676 Donors pressure Hague court (ICC) not to open Gaza war crimes inquiry

Donors pressure Hague court (ICC) not to open Gaza war crimes inquiry


Newsletter published on 20 August 2014

(1) Palestinian leaders, defying Western pressure, poised to take Israel
to ICC for war crimes
(2) Netanyahu asks US to Help Israel avoid War Crime Charges
(3) Donors pressure Hague court (ICC) not to open Gaza war crimes inquiry
(4) Guardian compiles evidence of Israeli War Crimes in Gaza
(5) Israel forestalls ICC War Crimes investigation by launching its own
(6) Israel Braces for War Crimes Inquiries on Gaza
(7) Israel furious as UN unveils Gaza probe team
(8) US networks remove reporters critical of Israeli attack on Gaza

(1) Palestinian leaders, defying Western pressure, poised to take Israel
to ICC for war crimes

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/05/palestinian-leaders-icc-israel-war-crimes

Palestinian leaders poised to join ICC in order to pursue Israel for war
crimes

Diplomats expect plan to join international criminal court and call for
investigation to be used as bargaining chip in Cairo talks

Julian Borger and Ian Black

The Guardian, Wednesday 6 August 2014 04.19 AEST

{photo} The Palestinian foreign minister, Riad Malki, said after meeting
ICC officials that Israel had left him no choice but to seek accession
to the court. Photograph: EPA {end photo}

Palestinian political leaders are poised to join the International
Criminal Court (ICC) with the aim of putting Israel in the dock on war
crimes charges, officials said today.

"Israel has left us with no other option," Riad Malki, the Palestinian
foreign minister, told reporters after meeting ICC officials in The
Hague to discuss the implications of signing the Rome Statute. It would
make the Palestinian state a member of the court with the authority to
call for an investigation into possible war crimes and crimes against
humanity.

The Palestinian Authority has asked Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad
(PIJ) to sign the accession document before it is formally presented,
and officials say they now expect both organisations to agree.

The development came as Palestinian negotiators were due to meet the
head of Egyptian military intelligence in Cairo to discuss a permanent
ceasefire with Israel, after all sides observed a 72-hour truce that
came in to force at 8am local time (0600 BST) on Tuesday.

Hamas launched a salvo of rockets minutes before the truce began,
calling it revenge for Israel's "massacres". Israel's anti-missile
system shot down one rocket over Jerusalem, police said. Another hit a
house in a town near Bethlehem in the West Bank. There were no casualties.

Israeli armour and infantry left Gaza ahead of the truce, and a military
spokesman said their main goal of destroying cross-border tunnels had
been completed. "Mission accomplished," the military tweeted.

The talks in Cairo follow a month of fighting during which 1,900
Palestinians, mostly civilians, 64 Israeli soldiers, two Israeli
civilians and a Thai migrant worker were killed. Officials from Hamas
and Islamic Jihad reportedly left Gaza once the truce came into effect
via the Rafah border crossing, after receiving assurances from Israel
that they would not be targeted. Israeli security officials were
expected in the Egyptian capital later on Tuesday or on Wednesday.

Israeli officials warned, however, that Hamas had exaggerated
expectations of what it could achieve in the talks. Israel Radio
reported that a Palestinian demand for the construction a port and
airport in Gaza was not on Egypt's agenda.

The main Palestinian demand is for an end to the seven-year blockade of
Gaza, which includes lifting restrictions on the movement of people and
goods by opening the border crossings. Others are for the release of
prisoners, starting reconstruction and ensuring fishing rights up to 12
nautical miles off Gaza's coast. Israel is insisting on an end to rocket
fire and wider "demilitarisation".

Diplomats say they expect the Palestinian plan to join the ICC and set a
war crimes investigation in motion to be one of the bargaining chips on
the table in Cairo. Palestinian officials claim that, for the first
time, they have achieved unity on the issue among the political and
armed factions, paving the way for ICC membership.

"I think it is going to happen," Saeb Erekat, a veteran Palestinian
diplomat, said. Erekat said he had shown the documentation to Hamas's
political leader, Khaled Meshal, a few days ago in Doha. "He asked to
study it for a couple of days. There are still some legal aspects and
procedures that have to be agreed."

The ICC prosecutor issued a statement on Tuesday stating that the court
did not have jurisdiction on Palestinian territory without a formal
Palestinian request. Palestinian Authority negotiators have taken a copy
of the accession document to ceasefire talks in Cairo in the hope that
the Hamas and PIJ representatives will sign it there.

If they do, the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, would add his own
signature, confirming membership of the ICC. He would then issue a
declaration calling for an investigation.

ICC investigators would consequently assess war crimes allegations
against all parties to the conflict, including Hamas and PIJ. Jawan
Jabarin, a Palestinian human rights activist who has been pushing for
ICC membership, said that both groups were prepared to sign because they
believed Israel would be the primary target of any investigation.

