With so much attention rightly paid to the Goldstone report, we ought to dwell on the justice question. The perpetrators of the ethnic cleansing of Palestine evaded justice; the Ben-Gurions, Rabins, Shamirs, Meirs, Begins, and Trumans died – leaving behind progeny who cannot be made to answer for their crimes. Ariel Sharon and Shimon Peres are alive, but who can reasonably expect them to be held accountable. Far likelier, they will die and real justice, the kind that carries life sentences in enclosed spaces, will be thwarted.
To be sure, posterity will mete out small measures of justice; some Zionist names and deeds will live in infamy, viscerally repugnant. But teaching future generations that Shimon Peres was a terrorist of the ugliest stripe – one who terrorized in the name of racial supremacy – is more palliative than curative. So we are forced to come to come to terms with the facts of historic Palestine. That the men who perpetrated ethnic cleansing were heroic in their time, that they lived in grandeur, died comfortably, and will never face justice.
The Gaza Massacre happened only one year ago. Here we have an opportunity to hold alleged war criminals to account individually. This reckoning may take decades – we’re very fortunate that some of the alleged criminals were only 18, 19 or 20 years old a year ago – and this reckoning may delay the one-state solution by decades, too. I believe in pragmatic decision-making, but the justice question is necessarily resistant to all other considerations; justice is principles-based. The desire for an equitable outcome in Palestine/Israel cannot trump the rights of victims, or their survivors. But in truth this formula is backwards; only justice can yield an equitable outcome in Palestine/Israel. Peace is only the absence of a legitimate grievance, just like cold is the absence of heat.
We the Palestinians have also allegedly committed war crimes. Here too we are fortunate; Israel has extrajudicially exterminated many of our alleged war criminals, and their children too. But I want justice for everyone. So our side must also be held to account – for the sake of future generations, and for the sake of truth.
I sincerely believe that if South Africa had employed a justice-based program for navigating that conflict, the country would be more equitable today. South African Apartheid may still exist – I do not believe F.W. de Klerk would have relinquished white power so easily if he thought it meant jail time – but true justice would have reset society’s baseline condition.
On this topic, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn imparts some wisdom. The context and crimes are different, but the essence is the same. His words apply equally to Barack Obama’s ‘We don’t torture but we’re looking forward in case we did (we’ve shattered the rearview mirror, in fact)’ Justice Department.
From The Gulag Archipelago (emphasis in original):
“From the most ancient times justice has been a two-part concept: virtue triumphs, and vice is punished.
We have been fortunate enough to live to a time when virtue, though it does not triumph, is nonetheless not always tormented by attack dogs. Beaten down, sickly, virtue has now been allowed to enter in all its tatters and sit in the corner, as long as it doesn’t raise its voice.
However, no one dares say a word about vice. Yes, they did mock virtue, but there was no vice in that. Yes, so-and-so many millions did get mowed down – but no one was to blame for it. And if someone pipes up: “What about those who…” the answer comes from all sides, reproachfully and amicably at first: “What are you talking about, comrade! Why open old wounds?” Then they go after you with an oaken club: “Shut up! Haven’t you had enough yet? You think you’ve been rehabilitated!”
In that same period, by 1966, eighty-six thousand Nazi criminals have been convicted in West Germany… But in a quarter-century we have not tracked down anyone. We have not brought anyone to trial. It is their wounds we are afraid to reopen…
In the German trials an astonishing phenomenon takes place from time to time. The defendant clasps his head in his hands, refuses to make any defense, and from then on asks no concessions from the court. He says that the presentation of his crimes, revived and once again confronting him, has filled him with revulsion and he no longer wants to live.
That is the ultimate height a trial can attain: when evil is so utterly condemned that even the criminal is revolted by it.
A country which has condemned evil 86,000 times from the rostrum of a court and irrevocably condemned it in literature and among its young people, year by year, step by step, is purged of it.
What are we to do? Someday our descendants will describe our several generations as generations of driveling do-nothings. First we submissively allowed them to massacre us by the millions, and then with devoted concern we tended the murderers in their prosperous old age.
