18 Novermber 2012
By El-Hajj Mauri' Saalakhan
Assalaamu Alaikum (Greetings of Peace):
In this release we have some very important
information re: the ongoing crisis in Occupied
Palestine. Please review the material thoroughly, and
then share it with others.
CONTENTS:
1. January 2010 interview of Professor Francis Boyle,
regarding Gaza.
2. A Palestinian Return Centre (PRC) release on the
Gaza Seige - accompanied by a very disturbing
photograph that readers should prepare themselves for.
4. A MUST SEE Press TV Debate on this latest crisis in
Gaza (Occupied Palestine).
----------------------------
The report that follows is an excellent example of
managed media. The intent is to give the reader the
perception that the report is neutral;
while words and paragraphs are strewn together in such
a way as to either paint Israel (the aggressor) as the
victim, who's only
"defending" itself; or to sow confusion
and then leave it up to
enslaved politicians - and prominent apologists
within the mainstream media -to fill
in the predictable blanks.
"Militants in the Gaza Strip pounded southern Israel
with rocket fire..."
This January 2010
interview of Professor Francis A. Boyle - an
American expert of international law - is chocked full
of valuable information. It will help the reader place
the escalating crisis gripping Gaza right now into
more clear perspective. - MS
An Important Look Back into Gaza's
Genocidal History
"What we're seeing in Gaza now,
is pretty much slow-motion genocide against the 1.5
million Palestinians who live in Gaza.... If you read
the 1948 Genocide Convention, it clearly says that one
instance of genocide is the deliberate infliction of
conditions of life calculated to bring about the
physical destruction of a people in whole or in part,"
stated Francis A. Boyle, professor of International
Law at the University of Illinois in Champaign.
"And that's exactly what has been
done to Gaza, since the imposition of the blockade by
Israel; then the massacre of 1,400 Palestinians,
two-thirds of whom were civilians, in Operation Cast
Lead. And that also raises the element in the Genocide
Convention, of murder, torture, and things of that
nature."
Boyle spoke to {EIR} on Jan. 15, 2010, giving his
assessment of Gaza, one year after the Israeli
attacks. He stressed that he was speaking only for
himself.
While the Israelis stopped the artillery bombardment
and air strikes just before the inauguration of
President Barack Obama in 2009, the deaths of
Palestinians continue-from lack of medicines,
infrastructure, clean water, and everything else that
the world community-as shown in emergency aid to
Haiti-{knows} is necessary to sustain human life.
But no international action has been taken to stop
genocide in Gaza-despite the finding by the UN's
Goldstone Report that Israel committed war crimes in
the wanton destruction of civilian infrastructure, and
in the killing of civilians, and despite the Jan. 21,
2010 letter by more than 50 members of the U.S.
Congress to President Obama that due to "the unabated
suffering of Gazan civilians," he must press to end
the Israeli blockade.
Similarly, according to Turkish Prof. Bulent Aras,
there is almost no hope for a peace agreement, or for
ending the growing isolation of Israel from the
international community, unless Gaza is opened and
reconstruction begins. Aras was speaking on a Jan. 14
conference call, sponsored by the Turkish SETA and New
America Foundations in Washington, D.C. He was
addressing the recent tensions between Israel and
Turkey after the Israeli Foreign Ministry insulted the
Turkish ambassador, and on the collapse of the
Turkish-mediated Israel/Syria negotiations, which
ended with the Israeli attacks on Gaza.
According to Boyle, the question of the Gaza opening
must be immediately taken up by the Obama
Administration. "We need all the openings to Gaza, the
crossings from Egypt and Israel, opened immediately.
{Massive} provision of humanitarian assistance,
medical supplies to Gaza-exactly what Obama's doing
today, with respect to Haiti-I support that! But why
aren't they doing it to Gaza? You have 1.5 million
people over there.
"Unless this step is undertaken, certainly on Gaza,
relieving the people of Gaza with massive humanitarian
relief supplies, I really think we're going to see a
dog-and-pony show," being run by the Obama White
House, and the sending of Sen. George Mitchell to the
region.