"I saw the draft letter which they took to Cairo. They are waiting for
signature from Hamas and Islamic Jihad and they will get it. We got
confirmation. They said they will do it," Jabarin, the director general
of Al-Haq, said. He predicted it would happen in "weeks or even quicker".

"They [Hamas and PIJ] believe the size of the crime that the Israelis
committed is huge. They feel like they didn't commit crimes, but they
say: 'Even if some of our leaders go to court, we will do that. It is
part of our responsibility to the victims.' So it is a matter of time,
but we are very, very close."

The Israeli foreign ministry declined to comment. Israeli officials
believe that any ICC investigation would backfire on the Palestinians,
implicating Hamas rather than Israel, and they have predicted that Abbas
would not sign the Rome Statute for that reason. The Palestinians became
eligible to join the ICC in November 2012, when the UN granted Palestine
status as a non-member observer state.

If Abbas proceeds with accession to the ICC, it would represent an act
of defiance of western capitals, which have put pressure on him not to
join, arguing it would be an impediment to peace negotiations. The UK's
foreign office minister, Sayeeda Warsi, resigned on Tuesday because of
the government's policy on Gaza, specifically citing her disagreement
with British pressure on the Palestinians not to pursue justice through
the ICC.

Amnesty International's secretary general, Salil Shetty, has urged the
Palestinian leadership to shrug off western pressure.

"They must make good on their words and seize this chance to move
towards accountability for countless victims of human rights violations
by submitting a declaration accepting the jurisdiction of the ICC
without further delay," Shetty said.

The Qassam brigades, the military wing of Hamas, warned in a statement
that its camapign would not end until its demands were met. "Our finger
is on the trigger," it said. "The enemy's moves will determine the
aftermath of the battle."

Ismail Haniyeh, the former Hamas prime minister, issued a statement on
Hamas TV saying: "Military victory will lead to the lifting of the siege
on the Gaza Strip."

In the lastest in a bitter propaganda war that has accompanied the
fighting of the past month, Israel TV Channel 2 reported the military as
saying it had killed 900 Palestinian fighters in Gaza, nearly half the
1,867 dead reported by Palestinian officials.Israel Radio said the
defence establishment had a list of 600 names of Hamas, Islamic Jihad
and other fighters killed during Operation Protective Edge.

(2) Netanyahu asks US to Help Israel avoid War Crime Charges

From: "ReporterNotebook RePorterNoteBook@Gmail.com [ReportersNotebook]"
Date: Thu, 14 Aug 2014 23:33:49 -0400

New York Post

http://nypost.com/2014/08/06/netanyahu-asks-us-to-help-israel-avoid-war-crime-charges/

Netanyahu asks US to help Israel avoid war crime charges

By Geoff Earle

August 6, 2014 | 5:32pm

WASHINGTON — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu asked US
lawmakers Wednesday to help fend off Palestinian claims that his country
engaged in “war crimes” while defending itself against attacks from
Gaza, one top lawmaker told The Post.

The Israeli leader later told international reporters that his country
employed “extraordinary measures” to avoid civilian deaths in the nearly
month-long conflict.

As a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas held for a third day, Netanyahu
met with a group of US legislators, including Rep. Steve Israel (D-LI,)
to discuss the country’s tense security situation and some fissures in
US-Israel relations.

Netanyahu asked the delegation to help Israel stay out of the
International Criminal Court, where its attacks on Gaza could come under
scrutiny — even while responding to Hamas rockets fired at Israeli urban
centers.

Palestinian leaders are getting ready to join the ICC, and met with
officials in The Hague recently to discuss the implications of joining.

“The prime minister asked us to work together to ensure that this
strategy of going to the ICC does not succeed,” Rep. Israel told The
Post by phone from Tel Aviv.

Netanyahu “wants the US to use all the tools that we have at our
disposal to, number one, make sure the world knows that war crimes were
not committed by Israel, they were committed by Hamas. And that Israel
should not be held to a double standard,” the congressman said.

Palestinians sit amid the ruins of destroyed homes in the Shejaia
neighborhood of Gaza City, which witnesses said was heavily hit by
Israeli shelling and airstrikes.

“It’s Hamas that embedded its rockets in hospitals and in homes,” he
added. “And now there are some in the international community who want
to investigate the Israelis for the war crime of simply defending
themselves.”

Netanyahu blamed Hamas for the civilian deaths, saying the group
intentionally used innocent people as human shields — and showed a video
to international journalists to prove the point.

“Let’s imagine your country attacked by 3,500 rockets,” Netanyahu said
at a news conference.

“Your territories infiltrated by death squads. What would you do? What
would you demand your government do to protect you and your family? What
if the rockets are fired from civilian areas? Should you then not take
action?”

Netanyahu also criticized Hamas for not agreeing sooner to the ceasefire
now in effect.

