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Israeli War Crimes - Part 2


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Really. Show me one post from you where you discussed the "ethics", "principles" and "morality" of Hamas tactics, of Palestinians who stab unarmed civilians, of Palestinian and Muslim extremists who use hospitals, schools, homes, innocent civilians as shields.

Spare me the bullsheeyit. You are here for one reason-to join in a chorus that will only select out and insult Israel for existing as a Jewish state by

using the pretext all its people are criminals.

No one has once said that suicide attacks or stabbings by Palestinians are okay. There is no argument there. However, there are those, like yourself, who try to excuse Israel's killings of innocent people. Not to mention confiscation of land and its resources and the disinterest by Israel to move towards solving the issues.

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At the pith and substance of this thread is the device of suggesting Israel commits war crimes and therefore is a criminal state.

The people who start the thread will not:

1-discuss the reason the Israel Defence Force initiates, responds or engages in actions;

2-discuss the terrorist activities that precipitate the actions in 1

3-the deliberate condonation and reclassification of terrorism as self defence.

In the above approach Israel's armed forces and government are said to operate in a vacuum, for no other reason than because they

want to kill Palestinians and steal their land.

In the above approach any action the Israeli government, its citizens or its armed forces engage in to protect themselves against

terrorism is defined as criminal. The act of being Jewish as a national, i.e, as an Israeli citizen is deemed criminal.

Believing Jews have the right to express their Jewishness through a state government is automatically deemed criminal.

We also see the tactic of trying to take what terrorists do against Israel and re-define it as "guerilla" activity or self defence.

We have Ghost repeating terrorism is "guerilla tactics" and of course Eye admonishing we readers the thread is about ethics, morality,

not rocketry but never once has he discussed what Hamas or Intifada orIslamic Jihad or PFLP or Fatah do to their own people

let alone Israelis and discuss the morality of their actions.

Who Eye write a comment that what Hamas does to its people is unethical? Eye?

Lol.

In military history and science the term "Insurgent" has been used to refer to anyone who violently rebels against a 'recognised' government and so that is a generic term that could be broken down further as a guerilla or as a terrorist.

"Guerilla" has been used and continues to be used to refer to armed individuals who apply irregular tactics, i.e., hit and run, sabotaging of buildings, high wire, rail roads, blowing up of buildings and depots but limited to attacking the property of the enemy's conventional armed forces NOT and never deliberately, civilians.

.

A terrorist is defined as someone who uses acts of violence against civilians and civilian targets to evoke fear and the feeling that the government of the day can no longer protect its people.

Guerillas attack military equipment, posts and soldiers, terrorists attack civilians, civilian homes and not the military.

Terrorists will not fight a conventional military force unless cornered and instead choose to flee.

Terrorists use proxies, i.e, children, women, the aged, the disabled, martyrs to carry their bombs and carry out the violence which is intended to kill and make a statement not just in the deaths of the vulnerable who can't fight back, but int he self destruction of their own martyrs who serve as examples of

sacrifice for the cause.

The Viet Cong who were not a conventional army, but a guerilla movement unattached to the North Vietnam regular army for the most

part were guerillas, i.e., they limited their actions to US or South Vietnamese military installations and soldiers.

When they did go into villages and burn them down or torture civilians or kill them as suspected terrorists, they crossed the line and became terrorists.

There is nothing guerilla like or guerilla tactic like in killing, torturing, abusing a civilian.

A conventional army must treat citizens according to the Geneva conventions or technically their actions become international crimes

if proven to be unjustified or deliberate.

A guerilla army if arrested are not a conventional army and so do not follow the rules of the Geneva convention when it comes to war and

are tried by the domestic criminal laws of the country they operated in and/or were apprehended in.

Terrorists like guerillas are not a conventional army, do not follow any laws other than their own and so fall outside the domain of

international law and are tried by domestic criminal laws in the country they operated in and/or were apprehended it..

Some countries will agree to deport terrrists or guerillas captured in their nations commiting domestic criminal crimes to other nations

they have treaties with where the terrorist or guerilla killed soldiers from that nation.

In law the consequence of breaking a state law and killing someone probably is the same whether you are a guerilla or terrorist but

if a foreign soldier on your soil killed someone in a legal act of war following the rules of the Gevena convention they can only be held in

a military jail until the end of hostilities then they must be released.

The International Red Cross is supposed to mediate the treatment and return of prisoners of war which is used to refer to soldiers of

conventional armies.

Civilians who are not part of a conventional army who fight on their side may not contrary to popular belief be protected or afforded the

rights of soldiers and this is why they usually are sent to non military prisons to be executed or tortured.

Now in regards to terrorists who fight conventional armies, the trendy lefts on this site and on this thread, will not discuss what the terrorists who attack and kill Israeli civilians do. They refuse to discuss it. They will only discuss the Israeli Armed Forces reaction to it which inherently makes the analysis critically flawed and partisan.

Terrorists do not get to escape examination or analysis in conflict simply because the analyst has a political bias in their favour.

That's what HudsonBugGuyEyeGhostDre et al would want you to do but international law and domestic crimional laws don't ignore terrorists.

Terrorists who murder Israeli citizens violate Israeli domestic criminal laws. They are NOT protected by international law. There is no

international law that deals with or defines terrorists and how to deal with them.

Because there is no international law, the people who deliberately ignore what Palestinian terrorists do to precipitate IDF attacks feel since

they don't fall under international laws like the IDF, they aren't war criminals. No but they remain criminals and whether international law

or domestic law defines them as a criminal, they remain criminals.

More to the point examination of IDF morality or ethics without analyzing the reason the IDF did what it did, and imstead simply starting with the assumption that anything the IDF does is a war crime makes the thread a joke.

The thread is simply a pretense to repeat over and over anything Israeli is criminal but to remain completely silent to the actions the IDF responds to.

Under international law, the IDF can use reasonable force to kill terrorists and defend its citizens and its state property. Because of this, anti Israelis

must engage in the assumption and fiction that ANY force it engages in us automatically unreasonable to them call it criminal.

The reality then is that this thread does not discuss any actual war crimes. by the IDF. It simply poses anything the Israeli government, the IDF or any Israel does or says automatically as a war crime.

Not once has anyone come on this board and been able to explain what a war crime is. So we have the spectacle for example. that Israeli settlers are called war criminals when they are not soldiers and in fact therefore are not committing war crimes or even domestic criminal frimes but may in f act be engaging in the civil offence of trespass if It can be shown they in fact are on land they have no title to.

This brings us to the next fiction. An Israeli citizien is automatically called a criminal, i.e., a land thief if they live on he West Bank not withstanding they

may have legitimately bought the land from its rightful owner or gained legal title the same way most Palestinians have, by physically occupying land uninterupted for about 10 years.

In the fiction on this thread if a Muslim comes to Palestine and gains title to land by squatting on it, that's legal but if any Jew does it, its not.

Not only that if a Jew does it, its a war crime as well.

The actual double standard as I explained started with Islamic law stating no Jew can ever own land or have a state because they are not equal I n legal status to Muslims. It is that concept that creates the double standard where Muslims from outside Palestine who squatted on land to get its possession

magically become Palestinians but any Jew even those who are born on the land are automatic war criminals.

In actual law, the majority of Palestinians today are descended from non Palestinian Muslims who came and acquired land title by squatting. This is wht Arafat blew up the land titles office to hide this truth. Very few Palestinians had land title because the land was claimed as title by absentee Turks.

The Palestinians whether they were Jews, Christians or Muslim might have been able to buy land from these absentee land owners, but many others acquired their land because the Ottoman Empire abandon its de facto land title control of the lands.

The people who started this thread can not conceive or grasp the implications of domestic real estate law, the law of title, municipal law, domestic law, international law, Christian Canon law, Talmudic Law that all have relevance when determining land title ownershop.

In their world if a Muslim wants the land in Israel, they are entitled to it. Never mind that the PA and Hamas refuse to recognize Christian Canon law and their land titles, on this thread there is only dispute with thieving Jews.

In fact 80% of land title ownership in East Jerusalem belongs to Christian churches and this is why Israelis and their government pay rent to these

churches for use of their land. In f act the Knesset and many Israeli government buildings were built on land owned by churches. Unlike the Muslims who

refuse to recognize Christian land titles or Jewish land titles, Israel does and pays rent. In Israel law based on Jewish Talmudic law

the law of ownership of Christian churches is not disputed. In Muslim law its not recognized because under Sharia law no Christian or Jew or non

Muslim can own any land.

So this pretense that if a Jew has land he or she is a thief and criminal in fact dates back to the concept of dhimmitude. It has mutated with modern anti Semitism from Europe which imported the concept of Jews being evil because they killed Christ.

Interestingly the pith and substance of European anti Semitism the blood libel against Jews has now been openly rejected by mainstream Christianity

although old habits die hard and the kind of anti Semitism we see in Europe today persists albeit without approval of the churches as it once was.

In the Muslim world dhimmitude prevails and it fuels the outrage of Muslim extremists who see the notion of a dhimmi or khafir, a non Muslim owning land

as a crime. Now its joined by those on this board mixing that religious belief they won't disclose as following submerged under the pretext of trendy leftism recasting Muslim dhimmitude and intolerance of the rights of non Muslims as intolerance towards Muslims.

Jews are criminals for believing they can own land. Its as simple and absurd as that.

.

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Without agreeing with the poster to whom you are responding, I think there is a very serious argument that the U.S. government was ambivalent it its opposition to the Nazis. That is beyond the scope of a thread on Israeli war crimes. I may very well write such a thread in the future but I don’t know if I’ll use it here or elsewhere, because of the severe cross-posting rules.

I don’t think Canada and the U.S. have an unmixed record with regard to Nazis and Nazism. They ran what amounted to show trials at Nuremberg. What is closer to this thread subject is the upset of the “world community” when Israeli commandos snatched Adolph Eichmann out of Argentina, gave him a real trial and hanged him.

We agree here.

Don't get me wrong JBG. I hear you. We could of course get into a long debate about the failure of post WW2 governments and their treatment of Jewish and Nazi refugees. I totally agree with you. I do not mean to white wash it. All I am saying though is to smeer all Americans for it is crap. It insults the Americans who died fighting Nazis and who ended up being the grass roots support that came about to support Israel.

The support of the US for Israel by non Jewish Christians was genuine is all I am saying and those people can not be smeered nor can Elenor Roosevelt who single handedly and more than any other person on the planet assured Israel's creation.

I do not white wash Britain, Canada, the US government of pre or post WW2 for many reasons, but I distinguish the error of governments and

certain anti semites like Henry Ford from all Americans just as I would not smeer all Germans as Nazis as while many may have supported Hitler it

would overlook the righteous who did not and died along side Jews.

That is all I meant. I hear you. Harry Truman's biography talks frankly about the rampant post WW2 anti Semitism he confronted in hisemf and others in the US government after Elenor Roosevelt shamed him. His biography is actually fascinating in how honest he was discussing his own anti semitic feelings and how he had to challenge his own views.

Likewise you read the biography of Churchill he's a fascinating man. On one level he defends Jews against anti semites. On another he seems them like anyone else who did not follow his beliefs, an obstacle. For Churchill sabotaging an Israeli state from coming about as he readily admitted he tried to do was nothing personal, he was simply protecting British interests and lets not forget his advisor High Commissioner Samuel who assisted him in this endeavour was a British Jew.

Its complex. The anti Semitism of Hitler was one thing. The anti Semitism of the rest of Europe was in some places very subtle and so engrained as not to be thought of consciously as a double standard or deliberately hateful. There's the open blatant anti semite like Canada's McKenzie King referring to Jews as vermin and the British Imperialist Churchill who simply saw non British Jews as a pain in his imperialist ass and probably with an engrained bias based on British class system more than deliberate hatred.

