British Lawyers Seek Arrest of Ehud Barack on War Crimes

The Guardian is reporting today that 16 British lawyers have filed to obtain an international arrest warrant for Ehud Barak, accusing him of committing war crimes in Gaza.

Fat chance. If recent history is any indicator then it would appear that these laws only apply to people of color in former Soviet or American puppet states as well as a couple of people in the Balkans.

Nonetheless, the Guardian reports:

The legal action relates to alleged war crimes and breaches of the Geneva conventions during the war, which was launched by Israel in response to Palestinian rocket attacks and widely criticised internationally. The death toll is disputed, but the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem found that 1,387 Palestinians died, among them 773 people not taking part in hostilities.

Solicitors are asking a district judge at the City of Westminster magistrates court to issue a warrant for Barak’s arrest under the 1988 Criminal Justice Act, which gives courts in England and Wales universal jurisdiction in war crimes cases. The application alleges that Barak has committed offences against the 1957 Geneva conventions.

Barak, who is also deputy prime minister of Israel and leader of the country’s Labour party, could argue that his government office guarantees him “state immunity” from prosecution. But lawyers from two London law firms, Irvine Thanvi Natas and Imran Khan & Partners, believe the warrant that the international criminal court issued in May last year for the arrest of Omar al-Bashir, the president of Sudan, offers a precedent. Bashir is accused of committing war crimes in Darfur.

This would be the shock of 2009 if Barak were dragged away in handcuffs, but don’t hold your breath in anticipation.

gaza, january 2009. (AFP/GETTY IMAGES)

UN to Israel: Let us Rebuild Gaza Schools

Mark Regev has been claiming pretty much since day one that the IDF has been allowing supplies to get into Gaza so that NGOs and other authories in the occupied territories can begin rebuilding efforts. Well, we all know that’s not true. Indeed only recently have people like Tony Blair, managed to put some pressure on the Israelis to get some supplies in, but let’s see how long that lasts.

In the meantime life continues to blow in Gaza, the world’s largest open-air prison. For example, the UN has just issued a press release calling upon the IDF to ease some of its restrictions on imports to Gaza so that they (the UN) can help to rebuild schools destroyed during the Israeli invation in late December\Early January.

From the press release:

The 18 schools that were completely destroyed and the 280 others that were damaged in the Israeli military offensive six months ago have not been rebuilt or rehabilitated because of restrictions placed on the movement of reconstruction materials and other supplies into Gaza, according to a joint news release issued by various UN agencies and non-governmental organizations (NGOs).

In north Gaza, 9,000 students from 15 damaged schools have been spread among 73 schools in the same area, with 4,000 of them squeezed into two schools, and some 1,200 secondary students running the risk of being left without a school next month.

“The blockade has caused untold suffering to children in Gaza, who face another academic year in terrible conditions,” said Philippe Lazzarini, acting UN Humanitarian Coordinator of the occupied Palestinian territories (oPt) in the joint statement.

More on the UN press release here.

Breaking the Silence: IDF Soldiers testify on War Crimes in Gaza

You would be hard pressed to have heard about this story if your daily media diet solely consists of the American mainstream variety, but Israeli and other international media have been reporting today on a new document issued by the Israeli group, “Breaking the Silence,” accusing the IDF of committing war crimes in its Gaza operations in late 2008 and early 2009.

The document published by the Israeli group contains anonymous testimonies of Israeli soldiers dismayed at what they observed during the Gaza conflict.

From the Breaking the Silence report:

Did he make any distinction between civilians and terrorists?
That, too, was mentioned later, not at the same talk, that if we see something suspect and shoot, better hit an innocent than hesitate to target an enemy. You exercise judgment. The first house we entered contained not a single enemy. We fired at windows and fire was not returned. So we went in and opened it the way we usually go at a house in Hebron: we go in, call out to the owner to open, gather all the males, shackle them, gather the entire family in one room and begin to search the house. This is not something that is usually done in war.

When you entered a house, did you know what you were supposed to do differently from other areas in the West Bank? How is this different?
When you enter a house, the idea is that it contains an enemy. You’re supposed to shoot your way in. We didn’t do this in the first house because we had opened fire and no fire was returned. So we assumed there was no one there. Then we knocked on the door and told them to call everyone downstairs, gathered them in a room and combed the place securely, looking for incriminating materials: weapons, posters, propaganda stuff.

Whom did you find in the house?
Men, women and children. This was our first objective in the operation plan. We walked in, reached the neighborhood and began the offensive advance. While you’re attacking you shoot a lot even while encountering no one. You make sure you’re not being surprised. Say we entered a hothouse and are securing it: you cut a hole and enter the hothouse, shooting at the plant rows. You’re not on automatic fire, but you do give a few bursts to make sure you won’t be surprised.

As is to be expected, the IDF and the Israeli government reacted with great skepticism to the testimonies of the Breaking the Silence soldiers. Spokespersons for the government and the IDF maintain that the Gaza War (known in Israel as Operation Cast Lead and in Arab Societies as the Gaza Massacre) was legal under international law and that soldiers who witnessed war crimes should go through the proper channels and file complaints.

Writing in The Guardian, Breaking the Silence critic Dan Kosky wrote:

Precedent shows that the IDF is not immune from censure, and Israel is very open to self-examination, where warranted. The Winograd Commission which followed the 2006 Lebanon war was highly critical of both Israel’s military and political leadership. In contrast, Breaking the Silence’s half-baked research and the undeserved attention it is receiving thanks to funding from the British Embassy in Tel Aviv and the EU, is an illegitimate basis for such soul searching.