“Ninety percent of the fatalities could have been avoided had Hamas not
rejected the ceasefire it accepts now,” he said.

“We have taken extraordinary measures to avoid civilian casualties.”

His assessment came as news surfaced that the West Bank kidnapping and
killing of three Israeli teens in June was funded by Hamas.

According to the Times of Israel, the alleged ringleader of the terror
cell behind the deaths told authorities that Hamas operatives in Gaza
funded the operation.

The discovery of the bodies, and an apparent revenge attack, sparked
days of unrest, which prompted Israel to launch its operations to
destroy a network of cross-border attack tunnels.

President Obama said he had “no sympathy” for Hamas and that Israel
needs assurances there will be no repeat of the rocket attacks, but
indicated Israel should make long-term concessions.

The two sides agreed to a 72-hour truce Monday — and Israel said it was
prepared to extend it. Hamas officials said they’d agree to an extension
only if progress is made in negotiations being held in Cairo.

Nearly 1,900 Palestinians have been killed in the fighting, with Gaza
officials saying three-quarters of the dead were civilians.

Israel says some 900 Hamas militants were among the dead. Sixty-four
Israeli soldiers and three civilians inside Israel have also been killed.

(3) Donors pressure Hague court (ICC) not to open Gaza war crimes inquiry

http://www.theguardian.com/law/2014/aug/18/hague-court-western-pressure-gaza-inquiry

Hague court under western pressure not to open Gaza war crimes inquiry

Potential ICC investigation into actions of both the IDF and Hamas in
Gaza has become a fraught political battlefield

Julian Borger, diplomatic editor

The Guardian, Monday 18 August 2014

The international criminal court has persistently avoided opening an
investigation into alleged war crimes in Gaza as a result of US and
other western pressure, former court officials and lawyers claim.

In recent days, a potential ICC investigation into the actions of both
the Israel Defence Forces and Hamas in Gaza has become a fraught
political battlefield and a key negotiating issue at ceasefire talks in
Cairo. But the question of whether the ICC could or should mount an
investigation has also divided the Hague-based court itself.

An ICC investigation could have a far-reaching impact. It would not just
examine alleged war crimes by the Israeli military, Hamas and other
Islamist militants in the course of recent fighting in Gaza that left
about 2,000 people dead, including women and children. It could also
address the issue of Israeli settlements in the Palestinian territories,
for which the Israeli leadership would be responsible.

The ICC's founding charter, the 1998 Rome statute (pdf), describes as a
war crime "the transfer, directly or indirectly, by the occupying power
of parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies".

Also at stake is the future of the ICC itself, an experiment in
international justice that occupies a fragile position with no
superpower backing. Russia, China and India have refused to sign up to
it. The US and Israel signed the accord in 2000 but later withdrew.

Some international lawyers argue that by trying to duck an
investigation, the ICC is not living up to the ideals expressed in the
Rome statute that "the most serious crimes of concern to the
international community as a whole must not go unpunished".

John Dugard, a professor of international law at the University of
Leiden, in the Netherlands, and a longstanding critic of Israel's human
rights record, said: "I think the prosecutor could easily exercise
jurisdiction. Law is a choice. There are competing legal arguments, but
she should look at the preamble to the ICC statute which says the
purpose of the court is to prevent impunity."

In an exchange of letters in the last few days, lawyers for the
Palestinians have insisted that the ICC prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, has
all the legal authority she needs to launch an investigation, based on a
Palestinian request in 2009. However, Bensouda is insisting on a new
Palestinian declaration, which would require achieving elusive consensus
among political factions such as Hamas, who would face scrutiny
themselves alongside the Israeli government. There is strong US and
Israeli pressure on the Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, not to pursue
an ICC investigation.

Western pressure on the ICC to stay away from the issue has caused deep
rifts within the prosecutor's office. Some former officials say the
Palestinians were misled in 2009 into thinking their request for a war
crimes investigation – in the wake of an earlier Israeli offensive on
Gaza, named Cast Lead – would remain open pending confirmation of
statehood. That confirmation came in November 2012 when the UN general
assembly (UNGA) voted to award Palestine the status of non-member
observer state, but no investigation was launched.

Bensouda initially appeared open to reviewing the standing Palestinian
request, but the following year issued a controversial statement (pdf)
saying the UNGA vote made no difference to the "legal invalidity" of the
2009 request.

Luis Moreno Ocampo, who was prosecutor at the time of the Palestinian
2009 declaration, backed Bensouda, saying in an email to the Guardian:
"If Palestine wants to accept jurisdiction, it has to submit a new
declaration."

But another former official from the ICC prosecutor's office who dealt
with the Palestinian declaration strongly disagreed. "They are trying to
hiding behind legal jargon to disguise what is a political decision, to
rule out competence and not get involved," the official said.

