05) ISRAEL'S WAR CRIMES
RECORD
(The
following
article is from the February 1-14, 2009, issue of People's Voice,
Canada's
leading communist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the
source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $25/year, or $12 low
income rate; for U.S. readers - $25 US per year; other overseas readers
- $25 US or $35 CDN per year. Send to: People's Voice, c/o PV Business
Manager, 133 Herkimer St., Unit 502, Hamilton, ON, L8P 2H3.)
People's Voice
Editorial
There is said to be "mounting fear in
Israel" that its leaders could face war crimes charges over their
invasion of Gaza. Even the country's chief law officer, Menachem Mazuz,
has warned that Israel will soon face "a wave of international
lawsuits".
The
post-World War Two Nuremburg
Tribunal ruled that illegal aggression against other countries was one
of the most serious Nazi war crimes. Certainly Israel's brutal attack
ranks with the US war against Iraq as such an aggression.
Richard
Falk, the United
Nations' special rapporteur on the occupied territories and a professor
emeritus of international law at Princeton University, accuses Israel
of gravely violating the laws of war during its three-week offensive,
which killed more than 1,300 Gazans, most of them civilians, and
wounded thousands more.
"There is a
well-grounded view
that both the initial attacks on Gaza and the tactics being used by
Israel are serious violations of the UN charter, the Geneva
conventions, international law and international humanitarian law,"
Falk said during the final stages of fighting.
Those
tactics include the
Israeli military's failure to distinguish between Palestinian civilians
and combatants, its firing of white phosphorus shells in Gaza, despite
the ban on this weapon in civilian areas (see page 9), and its use of a
deadly experimental weapon - dense inert metal explosive, or Dime -
that severs limbs and ruptures the internal organs of anyone close to
the blast.
Over 300
human rights
organizations have prepared a 37-page dossier of evidence to present to
the International Criminal Court in the Netherlands that tries war
crimes. Supporters of Israel in Canada who loudly attack trade unions
and other groups which criticize the Zionist regime would do well to
read this dossier.