What are we to do if the great Russian tradition of penitence is incomprehensible and absurd to them? What are we to do if the animal terror of hearing even one-hundredth part of all they subjected others to outweighs in their hearts any inclination to justice? If they cling greedily to the harvest of benefits they have watered with the blood of those who perished?
It is clear enough that those men who turned the handle of the meat grinder even as late as 1937 are no longer young. They are fifty to eighty years old. They have lived the best years of their lives prosperously, well nourished and comfortable, so that it is too late for any kind of equal retribution as far as they are concerned.
But let us be generous. We will not shoot them. We will not pour salt water into them, nor bury them in bedbugs, nor bridle them into a “swan-dive,” nor keep them on sleepless “stand-up” for a week, nor kick them with jackboots, nor beat them with rubber truncheons, nor squeeze their skulls in iron rings, nor push them into a cell so that they lie atop one another like pieces of baggage – we will not do any of the things they did! But for the sake of our country and our children we have the duty to seek them all out and bring them all to trial! Not to put them on trial so much as their crimes. And to compel each one of them to announce loudly: “Yes, I was an executioner and a murderer.” …
It is unthinkable in the twentieth century to fail to distinguish between what constitutes an abominable atrocity that must be prosecuted and what constitutes that “past” which “ought not to be stirred up.”
We have to condemn publicly the very idea that some people have the right to repress others. In keeping silent about evil, in burying it so deep within us that no sign of it appears on the surface, we are implanting it, and it will rise up a thousandfold in the future. When we neither punish nor reproach evildoers, we are not simply protecting their trivial old age, we are thereby ripping the foundations of justice from beneath new generations. It is for this reason, and not because of the “weakness of indoctrinational work,” that they are growing up “indifferent.” Young people are acquiring the conviction that foul deeds are never punished on earth, that they always bring prosperity.
It is going to be uncomfortable, horrible, to live in such a country!”
Elliott Abrams was convicted of crimes less than treason during the Iran-Contra scandal. He was pardoned was soon back in positions of power, continuing the same line of work.
Political criminals know they operate with impunity.
Zionist leaders will not go to trial
Care to elaborate BSD?
I think the troll’s batteries ran out mid-sentence.
We gotta get ourselves one o’ them bunny-rabbit trolls.
excellent article i m very happy that inside the Palestinian society there are many decent who recognize that targeting innocent Israeli civilians is a war crime, inexcusable.
Yup, right in between brutal grandiosity and whiny paranoia. He’s stuck!
Everyone’s going green now days. So, I say we hook him up with a solar panel so he can generate a few watts and perhaps then he’ll realize how much it hertz.
note to Phil: please add to your blog a “that comment made me laugh; thanks, I needed that” button.
have a good day, Shmuel.
Solzhenitsyn’s book about the Jewish-Russian relationship during its red period has yet to see the light of day in the USA or England. That should tell us something.
When was the last Imperial Japan war criminal brought to trial?
yes and when were those behing the Hiroshima atomic bombings were brought to trial?
The disgraceful performance of the French in WW2 ending up costing thousands of American lives. Now you decided to bring Americans who saved your country on trial? That’s a laugh.
Oh, Jules. Stop, you had me at ‘BDS won’t work! Antisemite, antisemite, Hitler Hitler! Islamofascism!’
The French lost an entire generation in WWI.
American indiscriminate fire cost thousands of French civilian lives in WWII
It is a fact that Japan bombed Pearl Harbor and then Hitler declared war on the USA, loyal to his pact with Japan. That’s exactly what FDR wanted; step one was
to cut off Japan’s oil supply. It’s called back door strategy against your own people.
Did the Germans lose less in WW1? Why exactly did the US get into WW1? To assure American corporations and bankers got their profit from supplying England?
Saved France by atomic bombing Hiroshima? Man, that ziocaine is making you crazy!
So you think FDR should have kept Japan supplied with oil for their brutal colonial gains in Manchuria and China? Every hear of the “rape of Nanking”?
you know Julian the difference between us and most Ziocaines like you that we believe in the role international law in conflicts, and in international law the disproportional use of force that cause suffer to innocent civilians is considered as war crime. So gaining advantage against your enemy by committing war crimes is not a victory for us.