You also have Roosevelt who openly warned never to allow a Jewish state for fear it would alienate Saudi Arabia and his oil partners, but also a man who genuinely defended Jews and blacks against bigots. DeGaulle was a blatant anti semite. Stalin hated Jews but he hated Ukrainians, Germans, anyone. Ironically the Japanese never understood anti Semitism. They considered Jews cursed and stayed away from them when they encountered them in China. I know my mother lived through the occupation in Shanghai in the Jewish community. They'd torture everyone and everybody but Jews telling them to stay away from them.

Very complex stuff. The governments of the day who took in Nazis were full of people who would never have considered themselves anti Jewish and others maybe they were. I do believe some of the people responsible for taking in German Nazi scientists in th e states genuinely felt they had to to keep them out of the hands of the Soviets to protect the world, likewise the Japanese scientists.

I also think money, profit, coloured the judgement of many who saw these scientists as having the ability to patent things they could make money off of and it was money that fueled their ethics not being anti Jewish.

That said I disagree with singling out the US or Israel as war criminals. Its a double standard and that is what I meant and I think its an insult to the role of the US in defeating Hitler to smeer Americans as loving Nazis. Hell no I won't even say German Americans let alone all Americans supported Hitler. Yah I know Walt Disney and some other industrialists were and kept the US out of the war but Roosevelt prevailed not just because of Japan and his anti Nazi beliefs were genuine. That is what I choose to focus on.

You know what happened. Germans, Italians, Japanese were arrested in Canada and the US even though most were loyal because there was no way to know the difference. That may well one day happen with Muslims That is all I am saying. I hate it went an entire people are smeered in discussions. Its fashionable for Canadians to piss on the US and pose as if we are more moral. We are not. Neither of us is evil although we both have our shortcomings and I hate entire generalizations of people/

I may despise Muslim terrorism and extremism and certain Muslim governments or certain Muslim mullahs, or how certain Muslim passages are used, but those same passages are read and used peacefully by Ismailis, Amidyah, progressive Sunnis and Shiites so I am always differentiating that just as I despise how all Israelis are smeered under the guise of alleged Israeli government decisions.

Edited by Rue
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International law is clear that stabbings or crimes committed by individuals or groups do not warrant a response that breaks the law. That's of course, if we go with the narrative that Israel's actions are all "a response".


For example: Just because a missile was shot from the Gaza Strip, this is not carte blanche for Israel to violate international law. International experts and their investigations have repeatedly found that Israel has violated the Geneva Convention, which Israel is a signatory to. Then, of course, there is also the following that Israel continues to violate

  • Freedom of movement – Gaza blockade and West Bank restrictions
  • Arbitrary arrests and detentions
  • Torture and other ill-treatment
  • Unlawful killings and Extrajudicial executions
  • Excessive use of force
  • Freedoms of expression, association and assembly
  • Housing rights – forced evictions and demolitions
  • Settler violence
  • Impunity
  • Refugees and asylum-seekers
More on Israel's violations of international law:









Edited by Hudson Jones
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International law is clear that stabbings or crimes committed by individuals or groups do not warrant a response that breaks the law. That's of course, if we go with the narrative that Israel's actions are all "a response".
For example: Just because a missile was shot from the Gaza Strip, this is not carte blanche for Israel to violate international law. International experts and their investigations have repeatedly found that Israel has violated the Geneva Convention, which Israel is a signatory to. Then, of course, there is also the following that Israel continues to violate
  • Freedom of movement – Gaza blockade and West Bank restrictions
  • Arbitrary arrests and detentions
  • Torture and other ill-treatment
  • Unlawful killings and Extrajudicial executions
  • Excessive use of force
  • Freedoms of expression, association and assembly
  • Housing rights – forced evictions and demolitions
  • Settler violence
  • Impunity
  • Refugees and asylum-seekers
More on Israel's violations of international law:

International law should not be a suicide pact. Your ministrations would make it one.

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Really. Show me one post from you where you discussed the "ethics", "principles" and "morality" of Hamas tactics, of Palestinians who stab unarmed civilians, of Palestinian and Muslim extremists who use hospitals, schools, homes, innocent civilians as shields.

It's pretty awful alright.

Spare me the bullsheeyit. You are here for one reason-to join in a chorus that will only select out and insult Israel for existing as a Jewish state by

using the pretext all its people are criminals.

I'm pretty sure I said the British were the thieves.

In any case, people who've been dispossessed do have legitimate claims.

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For a nation to perform genocide on a group, it can round them up, transport them into camps and then liquidate them at will. All the while stealing their land and possessions to give to their own people. This makes the process very obvious to the rest of the world, generates sympathy from the rest of the world and is easily condemned.

There is another way to perform genocide on a group. Systematically and periodically make war on them taking and keeping land at every opportunity while annihilating segments of the population with each incursion. Then start building on contested land and squeezing the victims into unlivable conditions which will guarantee more conflict. This slow, cancerous process ends with the extermination of the group.

Both methods are an affront to civilization.

We have seen the first method imposed in the 1940's on a religious group in Europe. We are watching the second method currently being employed by the majority in a Middle East nation on its own minority population.

They will prove to be equally successful.

We are in a position to stop the second one.

The second one is still slowly moving along:

Another Killing

But of course there will be justice:

Justice In Israel

Edited by Big Guy
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You smeer all Americans. You suggest because the US government after WW2 took in German scientists this gives you the right to state the entire nation loved Nazis. This coming from someone who has come on the board and complained people don't distinguish German citizens from Nazis and smeer them all as the same.

Ok, just for you, I shall clarify, the US government/military sure loved them Nazi scientists. But now it's in your head that I am anti-american along with an anti-semite. :D

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No one has once said that suicide attacks or stabbings by Palestinians are okay. There is no argument there. However, there are those, like yourself, who try to excuse Israel's killings of innocent people. Not to mention confiscation of land and its resources and the disinterest by Israel to move towards solving the issues.

Bull crap. Not one thread from you or EyeBigGuyGhost etc, ever about Palestinian terrorism and its lack of morality and ethics or its correlation to IDF responses to it. Not one. Of course there is no argument and its precisely why the lot of you ignore it and only come on this board to be partisan and blame it all on Israel.

Ok, just for you, I shall clarify, the US government/military sure loved them Nazi scientists. But now it's in your head that I am anti-american along with an anti-semite. :D

You an anti semite or anti American who said that? What you smeer all Israelis and Americans that doesn't mean anything.

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For a nation to perform genocide on a group, it can round them up, transport them into camps and then liquidate them at will. All the while stealing their land and possessions to give to their own people. This makes the process very obvious to the rest of the world, generates sympathy from the rest of the world and is easily condemned.

There is another way to perform genocide on a group. Systematically and periodically make war on them taking and keeping land at every opportunity while annihilating segments of the population with each incursion. Then start building on contested land and squeezing the victims into unlivable conditions which will guarantee more conflict. This slow, cancerous process ends with the extermination of the group.

Both methods are an affront to civilization.

We have seen the first method imposed in the 1940's on a religious group in Europe. We are watching the second method currently being employed by the majority in a Middle East nation on its own minority population.

They will prove to be equally successful.

We are in a position to stop the second one.

The second one is still slowly moving along:

Another Killing

But of course there will be justice:

Justice In Israel

First we have Ghost equating terrorism with guerilla warfare. Now you making the sweeping pronouncement again that anything the IDF does in response to the Palestinian conflict is genocide.

Land disputes are acts of genocide.

source:http://forward.com/opinion/347451/im-a-jew-of-color-and-accusing-israel-of-genocide-disgusts-me/

"And the terminology in the platform is offensive and dangerous. The term “genocide” was coined in 1944 by a Jewish lawyer named Raphael Lemkin to describe the systematic murder of the Jews under Nazi Germany. Tactics such as accusing Israel of committing genocide and comparing them to Nazis are often thinly veiled, cowardly ways for anti-Semites to hurt and trigger Jewish people. The accusation of genocide is completely asinine in the context of Israel because it is being used as a weapon against the very victims who experienced true genocide. The Palestinians have grievances, yes. But calling their experience a genocide completely devalues the term."

The tactic of accusing Israel of genocide Bug Guy parrots from the PA script:

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-29387079

Let's deal with the tactic of accusing Israel of genocide. Like the accusations of "ethnic cleansing" and "apartheid: its trotted out on this thread and by anti Israelis. Its thrown out to describe anything Israel does.

When Mahmoud Abbas’ speech at the United Nations General Assembly trotted it out yet again, his tactic to use that one word "genoicide" was used like Bug Guy uses it to describe the land disputes on the West Bank, and any response Israel engaged in when Hamas attacked it.

The accusation pure and simple is intended to equate Israelis as Nazis and to accuse Israel and that means all its citizens of committing genocide against the Palestinians, i.e., it means with deliberation and systematic planning carrying out mas executions of thousands or millions of Palestinians.

The intent is to suggest Israel is exterminating the entire people known as Palestinians, deliberately as part of a pre-meditated political plan like the Nazis did the Jews, or the Ottoman Turks did the Armenians, or like the Hutus did the Tutsis in Rwanda, the Sudanese in Southern Sudan with its Christians, the Indonesians in East Timor.

Out goes the slur accusing Israel of acting on a motivation to render Palestinians extinct.

The accusation for people like Big Guy is easy to throw out just as "ethnic cleansing" and "apartheid" is. There's no thought to it, you just throw it out and inflame. The irony is the sheer stupidity of it. All one has to do is look at the birth rate of Palestinians to know if in fact Israel is carrying out a genocide

of them as Bug Guy continually repeats, they are doing one crappy job.

Here is just how blatantly stupid the genocide claim is:

http://forward.com/news/breaking-news/328404/palestinian-population-to-pass-jews-by-2017-in-israel-and-territories/

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/feb/11/israelandthepalestinians.population

http://www.tradingeconomics.com/palestine/population

The very birth rate of Palestinians makes the claim Israel is systematically making them extinct absurd.

However the accusation of genocide is not just used to describe the disputes in Gaza or the West Bank but even the

1948 war where the Arab League armies tried in fact and openly admitted there agenda was to commit a genocide of

Jews in Palestine. Even that has been turned around by anti Israelis as Jews trying to commit genocide of Arabs because

in those days Palestinians refused to be known as Palestinians.

There is a simple explanation for why anti Israelis flood boards with the genocide accusation:

"When you pay attention to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, you’ll notice a lot of buzzwords that are used to describe things that are happening on the ground. Buzzwords are important because they are able to draw attention simply by saying them, you don’t even need an explanation. These buzzwords are one of the main tools to recruit a lot of the useful idiots and the people who just don’t care to hear the explanation to the side of the Palestinians. Here are my favorites."

source:https://www.quora.com/Why-do-some-people-think-Israel-committed-genocide-if-the-Palestinian-population-has-grown-since-1948

It also goes on to summarize this very thread's idiocy:

"Every single debate and every time you hear someone complaining about something Israel has done, you will always hear someone say, “… Israel…. Violation of international law…” However, you will never hear what law they are violating. Sometimes you will hear about something a representative of the UN said or a resolution passed against Israel; but I think I have heard an actual law quoted just about 4-5 times and maybe one of them related to what was being discussed."

Lol the accusers on this thread have yet to mention one law. I have asked but not one response to any law.

Reason? Its simple. Its easy to make an accusation but to then actually provide anything other than the allegation? Substance? An actual law quited? Ont his thread, hell no. Its all about accusing but not providing any actual law violated.

The above article also addresses the bull sheeyat tactics of throwing out "apartheid" and "ethnic cleansing" because hey what's a thread calling Israel a criminal without the trifecta of accusations, genocide, ethnic cleansing and apartheid...

