“*ILWOB*: Is the firing of rockets by Hamas into Israel lawful under
international law?

*FL*: No. … Deliberately attacking civilians is in all circumstances prohibited and it constitutes a war crime, even if in retaliation for Israeli attacks, however unjust this may seem in the heat of battle. The presumption is that the targets were civilian and therefore criminal attacks. The burden is on Hamas and Israel to convince the fact trier that their targets were military targets.”

Mr. Lamb, you don’t mention the law of belligerent reprisals, and so I presume your assertion is per incuriam, you didn’t think to take account of that law. I hope you will apply your mind to it, reconvene, and publish an addendum to this interview.

Hamas targeting innocent civilians in Israel is not a war crime, it’s lawful, it’s legal, it’s law enforcement, if Israel: (1) kills or injures Palestinian civilians, (2) illegally, per the laws of war, (3) denies it, and so promises more of the same in the future.

That’s the law of belligerent reprisals, and it’s is the official, formal, declared written, position of the U.S. and the EU4 (U.K., France, Germany, Italy), among others.

Yes, that’s right, the very same leaders of the international conspiracy to lie, to pretend this law doesn’t exist, slandering Hamas with the false label, “terrorist organization,” for doing the exact same thing they themselves assert the right to do, as a lawful action under the laws of war. An international conspiracy, to aid and abet, facilitate, Israel’s violent war crimes, the looting/population (colonization) of the 1967 oPt (occupied Palestinian territory), and the violence Israel uses, to make it happen, to make it stick.

Previously undisputed law, the 1949 Geneva Conventions outlawed belligerent reprisals, but only partially, only against “protected persons” (e.g., civilians in occupied territory). The 1949 prohibitions do not prohibit Hamas targeting Qassam rockets at Israeli civilians, because Hamas does not occupy Israel, nor Israeli settlements in the 1967 oPt (Israeli occupied Palestinian territory).

May be, you assumed the 1977 Protocol-I outlawed them, from its the entry into force (December 7 1979), as it purports to do, against civilians in non-occupied territory too. But there, you would be mistaken. The U.S. and Israel are not parties to this treaty, not entitled to its protections. And, big hitters in military matters (U.S. and the EU4), they say, “No,” they won’t have it, it erases the rule of law (a necessary remedy), they reserved against it, when they ratified, they assert this Protocol (treaty law) does not change the customary laws of war (non-treaty law).

So Hamas is legally entitled to use that same legal remedy, against Israel, if it’s legal to do it, under the long-standing law of belligerent reprisals.

So, let’s examine the case.

Is Israel illegally killing Palestinians?

How about the blockade. The siege of Gaza.

This is a war, apparently to overthrow a democratically elected government, Hamas, their election victory on January 26 2006, winning 56% of the seats, in the legislative council, on a 75% voter turnout. But we set that aside, the Israeli officials responsible, for that prima facie criminal decision, and their aiders and abettors, U.S./U.K. officials, who partner Israel in that war.

Instead, we accept the fact of war, that Israel, with its U.S./U.K. partners, are waging war on Gaza, and our task is to inquire into their methods, the methods Israel uses, to wage its war. Are they legal, Israel’s methods, aided and abetted by the U.S./U.K., under the laws of war.

“Article 54. Protection of objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population

1. Starvation of civilians as a method of warfare is prohibited.

2. It is prohibited to attack, destroy, remove or render useless objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population, such as foodstuffs, agricultural areas for the production of foodstuffs, crops, livestock, drinking water installations and supplies and irrigation works, for the specific purpose of denying them for their sustenance value to the civilian population or to the adverse Party, whatever the motive, whether in order to starve out civilians, to cause them to move away, or for any other motive.”

This is from 1977 Protocol-I, to the four 1949 Geneva Conventions, Israel did not sign it, the U.S. signed it but did not ratify it, but 169 countries did ratify it, every country in the western hemisphere (except the U.S.), every country in Europe (except Andorra), every component of the former Soviet Union (except Azerbaijan), every country in NATO (except the U.S. and Turkey), the whole Arabian Peninsula (Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Yemen), and others.

The U.S. says, this was already the law, a customary law of war, binding on U.S. officials and the U.S. military (even though the U.S. didn’t yet ratify the protocol), and a war crime to willfully violate it. What Israel has to say about it, that’s irrelevant, it’s background noise, Israel doesn’t dictate war law.

Obviously, Hamas cannot be lawfully labeled “terrorist” because they share the considered view of 170 countries, that Israel’s blockade of humanitarian supplies is illegal.