Dugard said Bensouda was under heavy pressure from the US and its
European allies. "For her it's a hard choice and she's not prepared to
make it," he argued. "But this affects the credibility of the ICC.
Africans complain that she doesn't hesitate to open an investigation on
their continent."

Moreno Ocampo took three years to make a decision on the status of the
2009 Palestinian request for an investigation, during which time he was
lobbied by the US and Israel to keep away. According to a book on the
ICC published this year, American officials warned the prosecutor that
the future of the court was in the balance.

According to the book, Rough Justice: the International Criminal Court
in a World of Power Politics, by David Bosco, the Americans suggested
that a Palestine investigation "might be too much political weight for
the institution to bear. They made clear that proceeding with the case
would be a major blow to the institution."

Although the US does not provide funding for the ICC, "Washington's
enormous diplomatic, economic and military power can be a huge boon for
the court when it periodically deployed in support of the court's work,"
writes Bosco, an assistant professor of international politics at
American University.

In his book, Bosco reports that Israeli officials held several
unpublicised meetings with Moreno Ocampo in The Hague, including a
dinner at the Israeli ambassador's residence, to lobby against an
investigation.

A former ICC official who was involved in the Palestinian dossier said:
"It was clear from the beginning that Moreno Ocampo did not want to get
involved. He said that the Palestinians were not really willing to
launch the investigation, but it was clear they were serious. They sent
a delegation with two ministers and supporting lawyers in August 2010
who stayed for two days to discuss their request. But Moreno Ocampo was
aware that any involvement would spoil his efforts to get closer to the US."

Moreno Ocampo denied that he had been influenced by US pressure. "I was
very firm on treating this issue impartially, but at the same time
respecting the legal limits," he said in an email on Sunday. "I heard
all the arguments. I received different Oxford professors who were
explaining the different and many times opposing arguments, and I
concluded that the process should … go first to the UN. They should
decide what entity should be considered a state."

He added: "Palestine was using the threat to accept jurisdiction to
negotiate with Israel. Someone said that if you have nine enemies
surrounding you and one bullet, you don't shoot, you try to use your
bullet to create leverage."

A spokeswoman for his successor, Fatou Bensouda, rejected allegations of
bias in the prosecutor's choice of investigations. "The ICC is guided by
the Rome statute and nothing else," she said. "Strict rules about
jurisdiction, about where and when ICC can intervene should be not be
deliberately misrepresented … Geographical and political consideration
will thus never form part of any decision making by the office."

The French lawyer representing the Palestinians, Gilles Devers, argued
that it was for the court's preliminary chamber, not the ICC's
prosecutor, to decide on the court's jurisdiction in the Palestinian
territories. Devers said negotiations were continuing among the
Palestinian parties on whether to file a new request for an
investigation, even though he believed it to be unnecessary in legal
terms. Ultimately, he said, the outcome would be determinedly politically.

"There is enormous pressure not to proceed with an investigation. This
pressure has been exerted on Fatah and Hamas, but also on the office of
the prosecutor," Devers said. "In both cases, it takes the form of
threats to the financial subsidies, to Palestine and to the
international criminal court."

Among the biggest contributors to the ICC budget are the UK and France,
which have both sought to persuade the Palestinians to forego a war
crimes investigation.

(4) Guardian compiles evidence of Israeli War Crimes in Gaza

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/mar/23/israel-gaza-war-crimes-guardian

Guardian investigation uncovers evidence of alleged Israeli war crimes
in Gaza

Palestinians claim children were used as human shields and hospitals
targeted during 23-day conflict

Clancy Chassay and Julian Borger

theguardian.com, Tuesday 24 March 2009 20.30 AEST

The Guardian has compiled detailed evidence of alleged war crimes
committed by Israel during the 23-day offensive in the Gaza Strip
earlier this year, involving the use of Palestinian children as human
shields and the targeting of medics and hospitals.

A month-long investigation also obtained evidence of civilians being hit
by fire from unmanned drone aircraft said to be so accurate that their
operators can tell the colour of the clothes worn by a target.

The testimonies form the basis of three Guardian films which add weight
to calls this week for a full inquiry into the events surrounding
Operation Cast Lead, which was aimed at Hamas but left about 1,400
Palestinians dead, including more than 300 children.

The Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) refused to respond directly to the
allegations made against its troops, but issued statements denying the
charges and insisted international law had been observed.

The latest disclosures follow soldiers' evidence published in the
Israeli press about the killing of Palestinian civilians and complaints
by soldiers involved in the military operation that the rules of
engagement were too lax.

Amnesty International has said Hamas should be investigated for
executing at least two dozen Palestinian men in an apparent bout of
score-settling with rivals and alleged collaborators while Operation
Cast Lead was under way.

