roachboy

a .pdf of the full report (575 ppg) is available here:

http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies...MGC_Report.pdf

the business that surrounds this report is disturbing, really.
how is it that war crimes can be committed, understood as crimes against humanity, yet not be prosecuted?
shouldn't there at least be investigations undertaken in order to determine the accuracy of this report?
and if the report is in fact accurate--or even if it is only partially accurate---wouldn't you think it important that this be carried out?

what exactly does the idea of war crimes mean if the only context in which anyone is prosecuted for them is after a country looses a war?

i find this disturbing.
what do you think?

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

The_Dunedan

Collectivism. If enough people (or enough of the RIGHT people) decide that something isn't a crime, wasn't a crime, or simply didn't happen, then it isn't, wasn't, or didn't. Political consensus, in the sense of realpolitik, is all that's required.

Absolutely, as soon as possible.

Without doubt.

That, as always, the winners get to write history books and take credit for their glories; the losers get to read the books (if they survive) and are punished for their transgressions.

I think you an I have found something to agree upon.

Baraka_Guru

One man's crime is another man's justice.

This is why we need third parties with authority, and these being multilateral. Those responsible for desecrating the most fundamental human rights and decency need to be brought to justice.

That nothing gets done in this case is indeed disturbing.

The innocent will continue to suffer--and humanity will in some instances be expendable--when no one does anything.

There is the fear that prosecuting Israel or Israelis will be deemed antisemitism. However, prosecution is not the same as persecution.

Either way, the same difficulties aren't found when it comes to Palestinians. There's no such thing as "Palestine."

__________________
Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

Cimarron29414

I won't even pick up my ten foot pole, much less touch this.

__________________
Gives a man a halo, does mead.

"Here lies The_Jazz: Killed by an ambitious, sparkly, pink butterfly."

Willravel

This is actually simple. If your people are victimized by a radical government and you manage to survive, you get a freebie.

No backsies.
It's Israel. Investigating them would be anti-Semitic. Shoot, doing anything that's not completely serving the interests of the occupying Israeli government would be antisemitism. I'm probably an anti-Semite for simply suggesting that Israel is occupying Palestine. Shame on me.
Having read the report, most of the things I could verify seemed to pan out as accurate. But no, we can't carry out anything against Israel because it's Israel.
That's not the case here. There was no war, there was an attack by a powerful government on an indigenous people that have basically no ability to defend themselves. It's an extermination and probably should be looked into not as a war crime, but actually genocide (not that it absolutely is genocide, but come on, it seems pretty obvious when you look at the numbers).

In all seriousness, eventually the US will get a president that has an objective take on Israel, so they will lose their veto power on the security council. Until then, Israel will continue to push Palestinians into the Mediterranean and Dead seas... at least those they don't kill.

But shame on Hamas and all that other false equivalence.

dksuddeth

i'm surprised you didn't place the blame on conservative libertarians.

__________________
"no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything. You cannot conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him."

percy

Firing rockets into a country with the sole intent to maim and kill is horrific in the least.

Punishing a society with an army that could take out the whole of Europe knowing it is their only chance to get away with it while Bush is in the White House is equally horrific.

Firing rockets to kill innocents because they should be wiped off the map is embarrassing and shameful.

Punishing a society then refusing to take responsibility for it and then relating insult and offence to being accused of wrong doing is embarrasing and shameful.

Killing 13 people with rockets is 13 too many

Killing 1300 people with advanced military technology is 1300 too many

Killing people with rockets is a crime against humanity

Killing people with airships, bulldozers, tanks, guns, etc is a crime against humanity

For both sides,...thinking the world constantly revolves around themselves is arrogant, ignorant and infantile.

For both sides,... the apparent lack of intelligence regarding this conflict is overwhelming beyond proportion. No words can describe their lack of sensibility.

War crimes? Yes both sides have committed them and will commit them for times to come.

Is peace a possibillity between these two sides? Yes. But only when all funding(foreign aid) is cut off to both parties, all media(daily,...yawn) ceases and the when the world collectively forgets about the trials and tribulations of the Israeli's and Arabs.

Then they will either kill each other or wake up realizing no one gives a shit, and find peace.

Simplistic yes. Realistic no

hiredgun

There is a school of thought that maintains that because the laws of war evolved gradually as repeatedly warring entities realized they could arrive at a mutually better equilibrium (a Pareto improvement, if you like) by limiting certain kinds of needless destruction - of human life, of property, of agriculture, etc - that therefore such laws are only meaningful in the context of reciprocity. The reasoning goes that if the other party is not subject to any self-restraint, then it makes no sense for 'us' to be restrained; we advantage our enemy with no benefit to ourselves.

This forms one pillar of the Israeli defense against the accusations laid out in the Goldstone Report (and similar charges in the past).

The second pillar of this defense maps the responsibilities of a warring nation to the intentions of its military activity rather than to the results. In other words, if a fighting force can show that it took some measures to reduce the unnecessary loss of life, or can show that a bomb killing a score of civilians might reasonably have been aimed at a single combatant among them, then that force has fulfilled its responsibility - regardless of the ultimate human toll of those slightly-mitigated actions. It is clear that in modern urban warfare, this principle appears increasingly as a shadow in some fun-house mirror, a bizarrely distorted and inhuman perspective; in modern warfare, a force following this logic will inevitably kill far more civilians than combatants. This inspires a dichotomy of reactions. On the one hand, doves will reply that a moral state must refrain or seriously hesitate before engaging in combat in dense urban areas, because civilian deaths are so likely to result. On the other hand, hawks have argued that simply conceding urban warfare is not a viable option, and that the reluctance to return fire in urban areas will attract enemies to those areas and encourage the use of human shields; instead, we must simply learn to swallow civilian casualties as a result of the new kind of warfare. There is sound logic in both of these thoughts, and where we fall must largely be a function of our attitudes towards human nature, warfare, and the value of human life.

War crimes? I don't know. It is a complicated question, but I am reasonably certain about the following:

1) At a purely human level, the cost of these operations in terms of Palestinian life and suffering is breathtaking - and utterly incomparable to any losses on the Israeli side.
2) Whatever the legal outcome of such a conflict may be, this human cost will inevitably take a political toll - and possibly worse. If Israel chooses to sow the wind, it will reap the whirlwind.
3) As a matter of utility, this conflict has done more to delay the emergence of a Palestinian peace constituency and to harm the long-term prospects for Israel's security than to help it.

Finally, for those interested in reading a detailed and gripping overview of the Gaza conflict, there's a good piece in the New Yorker: (Gaza, Gilad Shalit, Hamas, and Israel : The New Yorker). It begins with the capture of Gilad Shalit and takes you through the present day.