War Criminals Are Becoming The Arbiters Of LawBy Paul Craig Roberts, October 12, 2009
[Paul Craig Roberts is the Senior Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University and a former editor and columnist for The Wall Street Journal and columnist for Business Week From 1982 through 1993. During 1981-82 he served as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy in President Reagan's administration]
The double standard under which the Israeli government operates is too much for everyone except the brainwashed Americans. Even the very Israeli Jerusalem Post can see the double standard displayed by "all of Israel now speaking in one voice against the Goldstone report":
"This is the Israeli notion of a fair deal: We're entitled to do whatever the hell we want to the Palestinians because, by definition, whatever we do to them is self-defense. They, however, are not entitled to lift a finger against us because, by definition, whatever they do to us is terrorism. That's the way it's always been, that's the way it was in Operation Cast Lead. And there are no limits on our right to self-defense. There is no such thing as 'disproportionate.' We can deliberately destroy thousands of Gazan homes, the Gazan parliament, the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of Interior, courthouses, the only Gazan flour plant, the main poultry farm, a sewage treatment plant, water wells and God knows what else.
Deliberately.
Why? Because we're better than them. Because we're a democracy and they're a bunch of Islamo-fascists. Because ours is a culture of life and theirs is a culture of death. Because they're out to destroy us and all we are saying is give peace a chance.
The Goldstones of the world call this hypocrisy, a double standard. How dare they! Around here, we call it moral clarity."
A person would never read such as this in the New York Times or Washington Post or hear it from any US news source. Unlike Israeli newspapers, the US media is a complete mouthpiece for the Israel Lobby. Never a critical word is heard.This is the way the syllogism works:
It is anti-semitic to criticize Israel. Anti-semitism is a hate crime. Therefore, to criticize Israel is a hate crime.
Britain's ambassador to the United Nations, John Sawers, stepped into the hate crime arena when he told Israel Army radio that the Goldstone report on Israel's military assault on Gaza contains "some very serious details which need to be investigated." A year from now when the Anti-Defamation League has its phalanx of US Department of Justice (sic) prosecutors in place, Sawers would be seized and placed on trial. Diplomatic immunity means nothing to the US, which routinely invades other countries, executes their leaders or sends them to the Hague for trial as war criminals.
____________________________________________________________ _________________
October 22, 2009, Letters to the Editor, NY Times
Human Rights Watch was saddened to read that our founding chairman, Robert Bernstein, opposes holding Israel to the same standards that we apply to the rest of the world ("Lost in the Mideast," Views, Oct. 21). Human Rights Watch does not believe that the human rights records of "closed" societies are the only ones deserving investigation. If that were the case, we would not work on U.S. abuses in Guantánamo Bay, police abuse in Brazil, maternal deaths in India, or the ill-treatment of migrants in the E.U. "Open" societies and democracies commit human rights abuses, too, and Human Rights Watch has an important role to play in documenting those abuses.
Human Rights Watch has produced more than 1,700 reports, letters, news releases and other commentaries on the Middle East and North Africa since January 2000, and the vast majority of these were about countries other than Israel. Our Middle East division is only one of 16 research programs at Human Rights Watch. The work on Israel is a tiny fraction of Human Rights Watch's output.
It is not the case that Human Rights Watch had "no access to the battlefield" during and after the Israeli operation in Gaza in January 2009. We have a research assistant based in Gaza, and other researchers entered via the border with Egypt after the fighting and conducted interviews with victims, eyewitnesses, U.N. officials, local authorities and others. We also visited attack sites, analyzed ballistics evidence, and examined autopsy and other medical reports.
Mr. Bernstein would excuse these violations because they were supposedly committed in "self-defense" rather than "intentionally." But the Geneva Conventions prohibit abuses regardless of motivation. Moreover, many of Israel's actions showed evidence of official policy; the same was true of Palestinian rocket fire into Israeli towns. We've published reports on both.
In April 2009, Mr. Bernstein brought his concerns about our work on Israel to a full meeting of the Human Rights Watch board of directors. The board rejected his view that Human Rights Watch should report on only closed societies, and expressed its full support for the organization's work.
Carroll Bogert, New York
Associate director, Human Rights Watch
"This is the Israeli notion of a fair deal: We're entitled to do whatever the hell we want to the Palestinians because, by definition, whatever we do to them is self-defense. They, however, are not entitled to lift a finger against us because, by definition, whatever they do to us is terrorism. That's the way it's always been, that's the way it was in Operation Cast Lead. And there are no limits on our right to self-defense. There is no such thing as 'disproportionate.' We can deliberately destroy thousands of Gazan homes, the Gazan parliament, the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of Interior, courthouses, the only Gazan flour plant, the main poultry farm, a sewage treatment plant, water wells and God knows what else.
Deliberately.