Human rights groups say the vast majority of offences were committed by
Israel, and that the Gaza offensive was a disproportionate response to
Hamas rocket attacks. Since 2002, there have been 21 Israeli deaths by
Hamas rockets fired from Gaza, and during Operation Cast Lead there were
three Israeli civilian deaths, six Israeli soldiers killed by
Palestinian fire and four killed by friendly fire.

"Only an investigation mandated by the UN security council can ensure
Israel's co-operation, and it's the only body that can secure some kind
of prosecution," said Amnesty's Donatella Rovera, who spent two weeks in
Gaza investigating war crime allegations. "Without a proper
investigation there is no deterrent. The message remains the same: 'It's
OK to do these things, there won't be any real consequences'."

Some of the most dramatic testimony gathered by the Guardian came from
three teenage brothers in the al-Attar family. They describe how they
were taken from home at gunpoint, made to kneel in front of Israeli
tanks to deter Hamas fighters from firing, and sent by Israeli soldiers
into Palestinian houses to clear them. "They would make us go first so
if any fighters shot at them the bullets would hit us, not them,"
14-year-old Al'a al-Attar said.

Medics and ambulance drivers said they were targeted when they tried to
tend to the wounded; sixteen were killed. According to the World Health
Organisation, more than half of Gaza's 27 hospitals and 44 clinics were
damaged by Israeli bombs.

(5) Israel forestalls ICC War Crimes investigation by launching its own

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/gaza/11039636/Israeli-attacks-on-Gaza-families-must-be-investigated-as-war-crimes-say-human-rights-groups.html

Eight members of a Gaza family killed by Israeli artillery is one
possible war crime recorded by human rights groups

The remains of the Wahdan family house in Beit Hanoun Photo: Robert Tait

By Robert Tait, Beit Hanoun

7:00PM BST 17 Aug 2014

Whether the shell that killed eight members of the Wahdan family in
their home was fired randomly or deliberately targeted is unknown.

What is clear is that the Israeli army knew of the house and the people
who lived there. The three-storey structure in the Gaza town of Beit
Hanoun was pulverised to rubble during an Israeli artillery barrage on
the morning of July 26. The women, children and elderly people cowering
inside stood no chance under the cascade of masonry and stonework that
crashed down upon them. Only severed limbs and body parts have since
been recovered from the wreckage.

Human rights activists are pointing to the fate of the Wahdans as
evidence of possible war crimes committed by Israeli forces during the
offensive in Gaza that claimed nearly 2,000 Palestinian lives.

Campaigners say the latest conflict between Israel and Hamas, currently
stalled by a ceasefire, has decimated or even wiped out an unprecedented
number of families in the Palestinian territory. They are now trying to
gather the evidence of possible war crimes committed by Israeli forces.
Last week, Saeb Erekat, the Palestinian chief negotiator, told The
Telegraph that the Palestinian Authority was on the verge of signing the
Rome Statute and joining the International Criminal Court. If so, any
evidence gathered in Gaza could provide a basis for future legal action
against Israel.

"What is significant in this war compared to previous experience are the
heavy attacks on families," said Hamdi Shaqqura, deputy director of the
Palestinian Centre for Human Rights in Gaza City. "You have dozens of
families smashed. Sometimes no single family member is left. There are
hundreds of cases and every one is very significant."

Some 871 cases of homes being damaged or destroyed have been recorded,
resulting in 908 deaths - more than 90 per cent of them civilians,
according to Al-Mezan, another Palestinian human rights group.

Even in the context of such dizzying statistics, the Wahdans' story is
particularly poignant.

  Palestinians inspect the damage caused by an Israeli strike to the
Wahdan's house (AP)

It began soon after Israel's ground invasion of Gaza on July 17, when
troops took seven male members of the family to a facility at Erez
border crossing for interrogation.

The were released without charge after three days - strongly suggesting
that none were involved with Hamas or any other armed faction - but they
could not return home because of ferocious fighting taking place around
Beit Hanoun.

  A Palestinian holds the blood-stained ID of Hatem Abu Wahdan, 57, who
was killed along with other family members at a house in the Jebaliya
refugee camp that was hit by an Israeli strike, in the northern Gaza
Strip (AP)

That left the eight remaining members of the family alone in their
exposed home. Zaki Wahdan, 70, and his wife, Su'ad, 67, sheltered as
best they could along with their daughter-in-law, Baghdad, 51, and their
four grandchildren, Zeinab, 27, Somud, 22, Ahmed, 14 and Hussein, 10.
Their two-year-old great-granddaughter, Ghina, was also in the house.

The night before Israel declared a humanitarian ceasefire on July 26,
troops ordered them to not to use this respite to leave the home,
according to one relation. "I talked to them on the phone at nine
o'clock in the evening and the Israelis had left the area 10 minutes
before and told them not to move, to stay in the house," said Amin Zaki
Wahdan, 37, one of the men arrested but later released by Israeli
forces. When relatives returned to the house during the truce, they
found the building reduced to ruins.