Genocide/Ethnic Cleansing

These are phrases that grab people’s attention because they are really crimes against humanity. The phrase genocide means the deliberate and systematic killing of a large group of people from a particular background. Being a member Hamas doesn’t count as “a particular background” we could target, so that argument is out. How about Palestinians as a group? If it was deliberate, why do we wait until they attack us? If it was systematic, why do we warn civilians of airstrikes before they happen? If we were really attempting genocide, why did we allow Palestinians in the past to become Israelis?

There are whole cities of them that could be targeted in Israel of Israeli Arabs if genocide was our goal. But it’s not. If it was systematic, why have their numbers increased and continue to increase every year?

I guess it could just be the worst attempted genocide in the history of the world, but if you think that, you really need to get your brain checked.

Same with ethnic cleansing, there are no attempts to move Palestinians out of Gaza, no attempt to move them out of the many cities around Israel that are Arab only or the big cities like Tel Aviv. They all have rights and are full citizens just like me.

Apartheid

This word works very well to drive people into a frenzy because most people arguing about the conflict now were alive during the South African apartheid or it is in recent enough history that there are huge numbers of people that can teach about this period of history for South Africa.

Arabs in Israel hold the same rights as any Jew. That has been proven over and over. I am not saying there is no racism in Israel, but racism is met by people who fight it, including the law, and because of that it is reduced to a minimum, and always getting less.

The only difference is they aren’t drafted into the army, however, many still chose to do it."

Edited by Rue
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So let's summarize then. Big Guy et al say Israel is an evil criminal. According to Ghost its entire people engage in war crimes.

Israel engages in genocide and ethnic cleansing and yet the Palestinian population soars.

Israel engage sin apartheid and yet its Israeli Muslim citizens have all the democratic and legal rights of Jewish Israelis, same access to

schools and hospitals and will not give up their citizenships and move to Muslim countries and live with a higher standard of living of any Muslim in the Middle East if you don't consider the elite in the royal families that run Oman, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain and the UAE.

Hey apartheid, its why Israeli Muslims have all the rights not one Jew has in a Muslim country. Apartheid. Never mind the entire Middle East implements dhimmitude the Muslim sharia legal system that forces non Muslims like Jews to live in ghettos and does not allow them to own land or testify in court or enjoy the same legal rights as Muslims, we skip that.

But wait why stop at those three accusations.

We can trot out the word "occupation" another favourite buzzword accusation.

Hell never mind Israel is not in Gaza...its occupied because there is a blockade that searchs in-going property for weapons.

I mean never mind Hamas is in an open declared state of war against Israel including its open vow to kill Jews world wide not just in Israel, Israel should just let weapons flow in.

Hey you ever notice how Big Guy and Hudson Jones start threads daily on this forum stating Hamas is a violent, illegal terrorist

organization at war with Israel and because of that it paralyzes the ability of its people to live normal lives.?

Yes indeed Big Guy and Hudson write daily about Hamas' torture of Palestinians, its illegal seizure of their land and as we speak

redirecting cement and building materials to rebuild a network of tunnels to use to get into Israel to attack it.

Hey now let's not forget the West Bank . Before 1967, Jordan controlled the territory. Not a peep about occupation.

Israel sends in troops to prevent incoming terrorists-that's occupation.

Never mind in international law the term occupation refers to one nation's army taking over another sovereign nation's land, when it comes to the West Bank, we fabricate it's a country and not in fact what it is, land that is not a sovereign state.

Never mind the territory has always been in dispute, its "occupied" because we can not use the layman term for "occupied" and the international legal term "occupied: that only refers to sovereign state land as one and the same-why-because trendy leftists say so.

Now here's what's even more interesting. Can Big Guy, Eye, Hudson Jones, Ghost, any of these Middle East experts point out the difference between a UN resolution and a law let alone an international law that says when Arabs squat on land, its theirs, but if anyone else squats on land, its not?

Hell did you not know that? If an Arab Muslim moves to Palestinian and illegally" occupies" land, he's automatically Palestinian. Never mind he took the land from an actual Palestinian, in this fiction he's no thief or occupier because he's a Muslim Arab. If he was a Jew, well now, its colonial occupation.

Ethnic cleansing? Hell yah. We just ignore the 900,000 Jews forced out of Muslim Middle East countries but we will focus on 450,000 Palestinians who left Israel. Ethnic cleansing? Yah the Israelis sure did a good job on that. That's why Israel has as many Israeli Muslims as it does and Palestiniians birthrates like Muslim birth rates in Israel are skyrocketing far faster than the Jewish population-its genocide you see.

But hey Jews of Israel are Nazis. The West Bank and Gaza are concentration camps complete with gas ovens, train tracks, death camps.. Go on have Big Guy and Eye and all the other experts who have been to Gaza and the West Bank, tell you why no one is starving in Gaza or the West Bank. I mean Lord knows they would love to make the accusation. Have them try,

Hey have them while they are at it try claim there are no power plants, beaches, malls, theatres, restaurants, and hotels.

Have these experts who I want to now call the Council of Palestinian Concerned Maple Leaf Forum Posters explain why I-iPhone in Gaza is cheaper than in Israel. Lol, better still, have them explain how Palestinians get cable/satellite TV and Internet access provided by Israel-yep that's what genocidal occupiers do. Before they wipe you out they get you cheap internet access.

Hey while you are at it have the experts explain how 55% of people in the Middle East have no Internet access, but Gaza and West Bank citizens get it thanks to Israel. Have Hudson Jones explain that. Have Big Guy explain that. I mean Bug Guy quotes Al Jazeera and says that's the only source you need to understand what's going on.

Oh but hey while we are at it, let's discuss again how these experts know that what the IDF (called Israel by Ghost) does is automatically a war crime.

See how it works is a terrorist attacks an Israeli. That's a guerilla like tactic according to Ghost or a desperate act of freedom if you are Big Guy or Marcus and so its understandable. I mean You can't expect Palestinians to do anything but engage in violence. Talk? Negotiate? No. Not possible. The very fact Israelis exist traumatizes them. Everytime they see an Israeli they go kowabunga. Never mind that the vast majority of Palestinians don't want terrorism or violence, according to our learned experts on this forum, all Palestinians are kowabunga-ized and have no choice but to stab Jews.

As for the IDF? If Hamas shoots rockets at its citizens, invades through tunnels to try kill its citizens, uses its own civilian's homes, schools and hospitals to attack Israel, well hey now that's no reason for the IDF to respond and defend its people. I mean come on. They should just sit there and die.

Now get this straight. Anything Hamas does-its a guerilla tactic. Anything the IDF does in response-a war crime. Really its that simple.

Oh but wait, next Hudson Jones will respond to me and say, hey who says "we" condone terrorism? I think he means guerilla tactics?

Has anyone read one post by the anti Israelis on this forum that has stated Israeli citizens under international law have the right to defend themselves and have under international law the right to have an army to do just that? Ghost? Eye? Hudson? Marcus Kactus?

The IDF? Who them? Hey they aren't legal army with a moral imperative to protect its civilians? Hell no. See how it works is if you are a Jew and an Israeli you have no morality so your army is immoral. Also you are automatically possessed by cancer says Hudson Jones, and not just any cancer but a cancer that must be wiped out. A Jew who thinks he had the right to be an Israeli, is a cancer to be wiped out. But hey if I keep reminding Hudson Jones he said that or challenge Bug Guy for referring to Israeli settlers as cancer hey I am being harsh and unfair, so of course I won't say anything.

Now have any of you read the word "proportionality" on this thread? Lol. I mean imagine if Hudson Jones or Eye or Big Guy suggested somethings the IDF does are proportional to the violence commenced and initiated by Palestinian terrorists. Lol. Yah right.

I mean come on the word is hard pronounce and its hard to spell.. I mean imagine if one of them stated not everything the IDF does is a war crime but is a proportional response to acts of terrorism against its people.

Who them? Hey that's impossible because you see, proportional response does not exist with Israelis. They are all evil. Their IDF is evil. The moment they defend their lives and claim to have a right to be Jewish and Israeli, there's no proportion, there's just a war criminal.

So hey now. Tell me. If I shot an unguided rocket into Big Guy's or Hudson Jone's or Ghost's living room think they would just sit there and say they won't respond because hey now they understand the root causes behind those rockets and no harm was done?

Hell I know. When Hudson or Big Guy or Eye or whoever drives down the highway or 401, they do so always with proportional speed. They never use excessive force or cut anyone off. Perfect moral creatures they are and so here they are to point out the imperfections of the bad Jew-you know the bad Jew who is bad because he believes he has the right to be an Israeli-you know the kind of Jew who Big Guy says his "Jewish" friends (good ones) are shocked when they read my posts-so shocked in fact, they don't write in they have

Big Guy show them the forum posts and write back for them.

I mean he invites good Jews over, they read my posts, get shocked and Big Guy writes back for them and for that matter on behalf of all Canadians extolling them to boycott Israel..

Edited by Rue
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Ok, just for you, I shall clarify, the US government/military sure loved them Nazi scientists. But now it's in your head that I am anti-american along with an anti-semite. :D

So in your opinion, only the Americans made use of captured German scientists post-WW2. What should their punishment be for being the only country on Earth to make use of Nazis post WW2?

Cough...Mufti...Cough.

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You an anti semite or anti American who said that? What you smeer all Israelis and Americans that doesn't mean anything.

Make up your mind, either I am an anti-semite or not? Playing dumb is not your forte.

So in your opinion, only the Americans made use of captured German scientists post-WW2. What should their punishment be for being the only country on Earth to make use of Nazis post WW2?

Cough...Mufti...Cough.

Hells, yeah I LOVE some Mufti. Happy?

So let's summarize then. Big Guy et al say Israel is an evil criminal. According to Ghost its entire people engage in war crimes.

No where did I say that, but please keep going.

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The Mufti with his ODESSA connections was able to hide plenty of fleeing Nazis in the mysterious Middle East. Some even ended-up working as double agents for Mosad via CIA interests in the region...which weren't the same as Israel's, oddly enough. Otto Skorzeny being the prime example.

US-Israeli cooperation only really ramped-up post '73 with the Yom Kippur War as it became a front in the Cold War...NATO-Warsaw Pact.

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Make up your mind, either I am an anti-semite or not? Playing dumb is not your forte.

This obsession you have trying to drag me into a personal attack to try then censor me,

lol think its working? Lol.

Knock yourself out. Here's a test you can take-I already know the score..

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/low_concept/2007/02/are_you_a_liberal_antisemite.html

This article is interesting. Just replace the word "gay" with "ant-semite"..

http://www.lgbtqnation.com/2013/10/nine-things-not-to-do-why-you-come-out-of-the-closet/

Now getting back to the thread:

Please consider:

Is Israel Guilty of War Crimes?

by Denis MacEoin

January 29, 2015 at 5:00 am

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/5158/israel-war-crimes

"Can the International Criminal Court [iCC] even be considered an impartial legal body, any more than a Jim Crow court in America's old South?...

Groups such as al-Qaeda, the Islamic State, Hizbullah or Hamas are considered terrorists because they do not abide by the principles of international or domestic law. That, as well as the acts they commit, is what identifies them as terrorists. The differentiating factor with Islamist terror organizations is that they do not recognize international law at all.

Islamic law frees Hamas and other such groups from any obligation to abide by international standards, which they demonize as "Western" or "Christian" and therefore "Satanic."

As stated by an official UN report of 2009, among others, systematic and deliberate targeting of civilians violates International Humanitarian Law and amounts to a war crime.

Any movement, such as Hamas, that is openly determined to bring about the abolition of a sovereign state and the genocide of its citizens, breaks every clause in every charter of international law.

