De feiten over de Gaza Oorlog

 

Hamas is de eerst verantwoordelijke voor de Gaza Oorlog en haar slachtoffers drie jaar geleden. De meeste Palestijnse doden waren bovendien wel degelijk Hamasmensen.

 

Niet alle Israelische akties zijn gerechtvaardigd uit het oogpunt van zelfverdediging, maar als je de critici mag geloven, is niets wat Israel onderneemt gerechtvaardigd, en mag het zich alleen maar overgeven aan de Palestijnse eisen, die vaak misplaatst als "internationaal recht" worden gepresenteerd, zoals het vermeende recht op terugkeer van alle zogenaamde Palestijnse vluchtelingen of het vermeende Palestijnse recht op Oost-Jeruzalem.

 

Wouter

______________

 

Stop ignoring the facts about Cast Lead

http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/the-staggers/2011/12/israel-gaza-operation-civilian

Posted by Jonathan Sacerdoti - 30 December 2011 16:57

It featured the lowest ratio of civilian to combatant deaths in any asymmetric conflict in the history of warfare. 

 

Three years ago, Operation Cast Lead saw Israel send troops into the Gaza Strip in response to the thousands of rockets and mortars launched into Israeli civilian areas. Which other government in the world wouldn't defend its citizens in such circumstances? If some wish to portray this operation as a "massacre", they would have to ignore the facts to do so.

 

John Stuart Mill wrote in 1862 that "war is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things". Indeed today, even with laws, regulations and technology intended to lessen the horrors of battle, war is always ugly and tragic. But sometimes, it is still an essential response to something far uglier.

In 2006, following the Israeli disengagement and pullout from the Gaza Strip, there was an increase of 436 per cent in the number of Palestinian rockets launched towards Israel from that very territory. For some time, Israel resisted a large-scale military response to such acts deliberately aimed at civilians. As a result, the attacks got worse, and every country, including Israel, has the moral responsibility to defend its people from such actions.

Increased Palestinian terror attacks from Gaza were the cause of Operation Cast Lead. Yet Israel's is a conscript army. Indeed Israel goes to extraordinary lengths to protect its young soldiers (witness the efforts make to secure the release of the kidnap victim Gilad Shalit), and does not send them to war easily.

In the three years since the operation, there has been an unprecedented 72 per cent decline in the number of rockets launched from Hamas-controlled Gaza. No surprise, then, that Israel's Defence Forces Chief of Staff should call the operation "an excellent operation that achieved deterrence for Israel vis-a-vis Hamas". (However, that deterrence is still not enough to have prevented Palestinians from launching 1,571 rockets since the operation, including one attack with an anti-tank missile on a clearly identifiable Israeli school bus.)

Just as Israel's erection of a security fence to prevent homicide bombers from infiltrating Jerusalem saw a bigger than 90 per cent reduction in such attacks, Operation Cast Lead was undeniably effective in reducing terror attacks from the Gaza strip. The numbers speak for themselves.

Colonel Richard Kemp, former commander of British troops in Afghanistan, hasrepeatedly commented that, "during its operation in Gaza, the Israeli Defence Forces did more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone than any other army in the history of warfare." Furthermore, he points out that the steps taken in that conflict by the Israeli Defence Forces to avoid civilian deaths are shown by a study published by the United Nations to have resulted in, by far, the lowest ratio of civilian to combatant deaths in any asymmetric conflict in the history of warfare.

Kemp explains that by UN estimates, the average ratio of civilian to combatant deaths in such conflicts worldwide is 3:1 -- three civilians for every combatant killed. That is the estimated ratio in Afghanistan. But in Iraq, and in Kosovo, it was worse: the ratio is believed to have been 4:1. Anecdotal evidence suggests the ratios were very much higher in Chechnya and Serbia. In Gaza, it was less than one-to-one.

Since the 22-day Gaza operation, Israel has also been demonstrably fastidious in its efforts to protect civilian lives while targeting combatants. The Israel correspondent for Jane's Defence Weekly sites Israel's record this year, saying "the IDF killed 100 Gazans in 2011. Nine were civilians. That is a civilian-combatant ratio of nearly 1:10."