  A Palestinian looks at damages of a house in the Jebaliya refugee camp
that was hit by an Israeli strike that killed several members of the Abu
Wahdan family, in the northern Gaza Strip (AP)

Al Mezan, the human rights group, confirmed it was treating the Wahdans'
case as a possible war crime. Mahmoud Abu Rahma, its communications and
international relations director, pointed out that houses used as
"civilian dwelling places" should be immune from harm. "We can say that
the first house was attacked wantonly and deliberately with the
knowledge that there were people inside. Direct attacks on houses are
grave breaches of international law and may amount to war crimes," added
Mr Abu Rahma.

  An elderly Palestinian woman sits crying after an Israeli military
strike hit a house, killing at least three members of the Wahdan family
in Jabalia, northern Gaza Strip (Getty)

The prospect of outside investigation of the conduct of Israeli forces
in Gaza has already caused concern within the country's government. Last
week, Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister, denounced the committee
appointed by the United Nations Human Rights Council to look into
possible war crimes.

The body's Canadian chairman, William Schabas, a professor of
international law at London's Middlesex University, is viewed as being
particularly biased against Israel. "The report of this committee has
already been written," said Mr Netanyahu.

Anticipating the accusations, the Israel Defence Forces announced that
its own committee, headed by Major General Noam Tibon, would investigate
dozens of "exceptional cases" of civilians being killed or harmed.
Joseph Shapira, Israel's state comptroller, also promised an inquiry
into the decision-making and conduct of the country's civilian and
military leadership during the Gaza offensive.

But human rights groups say that past experience allows little
confidence in Israel's willingness thoroughly to investigate allegations
of war crime levelled against its own forces.

(6) Israel Braces for War Crimes Inquiries on Gaza
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/15/world/middleeast/israel-braces-for-war-crimes-inquiries-on-gaza.html

By ISABEL KERSHNERAUG. 14, 2014

JERUSALEM — The fighting is barely over in the latest Gaza war, with a
five-day cease-fire taking hold on Thursday, but attention has already
shifted to the legal battlefield as Israel gears up to defend itself
against international allegations of possible war crimes in the
monthlong conflict.

Israel has excoriated the United Nations Human Rights Council over the
appointment of Prof. William Schabas, a Canadian expert in international
law, to head the council’s commission of inquiry for Israel’s military
operations in the Gaza Strip.

The broader struggle will be over what some experts describe as Israel’s
“creative” interpretation of international law for dealing with
asymmetric warfare in an urban environment. More than 1,900 Palestinians
were killed in the recent fighting, a majority of them believed to be
civilians, while on the Israeli side 64 soldiers and three civilians
were killed.

Israeli leaders view the Human Rights Council as hopelessly biased
against Israel and say statements made in the past by Professor Schabas
rule him out as a fair adjudicator. In one prime example, Professor
Schabas was filmed in New York almost two years ago saying Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was his “favorite” to be in the dock at the
International Criminal Court.

Assessing the Damage and Destruction in Gaza

The damage to Gaza’s infrastructure from the current conflict is already
more severe than the destruction caused by either of the last two Gaza
wars.

“The report of this committee has already been written,” Mr. Netanyahu
said this week. “They have nothing to look for here. They should visit
Damascus, Baghdad and Tripoli.”

Mr. Netanyahu has repeatedly accused Hamas of a “double war crime” for
targeting Israeli civilians with its rockets and, he says, using Gaza’s
civilians as a human shield for its activities.

Yuval Steinitz, Israel’s minister for strategic affairs, said that
paradoxically, the only way Professor Schabas could prove he was worthy
of the job would be by resigning from it.

Responding to the accusations by telephone from London, Professor
Schabas said Thursday: “Everybody in the world has opinions about Israel
and Palestine. I certainly do.”

Continue reading the main story

He added: “I was recruited for my expertise. I leave my own personal
views at the door, as a judge does.”

Rejecting assertions that he is “anti-Israeli,” he said he had lectured
in Israel often and was on the board of the Israel Law Review. “I don’t
think everyone in Israel agrees,” he said. “I would fit in well there.”

A similar Human Rights Council inquiry into the 2008-9 war in Gaza led
to the Goldstone Report. Named for Richard Goldstone, the South African
jurist who led that inquiry, the report said it found evidence of
potential war crimes committed by both Israel and Hamas. It accused
Israel of intentionally targeting civilians in Gaza as a matter of
policy, a blow that Mr. Netanyahu once described as a strategic challenge.

Mr. Goldstone later retracted that central accusation, writing in The
Washington Post, after Israeli investigators presented counterevidence,
“If I had known then what I know now, the Goldstone Report would have
been a different document.” Other members of the Goldstone panel stood
by the report.

