Israel, the United States and international law

Israel, the United States and international law

28 October 2009

Israel has responded to the United Nations Human Rights Council’s endorsement of the Goldstone report accusing it of war crimes during its assault on Gaza in 2008-2009 by denouncing the UN and seeking to overturn existing international law.

The explicit aim of Tel Aviv is to give the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) carte blanche to do as it likes in the name of “combating terrorism.”

The report by South African Judge Richard Goldstone said the war on Gaza was “a deliberately disproportionate attack designed to punish, humiliate and terrorise a civilian population, radically diminish its local economic capacity both to work and to provide for itself, and to force upon it an ever-increasing sense of dependency and vulnerability.”

Goldstone said that the UN Security Council should refer the case to the International Criminal Court if Israel failed to carry out an independent investigation into the military’s conduct. Those countries that were signatories to the 1949 Geneva Conventions had a duty to use their powers of “universal jurisdiction” to search for and prosecute those responsible for war crimes, he added.

President Shimon Peres and Premier Binyamin Netanyahu rejected the UN Human Rights Council’s vote outright, denounced the report as biased, and refused to comply with its recommendations. Ehud Barak, defence minister and architect of the assault on Gaza, refused to even permit a cabinet discussion about setting up an inquiry. The government wanted to give the Israeli military “the full backing to have the freedom of action,” he said.

Netanyahu insisted that no Israeli official would stand trial for war crimes and promised that the resolution would be vetoed at the Security Council—that is, by Washington. He instructed his government to draw up plans for a “worldwide campaign” to lobby for changes in the international laws of war “in the interest of anyone fighting terrorism” and to ensure that countries remove or water down their universal jurisdiction legislation.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/oct2009/pers-o28.shtml

US warned on deadly drone attacks

The US has been warned that its use of drones to target suspected terrorists in Afghanistan and Pakistan may violate international law.

UN human rights investigator Philip Alston said the US should explain the legal basis for attacking individuals with the remote-controlled aircraft.

He said the CIA had to show accountability to international laws which ban arbitrary executions.

Drones have killed about 600 people in north-west Pakistan since August 2008.

Read more: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/8329412.stm

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x4122438

credit to dipsydoodle for this

this directly ties in to the "war criminal" question and charges that the UN only targets Israel