In fact, Israel's effort to combat the Hamas regime in the Gaza strip, while still safeguarding the rights of civilians, can be seen in her actions away from the battlefield as well. Despite the continued and sustained terror attacks from the area, around 60 per cent of Gaza's electricity comes from Israel, rather than from Gaza's other neighbour, Egypt, against whom no missiles are launched by the Palestinians.

Israel allows thousands of tonnes of goods to pass into Gaza weekly, and provides a large amount of the strip's water. If destroying infrastructure were truly Israel's aim, as some claim, this goal could be achieved without the risk to Israeli soldiers inherent in operations which see them sent into the Gaza strip.

It is time to stop blaming the Israeli government and defence forces for protecting Israeli civilians. Instead, we must demand that Palestinian leaders (and their apologists) work towards improving the welfare of their own citizens, rather than constantly attacking Israel's.

 

Jonathan Sacerdoti is director of the Institute for Middle Eastern Democracy

 

Aan de leden van Goldstone Commissie betreffende de Gaza Oorlog

Begin april, tijdens onze vakantie, schreef Richard Goldstone, voorzitter van de Goldstone Commissie die mogelijke schendingen van mensenrechten tijdens de Gaza Oorlog onderzocht, een belangwekkend artikel in de Washington Post (zie: Reconsidering the Goldstone Report on Israel and war crimes ), waarin hij tot de conclusie was gekomen dat Hamas, maar niet Israel, doelgericht burgers had aangevallen.

 

Maurice Ostroff zet hieronder nog eens een paar belangrijke missers in het Goldstone rapport op een rij, en spreekt de commissieleden aan die, in tegenstelling tot Goldstone, menen dat er geen reden is om ook maar iets van het rapport terug te nemen. Zij vallen Goldstone aan op zijn kritiek op het rapport. Laten we (tegen beter weten in) hopen dat Ostroff antwoord krijgt.

 

Zie over het Goldstone rapport ook:

Goldstone Rapport brengt recht noch vrede (IMO Blog, 2009)

7 mei 2010 - Open brief aan zuidafrikaanse oud-rechter Albie Sachs over Richard Goldstone en Israel

18 september 2009 - Fouten in het Goldstone rapport over de Gaza Oorlog: de Gaza politie

http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2009/04/more-of-those-civilians-killed-in-gaza.html 

http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/search/label/Goldstone%20Report?updated-max=2009-09-25T09%3A44%3A00-04%3A00&max-results=20 

 

RP

--------

To the remaining members of the UN fact-finding mission

http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Op-EdContributors/Article.aspx?id=217682

By MAURICE OSTROFF 
04/24/2011 03:08

The decision of Hina Jilani, Christine Chinkin and Desmond Travers to turn on Richard Goldstone is disturbing, to say the least.

I am astonished by the report in the Guardian of April 14 that, in response to Judge Richard Goldstone's recent oped in The Washington Post, the remaining members of the UN Fact-Finding Mission on Gaza, namely Hina Jilani, Christine Chinkin and Desmond Travers, have "turned on him," accusing him of misrepresenting facts in order to cast doubt on the credibility of their joint report. It is regrettable that they did not explain what facts he misrepresented.

I trust they will agree that every intellectually honest person will willingly review previously held convictions if and when relevant new evidence becomes available. To his credit, that is exactly what Judge Goldstone has done.

By contrast, their evidently inflexible belief in the immutability of every sentence of their 500-plus page report reflects an attitude reminiscent of those who refused to look at the evidence presented by Galileo.

If, as they wrote, they "find it necessary to dispel any impression that subsequent developments have rendered any part of the mission's report unsubstantiated, erroneous or inaccurate," it is puzzling that they did not refute the evidence that evidently influenced Judge Goldstone.

I therefore respectfully ask them to address the following circumstances.

1. Last November, when Hamas interior minister Fathi Hammad publicly admitted that the number of combatant casualties was very close to that announced by the IDF, it became obvious that their mission was mistaken in preferring casualty figures quoted by various NGOs.

In clause 361 of the report they stated: "The counterclaims published by the Government of Israel fall far short of international law standards." In the circumstances, it is fair to ask what these standards are, and whether the claims by the NGOs met these standards.