In Israel’s latest aerial and ground campaign, several episodes already
stand out as likely focuses of international attention, including
several deadly Israeli strikes at or near United Nations schools in Gaza
where thousands of civilians were taking refuge, actions that the
secretary general of the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon, has denounced as
“outrageous, unacceptable and unjustifiable.”

Critics have also pointed to the Israeli military’s policy of bombing
family homes it said were being used by Hamas operatives or other groups
as “command and control centers” or for weapons storage, causing heavy
casualties among civilians, including many minors and women, despite a
system of issuing prior warnings. B’Tselem, an Israeli human rights
organization, asserted in a recent report that the practice violated the
international legal principles of distinction and proportionality,
calling into question the clear military nature of the targets and
whether the military gains were significant enough to justify the deaths
of civilians.

And questions have been raised about a particularly aggressive and
deadly Israeli assault on the southern Gaza Strip city of Rafah on Aug.
1 as Israeli forces pursued a Hamas squad they believed had captured a
soldier. Prof. Emanuel Gross, an Israeli expert in military law and a
former military judge, said in a recent interview that the firepower
used in Rafah to try to return one soldier did not seem justified,
morally or legally, and appeared to be “disproportionate.” (The soldier
was later declared killed in action.)

In a move that some Israelis hope will take the wind out of the Human
Rights Council inquiry and other potential ones by outside groups,
Israel’s attorney general and the military advocate general are setting
up an independent mechanism for investigating the events in Gaza, and
the state comptroller also plans an inquiry.

But the Israeli military is not waiting. Lt. Col. Eran Shamir-Borer,
head of the strategic affairs branch in the international law department
at the Military Advocate General’s Corps, said in an interview that a
recently established military committee of fact-finding teams,
independent of the chain of command and made up largely of reservists,
is already investigating certain cases and could have some preliminary
findings as early as Friday.

Speaking at military headquarters in Tel Aviv, Colonel Shamir-Borer said
that since Israel’s 2006 war in Lebanon, the army’s legal counselors
have become more involved in operational activity before and during
military campaigns, as well as in the aftermath, training commanders,
reviewing planned targets and deploying to the Gaza border to work with
commanders at the division level during the recent conflict.

“We know the law very well,” Colonel Shamir-Borer said, “but it is
always more complex than in the textbooks.”

“The modus operandi of our enemy,” he said, referring to Hamas, “is by
definition defying the laws of armed conflict.”

Colonel Shamir-Borer said that the planned bombing of homes was reviewed
house by house, based on intelligence and other considerations, and
guidelines were set for some of the attacks, for example, determining
that they could be carried out only at night, or with a drone to check
that the residents had evacuated.

Individual cases where many family members were nevertheless killed,
such as a July 13 airstrike on a home that killed 18 members of the
Batsh family and severely wounded Tayseer al-Batsh, the Hamas police
chief in Gaza, are now being examined. In each case the teams will
decide if a criminal investigation is warranted. At this stage, the
policy of targeting houses is not under review.

Colonel Shamir-Borer said his department had invited nongovernment
organizations to submit complaints and had also approached them.

“You know the international community is going to raise allegations,” he
said. “You need answers.”

A version of this article appears in print on August 15, 2014, on page
A3 of the New York edition with the headline: Israel Braces for War
Crimes Inquiries on Gaza.

(7) Israel furious as UN unveils Gaza probe team

Subject: MCS BLAST! Israel furious as UN unveils Gaza probe team From:
Debbie Menon <debbiemenon@gmail.com>

http://mycatbirdseat.com/2014/08/67690-israel-furious-as-un-unveils-gaza-probe-team/

August 13, 2014 at 12:17 pm

Israel lashed out on Tuesday after the UN Human Rights Council named the
man who will be running an inquiry into its Gaza offensive.

Canadian international lawyer William Schabas, who will head the
commission, is widely regarded in Israel as being hostile to the Jewish
state over reported calls to bring Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
before the International Criminal Court.

"This commission's anti-Israeli conclusions have already been written,
all it needs is a signature," railed foreign ministry spokesman Yigal
Palmor.

"For this commission the important thing is not human rights but the
rights of terrorist organisations like Hamas," he told AFP.

But in a series of interviews with the Israeli media, Schabas defended
himself against allegations of bias against the Jewish state.

"I've frequently lectured in Israel, at universities in Israel, I'm a
member of the editorial board of the Israel law review, I wouldn't do
those things if I was anti-Israel," he told public radio.

He challenged Palmor's assertion that the commission's findings were a
foregone conclusion.

"As far as I'm concerned they're not written at all, that's the whole
point of an investigation," he told the radio.

"Many of the questions we have to examine will deal with very precise
matters on which the generalities about the conflict don't provide any
insight.

"When we look at specific incidents in which... civilians were killed
during the conflict, there are issues about targeting, about
proportionality, each one of these has to be examined specifically." In
a second interview with Israel's army radio, he said that he would also
be looking into the actions of Palestinian militants.

