (the SA judiciary has a superb reputation of unbiased unpolitical neutrality). Israel has always had contempt for the UN, even though it was created by it.

(4) Obama was completely silent during the Gaza massacre, his response in his Cairo speech was tepid and again he was silent about supporting the UN investigation into Israel's war crimes. One gathers that he doesn't like investigations into anything because it will self-incriminate him in the complicity with the Bush administration's war crimes such as torture and rendition--which are still continuing, according to Jeremy Scahill, author of Blackwater, The Rise of the World's Most Mercenary Army. David Brooks has mentioned that Obama doesn't want investigations into anything because it would really mean a re-opening of the 9/11 investigation (which I believe would implicate Israel in that event).

(5) America finances Israeli war crimes, and supplies it with the weapons to perpetrate them.

(6) On February 5, 2009, the Moroccan Jewish community condemned the Israeli operation in Gaza, saying "We are horrified by the unjustified carnage" and "This is not the way I see Judaism."

(7) Israel's assault on Gaza is a massive violation of international law and constitutes war crimes. The only way to deal with this, is to emulate the world's response to South African apartheid with BDS: Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions.

stanley hersh

New York, NY

If, let us say, a local rifleman ducks into a house and fires shots, the position can quite properly be brought under targeted artillery fire. The main blame goes to the fighters who moved into an urbanized area. Of course, if they had remained in the open, they would have been slaughtered, but that is not an excuse if you want to look at "war crimes."

Any area that one is receiving fire from is a legitimate target. If Israel were to hit such legitimate points with, say, 500-pound bombs or air/oil weapons, then I believe that all technical "war crime" aspects could be met effectively. The responsibility should rest on the Palestinians to refrain from using civilian areas.

John D. Froelich

Upper Darby, PA

How perverted it would be to stand outside someone's house, watching while others dropped bombs on the house and riddled it with gunfire, all while the men, women and children were inside, then reporting on whether the people inside committed any "human rights violations" in their own defense or even in retaliation.

Defend Israel's right to exist in peace, secure its borders, and you'll never have to examine its "human rights violations" in a neighboring terrorist den.

There are twenty-one Arab countries in the region, not one of which is willing to allow the "Palestinians" in. There's precisely one Jewish state. And that Jewish state lets its Muslim residents live freely within its borders.

There's a vulgar anti-Jewish stench to much of the writing in The Nation of late.

Robert Ceisler

Bangkok, Thailand