Ditto a companion law, which obligates belligerents (e.g., Israel) to permit organizations to deliver humanitarian aid to a civilian population (food, water, medicine, clothing, shelter, fuel for cooking, heating, electricity), whether in occupied territory (1949 Geneva-4, articles 59-63) or unoccupied territory (1977 Geneva Protocol-I, article 70). This companion law, the U.S. also considers that too a binding law of war, and a war crime to wilfully violate it.

So said the U.S. Defense Department, its JAG lawyers (army, navy, marines, air force) (May 8 1986), the U.S. State Department, its legal advisers (1987), and U.S. president Ronald Reagan, when he submitted it to the U.S. Senate for ratification (January 29 1987), Protocol-II, which has the same rules (article 14, article 18).

It’s richly documented that Israel blockades humanitarian relief supplies. Jimmy Carter said he persuaded Hamas to agree to a ceasefire for Gaza only, excluding the West Bank (April 17-19 2008, meetings in Cairo, Damascus). That 6-month ceasefire began June 19 2008, when Israel lied, and tricked Hamas, agreed to permit humanitarian deliveries to resume at normal levels (750 trucks a day), the same as before Hamas won the election, on January 26 2006.

Hamas did not renew the ceasefire, when it expired on December 19 2008, because Israel refused to break the humanitarian siege. In November 2008, Israel allowed only 23 trucks a day. 3-years earlier, in December 2005, before Hamas won the election, it was 631 trucks per day.

Did Palestinian civilians die, on account of the blockade war crime by Israel, and by it’s complicit U.S./U.K. partners.

Yes. Dying in hospital for want of medical supplies, dying at home for want of permission from Israel to exit to hospitals, in Israel, in Egypt. Malnourished children dying for want of physical strength to survive. People dying from disease, for want of electricity, to pump water, to pump sewerage. And besides dying, serious harm to others, starving children and pregnant mothers of essential nutrients.

Therefore, Israel, by it’s crimes, licenses Hamas, to launch rockets, targeting civilians in Israel, until they manage to kill an equal number of Israeli civilians (and some more, to equate the injuries), or until Israel relents, acknowledges its blockade war crimes, terminates violent crime as a tool of its military doctrine, and promises to not resume it.

That’s the law of belligerent reprisals, it’s law enforcement.

There’s a long history of Israeli war crimes, killing Palestinian civilians, but this is already a long comment, and so others are a topic for another day.

Barry

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w w w . h a a r e t z . c o m
Last update – 10:36 30/01/2009
Is an Israeli Jewish sense of victimization perpetuating the conflict with Palestinians?
By Akiva Eldar

A new study of Jewish Israelis shows that most accept the ‘official version’ of the history of the conflict with the Palestinians. Is it any wonder, then, that the same public also buys the establishment explanation of the operation in Gaza?

A pioneering research study dealing with Israeli Jews’ memory of the conflict with the Arabs, from its inception to the present, came into the world together with the war in Gaza. The sweeping support for Operation Cast Lead confirmed the main diagnosis that arises from the study, conducted by Daniel Bar-Tal, one of the world’s leading political psychologists, and Rafi Nets-Zehngut, a doctoral student: Israeli Jews’ consciousness is characterized by a sense of victimization, a siege mentality, blind patriotism, belligerence, self-righteousness, dehumanization of the Palestinians and insensitivity to their suffering. The fighting in Gaza dashed the little hope Bar-Tal had left – that this public would exchange the drums of war for the cooing of doves.

“Most of the nation retains a simplistic collective memory of the conflict, a black-and-white memory that portrays us in a very positive light and the Arabs in a very negative one,” says the professor from Tel Aviv University. This memory, along with the ethos of the conflict and collective emotions such as fear, hatred and anger, turns into a psycho-social infrastructure of the kind experienced by nations that have been involved in a long-term violent conflict. This infrastructure gives rise to the culture of conflict in which we and the Palestinians are deeply immersed, fanning the flames and preventing progress toward peace. Bar-Tal claims that in such a situation, it is hard even to imagine a possibility that the two nations will be capable of overcoming the psychological obstacles without outside help.

Scholars the world over distinguish between two types of collective memory: popular collective memory – that is, representations of the past that have been adopted by the general public; and official collective memory, or representations of the past that have been adopted by the country’s official institutions in the form of publications, books or textbooks.

The idea for researching the popular collective memory of Israeli Jews was raised by Nets-Zehngut, a Tel Aviv lawyer who decided to return to the academic world. At present he is completing his doctoral thesis in the International Center for Cooperation and Conflict Resolution at Columbia University’s Teachers College. The study, by him and Bar-Tal, entitled “The Israeli-Jewish Collective Memory of the Israeli-Arab/Palestinian Conflict,” examines how official collective memory in the State of Israel regarding the creation of the 1948 refugee problem has changed over time.