"The mandate that the commission has been given doesn't specify this and
I think a reasonable interpretation would be that mandate requires you
to look at both sides," he said.

He said the commission's findings are to be published in March 2015.

Israel has long had stormy relations with the UNHRC.

In January 2012, it became the first country to refuse to attend a
periodic review of its human rights record.

And two months later, it cut all ties with the Geneva-based council
after it announced an inquiry into how West Bank settlements may be
infringing on Palestinians rights. Israel has accused the UNHRC of
routinely singling it out at its annual meetings, as well as passing a
number of anti-Israel resolutions.

(8) US networks remove reporters critical of Israeli attack on Gaza

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/07/19/medi-j19.html

By Barry Grey

19 July 2014

On two consecutive days this week, journalists reporting from the Gaza
war zone who evinced empathy for the Palestinians and less than
unquestioning support for Israel were removed by television network
executives.

NBC News' Ayman Mohyeldin, an award-winning Egyptian-born journalist who
provided on-the-spot coverage of the Israeli invasion of Gaza in
2008-2009 and had distinguished himself for his objective reporting on
the current Israeli war, was suddenly pulled from the region on Thursday.

He was removed after he described via social media and video the murder
Wednesday of four Palestinian children by Israeli gunboats as the youth,
between the ages of 9 and 11 and all from the same family, played soccer
on a Gaza beach near hotels used by foreign journalists.

Mohyeldin wrote movingly of the tragic deaths, tweeting, "4 Palestinian
kids killed in a single Israeli airstrike. Minutes before they were
killed by our hotel, I was kicking a ball with them." He also sent
photos and a video of the devastated parents.

While NBC has given no public explanation for Mohyeldin's banishment,
numerous reports have referred to unnamed network executives citing
"security concerns" as the reason. However, the Huffington Post and
other sources have suggested the immediate trigger for his ouster was a
tweet he posted, and subsequently removed, questioning a US State
Department spokesperson who blamed the Palestinian Islamist movement
that rules Gaza, Hamas, for the death of the four youth.

The tweet stated: "The US State Department Spokesperson just said that
Hamas is ultimately responsible for Israel shelling and killing 4 boys
who were cousins aged 9-11 because Hamas didn't accept the ceasefire.
Discuss among yourselves."

Reporting Thursday on the removal of Mohyeldin, Pulitzer Prize-winning
journalist Glenn Greenwald, who has collaborated closely with Edward
Snowden in exposing the National Security Agency's secret and illegal
mass spying, cited a report last week by Mohyeldin in which he said that
"you can understand why some human rights organizations call Gaza 'the
world's largest outdoor prison.'" In his news account, Mohyeldin went on
to say: "One of the major complaints and frustrations among many people
is that this is a form of collective punishment. You have 1.7 million
people in this territory, now being bombarded, with really no way out."

Greenwald noted that right-wing and pro-Israel web sites have repeatedly
denounced Mohyeldin as a "Hamas spokesman" who spouts "pro-Hamas rants."

In NBC's Nightly News broadcast on Wednesday, Mohyeldin was inexplicably
absent, and his report on the killing of the Palestinian youth was
fronted instead by NBC chief foreign correspondent Richard Engel,
reporting from Tel Aviv. Engel, who has unswervingly mouthed State
Department propaganda from every recent war zone, including Libya and
Syria, has been assigned to replace Mohyeldin in Gaza.

On Friday, CNN removed correspondent Diana Magnay from her post covering
the Israeli invasion of Gaza. She was banished in retaliation for a
tweet in which she described as "scum" Israelis who were cheering the
bombing of Gaza and threatening to attack her if her report diverged
from the Israeli government line.

Magnay appeared on CNN Thursday, reporting from a hill overlooking the
Israel-Gaza border. As she was reporting, Israelis could be heard
cheering as missiles were fired at the Palestinian territory. After the
live report, Magnay tweeted: "Israelis on hill above Sderot cheer as
bombs land on Gaza; threaten our car if I say a word wrong. Scum."

The tweet was quickly removed and a CNN spokeswoman issued a craven
apology, followed by the announcement that Magnay had been reassigned to
Moscow.

These incidents underscore the ironclad and rigidly enforced
self-censorship practiced by the corporate-controlled media, which
hardly bother any longer to disguise their role as purveyors of
government lies and propaganda. Any evidence of sympathy for the plight
of the Palestinians, any hint of criticism of Israeli war crimes is met
with instantaneous banishment, generally followed by blacklisting.

The removal of the two reporters, particularly Mohyeldin, is intended as
a warning to any other journalists who retain some commitment to
journalistic principles and respect for the truth to keep their mouths
shut. Under no circumstances can the people be given access to an honest
and objective account of what is taking place in Gaza.

For that, one must rely not on the corporate media, but on the organ of
the international working class, the World Socialist Web Site.