The claim that the police casualties were civilians is obviously incorrect, since the Gaza police incorporates the Executive Force, described by The Telegraph and others as paramilitary. This is confirmed in clause 413 of the report, which states unambiguously that Executive Force members were integrated into the civil police, and that members of the force are resistance fighters. Their footnote 271 states that the Executive Force consisted of some estimated 6,800 members of the armed wings of Hamas and the Popular Resistance Committees.

2. There is also a glaring lacuna in all the casualty figures quoted, namely the number ascribed to having been caused by Israel which may have actually been inflicted by Palestinians. On Feb 2, 2009 Ma'an, the Palestinian news agency, reported that a senior leader in Fatah published a list of 181 names of those in Gaza who had been killed, maimed, beaten or tortured during the Israeli war on Gaza.

3. It is unfortunate that the mission rejected my written suggestion to call for evidence from former British Army Colonel Richard Kemp, who is among the most qualified soldiers able to evaluate the circumstances in which decisions are made in the type of warfare conducted in Gaza

4. In order to arrive at an unbiased opinion, Israel's actions in Gaza must be assessed against the backdrop of recent developments in Afghanistan and Libya, for example, which show conclusively that the standards by which the mission judged the IDF's performance are impossible in practice. Even President Barack Obama, with his impeccable intentions, has been unable to avoid extensive civilian casualties.

The New York Times of February 19, 2010 reported that in Afghanistan the US Air Force now flies twice as many Predator drones as it did a year ago. They carried out more than 200 missile and bomb strikes over the past year, and the civilian casualties they caused have stoked anger and anti-Americanism. Since the start of 2009, the drones have fired at least 184 missiles and 66 laser-guided bombs at militant suspects in Afghanistan. I quote these figures to demonstrate that even with the very best intentions, civilian casualties are inevitable.

The strikes came when troops encountered people who appeared to be planting bombs, but P.W. Singer, a scholar at the Brookings Institution, said officers had to keep in mind that "not everyone digging by the side of the road is automatically an insurgent." Singer's warning emphasizes the danger of confusing genuine error with criminal intent in situations where the combatants are hardly distinguishable from civilians.

5. The above applies particularly to the tragic Samouni case, with its unjustified accusations in the report that have contributed largely to the vilification of Israel in international media. Israel was accused of intentionally bombing the Samouni family house and killing its occupants with no justification whatsoever, but new evidence shows that Israeli drone photographs of a group of men carrying firewood were incorrectly interpreted as fighters carrying rocket launchers, and led to the bombing. I ask you what a reasonable person would have done in the heat of battle on sighting what appears to be rockets about to be launched?

6. As many of the report's conclusions are based on eyewitness testimony, it should be borne in mind that many miscarriages of justice have been recorded due to such testimony. In a paper "The reliability of eyewitness reports: The effect of accurate and inaccurate information on memory and bias," Jennifer Scheer wrote: "A considerable amount of research has established that exposure to leading or misleading suggestions can dramatically influence the accuracy of eyewitness reports.

7. Although some mention is made of captured IDF soldier Gilad Schalit in the report, the saddest failure of the UN Mission while it was in Gaza conversing amiably with the persons holding him captive was its failure to demand an end to the blatant violation of his right to Red Cross visits and to receive letters, as required by the Third Geneva Convention.

By way of contrast, Palestinian prisoners in Israel enjoy visitation rights, including conjugal visits, access to telephones, newspapers, television and radio broadcasts, lawyers' visits and even academic studies at state expense.

I would very much appreciate a considered response from them.

The writer is a commentator on current affairs. His website is www.2nd-thoughts.org ; a special reference to the Goldstone Report can be found at http://www.2nd-thoughts.org/id220.html

 

 

Wiki Leaks, het Goldstone Rapport en de Gaza Oorlog

 

Uit WikiLeaks blijkt dat er meer burgerdoden zijn gevallen in Irak en Afghanistan dan doorgaans wordt toegegeven door de coalitie. Dershowitz betoogt dat Israel daar gunstig tegen afsteekt in de Gaza Oorlog: hoewel de meeste media berichtten dat tweederde van de doden destijds burgers waren, waren de meesten in werkelijkheid Hamasstrijders en andere terroristen. Ook de honderden Hamas politie recruten die Israel op de eerste dag bombardeerde werden echt niet opgeleid om het verkeer te regelen...