So far, what the U.S. has done is, "once again,
provid[ed] diplomatic cover for Israel to stall and
delay its objectives, and meanwhile, they continue to
steal Palestinian lands, destroy their orchards,
destroy their olive fields, and build more
settlements. This has been going on, right from the
beginning of the Middle East peace negotiations in
1991,
when I was legal advisor to the Palestinians and the
Syrians at that time."
But, "miracles can always happen: Look at the darkest
days of the apartheid regime in South Africa, and all
of that collapsed," said Boyle. "Well, here we have
another apartheid regime, Israel. It's apartheid to
its core, it always has been. This whole situation
could turn around and collapse very quickly-I just
don't know. But I'll hangin there, certainly, with the
Palestinians."
And recent events in the field of international law
lead Boyle to say that, as in the case of Chilean
fascist Pinochet, law may catch up with Israeli
criminals.
- No Immunity Under Nuremberg
Codes -
Few international figures can speak in as much detail
about the decades-long fight against Israeli war
crimes, and the political blocks to prosecuting them,
than Professor Boyle, who has led successful campaigns
at the United Nations to bring war criminals-for
example, those who committed crimes against the
citizens of Bosnia-Herzogovina in
the 1990s Balkan War-before an international tribunal.
Even before "Operation Cast Lead," Boyle had proposed
that the UN General Assembly establish an
International Criminal Tribunal for Israel (ICTI) as a
"subsidiary organ" under UN Charter Article 22.
Boyle's proposal has been endorsed by Malaysia and
Iran, and supported in General Assembly debates by
some dozen Arab and Muslim nations.
His work on bringing Israelis to justice for war
crimes goes back much further-to the 1982 massacres at
the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Lebanon,
conducted under the watch of top Israeli officials
like Gen. Ariel Sharon and Gen. Amos Yaron.
Boyle told {EIR}, "I think that I was probably the
first lawyer ever to file a lawsuit against a major
Israeli war criminal-that was back in about 1986, when
I represented several women who were next of kin of
the victims of the massacre of Sabra and Shatila, and
I sued General Yaron, whose forces were occupying the
Sabra and Shatila camps, and the whole massacre took
place under his direction and control."
"I sued him ... about 1986. Eventually I lost the
lawsuit, when the Reagan Administration entered the
lawsuit through the State Department, and claimed that
Yaron, since he was being admitted to the country and
accredited as Israel's military attache@aa to
Washington - which we tried to stop, and indeed, we
held up for quite some time - had diplomatic
privileges and immunities, could not be sued."
"I dealt with that issue, saying that under the
Nuremberg principles, there are no privileges and
immunities in the commission of war crimes and crimes
against humanity." But the court decided that because
Yaron got a "formal certification" by the Reagan
Administration, "this was a political question and the
Court could not do anything to the contrary."
But that was not the end of it.
Since then, he has followed "all the lawsuits against
Israeli war criminals" internationally, "and they've
really taken off, and they will take off" further. In
the U.S. he says, "because of the pretty much Zionist
control and domination of the American judiciary, none
of these lawsuits have gotten anywhere," he says, but
"abroad, they are making progress.... "
"I advise the Belgian lawyers.
They filed another lawsuit, 20 years later [in 2002],
against Yaron, Sharon, Elie Hobeika, and [Gen. Rafael]
Eitan for the massacre at Sabra and Shatila," which
was a criminal case.
Boyle explained that the 2002
case came to an end {only after the Belgian law was
changed by the Parliament under pressure}-because
someone else had sued U.S. Defense Secretary Donald
Rumsfeld under the same law. Rumsfeld threatened
Belgium and NATO unless that law was rescinded, and
Parliament killed it.
"But, at this point, it doesn't matter: The genie is
out of the bottle. Twenty-five years ago, or so, when
I filed that lawsuit [over Sabra and Shatila], there
weren't too many lawyers qualified to do that work.
Today, with the expansion of the human rights
community, you have all sorts of lawyers qualified to
do that work, and they're doing it."