Let me recall you history, in occupied France under Pétain/Vichy and Hitler regime used to kill 10 men for each soldier killed by the French resistance, so just think about the ratio 1398 vs 13.
Julian would applaud them.
Yes, but the US knew about the eminent and planned attack on Pearl Harbor, and still let the Japanese attack. The US needed an excuse to join the war.
Hummmm…..what does that remind me of in recent history….?
Here is a few facts about your country:
The French Resistance was a myth. Virtually all French were either neutral or collaborators.
Americans had to go to France to rescue your country causing the death of thousands of heroic Americans.
The French show no gratitude that we saved them and rebuilt their sorry state.
Now you talk about putting American heroes on trial? What utter gall.
Morning, Julian. Let’s assume for a moment that your simplistic jingoistic (we saved your asses, if it weren’t for us you’d all be speaking German blah blah blah) version of history is true. Allow me to introduce you to some justice 101: Good actions are rewarded and bad actions are punished. Fighting to defend innocent civilians in one place in no way excuses or “balances out” the wanton killing of innocent civilians in another place (or even in the same place). There are cogent legal and moral arguments against pursuing 60-70-year-old war crimes, but “we saved your asses so you shut up” is not one of them.
FDR didn’t give a crap about Nanking or anything Japan did to China. He was angling for a way to justify attacking Germany when the American people as a whole did not want to fight Germany. And you know it. If you don’t, what’s the name of that drug you’ve been taking all these years?
Exactly, Avi. And then some.
These are not American heroes that should be put on trial, but rather
they are more akin to the Nazi German heroes that were eventually put on trial. The USA is on the wrong side of this current I-P war if history is any guide.
And Bomber Harris, behind the Dresden firebombing.
Is Kurt Vonnegut in the room?
Which was more justified in terms of saving American lives, the fire bombing of Dresden, or
the 2 atom bombs dropped on Japan? Pretend you had a father, uncle, or brother in the US Army
combat arm at the time.
Japan was prett much washed up, and only continued to fit because of the intransigence and delusions of Hirohito. See Herbert P. Bix “Hirohito and the making of modern Japan” Harper-Collins, 2000 ISBN o-o6-019314-X
Hirohito was a very good candidate for a war-crimes trial, but when MaCarthur got to Japan and saw how short he was, he felt protective twords the little guy. Who can figure people out?
Mooser, I suggest you look at the fact Dresden was a comparatively safe haven for
innocents when it was fire-bombed; it was definitely NOT a military target in any way–it was the equivalent of a giant red cross station.
Now, look at the cost of the battles to American soldiers on the militarized islands approaching the Japan mainland, combined with the Kamikazee attacks on our navy. And the consequential decision to nuke two Japanese cities.
Yes?
Britain is also having its own version of Goldstone Report. It’s called “Chilcot Inquiry” on British collaboration with Bush’s Zionist administration’s invasion of Iraq in 2003 – and I bet its verdict will not be any different than the Bush’s “9-11 Commission”.
British Iraq Inquiry: An ‘old fashioned anti-Semitism’
link to rehmat1.wordpress.com
“It’s obvious that Iraq Inquiry would be as much of an official cover-up of Israeli involvement as was the case in the US’s 9-11 Commission. Both involved Zionist Jews as members. For example, 9-11 Commission member, Philip Zelikow, who told an audience at the University of Virginia on September 10, 2002:
“Why would Iraq attack America or use nuclear weapons against us? I’ll tell you what I think the real threat (is) and actually has been since 1990—it’s the threat against Israel. And this is the threat that dare not speak its name, because the Europeans don’t care deeply about that threat, I will tell you frankly. And the American government doesn’t want to lean too hard on it rhetorically, because it is not a popular sell.”
Conclusion: Both the goy Brits and the goy Americans are gullible fools. And the leaders from their own ranks don’t mind that since they personally are greedmeisters.
Seems like the gentiles need to take a few lessons when it comes to masking racism and/or ethnocentric palatable via humanistic verbiage. At one time, this was indeed a hard challenge due to white privilege, buttressed by fanatic military and economic force, but times have been a changing. Look around you.