 

Wouter

____________ 

 

Wiki Leaks and The Goldstone Report

http://www.hudson-ny.org/2052/wikileaks-goldstone-report

by Alan M. Dershowitz
April 19, 2011 at 1:30 pm

A book about Wiki Leaks recently published in England by editors of The Guardian, sheds an entirely new light on the Goldstone report. Richard Goldstone has recently reconsidered his report's central conclusion, namely that Israeli political and military leaders specifically intended to kill innocent Palestinian civilians. But even before Goldstone's reconsideration, many objective readers of the report could not find any hard evidence to support that unlikely conclusion, for an obvious reason: No such evidence is cited in the body of the report. The best those who wrote the report could come up with was an inference that since so many civilians were killed, that result must have been intended. Recently a leader of Hamas in Gaza acknowledged—indeed boasted—that most of the Palestinians killed during Operation Cast Lead were Hamas fighters. The number of innocent civilians killed (depending on how one defines "innocent" and "civilian" in a war fought by people who are terrorists by night and civilians by day) now appears to be about 500-600. The number of combatants killed now appears to be in excess of 700. In other words, the ratio of combatants to civilians appears to be that slightly more combatants than civilians were killed. Even one civilian death is too many but such deaths are inevitable when combatants hide among civilians, fire rockets from civilian areas and use civilians as human shields—as Hamas routinely does.

The Goldstone commission adamantly refused to accept testimony that would have shown that the Israeli army took greater care to reduce civilian deaths than any other armed forces fighting comparable wars. For example, they refused to hear the proffered testimony Colonel Richard Kemp, the former commander of British forces in Afghanistan and a recognized expert on asymmetric warfare, who would have testified that:

"[F]rom my knowledge of the IDF and from the extent to which I have been following the current operation, I don't think there has ever been a time in the history of warfare when any army has made more efforts to reduce civilian casualties and deaths of innocent people than the IDF is doing today in Gaza.

The recently published book about Wiki Leaks strongly confirms Colonel Kemp's assessment.

The Guardian summarized one Wiki Leaks disclosure about Afghanistan as follows:

"We today learn of nearly 150 incidents in which coalition forces, including British troops, have killed or injured civilians, most of which have never been reported…."

And another:

"The logs disclosed a detailed incident-by-incident record of at least 66,081 violent deaths of civilians in Iraq since the invasion. This figure, dismaying in itself, was nevertheless only a statistical starting point. It is far too low. The database begins a year late in 2004, omitting the high casualties of the direct 2003 invasion period itself, and ends on 31 December 2009. Furthermore, the US figures are plainly unreliable in respect of the most sensitive issue—civilian deaths directly caused by their own military activities.

For example, the town of Falluja was the site of two major urban battles in 2004, which reduced the place to near-rubble. Yet no civilian deaths whatever are recorded by the army loggers, apparently on the grounds that they had previously ordered all the inhabitants to leave. Monitors from the unofficial Iraq Body Count group, on the other hand, managed to identify more than 1,200 civilians who died during the Falluja fighting."

In another incident, not the subject of a Wiki Leak disclosure, German forces in Afghanistan called in an air strike against two fuel tankers captured by Taliban insurgents. Between 70 and 100 civilians, including 24 children, were killed. There was an immediate attempt by German authorities to cover up the civilian deaths, but ultimately they were revealed and nominal compensation was paid.

As to the investigation of alleged war crimes, the Wiki Leaks disclosures show that:

"US authorities failed to investigate hundreds of reports of abuse, torture, rape and even murder by Iraqi police and soldiers whose conduct appears to be systematic and normally unpunished…The numerous reports of detainee abuse, often supported by medical evidence, describe prisoners shackled, blindfolded and hung by wrists or ankles, and subjected to whipping, punching, kicking or electric shocks. Six reports end with a detainee's apparent death….[T]he logs reveal that the coalition has a formal policy of ignoring torture allegations. They record "no investigation is necessary" and simply pass reports to the same Iraqi units implicated in the violence."

No "Goldstone Commissions" have ever been appointed to investigate the far greater number and proportion of civilian deaths caused by British, German and U.S. military actions—and the frequent lack of credible investigators.