On November 4, 2014, Amnesty International published a scathing report on Israeli "war crimes" in Gaza during the war between Hamas and Israel last year. ...One day later, November 6, 2014, the chief military commander of the U.S., General Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a man with lifelong military experience, including senior service in Iraq, flatly contradicted both Amnesty and Pillay in an outspoken insistence that Israeli troops had behaved in an exemplary fashion. "I actually do think that Israel went to extraordinary lengths to limit collateral damage and civilian casualties," he said. "They [the IDF] did some extraordinary things to try and limit civilian casualties to include ... making it known that they were going to destroy a particular structure".

Dempsey's remarks are a direct echo of sentiments expressed (and not for the first time) by a former British commander in Afghanistan, Col. Richard Kemp: "The way that this conflict [Operation Protective Edge] is being portrayed in many, many media outfits by many reporters, by some politicians round the world, is the mirror opposite of reality. Israel has been demonized, Israel has been accused of committing war crimes. The real war crimes have been committed by Hamas."[1]

...Either the IDF is made up of war criminals or, as Kemp has said, "the Israeli Defence Forces did more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone than any other army in the history of warfare."

.....

The fundamental issue is whether any of the accusations against Israel are true. Has Israel been committing terrible crimes in Gaza? Or were the war crimes in this conflict actually committed by Hamas, while Israel and its armed forces behaved in an exemplary fashion, in hard-fought battles, to minimize civilian casualties? Further, are the claims of war crimes and indiscriminate killing born, not from humanitarian anxieties, but from a recrudescent anti-Semitism? It often seems as if your grandmother's old-fashioned anti-Semitism has merely morphed and been repackaged as anti-Israel invective and rallies that call on Hamas to rise up for human rights. The supporters of this repackaged anti-Semitism, however, always seem perfectly comfortable "forgetting" that the Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement [Hamas] offers its people no human rights, and often liberal helpings of human wrongs. Thus is a liberal democracy maligned by a theocratic tyranny.

It is time that Israel's harsher critics, politicians, and the media acquainted themselves with the physical and legal facts of this conflict. Their goals may be admirable, even if their motives are not; for which of us does not wish to minimize the deaths of innocents? But, sadly, they seem have taken precisely the wrong side of the moral argument.

Rather than help save innocent lives, they seem actually to relish putting Israel into the dock. They promote incessant rounds of boycotts, divestments and sanctions, mounted against Israel and no other nation. At the UN, they continually vote lopsided for sanctions against Israel and no other nation -- not Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, Pakistan or the Sudan.

....Israel is not mankind's enemy; it is not even an enemy of the Palestinian people. Hamas, on the other hand -- a brutal, internationally-recognized terrorist organization -- is the greatest threat to, first and foremost, Palestinians.

Most people know and agree that Islamist groups such as al-Qaeda, the Islamic State [iS, Da'ish, ISIS], Hizbullah, or Hamas are considered terrorists because they do not abide by the terms of international or domestic law. That, as well as the acts they commit, is what identifies them as terrorists rather than "freedom fighters" or "militants." Like the German Red Cells or the Italian Red Brigades and other European terrorist bodies in the 1970s, a terrorist's job is to terrorize: they use terror to achieve their ends, and this comparison helps us place Hamas within that category. But there is a differentiating factor with the Islamist terror organizations, and that is that they do not recognize international law at all.

All the norms of the Geneva Conventions, UN resolutions, international treaties, the protection of refugees, all other things that govern military action and aspects of internationally accepted norms of law, they reject because they only recognize one legal system, namely Islamic shari'a law. And the aspect of shari'a law in all the five law schools (four Sunni and one Shi'i) that applies to international relations, the fighting of war, and the making of truces and treaties, is the law of jihad. It has a special section in all books of general shari'a law.

A dependence on Islamic law frees Hamas and other such groups from any obligation to abide by international standards, which they demonize as "Western" or "Christian" and therefore "Satanic." When the Islamic State gives Christians or Yazidis a choice between conversion, payment of protection money (jizya), or death, they abide by the strict terms of jihad law as it has been practiced for fourteen centuries. When they kill without offering a subordinate status in return for the annual jizya payment, they breach Islamic law in the case of Christians, but not in the case of Yazidis (or Hindus or other "pagans"). Therefore, calling on Hamas to abide by recognized conventions is pointless.

To illustrate this, let us just examine three passages from Article 13 of the Hamas Charter[2]:

"(1) Initiatives, and so-called peaceful solutions and international conferences, are in contradiction to the principles of the Islamic Resistance Movement. Abusing any part of Palestine is abuse directed against part of religion. Nationalism of the Islamic Resistance Movement is part of its religion.... (2) Now and then the call goes out for the convening of an international conference to look for ways of solving the (Palestinian) question. Some accept, others reject the idea, for this or other reason, with one stipulation or more for consent to convening the conference and participating in it. Knowing the parties constituting the conference, their past and present attitudes towards Moslem problems, the Islamic Resistance Movement does not consider these conferences capable of realizing the demands, restoring the rights or doing justice to the oppressed. These conferences are only ways of setting the infidels in the land of the Moslems as arbiters. When did the infidels do justice to the believers?.... (3) There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors. The Palestinian people know better than to consent to having their future, rights and fate toyed with." (Italics added)

Hamas's statement of purpose reads: "Jihad is its path and death for the sake of Allah is the loftiest of its wishes." (Article 8).

It is inevitable that any movement, such as Hamas, that rejects peacemaking outright, and is outspokenly determined to bring about the abolition of a sovereign state and the genocide of its citizens, breaks every clause in every charter of international law. Thus, from the Introduction of the Hamas Charter: "Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it;" and from Article 7: "The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews and kill them (hatta yuqatil al-muslimun al-yahud fa-yaqtuluhum al-muslimun[3]), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdullah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him".

It is this assumption of superiority to international legal norms, and complete indifference to their demands, that makes Hamas, like all other jihadi movements, such formidable enemies. Glorification of suicide also increases their alienation, not only from legal standards in warfare, but from the ethical standards of civilization. It is not only their own thirst to die that marks these extremists out, it is that they wish for the deaths of their own people, whether as suicide bombers or as casualties of a conflict started by Hamas itself.

....Israel has never initiated any of the conflicts in which it has been engaged. Not the 1948 war, when seven Arab armies from five countries invaded it. Not the 1967 Six-Day War, when Israel found itself surrounded by armies from Egypt, Syria and Jordan about to invade. Not in 1973, when a coalition of Arab states led by Egypt and Syria with Jordan again invaded Israeli territory and were fought off at great cost. Not the first Gaza war, the second Gaza war, or the 2014 conflict. All Israel's actions have been defensive, all Arab actions offensive. This has a serious bearing on the issue of which side has acted legally within the confines of international law. This is not a matter of opinion, but of history: of plain, verifiable fact.

...Israel has taken the defense of its citizens seriously, providing them with bomb shelters, ordering all houses to be equipped with secure rooms, creating an extensive alarm system to warn of incoming rockets, and building the very effective Iron Dome missile defense system. This has meant that Israeli casualties have been few, while defensive measures have never hurt a single Palestinian. Israel's defensive measures have also protected its own Arab population, which has a direct bearing on the spurious claims of "disproportion" in fighting.

Hamas provided absolutely no defenses for its civilian population. There are no bomb shelters, no secure rooms, no alarm systems, and no anti-missile installations in the Gaza Strip. On the contrary, Hamas has spent billions of dollars of aid money to supply itself with a vast array of rockets, only used in offensive attacks, as well as on underground tunnels designed to import weapons, to protect the Hamas military forces, and to serve as conduits for attacks on Israel civilians during Gaza-Israel cross-border kidnapping and murder attacks. (The tunnels are now being used to allow Hamas to launch attacks into Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, and it is thought that Hizbullah is digging similar tunnels into Israeli territory in the north.)

Hamas has, as mentioned, fired thousands of rockets onto Israeli civilian centers, including several thousand before and after the latest conflict. Its firing has been indiscriminate and has impacted on civilian areas only. This is a war crime, as indicated in paragraphs 4-5b of Protocol I of the Geneva Conventions.

Hamas boasted that Palestinian civilians were killed while Hamas's terrorists remained alive, hiding in their underground bunkers and tunnels. (

With respect to Palestinian terrorist acts and the discovery of armed Hamas operatives entering Israeli civilian areas through tunnels, it is also worth noting that this is also a war crime according to Article 8(2)(g) of the same Statute.

There is overwhelming evidence that Hamas used human shields in various ways. Children have been used to protect fighters, who physically hold them. Numbers of civilians have been ordered into buildings containing military emplacements, against which Israeli attacks are likely or planned. More broadly, there is evidence that Hamas military structures, rocket launch pads, and command centers have been situated directly in or next to civilian dwellings, hospitals, mosques, and schools. This is historically a deliberate Hamas policy, as is clear from a 2008 video of a speech by Fathi Hammad, the Hamas Interior Minister:

"The enemies of God do not know that the Palestinian people have developed their methods of death and death-seeking. For the Palestinian people, death has become an industry, at which women excel, as do all the people living in this land. The elderly excel at this, and so do the mujahidin [i.e. the jihad fighters] and the children. This is why they have formed human shields [duruq bashariyya] of the women, the children, the elderly, and the mujahidin, in order to challenge the Zionist bombing machine. It is as if they were saying to the Zionist enemy: 'We desire death, just as you desire life.'"

How does Hamas's use of human shields potentially play out in legal terms? According to the conclusions reached during and after the 2008-09 Gaza War, in which Hamas used tactics similar or identical to those it has used in 2014, the BBC reported on January 5, 2009 that "Witnesses and analysts confirm that Hamas fires rockets from within populated civilian areas." Amnesty International, which now condemns Israeli "war crimes," earlier assessed that Hamas fighters put civilians in danger by firing from homes. UN Humanitarian Affairs Chief John Holmes accused Hamas of war crimes, saying "The reckless and cynical use of civilian installations by Hamas, and the indiscriminate firing of rockets against civilian populations, are clear violations of international humanitarian law."

In the course of the fighting in Gaza in 2008 and 2009, purported evidences of Hamas's exploitation of civilian infrastructure were recorded in reports from the Israeli Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center: "Civilians as Human Shields", "Evidence of the Use of the Civilian Population as Human Shields", "Using civilians as humans shields."

A study by the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies [CSIS] suggests that Hamas must share responsibility for the effects on Gaza's civilian population, as it seems to have relied on the population density of Gaza both to deter Israeli attacks and as a defense against Israeli offensives. Irwin Cotler has said that attacks from within civilian areas and civilian structures -- such as apartment buildings, mosques or hospitals -- in order to be immune from a response, are unlawful. He argues that in these cases, Hamas bears legal responsibility for the harm to civilians, as enshrined in general principles of International Humanitarian Law.

ITIC accused Hamas of making systematic use of protected civilian areas (including homes and mosques) for hiding and storing rockets, explosives and ammunition; the use of civilian facilities (such as universities) for developing weapons, and calling on Palestinians to flock to targets expected to be attacked in order to form human shields. Such conduct contravenes the Laws of Armed Conflict, and some of the practices above amount to a war crime under, for example, Art. 8(2)(B)(xxiii) of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.'

It is obligatory, under international law, to distinguish between military and civilians. This is a major theme in international law protocols. Article 51 of the protocol additional to the 1949 Geneva Conventions makes this clear.

That human shields are used by Hamas is self-evident from detailed maps, which show how totally embedded Hamas military forces were within the public and private buildings across the Strip, but mainly in Gaza City, where entire neighborhoods are as much military bases as residential sectors. This is also illustrated in a report released by the Israel Defense Forces [iDF] Military-Strategic Information Section on August 9, 2014, under the title "Hamas War Tactics: Attacks from Civilian Centers."

That document provides a table showing, among other things, that Hamas fired rockets from 31 UN facilities, 41 hospitals, 50 children's playgrounds, 85 medical clinics, 248 schools, 331 mosques, and 818 other civilian sites. On the next page, we read that, "Hamas uses UN facilities, schools, children's playgrounds, water towers, mosques and countless other active civilian facilities as launching sites for rockets and attacks. In this operation alone, Hamas has launched above 1,600 rockets from civilian sites."

