Israel Obstructs Human Rights Probe

From the Times:

Israel has refused to cooperate, depriving his team access to military sources and victims of Hamas rockets. ... [T]the chief barrier remains the lack of a court with clear jurisdiction to hear any resulting cases stemming from the investigation into Israel's three-week offensive in Gaza which ended in January...

Though the AP report claims to be looking at Hamas as well as Israeli human rights violations, no serious observer sees an equivalence. Israel is the leading terror state in the region.

Palestinian Authority Veering into Authoritarianism

As Palestinians endure a state of constant siege and wanton killing, the Palestinian Authority (PA) is drawing condemnation for its despicable turn to authoritarianism, with the support of Israel and the United States.

It's is an old story. Arafat was a corrupt, Messianic boss trolling through the carnage of Israeli terror, though he did manage to keep up the resistance to the militaristic Israeli forces over decades. [Above is Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad at the opening ceremony of the Presidential Guards College in the West Bank city of Jericho, March 2009.]

Ben White reports in The Electronic Intifada:

Last week, less than two weeks after I had talked with him in his an-Najah University faculty office, Abdel Sattar Qassem was arrested by the Palestinian Preventive Security forces in Nablus, occupied West Bank.

Qassem is a 60-year-old professor of political science, and has been at an-Najah University since 1980. Imprisoned several times by the Israeli occupation, he is the author of dozens of books and papers, as well as hundreds of articles, on Palestinian politics and Islamic thought. But Qassem is also an eloquent and prominent critic of the Palestinian Authority (PA), and he has been arrested, and targeted by politically-motivated attacks, on a number of previous occasions.

The most recent of these was in January of this year, when his car was set alight. According to a news report from the Palestinian news agency, Ma'an, claim of responsibility was circulated by an unknown group who accused Qassem of being a ‘mouthpiece for the Iranian and the Syrian regimes.’ As reported by Asharq al-Awsat, Qassem pointed out how the statement was a ‘hoax,’ and thus a cover for individuals who did not want to openly identify themselves. The attack was condemned by a variety of public figures ‘in the harshest possible words,’ according to Ma'an.

This time, the official line is that his arrest was a civil, criminal case, the result of litigation proceedings against Qassem by two figures within the PA's security forces. The Palestinian Information Center reports that Qassem, who according to his family was arrested hours after he gave an interview to al-Aqsa TV to discuss the shooting of West Bank Hamas leader Hamid al-Bitawi, insists that the charges are groundless and politically motivated.

Speaking to me on the telephone after his release, Qassem noted: ‘It was evident that they didn't want to arrest me on a political basis, so they decided to fabricate something against me. Last Thursday, in court, there were many lawyers trying to represent me, because they feel like this is a national issue. They see that this is intimidation, not a genuine civil case.’

The attempts to intimidate a critic of the Palestinian Authority into silence is disturbing, but is only one incident in a growing trend. The Ramallah-based political leadership, dominated by Fatah, and the PA security forces, are becoming increasingly authoritarian, encouraging a culture of militarized policing and a lack of respect for human rights and the rule of law.

Now, nonviolent resistance leaders against the Israeli occupation like Sami Awad, based in Bethlehem, are saying that they ‘have to be ready to face any injustice even if caused by our own people, within the PA.’ ...

Meanwhile, the Israeli military continues to invade PA-controlled areas, particularly at night, an arrangement which was actually a joint Palestinian-Israeli agreement. Moreover, while a weary Palestinian population is grateful for small economic upturns in their occupied cities, they are well aware that the PA's law and order focus is a welcome part of Israel's strategy in the West Bank; the BBC noted in December last year how the Israeli army was pleased with the 'good job' Palestinian forces were doing.

One of the reasons for Israel's complimentary report card is the extent to which PA forces have been arresting members of groups who oppose the official 'peace process,' and in particular, detaining those who are either openly, or simply suspected, members and supporters of Hamas. According to the International Middle East Media Center, estimates give the number of detainees in Palestinian security forces' custody at between 500 to 600, many of whom have had no trial.

Israel, Detached from Reality, Devolves into a Neo-McCarthyite State

Update: Obama can't afford to continue Bush's Israel policy

Israel should know that reckless, neocon militarism will result in devastation for all concerned.

Perhaps the worst crime that a government or movement can commit today is to come forward with a peace proposal overwhelmingly supported by the world community.

Ask Hamas and Hezbollah.

Read Patrick Cockburn's Has Anything Changed Since Sabra and Chatila?
In Israel, Detachment From Reality is the Norm for another sober analysis of the sickness in domestic Israel.

At first I thought that little had changed since Sabra and Chatila. Once again there were the same tired and offensive excuses that Israel was somehow not to blame. Hamas was using civilians as human shields, and in any case – this argument produced more furtively –two-thirds of people in Gaza had voted for Hamas so they deserved whatever happened to them.

