Having trouble being accused of war crimes? Find yourself breaking the laws of war . . . again? Can’t leave the country out of fear of being arrested, and can barely get a word in edgewise defending yourself? Well, have no fear the Netanyahu government has the answer for you.
Don’t worry, you don’t have to investigate your misdeeds, or even engage in too much self reflection. You just have to change the rules. From the JTA:
Netanyahu seeks to change rules of war
JERUSALEM (JTA) — Benjamin Netanyahu ordered several government ministries to look into floating an international initiative to change the rules of war in light of global terrorism.
The Israeli prime minister at a meeting Tuesday of the Ministerial Committee on National Security also ordered the justice minister to form a committee to deal with international legal proceedings against Israel and Israeli officials in the wake of the Goldstone report. . .
“Our challenge is to delegitimize the continuous attempt to delegitimize the State of Israel," Netanyahu said at the meeting, according to a statement released by the Government Press Office. "The most important arena where we need to act in this context is in the arena of public opinion, which is crucial in the democratic world. We must continue to debunk this lie that is spreading with the help of the Goldstone report.”
Be sure to attack the image, never the substance, Bibi. Be sure to launch a PR campaign but never reform. Be sure to attack the critics but never the criminals.
And most of all, be sure to pull the strings on your puppet in the White House to quash any movement towards justice.
Complete Israeli melodrama: they are wholly good, everyone else is wholly evil; classic definition of melodrama.
The “we rock, you suck” syndrome.
link to haaretz.com
Deputy PM to Haaretz: Israel needs internal probe of Gaza war
Wonderful. How about this:
“The army, [author of the IDF's Code of Conduct, Asa] Kasher thought, should have warned the civilians beforehand, and “whoever stayed, let the blood be on his head.” This is how generals who try to justify their criminal actions speak. But an intellectual? An expert on ethics?”
link to haaretz.com
And out curiosity, Witty, then the Deputy PM is calling for the first set of… “investigations,” to be overturned in favor of a new probe? Just need a clarification here, because I thought the Israeli government claimed it’s already investigated and “found nothing.”
So the Gazans are free to leave the ghetto? Somebody must not have gotten the message.
Get back to me when Netanyahu says it, not Meridor.
If you want it to happen, add your voice. Write your Congressperson. Did you yet?
I write my Senator often, my Congressperson being hopeless. Actually, my Senator is just as hopeless but he clings to the delusion that I will vote for him, so he acknowledges my messages, then pockets AIPAC’s money.
Write our Congresspeople to get them to influence Israel? Boy do you have it backwards, Witty.
Yeah, congress, the same ones who passed a bill cheering on the Gaza massacre by overwhelming majority. Particularly when it comes to Israel, I’d like do more good by writing my neighbor’s dog. Just to drive the point home; my senator, Sam Brownback, openly supports ethnically cleansing the West Bank.
So let me get this straight…………the only way for Israel to be legitament is to deliberately maim and kill innocent civilians?
Yeah, there’s a name for that policy of “survival.” It’s called lebensraum.
Reminds me of Saddam Hussein nipping a little rule here, tucking another over there… nicey-nice lined up for the legalized state slaughter.
I think Netanyahu’s approach is good … as long as we can rewrite all the guilt trippy refugee laws that the AJC, ADL, Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society and others use to dump refugees on America.
If the tribe is rethinking the … ummm … “practicality” of all those goofy post World War II Holocaust Guilt Trip Treaties, lets get something in there for the rest of us, too!
Y’all can dump your Darfurian refugees back in Egypt and I promise I won’t say a word, as long as the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society stops dumping Somalis on my homeland (and getting us gentiles to pay for them with our own tax money!)
Hahaha, now this is sure to be popular around the world! “Yeah, why don’t we let a war-crimes-accused state rewrite the laws of war?”
Yeah, another exercise of the genius exceptional DNA in action.
This is too funny for words! :-)
Thank You for this – made my day.
I laughed, I cried, it was better than Cats.
I am at a loss for words, but it is encouraging to see such idiocy being pursued – reveals the bankruptcy and desperation of their position.
May God have mercy on their souls.
You know, it is uncanny how Bibi wants to rewrite the rules of war – it sort of echoed in my mind, where have I heard this before?
“According to Nazi ideology, ethical conventions couldn’t be applied in the case of “Jews or Bolsheviks; their method of political warfare is entirely amoral.” On the eve of the “preventive war” against the Soviet Union, Hitler issued the Commissar Order, which mandated the summary execution of Soviet political commissars and Jews, and set the stage for the Final Solution. He justified the order targeting them for assassination on the ground that the Judeo-Bolsheviks represented a fanatical ideology, and that in these “exceptional conditions” civilized methods of warfare had to be cast aside:
“In the fight against Bolshevism it must not be expected that the enemy
will act in accordance with the principles of humanity or international
law…any attitude of consideration or regard for international law in
respect of these persons is an error….The protagonists of barbaric
Asiatic methods of warfare are the political commissars….Accordingly
if captured in battle or while resisting, they should in principle be shot.