The report continues:

"Additionally, Hamas purposefully engages IDF troops in conflict in urban areas. For example, in Shuja'iyya and in Jebaliyya, IDF troops have come under intense attack by terrorists in highly populated areas, and have been forced to defend themselves.

"Hamas also uses civilian infrastructures for other military purposes, and places weapon caches and C2 [command and control] centers in civilian places. Hamas's tactic serves two purposes. Firstly, because the IDF responds to attacks with acute concern for innocent lives, attacking from these sites gives Hamas a major strategic advantage. Secondly, any civilian casualties that are incurred from these attacks are used to create international pressure against Israel, even though it is ultimately Hamas that is to blame for these deaths.

"Such tactics flagrantly violate international law and the most basic of moral precepts."

The report provides links to videos showing Hamas firing from civilian areas, placing civilians in the line of fire, and admitting that they do this. It shows detailed aerial reconnaissance maps, which provide overwhelming evidence of the extent of launching sites in Gaza north, central, and south. Further maps and videos show launches from educational facilities, from UN and Red Cross facilities, from mosques, from power plants, hospitals and hotels, with the maps delineating rocket trajectories towards Israeli towns and villages.

A detailed map of Gaza City's Shuja'iyya district shows the area peppered with terrorist locations of every size. In the accompanying text, we read:

"The UN recently published a map that marks areas of Shuja'iya damaged during IDF strikes. A comparison of the two maps clearly demonstrates that the areas targeted by the IDF are the same areas that the UN marked as damaged. The conclusion: the IDF distinguishes between structures used for terror purposes and structures used only for civilian purposes."

A few things emerge from the above statements. First, Hamas has done its level best to avoid distinguishing its fighters from the civilian population. Not only do they hide among that population, they do not wear distinctive uniforms; and as often as not, they play dual roles as fighters and civilians. This makes it difficult if not impossible for the IDF to make that essential distinction. Second, it is legitimate to attack embedded military sites. And third, such attacks on undistinguished sites are subject to the condition that injuries and damage to civilians and their property should be proportionate to the damage that could be inflicted by the targeted site.

The prohibition of using human shields is contained in countless military manuals. Using human shields constitutes a criminal offence under the legislation of many states. This practice includes that of states not necessarily a party to Additional Protocol I or to the Statute of the International Criminal Court.

Many say the casualties from last year's fighting in Gaza were disproportionate because some 2,100 Gazans died in the conflict, as opposed to 66 Israeli soldiers and a mere 5 civilians. But this apparent disproportion is simplistic as well as incorrect. Gatestone author Shoshana Bryen has written in some detail about the principle of proportionality in international law. She argues that "Proportionality in international law is not about equality of death or civilian suffering, or even about firepower returned being equal in sophistication or lethality to firepower received. Proportionality weighs the military necessity of an action against the suffering that the action might cause to enemy civilians in the vicinity."

The claim that Israel's response to Hamas attacks was disproportionate also ignores that 50% or more of the Gazan casualties have been among men of fighting age -- a statistic detailed in several places. Both the BBC and the New York Times, neither remotely friendly to the Israeli narrative, have pointed out the enormous discrepancies in the figures provided. "If the Israeli attacks have been 'indiscriminate,' as the UN Human Rights Council says, it is hard to work out why they have killed so many more civilian men than women," the BBC's Anthony Reuben wrote in "Caution needed with Gaza casualty figures."

The New York Times reached much the same conclusion. Jodi Rudoren describes the issue in "Civilian or not? New Fight in Tallying the Dead From the Gaza Conflict," where the names of 1,431 casualties were reviewed. The report showed that "the population most likely to be militants, men ages 20 to 29, is also the most over-represented in the death toll. They are 9% of Gaza's 1.7 million residents, but 34% of those killed whose ages were provided."

Women and children form 71% of the population yet a mere 33% of casualties. That is also a discrepancy.

Anthony Reuben of the BBC quoted IDF Spokesman Capt Eytan Buchman, who said that "the UN numbers being reported are, by and by large, based on the Gaza health ministry, a Hamas-run organisation." Buchman added that we should keep in mind that "when militants are brought to hospitals, they are brought in civilian clothing, obscuring terrorist affiliations," and that "Hamas also has given local residents directives to obscure militant identities."

As no independent investigations were carried out in Gaza during the last war, and as Fatah, Hamas and other groups have a long-standing history of falsifying figures and filming fake scenes of carnage, it is highly likely that the true civilian casualty figures will prove to be much lower than claimed.

The sense of a discrepancy in the number of casualties dwindles to almost nothing when we consider the contrast, already noted, between Israeli defensive measures to save lives, compared to Hamas's use of civilians as human shields. It should also be noted that claims that Gazan civilians were killed and injured because they had nowhere to run to are simply laughable: there are vast open areas in the Strip in which Hamas fighters might have placed military infrastructure or to which they might have directed civilians in the event of war (since it was Hamas that started the war in the first place). Gatestone author Alan Dershowitz has demonstrated in detail that Gaza's population density is not a source of vulnerability for its civilian population.

It is also is highly irresponsible to speak of Israeli attacks as "indiscriminate." No army in history has fought with as great a concern to avoid civilian casualties, as has the IDF. It is Israeli policy to warn civilians of impending attacks by dropping thousands of leaflets, making telephone calls, sending text messages, and even dropping projectiles called "knocks on the roof" to give residents advanced warnings to evacuate the premises. This alone makes Amnesty International's accusation of "callous indifference" to civilian deaths utterly indefensible. Giving advance warning of attacks is disadvantageous for the Israeli Air Force in two ways: it warns Hamas fighters and rocket-launching teams that they have been spotted and designated as targets, and it allows Hamas to order civilians to remain in buildings or go onto flat roofs to dissuade Israelis from firing. This policy of warning civilians of a coming attack is stated clearly in Israel's Manual on the Rules of Warfare (2006).[4]

When Hamas fighters fire from near or inside a school, mosque or hospital, and civilians are killed in the return fire, Hamas benefits by parading dead civilians, dead children (and dead fighters dressed as civilians) before the eyes of the world media.

Those who condemn Israeli actions in war should first read this useful article which argues that every IDF officer receives detailed and ongoing training in international law relating to combat; that the IDF has a website devoted to international law issues; that there is a legal expert in every IDF division; that Israeli assaults are either called off or adapted to avoid illegal action; that every single shell shot by Israeli artillery or the air force was thought about in advance, and that targets were vetted in advance, after being visually identified by one or more of the technical layers of "eyes" the IDF had over Gaza -- satellites, drones, and radar.

...To speak of "indiscriminate" attacks by Israel mocks understanding that Israel's military equipment is second to none with regard to its technological sophistication. Given Israel's international reputation as one of the most technically advanced countries in the world, this hardly surprising. We can expect an Israeli aircraft to hit its target with precision. As every civilian casualty is detrimental to Israel's standing in the world, it makes no sense at all for such a technically savvy country to fire indiscriminately on civilians -- a move that would only help Hamas to win the war through media coverage alone.

If that is so, some may ask, why did Israeli attacks kill so many civilians? The answer is simple: first, as discussed, many civilian deaths may not even have been civilian deaths, as in previous conflicts. Second, the primary cause of many of those deaths may have been Hamas's use of human shields, and the proximity of firing sites, command centers and munitions stockpiles to every sort of civilian location. Casualties did not come from an irresponsible and self-defeating lack of discrimination or incompetence on Israel's part.

Denis MacEoin is a former university teacher in Arabic and Islamic Studies and a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Gatestone Institute.

[1] "The Gaza War in 5 Minutes: Thoughts from Col. Richard Kemp", YouTube, 10 November 2014. And see other videos by Kemp listed on the same page.

[2] For a good translation of the original Arabic text, see Yale Law School's Avalon Project version.

[3] My translation here is more accurate than the Yale version.

[4] See in greater detail, International Committee of the Red Cross, "Israel: Practice Relating to Rule 20. Advance Warning", Customary IHL.

© 2016 Gatestone Institute. All rights reserved. The articles printed here do not necessarily reflect the views of the Editors or of Gatestone Institute. No part of the Gatestone website or any of its contents may be reproduced, copied or modified, without the prior written consent of Gatestone Institute.

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Oh my too many sentences. Its sooooo long.

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Hey now I do believe Big Guy believes debating is coming on a forum and sayin, me right, you wrong.

Lol.

Now one of Bug Guy's tactics of course is to attack me personally and say my opinions are "wrong" because I am a bad Jew.

So of course I quote others not myself, and guess what, they are wrong to.

Lol

Here's some more people Big Guy has no clue how to respond to other than to call them "wrong".

http://www.charismanews.com/opinion/standing-with-israel/55301-why-are-israeli-settlements-not-illegal-under-international-law

http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2014/07/israeli_settlements_are_not_illegal.

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2014/02/24/challenging-the-long-held-notion-that-israeli-settlements-are-illegal/

https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/the-illegal-settlements-myth/

http://www.mythsandfacts.org/replyonlineedition/chapter-9.html

Edited by Rue
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Looks like there will be some more foolishness and perhaps carnage coming up. A "flotilla"of two boats manned (actually womanned) by freedom protesters have set sail for the Middle East.

Flotilla

These boats are "armed" with food and supplies for the suppressed Palestinians in Gaza. Will be interesting when in three weeks, they will reach the Israeli stranglehold around Gaza. What excuse are the Israeli thugs going to use to stop or kill (as they did to 10 humanitarians a few tears ago) these freedom advocates attempting to feed the starving Palestinians?

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Bottom line, you won't see Hudson Jones, Big Guy, Eye, Dre, Kactus, Marcus, Ghost quote any international law. Not one section. They wil do what people do, chirp making accusations that Israel ethnically cleanses, commits war crimes, is immoral, evil, a spreading cancer, occupying land, engaging in apartheid. Name calling is what they do. Actually backing up the allegations with specific sections of international law they do not do because they have no idea what laws it is they refer to. They can't even differentiate between a war against humanity and a war crime.

What I do get on this forum posed as a "reasonable response" are comments like the trite one from Bug Guy saying I am wrong and he is right and complaining I wont stop. Lol.

Oh he bets I won't stop.

Big Guy you started this thread to incite hatred against all Israelis for being Israeli and any Jew who chooses to be Israeli. Your words state that interposed as alleged debatae over actions taken by the Israeli government. You refer to Israelis as caner to be wiped out.

You are quick to allege, call names, smeer, but never once provide one section of one treaty.

So I will. I enclose word by word, the specific legal arguments quoting the sections Big Guy has no idea exist but thinks he understands and thinks he refers to.

Big Guy you and Hudson Jones et al, you have zero clue as to the mandate of the ICJ the difference between a resolution and a law, zero clue. Zero.

source

http://www.mythsandfacts.org/replyonlineedition/chapter-9.html

:https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/the-illegal-settlements-myth/

"In advising that Jewish settlements are illegal, the ICJ went beyond its own mandate from the General Assembly without being asked to do so.

In paragraph 120 of the Court’s opinion, the ICJ declares:

“The Court concludes that the Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (including East Jerusalem) have been established in breach of international law.”

The ICJ based its conclusion on the inappropriate use of an article of the Fourth Geneva Convention which stipulates:

“The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.”

This was coupled with a host of anti-Israeli UN General Assembly resolutions passed in the 1990s that describe the West Bank and Gaza as “Palestinian Occupied Territories” and declare Israeli settlements – including hundreds of thousands of Jewish Jerusalemites living in numerous new neighborhoods built since 1967 – to be illegal settlers.