Whenever efforts are made to put Israel's actions in a comparative context with other democracies, demonizers of Israel, who always impose a double standard on the Jewish state, respond by arguing "we're talking about Israel now; don't change the subject by talking about other democracies." That reminds me of a famous story about Harvard's notoriously anti-Semitic president, A. Lawrence Lowell, near the beginning of the 20^th Century. In an effort to defend his decision to impose an anti-Jewish quota, he said, "Jews cheat." A distinguished Harvard alumnus, Judge Learned Hand, wrote President Lowell a letter saying that "Protestants also cheat," to which Lowell responded, "you're changing the subject; we're talking about Jews now."

You can't just talk about Jews, or about the Jewish state when making accusations of war crimes or violation of international law. Comparison is everything, especially since international humanitarian law is expressly based on how democratic nations customarily behave in comparable situations.

According to the materials disclosed by Wikileaks, Israel shines in comparison to other democracies. It has a significantly better ratio of combatant to civilian deaths; it takes greater steps to avoid such casualties, and it does a better job investigating negligent and criminal behavior on the part of its soldiers. Moreover, it is seeking to protect its own civilians directly from ongoing cross-border rocket attacks and other terrorist acts, whereas the other democracies are fighting wars of choice many miles from its civilian areas.

This is not to suggest the need for "Goldstone Reports" against Great Britain and Germany and the United States. It is to demand that a single standard be applied to all democracies.

** Alan Dershowitz is serving as an American legal consultant to Julian Assange's and Wiki Leaks British lawyers.

 

Wie begon wanneer de Gaza Oorlog?

 

Het is vandaag precies twee jaar geleden dat de Gaza oorlog begon. Oeps, nou maak ik een fout: het is vandaag precies twee jaar geleden dat Israel met haar tegenoffensief, Cast Lead, begon. Hamas had al een paar dagen eerder Israel de oorlog verklaard, maar dat is de Westerse media, Goldstone en Amnesty International ontgaan. Hamas noemde haar operatie, begonnen op 24 december, 'Oil Stain' en vermeldde aanvankelijk trots hoe succesvol deze was:

 

Al-Qassam Brigades threatened to enlarge the "Oil Stain" to get more thousands of Israelis "under fire". The group asserted that its fighters are "far greater than surrendering to Israeli threats and that they became much more prepared to counter Israeli aggression and to defend themselves than in the past."

 

Pas naderhand, toen duidelijk was dat de Westerse media en wereldleiders Israel unaniem als de agressor zagen en hard veroordeelden, paste Hamas haar toon - en de geschiedenis - aan. Het is niemand ooit opgevallen, behalve een paar zionistische bloggers.

 

RP

-------------

 

The false framework of the Gaza war

http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2010/12/false-framework-of-gaza-war.html

 

 

Today is the second anniversary of the beginning of Operation Cast Lead - but it is not the anniversary of the beginning of the Gaza War.

On the very first day of OCL, I pointed out something that has been all but ignored by the media (but that I had mentioned earlier): Hamas declared war on Israel on December 24th, a full three days before Cast Lead.


From Ma'an, December 25th, 2008:

The military wing affiliated to Hamas, Al-Qassam Brigades released a statement on Thursday morning briefing the group's military activities over the first twenty four hours of an operation they called "Oil Stain" which started Wednesday morning.

According to the statement, a total of 87 shells have been fired at Israeli targets bordering the Gaza Strip including 54 mortar shells, 31 homemade projectiles which Hamas calls "Qassam", and two Soviet-made Grad missiles.

Al-Qassam Brigades threatened to enlarge the "Oil Stain" to get more thousands of Israelis "under fire". The group asserted that its fighters are "far greater than surrendering to Israeli threats and that they became much more prepared to counter Israeli aggression and to defend themselves than in the past."

Even after Cast Lead started, Hamas - in Arabic - continued to call the war "Oil Stain." For example, on December 30th, an article in the Palestine Today website brags that "Operation Oil Stain" had been expanded and a Grad rocket had reached Beersheva for the first time.