Asked about recent arrest
warrants issued in Britain against Israeli officials,
Boyle exclaimed, "That's starting now! They're going
after them in Britain; they're going after them in
Belgium.... So, I think, eventually, we're going to
get one of these people, just like the human rights
lawyers in Britain got General Pinochet. Indeed, now
we know, that before Israeli government officials
travel abroad, they have to get legal advice as to
where they can travel-which is good."
Unfortunately, they can still
pretty much freely travel here to the United States!
And that's all they really care about. "But they're
really in a sort of pariah status now, in many other
countries, especially in Europe. And that will
continue, for sure."
- Open Gaza Now; End Apartheid
-
Nearly 30 years after Boyle's first lawsuit, U.S.
policy still gives Israel impunity for war crimes,
beginning with Gaza.
"In the Obama Administration, they are continuing to
aid and abet the genocidal Israeli policies against
the 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza," Boyle told {EIR}.
Just recently, the U.S. "pressured the Egyptians to
build a steel wall on the border of Gaza, to cut off
Gaza, to stop the tunnels that were bringing food,
relief supplies, medicines, and everything else to the
people," he revealed. And it was done with the
assistance of U.S. Army engineers.
This "makes a mockery of the
claim by the Obama Administration and the alleged
efforts by Senator Mitchell, to reconvene the Middle
East peace negotiations," he said. And
unless Mitchell and the Obama Administration are
prepared to do something-immediately-to stop the war
crimes in Gaza, then the mission will be just another
"dog-and-pony show."
"When President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton
called for Netanyahu to freeze the settlements, and
Mitchell did, too, Netanyahu stood up to them and
forced them to back down. So-I'm not questioning
Senator Mitchell's good faith and intentions and
experience-but if Netanyahu has already successfully
stood him down on the settlements, how is he going to
get Netanyahu to do anything?
"Secondly, how is he possibly
going to engage in any type of good faith negotiations
between Israel and Palestine, brokering them, when he,
Senator Mitchell, Obama, and Clinton, are working with
the Israelis and the Egyptians, to starve 1.5 million
Palestinians? How can this be done?"
According to Boyle, Obama had already decided on the
track of "toeing the line" for Israel during the 2008
campaign, when in response to Republican John McCain's
claim that he was "soft" on supporting Israel, Obama
promised Jewish voters in Florida that he would
appoint Rahm Emanuel as his chief of
staff.
"Now, Emanuel is an agent of the
AIPAC [American Israel Public Affairs Committee],
which, in turn, is an agent of the Israeli
government.... [David] Axelrod is a
Zionist; Dennis Ross is now at the
White House, he's a Zionist.... [Most of] the cast of
characters there in the White House ... are Zionists,"
Boyle said.
"Fortunately, Senator Mitchell, in charge of these
negotiations, is not. But I really don't know how much
freedom Senator Mitchell has to do anything under
these circumstances."
- The Two-State Solution -
There are international actions in the works to use
every possible avenue to stop the war crimes against
the Palestinians, and Boyle is involved in many of
them.
"Right after Operation Cast Lead ended, I did advise
Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian President," says Boyle,
"to send in a declaration, under Article 12, paragraph
3, of the Rome Statute for the International
[Criminal] Court, accepting the jurisdiction of the
Court, and requesting prosecution of the Israelis,
high-level Israeli officials, for what they did to the
people of Gaza. And President Abbas did do this....
"Just recently the ICC prosecutor, [Luis] Moreno-Ocampo,
did make a public statement to the effect that he is
investigating this, for two reasons: 1) to determine,
do the Palestinians have sufficient government and
state capacity to make this declaration; and then, 2)
were war crimes and crimes against humanity committed
by Israel against the
Palestinians part of Operation Cast Lead?
"That statement by Moreno-Ocampo was [issued] before
the Goldstone Report came out, and Goldstone
determined that, in fact, Israel had committed war
crimes and crimes against the Palestinians.... "Right
now, as we speak, the Council of Foreign Ministers of
the League of Arab States has proposed a resolution to
be submitted to the Security Council for Palestine to
be admitted as a UN member-state, with the 1967
boundaries. "
Admission to the UN is done by
the General Assembly, but it must be upon
recommendation by the Security Council. The problem
there, is, of course, it could be subject to a veto by
the Obama Administration. I don't know what position
they are going to take on this: I would hope they are
going to abstain. Certainly, the votes for the
admission of Palestine to the United Nations are
there.