Bar-Tal became enthusiastic about the idea and, with funding from the International Peace Research Association Foundation, he conducted a survey in the summer of 2008 among a representative sample of 500 Jewish Israeli adults. The study demonstrated that widespread support for the official memory testifies to a lower level of critical thinking, as well as belief in traditional values, high identification with Jewish identity, a tendency to delegitimize the Arabs, and support for taking aggressive steps against the Palestinians.

In a telephone interview from New York, Nets-Zehngut says it is very clear that those with a “Zionist memory” see Israel and the Jews as the victims in the conflict, and do not tend to support agreements or compromises with the enemy in order to achieve peace. This finding, he explains, demonstrates the importance of changing the collective memory of conflicts, making it less biased and more objective – on condition, of course, that there is a factual basis for such a change.

Bar-Tal, who has won international awards for his scientific work, immigrated to Israel from Poland as a child in the 1950s.

“I grew up in a society that for the most part did not accept the reality that the authorities tried to portray, and fought for a different future,” he says. “I have melancholy thoughts about nations where there is an almost total identity between the agents of a conflict, on the one hand, who nurture the siege mentality and the existential fear, and various parts of society, on the other. Nations that respond so easily to battle cries and hesitate to enlist in favor of peace do not leave room for building a better future.”

Bar-Tal emphasizes that the Israeli awareness of reality was also forged in the context of Palestinian violence against Israeli citizens, but relies primarily on prolonged indoctrination that is based on ignorance and even nurtures it. In his opinion, an analysis of the present situation indicates that with the exception of a small minority, which is capable of looking at the past with an open mind, the general public is not interested in knowing what Israel did in Gaza for many years; how the disengagement was carried out and why, or what its outcome was for the Palestinians; why Hamas came to power in democratic elections; how many people were killed in Gaza from the disengagement until the start of the recent war; and whether it was possible to extend the recent cease-fire or even who violated it first.

“Although there are accessible sources, where it is possible to find the answers to those questions, the public practices self-censorship and accepts the establishment version, out of an unwillingness to open up to alternative information – they don’t want to be confused with the facts. We are a nation that lives in the past, suffused with anxiety and suffering from chronic closed-mindedness,” charges Bar-Tal.

That describes the state of mind in 2000, when most of the pubic accepted the simplistic version of then-prime minister Ehud Barak regarding the failure of the Camp David summit and the outbreak of the second intifada, and reached what seemed like the obvious conclusion that “there is no partner” with whom to negotiate.

Bar-Tal: “After the bitter experience of the Second Lebanon War, during which the memory of the war was taken out of their hands and allowed to be formed freely, the country’s leaders learned their lesson, and decided that they wouldn’t let that happen again. They were not satisfied with attempts to inculcate Palestinian awareness and tried to influence Jewish awareness in Israel as well. For that purpose, heavy censorship and monitoring of information were imposed” during the Gaza campaign.

The professor believes that politicians would not have been successful in formulating the collective memory of such a large public without the willing enlistment of the media. Almost all the media focused only on the sense of victimization of the residents of the so-called “Gaza envelope” and the south. They did not provide the broader context of the military operation and almost completely ignored – before and during the fighting – the situation of the residents of besieged Gaza. The human stories from Sderot and the dehumanization of Hamas and the Palestinians provided the motivation for striking at Gaza with full force.

Nets-Zehngut and Bar-Tal find a close connection between the collective memory and the memory of “past persecutions of Jews” (“the whole world is against us,” and the Holocaust). The more significant the memory of persecution, the stronger the tendency to adopt Zionist narratives. From this we can understand the finding that adults, the religious public and those with more right-wing political views tend to adopt the Zionist version of the conflict, while young people, the secular public and those with left-wing views tend more to adopt critical narratives.

The atmosphere in the street and in the media during the weeks of the Gaza war seems to have confirmed the central finding of the study: “The ethos of the conflict is deeply implanted in Jewish society in Israel. It is a strongly rooted ideology that justifies the goals of the Jews, adopts their version, presents them in a very positive light and rejects the legitimacy of the Arabs, and primarily of the Palestinians,” notes Bar-Tal.