But on returning to Jerusalem 10 years after I was stationed here as The Independent's correspondent between 1995 and 1999 I find that Israel has changed significantly for the worse. There is far less dissent than there used to be and such dissent is more often treated as disloyalty. ...

Intolerance of dissent has grown and may soon get a great deal worse. Benjamin Netanyahu, who helped bury the Oslo accords with the Palestinians when he was last prime minister from 1996 to 1999, is likely to win the Israeli election on 10 February. The only issue still in doubt is the extent of the gains of the extreme right.

The views of these were on display this week as Avigdor Lieberman, the chairman of the Ysrael Beitenu party, which, according to the polls will do particularly well in the election, was supporting the isqualification of two Israeli Arab parties from standing in the election. 'For the first time we are examining the boundary between loyalty and disloyalty,' he threatened their representatives. 'We'll deal with you like we dealt with Hamas.'

Last year as the Free Gaza Movement was running the illegal Israili blockade to ship in humantiarian supplies, I read the comments in Haaretz. Comments like 'let them drown' and 'sink them" are common.

UN investigator Richard Falk is the focus of a piece today in Haaretz, UN human rights official: Gaza evokes memories of Warsaw Ghetto, and the comments are not much better.

But check out the piece:

There is evidence that Israel committed war crimes during its 22-day campaign in the Gaza Strip and there should be an independent inquiry, UN investigator Richard Falk said Thursday.

The mental anguish of the civilians who suffered the assault is so great that the entire population of Gaza could be seen as casualties, said Falk, UN special rapporteur on human rights in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Falk, speaking by phone from his home in California, said compelling evidence that Israel's actions in Gaza violated international humanitarian law required an independent investigation into whether they amounted to war crimes.

I believe that there is the prima facie case for reaching that conclusion,’ he told a Geneva news conference.

Falk said Israel had made no effort to allow civilians to escape the fighting.

‘To lock people into a war zone is something that evokes the worst kind of international memories of the Warsaw Ghetto, and sieges that occur unintentionally during a period of wartime,’ Falk, who is Jewish, said, referring to the starvation and murder of Warsaw's Jews by Nazi Germany in World War II.

Israel has approached the brink of insanity and President Obama must put a halt to this madness through action, specifically withholding American military, economic and diplomatic support until Israel, an outlaw actor now, joins the community of nations and begins reparations to the Palestinian people.

See also Soldiers kill father and 4-year-old son and wound other family members in their home, a-Zeitun neighborhood, Gaza City for a typical report from Gaza under Israeli occupation and attack.

Blind support of militarism, Israeli or otherwise, is wrong

Update: Rights group: Israel uses white phosphorus in Gaza
Sunday, January 11, 2009 3:41 PM EST
The Associated Press By JASON KEYSER Associated Press Writer
JERUSALEM (AP) — Human Rights Watch said Sunday that Israel's military has fired artillery shells with the incendiary agent white phosphorus into Gaza and a doctor there said the chemical was suspected in the case of 10 burn victims who had skin peeling off their faces and bodies.

This is what Rep. Tammy Baldwin and others are supporting. It's wrong, period.

Reform Dem has an insightful piece out.

Yesterday Representative Tammy Baldwin (D-Madison) voted for a resolution that unconditionally supports Israel's attack on Gaza, and places full blame for both the attack and the resulting civilian deaths on Hamas. The resolution passed overwhelmingly.

The lessons of the Vietnam War, the illegal invasion of Iraq, one can go on, are lost on today's Congress, most strikingly on congressional Democrats.

The thing about war is that it is an utterly destructive act and should be avoided whenever possible, you know?

Most Democrats who voted for the 2003 invasion of Iraq know this truism, but voted for the war anyway out of perceived political convenience.

Now Rep. Tammy Baldwin and most Democrats are making the same mistake on Israeli militarism of the same stripe.

Baldwin is a particular disappointment because we know damn well that she knows better but chooses political convenience over the lives of innocent Palestinian families (and actually Israel's long-range security) out of a cynical political calculation.

SOP? Sure, but one expects better out of Baldwin.

Media Blacks Out Israel's Aggression

To listen to corporate American media, Israel's illegal blockade of Gaza, its illegal collective punishment of human beings who live in Gaza, and its illegal ground war do not matter.

The only question is will this ground war cost too much: For Israel?

The same timid, unthinking analysis by the American media that led up to the Iraq War (an illegal war of aggression similarly based upon an array of fabrications and distortions) is on display as the 1,000s of casualties pile up in Gaza.

The United Nations Security Council has scheduled emergency consultations to address Israeli aggression: Its relevancy is, well, less than certain. That the overwhelming number of nations in the world, and the UN itself, condemn Israeli human rights violations thus far has not resulted in any anything approaching substantial influence in this sordid affair.