"Right now, today, the State of Palestine is
recognized bilaterally {dejure} by about 126 states.
It has all the rights of a UN member-state, except the
right to vote; it has state membership in the League
of Arab States, the Islamic Council Organization [ICO],
and then, also, in the advisory proceedings by the
World Court on Israel's [Separation] Wall,
the State of Palestine was invited to participate in a
state capacity.
"So, that is another initiative. Now, the problem is,
Israel is claiming, fatuously, that somehow, this is
going to interfere with the peace process. Well,
first, right now, there is no peace process. But,
second, this is ridiculous, because if Palestine is
admitted to the United Nations with the 1967
boundaries, we will have two states at the UN: We will
have Israel and we will have Palestine, and we will
have the [UN Resolution] 242 boundaries. Even
Netanyahu has recently stated that he is favor of two
states, {mirabile dictu}! Obama has stated he's in
favor of two states. Even Bush said he was in favor of
two states!
"This would be - as I saw it originally in my advice
to President Abbas - a way to produce two states, for
two people, living in peace and both bound by the
requirements of the United Nations Charter for the
peaceful resolution of international disputes, that
would overcome the fact that there are no Middle East
peace negotiations going on right now. So, those are
three initiatives, I want to have taken myself."
Boyle has a fourth
initiative, which is gathering international steam -
disinvestment.
"Back in 2000, I did call for the establishment of
the Israeli
disinvestment campaign, and have worked quite hard to
push that. That's a grassroots movement.
Certainly in my lifetime, which goes back to civil
rights for African Americans,
the only progressive change we have ever seen in this
country is by a grassroots movement by the common,
ordinary, everyday people of America.
And, as of 2000, the Palestinians did not have a
grassroots movement in their support, so I decided to
set one off, and it's doing quite well. Indeed, it's
take off worldwide."
- Dershowitz Accused of War
Crimes -
On one issue-the Jewish
settlements in the occupied lands-Israel has {already}
been found, by an international court, to be in
violation of international law. This has
caused a firestorm of reaction from Israel, and its
apologists, like Harvard's Alan Dershowitz. But, Boyle
and a number of other American human rights advocates
have taken Dershowitz on, and are ready to do it
again.
The settlements are "clearly illegal and criminal,"
said Boyle. "All the settlements, as the World Court
ruled in the advisory opinion on the [Separation]
Wall, all these settlements violate the Fourth Geneva
Convention, and a violation of the Fourth Geneva
Convention is a war crime. All these so-called
settlers are committing war crimes, except the
children, who are obviously not old enough to
formulate a criminal intent.
"Indeed, Alan Dershowitz began attacking the World
Court for this ruling and attacking their credibility,
and this, that, and the other.
"Well, Dershowitz is not a trained international
lawyer; he's not a trained human rights lawyer. I
debated him once, and he sort of gratuitously conceded
that I was the expert on these subjects. "But in any
event, what Dershowitz was not aware of, was that in
the advisory committee proceedings, the American
judge, Thomas Buergenthal, {who is a
Holocaust survivor, himself}, joined the ruling-he
dissented against a lot of other things by the World
Court [International Court of Justice] - but Judge
Buergenthal ruled that the settlements violate the
Fourth Geneva Convention. And to Judge Buergenthal's
credit -I've known him for many years; I have a lot of
respect and admiration for him - he
made this ruling.
"So, in other words, Dershowitz was attacking the
integrity of a Holocaust survivor. But of course, that
doesn't surprise me: He attacked [Prof.] Norman
Finkelstein's mother; he also attacked Prof. Israel
Shahak, one of the leaders of the peace movement in
Israel, himself a Holocaust survivor, unfortunately,
no longer with us, but a great man.