For example, in paragraph 19 of the opinion, the ICJ notes that in 1997 the Security Council rejected two one-sided draft resolutions that sought to brand Israeli settlements as illegal (draft S/1997/1991 and draft S/1997/2412). The ICJ then proceeds to solemnly describe how “the Arab Group” maneuvered to by-pass the Security Council and to subsequently pass General Assembly Resolution ES-10/2 that “expressed its [General Assembly] conviction” and:

“… condemned the ‘illegal Israeli actions’ in occupied East Jerusalem and the rest of the Occupied Palestinian Territory, in particular the construction of settlements in that territory.”

The ICJ leads the reader to believe that expressing “conviction” in regard to the so-called “illegal Israeli actions in occupied East Jerusalem and the rest of the Occupied Palestinian Territory” is sufficient to make the document a source of law.

The General Assembly request of the ICJ’s advisory opinion reads:

“Recalling in particular relevant United Nations resolutions affirming that Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, are illegal and an obstacle to peace and to economic and social development as well as those demanding the complete cessation of settlement activities.”3

Again, the ICJ treats its reference to “United Nations Resolutions” as if it was a source of law, all without checking its accuracy or legal standing.

The UN Charter does not grant the General Assembly or the International Court of Justice the authority to assign or affect ‘ownership’ of the Territories.

As incredulous as it may be, the ICJ chose to ignore the actual powers vested in the UN General Assembly. A host of anti-Israel resolutions passed annually by the Assembly are not legally binding documents by any measure. One need only to read Article 10 of the UN Charter:

“The General Assembly may discuss any questions or any matters within the scope of the present Charter or relating to the powers and functions of any organs provided for in the present Charter, and, except as provided in Article 12, may make recommendations to the Members of the United Nations or to the Security Council or to both on any such questions or matters” [italics by author].

Schwebel, the former president of the International Court of Justice, has written that:

“… the General Assembly of the United Nations can only, in principle, issue ‘recommendations’ which are not of a binding character, according to Article 10 of the Charter of the United Nations.”4

Schwebel also cites the (1950) opinion of Judge, Sir Hersch Lauterpacht, a former member judge of the International Court of Justice, who declared that:

“… the General Assembly has no legal power to legislate or bind its members by way of recommendation.”

Yet, another former ICJ judge, Sir Gerald Fitzmaurice, has been just as resolute in rejecting what he labeled the “illusion” that a General Assembly resolution can have “legislative effect.”5

Academics and renowned international law experts also agree. Professor Stone illuminates this subject by pointing out:

“In his book The Normative Role of the General Assembly of the United Nations and the Declaration of Principles of Friendly Relations, Professor Gaetano Arangio-Ruiz6 is led to conclude that the General Assembly lacks legal authority either to enact or to ‘declare’ or ‘determine’ or ‘interpret’ international law so as legally to bind states by such acts, whether these states be members of the United Nations or not, and whether these states voted for or against or abstained from the relevant vote or did not take part in it.”7, 8

Certain General Assembly resolutions may be recognized as “declaratory,” but no more. Among Schwebel conclusions:

“… certain resolutions of the General Assembly – viewed as expressions of the assembled States of the world community … which treat questions of international law which are not the subject of principles found in the United Nations Charter may be recognized to be declaratory, though not creative, of international law, provided that they are:

(i) adopted with the support of all assembled States, or, at any rate, of all the groups of States represented in the General Assembly, including major States that are not members of a group, such as the United States of America and China.”

The Territories and the war of words.

One can easily trace the General Assembly’s attempts to legislate changes in the status of the Territories. How the definition of the status of the Territories was doctored is well documented on the website of the Palestinian delegation to the United Nations that posts landmark pro-Palestinian decisions. Examination reveals how over the years UN General Assembly resolutions and the wording of resolutions by sub-committees moves from “territories” to “occupied territories” to “Occupied Territories” and “Arab territories” to “occupied Palestinian territories” to “Occupied Palestinian Territory” and “occupied Palestinian territory, including Jerusalem”:

Resolution 3236 (XXIX)9 passed in November 1974 speaks of “the question of Palestine”;

Resolution 38/5810 in December 1983 speaks of “Arab territories” and “occupied territories”;

Resolution 43/17611 passed in December 1988 expresses sentiments suggesting Palestinian entitlement – speaking of “the Palestinian people[’s] right to exercise their sovereignty over their territory occupied since 1967”;

Resolution 51/13312 passed in December 1996 adds Jerusalem in particular – speaking of “occupied Palestinian territory, including Jerusalem, and the occupied Syrian Golan”;

Resolution 52/25013 passed in July 1998 fully “assigns title” – speaking of “Occupied Palestinian Territory,” a designation that is frequently used in subsequent resolutions.

None of these terms have a legal foundation any more than declaring “the world is flat” makes it so. Yet, the International Court of Justice cites these terms as if they were legal documents, all in violation of the Court’s Statute.

It should be noted that the coining of the term “Occupied Palestinian Territory” by the General Assembly, and all the more so its ‘adoption’ by the International Court of Justice, is contrary to, and totally incompatible with, Article 12 of the UN Charter which states:

“While the Security Council is exercising in respect of any dispute or situation the functions assigned to it in the present Charter, the General Assembly shall not make any recommendation with regard to that dispute or situation unless the Security Council so requests” [italics by author].

International law allows for “just wars” and “lawful occupation.”

Resolutions 242 and 338 (discussed in Chapter 8) are the cornerstones for how a “just and lasting peace” should be achieved. The term ‘Occupied Palestinian Territory’ does not appear in either, not even the term ‘occupied territory.’ Resolution 242 affirms that:

“… fulfillment of the Charter principles requires the establishment of a just and lasting peace in the Middle East which should include the application of both the following principles: Withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict; Termination of all claims or states of belligerency and respect for and acknowledgement of the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of every State in the area and their right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force.”

The ICJ ignores that there is such a quality as a “lawful occupation.” In essence the ICJ seeks to overturn Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338, and to de-legitimize Israel’s right to claim any territory over the Green Line, even for self-defence.

In paragraph 74 of the opinion, the ICJ prefers a highly questionable, abridged rendition of these two core documents in a way that makes it appear as if Israel was an aggressor:

“On 22 November 1967, the Security Council unanimously adopted resolution 242 (1967), which emphasized [E.H., Principle I] the inadmissibility of acquisition of territory by war and [E.H., Principle II] called for the ‘Withdrawal of Israel armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict,’ and [E.H., Principle III] ‘Termination of all claims or states of belligerency.’”

ICJ selective writing falsifies historical documents.

The ICJ misleads the readers by simply removing from the second principle [Principle II above] the need, as stated in Resolution 242, for “secure and recognized boundaries” that will not invite aggression. In any case, the ICJ cannot override Security Council resolutions nor can it edit or fix them. Such doctored use of “the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by force” is disingenuous.

It is impossible to believe that the ICJ was unfamiliar with the basic rules governing the workings of the UN that are most relevant in understanding the meaning of the Security Council’s power and the two types of resolutions it may adopt:

Resolutions adopted under Chapter VI of the UN_Charter – Recommending “Pacific Resolution of Dispute”:

Resolutions the Security Council adopts under Chapter VI are intended to be followed and implemented via negotiated settlements between concerned parties. One of the UN resolutions adopted under Chapter VI of the UN Charter is Resolution 242, adopted after the 1967 Six-Day War. It calls on Israel and its Arab neighbours to accept the resolution through negotiation, arbitration and conciliation. Under Chapter VI of the UN Charter, the recommendations of UN Resolution 242 cannot be imposed on the parties concerned, as Arab leaders often argue. In fact, the title of Chapter VI also offers a clue to its nature, for it deals with “Pacific Resolution of Disputes.”

Resolutions adopted under Chapter VII of the UN Charter – Dealing with the “Threats to Peace …”:

In contrast, resolutions adopted by the Security Council under Chapter VII invest the Security Council with power to issue stringent resolutions that require nations to comply with the terms and directives set forth in the resolution. This leaves no room to negotiate a settlement with the affected parties. Thus,

Chapter VII deals with “Threats to Peace, Breaches of the Peace and Acts of Aggression.”

When Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, the Security Council adopted resolutions under Chapter VII that only required the aggressor, Iraq, to comply.14

Had Israel been an aggressor – where the territories were “occupied territories” taken by force in an unjust war – Resolution 242 would have been adopted under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, requiring Israel to comply … and not under Chapter VI.

In paragraph 26 of its opinion, the ICJ notes that Chapter VII empowers the Security Council to “require enforcement by coercive action,” thus implying that this Chapter is somehow relevant to these proceedings. Chapter VI isn’t even mentioned in the ICJ’s opinion – not in general and not with regard to

Resolutions 242 or 338, although the Bench cites “242 (1967)” no less than seven times, providing ample opportunity to clarify that 242 adopted under

Chapter VI of the UN Charter is intended to be followed and implemented via negotiated settlements between the concerned parties, and not by this Court.

Ignoring just wars and legal occupation.

It is important to note here that the ICJ refuses to even acknowledge the existence of scholarly literature that addresses the issue of seizure of territory in just wars written by internationally respected, former members of the ICJ. The ICJ simply turns a blind eye to the fact that some wars are just wars and not all occupations are illegal – as in the Israeli case, so clearly reflected by the unanimous adoption of UN Security Council Resolution 242 under Chapter VI.

As noted earlier, Lauterpacht pointed out in his writing that:

“… territorial change cannot properly take place as a result of the ‘unlawful’ use of force. But to omit the word ‘unlawful’ is to change the substantive content of the rule and to turn an important safeguard of legal principle into an aggressor’s charter. For if force can never be used to effect lawful territory change, then, if territory has once changed hands as a result of the unlawful use of force, the illegitimacy of the position thus established is sterilized by the prohibition upon the use of force to restore the lawful sovereign. This cannot be regarded as reasonable or correct.”15

This argument, which is widely recognised, goes unnoticed or is consciously and purposely ignored by the Court.

The ICJ’s sweeping ‘adoption’ of the General Assembly’s resolutions – as if they were legally binding or a source of international law – and the ICJ’s unauthorized ‘illegal transfer’ of unallocated disputed territories to one of the sides in the conflict, is all the more ironic in light of the ICJ’s main contention: that Israel’s actions are primarily political and not security motivated, and that these actions constitute a fait accompli, declaring in paragraph 121 of the opinion:

“The Court considers that the construction of the wall and its associated régime create a ‘fait accompli’ on the ground that could well become permanent, in which case, and notwithstanding the formal characterization of the wall by Israel, it would be tantamount to de facto annexation.”

This begs the question: Are the ICJ’s own actions in arbitrarily handing over ownership and title to all territories beyond the Green Line to the Palestinians – including East Jerusalem – not tantamount to unlawful de facto annexation?

Professor Stone cites in his writings that in 1975 the ICJ has been:

“insistent, not least as regards [to] questions of territorial title, that the rules and concepts of international law have to be interpreted ‘by reference to the law in force’ and ‘the State practice’ at the relevant period [italics by author].

“Judge de Castro in his Separate Opinion (ibid., 127, at 168 ff.) declared the principle tempus regit factum as a recognized principle of international law. He continued (p. 169): ‘Consequently, the creation of ties with or titles to a territory must be determined according to the law in force at the time. ... The rule tempus regit factum must also be applied to ascertain the legal force of new facts and their impact on the existing situation.’ He went on to illustrate this influence of ‘new facts and new law’ by reference to the impact on the suppression of the colonial status of Western Sahara by the principles concerning non-self-governing territories emanating from the United-Nations Charter and the later application to them of the principle of Self-determination (pp. 169-71). This limiting rider has reference to the appearance of new principles of international law, overriding the different principles on which earlier titles are based. But, of course, it can have no application to vested titles based, as was the very territorial allocation between the Jewish and Arab peoples, on the principle of self-determination itself.”16

If the so-called West Bank and Gaza were indeed occupied territory – belonging to someone else and unjustly seized by force – there could be no grounds for negotiating new borders, as UN Security Council Resolution 242 implies.