Krausnick, Anatomy, pp. 318-19; Boog, Attack, pp. 499-500, 510, 515.” ”
The above is a Quote from Norman Finkelstein in and argument with Alan Dershowitz. Although the original setting of the response is for a different purpose (Dershowitz call all terrorists totally different, and that you cannot apply the normal conventions of war, for the same reasons the Nazis used as a precursor of the final solution), it applies well here. Isn’t it interesting how history repeats itself?
Well, it repeats itself over and over and over. Nobody has ever fought an unjust war. It was all self-defense. Or legally justified by retaking one’s own possessions.
Nobody has ever murdered civilians or destroyed their means of survival, or purposely made their lives miserable – unless of course the cowardly enemy forced them to do it, and then of course they felt really bad about it.
And nobody has ever intentionally violated the rules of war – except of course against enemies who had done the same. Or were about to do the same, just as we stopped them by doing it first. They started it – or would have started it, which is the same thing, even if in physical reality, we did it first.
The way I see it, the development of international law on the subject of armed went through several phases. In the 18th century cabinet wars, and even in the 19th century, such law was customary, not codified, but usually adhered to out of a sense of honor. One simply did not do such a thing as torturing prisoners or murdering enemy commanders or burning places of worship – no matter if it might have seemed advantageous.
With larger-scale, industrialized warfare in an world increasingly organzied into nation-states came a codification of these laws. This, in turn, also spawned a new culture of hypocrisy and double standards – wherever there is a letter of the law, there will be people to try and circumvent its spirit. In most wars of the 20th century, the results, which I outlined above, could be clearly seen.
However, in very recent years, there have been some fragile developments to try and ingrain the new, internationally recognized rules of war into the minds of soldiers and politicians as deeply as the customs of war were ingrained into the minds of their 18th-century counterparts.
But not in the “most moral army of the world”. And looking at history, it is not hard to see why: Israel did not exist when following the customary laws of war still was a matter of honor – and the IDF has no traditions going back to that time. It was born in the age of violating the spirit of highly codified laws and this shows. Netanyahu’s ideas are a sterling example. The letter of the law is the problem, and if it can’t be creatively interpreted any more, it must simply be changed. The concept that these laws forbid something because it is morally wrong, and that one would thus be obliged to avoid this kind of behaviour no matter what the laws say does not even enter the equation. It’s all about getting the best deal.
Of course, we cannot assume that Bibi is that great a student of history, so he is probably following through the the US position on terrorism, in the so-called “war on terror.” Bibi is merely completing what the US declared, fulfilling it, by saying “if we have ignored these laws and conventions pell mell, why not codify it into law?” (although I am sure that the US adopted most of these positions on “terrorists” by being coached by those neocon Zionists in those “war rooms” before and during the Afghanistan and Iraq war. I am told that those war rooms were so filled with Zionist “experts on the ME,” that it looked like a bordello on Saturday night. But it takes two to tango, so you cannot just blame the Zionists/neocons)
The idea is, that we can codify these acts like – abduction without recourse, assassination, indefinite detention, kangaroo courts, offing habeas corpus, little to no representation, torture, loose laws of engagement so a maximum of civilians die, and so on into International Law. That way all the nations can participate in these atrocities (because they are necessary when dealing “with them terrorists”), and they can thank Israel for these “blessings,” with the proviso that Israel gets off free for their offenses. This is the summit of insanity.
Do you think people who act like this and propose these insane ideas can be reasoned with? That they can be talked into “peace?” I don’t think so, that is why I opt for BDS. The scene gets more bizarre with time, there is no telling what they are capable of doing.
that is why I opt for BDS
The conclusion I’ve reached. Reasoning with these people is pointless. They’re ignorant of history; and moreover, aren’t interested.
Reporters without Borders have published their annual Press Freedom Index for 2009.
Denmark ranks at #1, followed by Finland, Ireland and Norway and Sweden.
Israel’s ranking dropped from the 40s to the 93 spot (within Israel proper), while it ranks 150 in the occupied territories and Gaza.
The US is at 22 domestically and 108 internationally (in the way it censors journalists where US forces are operating like Iraq or Afghanistan). Let freedom ring.
Interestingly the UAE, Kuwait and Lebanon were found to have more freedom of the press than Israel (the only democracy in the Middle East).
link to rsf.org
Netanyahu doesn’t have an original thought in his head. He is just repeating what his neocon buds in Washington have been saying for years: Seize discourse. Change the meanings of words and concepts such as “terror” and “ethics”. Define your goals first and then make up the justifications as you go along – like shooting an arrow and drawing the bull’s eye around it. The new administration has done nothing but strengthen Netanyahu’s impression that Washington still plays by Cheney Rules. Come to think of it though, the idea of rewriting the laws of war to “accommodate” the “terror factor” (as defined by you-know-who) is not out of vogue even among “liberals” these days, and is closely linked to the concept of exceptionalism – American and Israeli.
Another great comment.
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Thanks. You’re making me blush ;-)
I see it the other way round:
I see the Israelis as masters and teachers of American neocons.
After all they’ve had 64 years of daily practice in the black art of oppression and thuggery against the Palestinian people – while claiming superior morality and the muscle of law on their side.
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