"I've dealt with [Shahak], I have great respect, and
indeed, he was going to have a lecture tour here in
the United States, in, I guess, the Fall of 1990, and
he was coming to speak in Champaign, [Ill.], and the
organizers of his lecture tour asked me if I would put
him up in my home as my guest, in order to conserve on
expenses, and I agreed. And I was
greatly looking forward again to meeting Professor
Shahak.... But as you know, with the Gulf crisis,
Professor Shahak decided to cancel his lecture tour
and stay home with his own people, which was certainly
understandable.
"Dershowitz couldn't care less. Whatever kind of
outright character assassination he has to apply to
anyone, even Holocaust survivors like Judge
Buergenthal, Professor Shahak, Norman Finkelstein's
mother, it doesn't bother Dershowitz. Indeed, my
understanding is, he's trying to run to become
President of Israel, to take Peres's place. Well,
fine, it would be great to get him out of Harvard Law
School - my dis-alma mater! - and ship him over to
Israel with all the other war criminals over there. In
fact, I say that, because Dershowitz admitted,
publicly, that he is part of a Mossad committee that
authorized the assassination of Palestinians.
"You can find that article on counterpunch.org, by
Prof. [Liquat Ali] Khan. Well, the Palestinians are
all protected persons under the Fourth Geneva
Convention, and for Dershowitz to authorize their
murder is a war crime. So, Dershowitz is a {prima
facie} war criminal, who should be prosecuted himself.
"And there he is, teaching at the Harvard Law School,
and advocating torture, crimes against humanity, war
crimes against the Palestinians. As you know, he said,
`Well, we should just be obliterating their villages.
You know, if they do this, there's a terror bombing
here, we [should] destroy one of their villages.' And,
of course, Dershowitz also advocates torture here, in
America. The guy's shameless.
"I remember, [when] I started [at Harvard], Dershowitz
started as an assistant professor, and his first big
case was defending a pornographic film star in `Deep
Throat.' Dershowitz likes to present himself as some
great defender of the First Amendment.... Well, as
Catherine McKinnon has, I think, taught us all,
pornography is a form of violence against
women: It's a human rights matter. So, it doesn't
surprise me that Dershowitz started his career
defending pornographers and pornography, and was and
still is greatly proud of it-and now he moves on to
defending war crimes, crimes against humanity,
genocide, and in addition, over the years, became a
war criminal himself.
"But the sum of it is, he's still teaching there at
Harvard Law School. So, I hope he goes back to Israel
and becomes President, sure! Be great to see him go:
Bon voyage."
------------------------------------
A note of
caution on what you're about to see
I don't want the photo
below to take anyone by surprise, so I'm going to warn
you in advance that it is disturbingly graphic. It
immediately brought tears to my eyes when I saw it. I
had to walk away for a few moments, and then ask
myself, do you really want to include this photo in
your release.
This child was a living
soul...and somebody's baby. Some may wonder, why would
you forward such a disturbing photo through your
listserve, Saalakhan? I will answer that question with
a page out of history.
In August 1955, a 14 year
African American male by the name of
Emmett Louis Till [please google his
name] was brutally murdered while visiting the deep
south because he allegedly whistled at a white
woman. Young Emmitt was so savagely beaten (before
being dumped in the Mississippi River) that his face
was totally disfigured, and his mother couldn't
recognize him.
When the time came for his
funeral, his mother courageously insisted on an open
casket - and even allowed national media to publish
pictures of Emmett's mangled remains - so that the
world could see what happened to her son! The murder
of Emmitt Till, and the subsequent funeral (which was
attended by an overflow multitude of people), sent
shock waves throughout the world and served as a
catalyst for the Civil Rights Movement.
It is for this reason that I
include the following photo of a Palestinian mother's
child, who may have been used for target practice by a
different type of two-legged beast masquerading as a
human being (than the ones who used to roam America's
old south). If the photo of this innocent child can
shock more of us into action, than perhaps some good
can come out of this horrific adversity.
May ALLAH comfort and fortify
this young child's family; and may he (or she) be a
forerunner for them through the gates of Paradise.
Ameen - MS
Add Comments