The ICJ charges that Jewish settlements in the West Bank are populated by settlers ‘deported by force.’

Once the ICJ has ‘established evidence’ that the West Bank and Gaza are unlawfully occupied territories, it then applies this status to the Fourth Geneva Conference17 de jure, stating in paragraph 120 of the opinion that:

“As regards these settlements, the Court notes that Article 49, paragraph 6, of the Fourth Geneva Convention provides: ‘The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.’

“In this respect, the information provided to the Court shows that, since 1977, Israel has conducted a policy and developed practices involving the establishment of settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, contrary to the terms of Article 49, paragraph 6, just cited” [italics by author].

One can hardly believe this baseless ICJ assertion that Israel used “deportation” and “forced transfer” of its own population into “occupied territories.”

The Court attempts to broaden the definition of Article 49 to possibly ‘fit’ some wrong doing on the part of the State of Israel, all with no reference to law, adding:

“That provision prohibits not only deportations or forced transfers of population such as those carried out during the Second World War, but also any measures taken by an occupying Power in order to organize or encourage transfers of parts of its own population into the occupied territory.”

In the above conclusion, the ICJ fails to disclose the content of the “information provided” (information the Court based its decision on), and the anonymous ‘authorities’ that provided such. Anyone interested in the subject at hand is aware of the difficulties the Israeli Government faces in its decision to relocate some Israeli settlements out of the “Territories,” a fact that seems to be contrary to the “information provided” to the ICJ.

Professor Stone touches on the applicability of Article 49 of the Geneva Convention. Writing on the subject in 1980:

“… that because of the ex iniuria principle, Jordan never had nor now has any legal title in the West Bank, nor does any other state even claim such title. Article 49 seems thus simply not applicable. (Even if it were, it may be added that the facts of recent voluntary settlements seem not to be caught by the intent of Article 49 which is rather directed at the forced transfer of the belligerent’s inhabitants to the occupied territory, or the displacement of the local inhabitants, for other than security reasons.) The Fourth Geneva Convention applies only, according to Article 2, to occupation of territory belonging to ‘another High Contracting Party’; and Jordan cannot show any such title to the West Bank, nor Egypt to Gaza.”

Support to Stone’s assertion can be found in Lauterpacht’s writing in 1968:

“Thus Jordan’s occupation of the Old City–and indeed of the whole of the area west of the Jordan river–entirely lacked legal justification; and being defective in this way could not form any basis for Jordan validly to fill the sovereignty vacuum in the Old City [and whole of the area west of the Jordan river].”18

Rostow concludes that the Convention is not applicable to Israel’s legal position and notes:

“The opposition to Jewish settlements in the West Bank also relied on a legal argument – that such settlements violated the Fourth Geneva Convention forbidding the occupying power from transferring its own citizens into the occupied territories. How that Convention could apply to Jews who already had a legal right, protected by Article 80 of the United Nations Charter, to live in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip, was never explained.”19

It seems that the International Court of Justice “never explained” it either.

By default, ICJ support of the “Mandate for Palestine” suggests it is actually supporting Jewish settlement in Palestine. Is the ICJ confused?

The ICJ concluded that under the Fourth Geneva Conference, Jewish settlements in the “Territories” are illegal, which brings up the need to reconcile two of the ICJ’s conflicting positions:

The first, as noted above, is the ICJ opinion regarding the illegal Jewish settlements in the “Territories.”

The second, refers to the ICJ ‘adoption’ of the “Mandate for Palestine” – a document which under Article 6 testifies to the legality of Jewish settlements in Palestine that:

“encourage, in co-operation with the Jewish agency referred to in Article 4, [building] close settlement by Jews on the land, including State lands and waste lands not required for public purposes”20 [italics by author].

The ICJ ignores that under both international convention21 and Article 80 of the UN Charter, all of western Palestine is legally open to settlement by Jews, and at best, the West Bank and Gaza are unallocated territory left over from the British Mandate to which there are two claimants.

Paragraph 88 of the Court’s opinion stated that:

“… the ultimate objective of the sacred trust” referred to in Article 22, paragraph 1, of the Covenant of the League of Nations “was the self-determination … of the peoples concerned.”

The ICJ seems confused. It attempts to links the “sacred trust” to the wrong “people concerned”!

UN Charter and Article 80.

International law, the UN Charter, and specifically Article 80 of the UN Charter implicitly recognize the “Mandate for Palestine” of the League of Nations.

This Mandate granted Jews the irrevocable right to settle in the area of Palestine, anywhere between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. Rostow explains:

“This right is protected by Article 80 of the United Nations Charter. The Mandates of the League of Nations have a special status in international law, considered to be trusts, indeed ‘sacred trusts.’

“Under international law, neither Jordan nor the Palestinian Arab ‘people’ of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip have a substantial claim to the sovereign possession of the occupied territories.”22

It is interesting to learn how Article 80 made its way into the UN Charter. Professor Rostow recalls:

“I am indebted to my learned friend Dr. Paul Riebenfeld, who has for many years been my mentor on the history of Zionism, for reminding me of some of the circumstances which led to the adoption of Article 80 of the Charter. Strong Jewish delegations representing differing political tendencies within Jewry attended the San Francisco Conference in 1945. Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, Peter Bergson, Eliahu Elath, Professors Ben-Zion Netanayu and A. S. Yehuda, and Harry Selden were among the Jewish representatives. Their mission was to protect the Jewish right of settlement in Palestine under the mandate against erosion in a world of ambitious states. Article 80 was the result of their efforts.”

The ICJ ignores the history of Jewish life in the area called Palestine.

The ICJ also ignores that Jews who had settled in these areas during almost 30 years of “Mandate” government and, in fact, for thousands of years in areas such as Hebron and the Old City of Jerusalem (in so-called “East Jerusalem”), in Kfar Darom in Gaza or the Etzion Bloc near Hebron, were either killed or driven out by the Arabs during the 1948 War. All areas of western Palestine that remained under Arab control were rendered racially cleansed of Jews – by Jordanian and Egyptian invaders, an act that in today’s parlance would be labeled “ethnic cleansing.” Even the 2,000 Jewish inhabitants of the Jewish Quarter of the Old City [of Jerusalem], who lived adjacent to the holiest site to Judaism, the Western Wall in the shadow of the Temple Mount, were an intolerable presence to Arabs.

While the ICJ opinion mentions Jerusalem 54 times, all references are in relation to Palestinian rights of free access to holy sites. The ICJ ignores the fact that not one Jew was allowed to reside or even visit the West Bank and the Old City of Jerusalem for 19 years of illegal Jordanian rule. Between 1949 and 1967, Jordanian military personnel overran and razed Jewish settlements to the ground, trashed some 58 synagogues, and used headstones from the Mount of Olives cemetery to build roads.23 After the 1967 Six-Day War, Jews reestablished their legal right to settle anywhere in western Palestine – an entitlement unaltered in international law since 1920 and valid to this day.

Invoking the Fourth Geneva Convention to make any Jewish presence in the West Bank, including the Old City of Jerusalem, ‘illegal’ is hardly applicable – neither from an historical, nor from a legal standpoint.

Where Jews are and are not permitted to settle.

The ICJ chooses to ignore the content of the “Mandate for Palestine” and accompanying legally binding international accords that set the boundaries of the Jewish mandate and delineate where Jews are and are not permitted to settle.

The Court opinion cites in paragraph 70 – almost parenthetically – that:

“The territorial boundaries of the Mandate for Palestine were laid down by various instruments, in particular on the eastern border by a British memorandum of 16 September 1922 and an Anglo-Transjordanian Treaty of 20 February 1928.”

The reader is left in the dark as to what these “instruments” say or to what the text refers. No wonder. The ICJ does not quote the content of these two key international treaties and ignores the relevant clauses of the Mandate itself vis-à-vis the status of western Palestine, because citing these treaties and clauses would collapse the foundations of the commonly-held assumption that Israeli settlements are ‘illegal’. It is important to set the record straight. The “eastern border” the ICJ chose not to discuss was the Jordan River.

At first, the six page “Mandate” document did not set the borders – leaving this for the Mandator to stipulate in a binding appendix to the document in the form of a memorandum, but Article 6 of the Mandate says clearly:

“The Administration of Palestine, while ensuring that the rights and position of other sections of the population are not prejudiced, shall facilitate Jewish immigration under suitable conditions and shall encourage, in co-operation with the Jewish agency referred to in Article 4, close settlement by Jews on the land, including State lands and waste lands not required for public purposes” [italics by author].

Article 25 of the “Mandate for Palestine” entitled the Mandatory to change the terms of the Mandate in the part of the Mandate east of the Jordan River. That is, it gave the Mandatory an ‘escape clause’ that was not applicable to western Palestine:

“In the territories lying between the Jordan and the eastern boundary of Palestine as ultimately determined, the Mandatory shall be entitled, with the consent of the Council of the League of Nations, to postpone or withhold application of such provision of this Mandate as he may consider inapplicable to the existing local conditions, …”24

Great Britain activated this option in the above-mentioned memorandum of September 16 1922, which the Mandatory sent to the League of Nations and which the League subsequently approved – making it a legally binding integral part of the Mandate.

Thus the “Mandate for Palestine” brought to fruition a fourth Arab state east of the Jordan River, realized in 1946 when the Hashemite Kingdom of Trans-Jordan was granted independence from Great Britain. All the clauses concerning a Jewish homeland would not apply to this part (Trans-Jordan) of the original Mandate, stating clearly:

“The following provisions of the Mandate for Palestine are not applicable to the territory known as Trans-Jordan, which comprises all territory lying to the east of a line drawn from … up the centre of the Wady Araba, Dead Sea and River Jordan. … His Majesty’s Government accept full responsibility as Mandatory for Trans-Jordan.”

The creation of an Arab state in eastern Palestine (today Jordan) on 77 percent of the land mass of the original Mandate for Jews, in no way changed the status of Jews west of the Jordan River and their right to settle anywhere in western Palestine, between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.

These documents are the last legally binding documents regarding the status of what is commonly called “the West Bank and Gaza.”

The memorandum (regarding Article 25) is also the last modification of the Mandate on record25 by the League of Nations or by its legal successor – the United Nations – in accordance with Article 27 of the Mandate that states unequivocally:

“The consent of the Council of the League of Nations is required for any modification of the terms of this mandate.”

But to note or to quote these documents would ‘spoil’ the ICJ’s charge that Israeli settlements are “illegal” and that Israel is an unlawful “occupying power” of land that ‘belongs’ to Palestinian Arabs.

The ICJ even uses its own opinions in a selective manner. Under the mistaken assumption that Palestinian self-determination was set in stone by the international community in 1922 by the Mandate for Palestine, the Bench quotes a previous opinion on Namibia that addresses the fate of League of Nations’ mandates, stating in paragraph 70 of the opinion:

“…two principles were considered to be of paramount importance: the principle of non-annexation and the principle that the well-being and development of … peoples [not yet able to govern themselves] form[ed] ‘a sacred trust of civilization.’”26

The term “sacred trust” quoted by the ICJ is borrowed from the United Nations Charter Article 7327 which recognizes the UN’s commitments of its predecessor – the League of Nations – and promises to carry through to fruition the mandate system the League of Nations created, enshrined in Article 22 of the League of Nations Charter. Thus, the Bench quotes from its own 1950 opinion when it believes it supports the Palestinian cause, but the Bench also fails to mention that in the same case under the ICJ Advisory Opinion of 21 June 1971, the ICJ says:

“…The International Court of Justice has consistently recognized that the Mandate survived the demise of the League [of Nations]” [italics by author].

In other words, neither the ICJ nor the General Assembly can arbitrarily change the status of Jewish settlement as set forth in the “Mandate for Palestine,” an international accord that was never amended.