Why? Because we're better than them. Because we're a democracy and they're a bunch of Islamo-fascists. Because ours is a culture of life and theirs is a culture of death. Because they're out to destroy us and all we are saying is give peace a chance.
The Goldstones of the world call this hypocrisy, a double standard. How dare they! Around here, we call it moral clarity."
A person would never read such as this in the New York Times or Washington Post or hear it from any US news source. Unlike Israeli newspapers, the US media is a complete mouthpiece for the Israel Lobby. Never a critical word is heard.This is the way the syllogism works:
It is anti-semitic to criticize Israel. Anti-semitism is a hate crime. Therefore, to criticize Israel is a hate crime.
Britain's ambassador to the United Nations, John Sawers, stepped into the hate crime arena when he told Israel Army radio that the Goldstone report on Israel's military assault on Gaza contains "some very serious details which need to be investigated." A year from now when the Anti-Defamation League has its phalanx of US Department of Justice (sic) prosecutors in place, Sawers would be seized and placed on trial. Diplomatic immunity means nothing to the US, which routinely invades other countries, executes their leaders or sends them to the Hague for trial as war criminals.
______________________________
October 22, 2009, Letters to the Editor, NY Times
Human Rights Watch was saddened to read that our founding chairman, Robert Bernstein, opposes holding Israel to the same standards that we apply to the rest of the world ("Lost in the Mideast," Views, Oct. 21). Human Rights Watch does not believe that the human rights records of "closed" societies are the only ones deserving investigation. If that were the case, we would not work on U.S. abuses in Guantánamo Bay, police abuse in Brazil, maternal deaths in India, or the ill-treatment of migrants in the E.U. "Open" societies and democracies commit human rights abuses, too, and Human Rights Watch has an important role to play in documenting those abuses.
Human Rights Watch has produced more than 1,700 reports, letters, news releases and other commentaries on the Middle East and North Africa since January 2000, and the vast majority of these were about countries other than Israel. Our Middle East division is only one of 16 research programs at Human Rights Watch. The work on Israel is a tiny fraction of Human Rights Watch's output.
It is not the case that Human Rights Watch had "no access to the battlefield" during and after the Israeli operation in Gaza in January 2009. We have a research assistant based in Gaza, and other researchers entered via the border with Egypt after the fighting and conducted interviews with victims, eyewitnesses, U.N. officials, local authorities and others. We also visited attack sites, analyzed ballistics evidence, and examined autopsy and other medical reports.
Mr. Bernstein would excuse these violations because they were supposedly committed in "self-defense" rather than "intentionally." But the Geneva Conventions prohibit abuses regardless of motivation. Moreover, many of Israel's actions showed evidence of official policy; the same was true of Palestinian rocket fire into Israeli towns. We've published reports on both.
In April 2009, Mr. Bernstein brought his concerns about our work on Israel to a full meeting of the Human Rights Watch board of directors. The board rejected his view that Human Rights Watch should report on only closed societies, and expressed its full support for the organization's work.
Carroll Bogert, New York
Associate director, Human Rights Watch
3 opmerkingen:
Makkelijk is het om over de serie 'de oorlog' te praten en over Mandela en het apartheidsregime.
Makkelijk ook om te zwijgen over wat nu gebeurt in Israel.
anzi
laten we eens kijken wat Lieberman op 11 november met Maxime Verhagen hier in Den Haag te bespreken heeft?
Zou Maxime hem hard aanpakken of zal hij zoals gewoonlijk wegkijken en weer een benefit concert voor War Child openen?
In de Gaza en op de West Bank zijn geen kinderen toch?
jose
Ik zie weinig verschil w.b. mensenrechten tussen Lieberman en Verhagen. Alletwee voorstanders van moord. Alleen is de 1 wat vager en de andere duidelijk in zijn bewoordingen. Waarschijnlijk zal Maxime in de pers door laten schemeren dat hij het met de opvattingen van Lieberman niet eens is, maar daar staat wel weer een vette bonus voor Israel tegenover en natuurlijk geen instemming over de uitkomst van het Goldstone rapport. Trouwens een figuur als Lieberman komt als geroepen. Men kan nu met de vinger naar hem wijzen als de persoonlijking van het kwaad tegenover het goede van de rest. Net zoals in Nederland de rottigheid verdoezelt wordt in de zogenaamde tolerantie tegenover homo's en kleurlingen. Zo wil men laten zien dat we een verlicht volk zijn. Bij P en W gesprek over 'de oorlog' en over de musical Mandela. Een uitgelezen kans om over de bindingsfactor tussen deze 2 gebeurtenissen te praten. Maar die verzwijg je liever, want dan blijkt dat we enerzijds nog steeds aan apartheid doen en aan de andere kant Mandela bejubelen.
anzi
Een reactie posten