For example, when asked the question, “What were the reasons for the failure of the negotiations between [Ehud] Barak and [Yasser] Arafat in summer 2000?” 55.6 percent of the respondents selected the following answer: “Barak offered Arafat a very generous peace agreement, but Arafat declined mainly because he did not want peace.” Another 25.4 percent believed that both parties were responsible for the failure, and about 3 percent replied that Arafat did want peace, but Barak was not forthcoming enough in meeting the needs of the Palestinians. (Sixteen percent replied that they didn’t know the answer.)

Over 45 percent of Israeli Jews have imprinted on their memories the version that the second intifada broke out only, or principally, because Arafat planned the conflict in advance. Only 15 percent of them believe the viewpoint presented by three heads of the Shin Bet security services: that the intifada was mainly the eruption of a popular protest. Over half those polled hold the Palestinians responsible for the failure of the Oslo process, 6 percent hold Israel responsible, and 28.4 percent said both sides were equally responsible.

Among the same Jewish public, 40 percent are unaware that at the end of the 19th century, the Arabs were an absolute majority among the inhabitants of the Land of Israel. Over half of respondents replied that in the United Nations partition plan, which was rejected by the Arabs, the Arabs received an equal or larger part of the territory of the Land of Israel, relative to their numbers; 26.6 percent did not know that the plan offered the 1.3 million Arabs a smaller part of the territory (44 percent) than was offered to 600,000 Jews (55 percent).

Bar-Tal claims that this distortion of memory is no coincidence. He says that the details of the plan do not appear in any textbook, and this is a deliberate omission. “Knowledge of how the land was divided could arouse questions regarding the reason why the Arabs rejected the plan and make it possible to question the simplistic version: We accepted the partition plan, they didn’t.”

However, his study shows that a larger percentage of the Jewish population in Israel believes that in 1948, the refugees were expelled (47.2 percent of respondents), than those who still retain the old Zionist version (40.8 percent), according to which the refugees left on their own initiative. On this point, not only do almost all the history books provide up-to-date information, but some local school textbooks do as well. Even on the television program “Tekuma” (“Rebirth,” a 1998 documentary series about Israel’s first 50 years), the expulsion of the Arabs was mentioned.

Nets-Zehngut also finds a degree of self-criticism in the answers relating to the question of overall responsibility for the conflict. Of those surveyed, 46 percent think that the responsibility is more or less evenly divided between Jews and Arabs, 4.3 percent think that the Jews are mainly to blame, and 43 percent think that the Arabs and the Palestinians are mainly to blame for the outbreak and continuation of the conflict. It turns out, therefore, that when the country’s education system and media are willing to deal with distorted narratives, even a collective memory that has been etched into people’s minds for years can be changed.

Bar-Tal says he takes no comfort in the knowledge that Palestinian collective memory suffers from similar ills, and that it is also in need of a profound change – a change that would help future generations on both sides to regard one another in a more balanced, and mainly a more humane manner. This process took many decades for the French and the Germans, and for the Protestants and the Catholics in Northern Ireland. When will it finally begin here, too?
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what is known is that these cultists, like so many others, have suffered three shoahs: in N.Kingdom 728 bc and in Judea ca 7o-150 ad.
the forth and probably the last shoah awiats this horrible, utterly mad cult.
also sprach zarathustra.thnx

Hence you repeat this godawful stuff and use all kinds of posturing to hide behind – like, “their anti-semitic, and hate Jews…”.

Grow up, stand on your own two feet and look at what Israel did to the childen of Gaza…look!!!!

It is you who come on here to spew venom about Palestinians. 1,700 mostly civilians many children dead because of your beliefs (not your religious beliefs, but your supremist hateful beliefs.)

Jews, are you a Jew, Ritchie? Or are you just a hateful murderous person?

Mary
So did you explain to Jean-Moïse Braitberg all the options?
Did I miss something in the Parsley clip you proposed? I really took the time to watch it.

Gaza casualties
How to count this casualty?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xX3_PfZc8as

Should he be classified as a child (he looks younger than 17), or a victim of Israeli bombardment or maybe an innocent bystander?
Could you hear the Moazine call from the other side of the wall?
It’s really luck that there was no Israeli response to this launch, otherwise because of the proximity to the Mosque wall it could have been damaged. We will not count the hole in the Mosque wall as a result of this blast, as Israeli destruction, would we?

One thing for sure, because it was accompanied by Allah Akbar, he took the staircase to Haven.

Barry –
I understand you are capable of repeating your chant even in the face of the facts. Would you like to respond to Christopher Gunness, a spokesman for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency?

I mean what is the point? To educate them? Correct their mis-guided ways?

These are baby killers who don’t give a fly’n f&ck.

Barry, your sense of history is keen and I appreciate your posts; but talking to this murders? (and when commentors support murder than they are more than complicit).