Probe Urged into whether Mofaz ordered 'War Crimes'

<snip>

"The Israeli Attorney General has been urged to launch a criminal investigation into whether Shaul Mofaz, a leading prime ministerial candidate, ordered "war crimes" to be committed against Palestinians when he was the military's chief of staff, British The Independent reported Monday.

A leading Israeli law professor has written to justice officials, calling for the investigation into claims – highlighted by The Independent last month – that during a briefing to army officers in May 2001, after the start of the second Palestinian uprising, Mr Mofaz ordered a daily "quota" of Palestinian deaths.

David Kretzmer, emeritus professor of international law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, says that accounts of the briefing by Mr Mofaz give rise "to a grave suspicion" that he "committed serious offences, some of which at least, fall into the category of war crimes".

The letter to the Attorney General, Menachem Mazuz, refers to a book by two Israeli journalists, Raviv Drucker and Ofer Shelah, which says that Mr Mofaz, after ensuring he was not being officially recorded, called for a Palestinian death toll of 70 per day.

The Shelah/Drucker book, Boomerang: The Failure Of Leadership In The Second Intifada, says that while Mr Mofaz's alleged instruction caused disquiet among some senior officers, a Hebron district commander said that the subsequent fatal shooting of a Palestinian policeman was in accordance with the briefing."

http://www.palestine-pmc.com/details.asp?cat=1&id=1999

Not much, but a bit.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/2/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10531228&pnum=0

Maybe it will result in one of those internal investigations, where everyone gets exonerated after a couple of weeks. Maybe not.