All of western Palestine, from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, including the West Bank and Gaza, remains open to Jewish settlement under international law until a legally binding document – in Israel’s case, a peace treaty between Arabs and Jews that was called for in Security Resolution 242 and 338 – changes this.

Rostow’s position concurred with the ICJ’s opinion as to the “sacredness” of such trusts:

“A trust” – as in Article 80 of the UN Charter (which the Court avoids to mention) – “does not end because the trustee dies … the Jewish right of settlement in the whole of western Palestine – the area West of the Jordan – survived the British withdrawal in 1948. … They are parts of the mandate territory, now legally occupied by Israel with the consent of the Security Council.”28

The Oslo Accords and the Gaza-Jericho agreements recognize Israel legal presence in the “Territories.”

Even the Oslo Accords do not forbid either Israeli (i.e., Jewish) or Arab settlement activity. Likewise, the ICJ does not consider it relevant that the propriety of a security fence around Gaza was written into the Gaza-Jericho agreement, between Israel and the PLO, signed in Cairo, May 4 1994, and that Israel retained the right to provide for security, including the security of Israeli settlers.

“The Parties agree that, as long as this Agreement is in force, the security fence erected by Israel around the Gaza Strip shall remain in place and that the line demarcated by the fence, as shown on attached map No. 1, shall be authoritative only for the purpose of this Agreement”29 [italics by author].

The ICJ’s narrative of how the Territories came into the possession of Israel is void of any context and sanitized of any trace of past and present Arab aggression.

The backdrop to the 1967 Six-Day War – the expulsion by Egypt of UN peace-keepers from the Sinai Peninsula, Egypt’s illegal blockade of an international waterway, the massing of Egyptian troops on Israel’s borders, and Jordan attacking the Israeli-held part of Jerusalem – mysteriously disappears from the ICJ’s narrative. The ICJ jumps from the signing of the 1948 armistice agreements that established the Green Line as a temporary border, to the aftermath of the 1967 Six-Day War in one step. Paragraph 72 of the opinion recounts how:

“By resolution 62 (1948) of 16 November 1948, the Security Council decided that ‘an armistice shall be established in all sectors of Palestine’ and called upon the parties directly involved in the conflict to seek agreement to this end. … The Demarcation Line was subject to such rectification as might be agreed upon by the parties.”30

Paragraph 73 of the Court’s opinion immediately follows, saying:

“In the 1967 armed conflict, Israeli forces occupied all the territories which had constituted Palestine under British Mandate (including those known as the West Bank, lying to the east of the Green Line).”

Readers might think that Israel just woke up one morning and out of the blue attacked its neighbors and occupied part of their territory without provocation. In fact, both the events and UN resolutions of the period substantiate and recognize that Israel’s presence in the West Bank and Gaza is a legal occupation, and a result of Arab aggression.

The Principal Allied Powers and the League of Nations recognized Jewish historical rights to the land of Palestine.

Mandate for Palestine document, 1920:

“Whereas recognition has thereby been given to the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine and to the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country …”

Report on the economic and commercial situation of Palestine, 1921:

“… Jews throughout the world would be able to see one country in which their race had a political and a spiritual home, in which, perhaps, the Jewish genius might repeat the services it had rendered to mankind from the same soil long ago” [italics by author].

Report of The High Commissioner of Palestine, 1920-1925:

“Jewish National Home in Palestine … should be formally recognised to rest upon [Jewish] ancient historic connection … fervid imaginations saw a rapid occupation of the country by great numbers of Jews, hurrying from the lands in which they were oppressed, the consequent creation, within a few years, of a Jewish State, the sudden fulfillment in almost apocalyptic fashion of the most far reaching of the ancient prophecies. … Among the eight millions of Jews in Eastern Europe … Palestine makes to them a most powerful appeal; they wish particularly to contribute to the productiveness of Palestine and above all to help to recreate in Palestine a people of Jewish agriculturists” [italics by author].

Palestine Royal Commission report, July 1937:

“… [The Jewish people] should know that it is in Palestine as of right and not on sufferance … and that it should be formally recognized to rest upon ancient historic connection”

References for above legal arguments:

Rejected — UN Security Council draft resolution S/1997/199, March 7 1997. See: http://domino.un.org/UNISPAL.NSF/0/f97c162f6a30647205256531005b4e15?OpenDocument. (11379) ↑
Draft SC Resolution (res no. S/S/1997/241) Vetoed by the U.S. March 21 1997. See: http://domino.un.org/UNISPAL.NSF/0/88f7fb474668764705256531005b7239?OpenDocument. (11380) ↑
United Nations, General Assembly Resolution, A/RES/ES-10/14, “Illegal Israeli actions in Occupied East Jerusalem and the rest of the Occupied Palestinian Territory” 12 December 2003. See: http://middleeastfacts.org/content/UN-Documents/A-RES-ES-10-14.htm. (10938) ↑
Professor, Judge Stephen M. Schwebel, The Legal Effect of Resolutions and Codes of Conduct of the United Nations in Justice in International Law, Cambridge University Press, 1994. Opinions quoted in this critiques are not derived from his position as a judge of the ICJ. ↑
Cited in Israel and Palestine, Assault on the law of nations, Professor Julius Stone, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981. p. 29. ↑
Professor Gaetano Arangio-Ruiz “The United Nations declaration on friendly relations and the system of the sources of international law” Publisher: Alphen aan den Rijn, The Netherlands; Germantown, Md.: Sijthoff & Noordhoff, 1979. ISBN: 902860149X. ↑
Ibid, p. 40. Professor Julius Stone – another eminent scholar of international law – labeled Ruiz’s work “perhaps the most comprehensive and up-to-date treatise on this matter”. ↑
See the Hague Academy of International Law, at: http://www.ppl.nl/bibliographies/all/showresults.php?bibliography=recueil&keyword1ppn=076252078&keyword=General%20Assembly. ↑
See: http://domino.un.org/UNISPAL.NSF/0/025974039acfb171852560de00548bbe?OpenDocument. (11382) ↑
See: http://domino.un.org/UNISPAL.NSF/0/2fdd47753d2ae353852560d8006ca36b?OpenDocument. (11383) ↑
See: http://domino.un.org/UNISPAL.NSF/0/8ff8af940beaf475852560d60046f73f?OpenDocument. (11384) ↑
See: http://domino.un.org/UNISPAL.NSF/0/4080cb55ac61c2658025646c002a89a3?OpenDocument. (11385) ↑
See: http://daccessdds.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N98/773/11/PDF/N9877311.pdf?OpenElement. (11386) ↑
UN Security Council Resolution 678, S/RES/0678 (1990), November 29 1990. See: http://www.mefacts.com/cache/html/icj/11446.htm. (11446) ↑
Professor, Judge Sir Elihu Lauterpacht, Jerusalem and the Holy Places, Pamphlet No. 19 (London, Anglo-Israel Association, 1968). ↑
Majority Opinion in the Western Sahara case, I.C.J. Reports, 1975, p. 12, esp. at 38-39) as cited by Professor Julius Stone, Israel and Palestine, Assault on the Law of Nations. The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981, p. 127.
Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War. See: http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/92.htm. (10356) ↑
Professor, Judge Sir Elihu Lauterpacht, Jerusalem and the Holy Places, Pamphlet No. 19 (London, Anglo-Israel Association, 1968). ↑
Professor Eugene V. Rostow, see: http://www.law.yale.edu/outside/pdf/Public_Affairs/ylr50-2/Rostow.pdf. ↑
See Appendix A. “Mandate for Palestine.”
Ibid.
Eugene V. Rostow, The Future of Palestine from the paper delivered at the American Leadership Conference on Israel and the Middle East in Arlington, Virginia. October 10 1993. See: http://middleeastfacts.org/content/book/The%20Future%20of%20Palestine.htm. (10509) ↑
Jeff Jacoby, “When Jerusalem was divided,” see: http://www.mefacts.com/cache/html/territories/11304.htm. (11304) ↑
See: Appendix A. “Mandate for Palestine.”
Ibid.
The latter – a quote from Article 73 of the UN Charter.
Charter of the United Nations at: http://middleeastfacts.org/content/UN-Documents/UN_Charter_One_Document.htm. (11032) ↑
Professor Eugene V. Rostow was Sterling Professor of Law and Public Affairs Emeritus at Yale University and served as the Dean of Yale Law School (1955-66); In 1967 as U.S. Under-Secretary of State for Political Affairs he become a key draftee of UN Resolution 242. http://www.mefacts.com/cache/html/bio/10956.htm. (10956)
Gaza-Jericho agreement. See: http://www.mefacts.com/cache/html/arab-peace-agreements/11371.htm. (11371) ↑
UN Security Council Resolution of November 16 1948. See: http://domino.un.org/UNISPAL.NSF/0/1a2b613a2fc85a9d852560c2005d4223?OpenDocument. (11381)

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Looks like there will be some more foolishness and perhaps carnage coming up. A "flotilla"of two boats manned (actually womanned) by freedom protesters have set sail for the Middle East.

Flotilla

These boats are "armed" with food and supplies for the suppressed Palestinians in Gaza. Will be interesting when in three weeks, they will reach the Israeli stranglehold around Gaza. What excuse are the Israeli thugs going to use to stop or kill (as they did to 10 humanitarians a few tears ago) these freedom advocates attempting to feed the starving Palestinians?

You now out and out lie, I am calling your statement out that Palestinians are starving as a blatant falsehood. Prove it.

No Palestinian in Gaza is starving, This is an out and out lie.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/israel/7806209/Dispatch-Just-how-hungry-is-Gaza.html

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Westphalia.

Oh you speak and you are a legal expert now. Lol.

1. the name you use I suppose is your attempt to quote the international legal principle that arose from the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648;

2. the principle you quote has nothing to do with international laws regarding military crimes alleged against Israel which is the thread's topic;

3. the pinciple deals with the concept of sovereign nations being equal and how each has the right not to be interfered with by other sovereign nations and has territorial integrity over its borders-the principle applies to Israel vis-a-vis Arab states but the West Bank and Gaza are not and have never been sovereign states so the principle does not apply to them;

4. the principle you quote is not recognized by the Arab League of Nations, Hamas, Fatah, PA, Hezbollag, Ismalic Jihad, Intifada, PFLP, Daesh-ISIL, Al Quaeda and over 300 other Palestinian terror cells with charters like Hamas and PA as they refuse to recognize the state of Israel and terrorist groups like Hamas and the PA like to call themselves political states while at the same time claiming they do not have to follow international call-they not only refuse to respect the right of Israel to exist unless it disbands and turns itself into a Muslim state but the terror groups and Iran repeatedly call for the violent destruction of the Jewish state of Israel and war against Jews worldwide;

5. to this day all these entities have made it clear they will never recognize the right of the Jewish sovereign state of Israel to exist and the Charters of these terror group organizations call on Muslims world wide to kill Jews world wide and invade Israel and kill its citizens.

Israel attempted twice to sign treaties with the PA towards creating and recognizing a Palestinian state in return for mutual recognition from the Palestinians-Arafat announced to the world he engaged in bad faith bargaining when he signed the treaties and Israel and the US (Clinton) should have known he was acting in bad faith and he would never agree to anything but the destruction of Israel and Jordan and a Muslim state in Gaza, the West Bank, Jordan and Israel. His predecessor Abbas calls daily for a war to rid Israel of Jews.

So in summary:

a-you quote a legal principle Israel was willing to follow but the Arab League of nations, the PA, Hamas et al will not;

b-you do not understand the difference between international law pertatining to crimes against humanity, crimes during war and legal principles that arise between equal sovereign nations

c-you can't grasp the fact that the principle you quote does not apply if for no other reason the West Bank and Gaza have never been and are not sovereign nations but disputed territory.

Anything else?

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