Hamas has since changed its tune. First, it renamed the operation during the war "Battle of the Criterion." And now that they have seen how much the Gaza war has hurt Israel's reputation, they have even changed their own history - in an article earlier this year on the Al Qassam website, they claim that Oil Stain was a reaction after Israel to reflect their deploying longer-range Grad rockets.

And there is a very good reason why Hamas has changed their history.

One of the most insidious ways that NGOs and the media attack Israel is by creating a false framework around events like Cast Lead. The issue isn't "competing narratives" - it is much bigger than that. By framing the issue in false terms, Israel looks like the aggressor without having to say it explicitly.Every time an NGO and newspaper says that the Gaza war started on December 27th, they really mean that Hamas attacks on Israeli civilians are not important and that Israel is the aggressive party.

Amnesty's history of the war starts on December 27th.

HRW characterizes the entire war as "Israel's three-week-long military offensive in Gaza that began on December 27." It isn't even a war - it is simply framed as Israeli aggression. And this is in a report about Hamas rocket fire!

Goldstone's chapter headings show this false framework as well:

III. EVENTS OCCURRING BETWEEN THE "CEASEFIRE" OF 18 JUNE 2008 BETWEEN ISRAEL AND THE GAZA AUTHORITIES AND THE START OF ISRAEL'S MILITARY OPERATIONS IN GAZA ON 27 DECEMBER 2008

VI. OVERVIEW OF MILITARY OPERATIONS  CONDUCTED BY ISRAEL IN GAZA BETWEEN 27 DECEMBER 2008 AND 18 JANUARY 2009 AND DATA ON CASUALTIES

When the very framework of the issue is biased to begin with, anyone trying to take Israel's aide is already handicapped. It loads the dice before the game even starts, and it takes an effort to re-frame the argument - something that Israeli spokespeople have little opportunity to do when giving statements to the press or when answering questions about NGO accusations.

Even though Hamas wants to be known as a masculine defender of Arab rights in Arabic, and it was proud to take credit for starting the war back in 2008, it has realized the immense value of the false framework provided by Goldstone and HRW and Amnesty and the mainstream media. So it has adopted that framework simply because it puts Israel at a disadvantage.

This is one of the biggest issues that Israel faces when speaking to the world. The idea of Israel as aggressor is so ingrained in the fabric of the discussion that it is not easy for even Israel's defenders to recognize it when they see it. It is especially difficult in the heat of a debate to be able to step back and challenge the questioner as to their implicit assumptions.

One fact is clear - Hamas started the war, and they bragged about it. Any narrative of the Gaza War that does not recognize that simple fact is inherently biased from the outset. No mater how prestigious the NGO or media outlet that promulgates this lie - it is still a lie, and that lie must be corrected.

 

Hamas erkende dat meeste doden Gaza Oorlog strijders waren

 

De bevestiging van Hamas dat een veel hoger aantal strijders door Israel is gedood tijdens de Gaza oorlog, al op 1 november door de Jerusalem Post bericht, is nog steeds niet echt doorgedrongen tot de media en de vele organisaties en mensen die indertijd vooraan stonden met felle veroordelingen van Israel. Dershowitz vraagt terecht dat het Goldstone rapport, dat uitging van de cijfers die Palestijnse bronnen gaven, de cijfers en daarmee ook de conclusies herziet, evenals Amnesty International en andere mensenrechtenorganisaties die rapporten uitbrachten over Cast Lead.

 

RP

--------

 

Alan Dershowitz

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alan-dershowitz/finally-a-hamas-leader-ad_b_798429.html

Posted: December 17, 2010 04:05 PM

Finally, a Hamas Leader Admits That Israel Killed Mostly Combatants In Gaza

 

Since the end of the Gaza War in January 2009, Israel has stood accused of targeting civilians, rather than terrorist combatants. The Israeli Defense Force has claimed that during Operation Cast Lead it targeted only combatants in its efforts to protect its civilians from rocket attacks. It has also claimed that most of the dead were combatants and issued lists of names of many of the combatants killed and identified them as members of the specific Hamas military units. Despite unprecedented efforts to avoid civilian casualties -- including hundreds of thousands of leaflets, telephone calls and non-lethal, noise-making warning bombs -- some civilians were killed, because Hamas deliberately hid behind civilians, using them as shields, when they fired rockets at Israeli civilians.

Following the end of the Gaza War, which has essentially stopped Hamas rocket attacks against Israeli civilians, there was a great debate about the number of Gaza civilians actually killed, and the ratio of civilian to combatant deaths during this difficult military operation.

The Israel Defense Force put the total number of known combatants killed at 709 and the number of known civilian deaths at 295, with 162 (mostly men of fighting age) "unknown." Such a ratio, if true, would be far better than that achieved by any other nation in a comparable conflict. Not surprisingly, Israel's enemies initially disputed this ratio and claimed that the number of combatants killed was far lower and the number of civilians far higher. The United Nations, the Goldstone Report, various "human rights" organizations and many in the media automatically rejected Israel's documented figures, preferring the distorted numbers offered by Hamas' and other Palestinian sources.

But a statement recently made by a Hamas leader confirms that Israel was correct in claiming that approximately 700 combatants were killed.

First, a word about the context of the Hamas statement. In the aftermath of the war, Hamas has come under considerable criticism from rival terrorist groups for not doing enough to defend Gaza and for allowing so many civilian casualties. So, in a recent interview with a London paper, Al-Hayat, Fathi Hamad, Hamas' Interior Minister, responded to these criticisms as follows:

"It has been said that the people were harmed by the war, but is Hamas not part of the people? It is a fact that on the first day of the war Israel struck police headquarters and killed 250 members of Hamas and the various factions, in addition to the 200-300 operatives from the [Izz al-Din] al-Qassam Brigades. In addition, 150 security personnel were killed, and the rest were from people. (The original text of the interview in Arabic, as reprinted in the Hamas newspaper Felesteen, can be found on the website of the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center. It was also reported by Agence France Presse)

This statement not only supports the Israeli numbers, but it also acknowledges what Israel has long said about the 250 policemen who were killed on the first day of combat: they were "members of Hamas and the various factions" and were indeed "combatants" by any realistic definition of that term.

Fathi Hamad's figures are in striking contrast to those originally issued by Palestinian groups which claimed that only 48 combatants were killed and that the total amounted to a mere 17 percent of all fatalities.

Because it uncritically accepted the original Hamas claims of very few combatant deaths, the Goldstone Report was able to reach its flawed conclusion that the purpose of the operation must have been to kill civilians, not combatants. This is what the Goldstone Report said:

The Mission notes that the statistics from non-governmental sources are generally consistent. Statistics alleging that fewer than one out of five persons killed in an armed conflict was a combatant...raise very serious concerns about the way Israel conducted the military operations in Gaza. The counterclaims published by the Government of Israel fall short of international law standards.

Now that the truth has been admitted by the Hamas leadership -- that as many as 700 combatants were, in fact, killed -- the Goldstone Commission is obliged to reconsider its false conclusion and correct its deeply flawed report.

Richard Goldstone himself has repeatedly said that he hoped that new evidence will prove his conclusions wrong. Well, this new evidence -- a classic admission against interest -- does just that!

The original false figures have also been submitted by the Palestinian Authority to the International Criminal Court. It too has an obligation to correct the record. It would be an outrageous miscarriage of justice for the International Criminal Court to open an investigation of a nation that, in actuality, had the best ratio of combatant to civilian deaths in any comparable war.

The admission by Fathi Hamad that Israel's figures were correct and those originally offered by Palestinian groups were false exposes the rush to judgment against Israel that has stained the so-called "human rights" community so often in the past. It is essential that this new evidence be widely circulated, which it has not been to date, and that those who condemned Israel on the basis of false allegations correct the record. Don't hold your breath! In today's distorted world of "human rights," truth takes a back seat to ideology, and false claims -- especially those that "support" radical ideologies -- persist even after they have been exposed.

Professor Alan Dershowitz's latest book is a novel, The Trials of Zion.

 

Brief van een Israelische oorlogsmisdadiger in Gaza

 

De meeste Israelische soldaten in de Gaza Oorlog deden niet meer en niet minder dan hun plicht, met als doel de Qassam-terreur uit de Gazastrook een halt toe te roepen. Daarin zijn ze grotendeels geslaagd, want nadien werd het een heel stuk rustiger in Sderot en andere Israelische plaatsen aan de Gaza grens. Mijn indruk is dat de IDF zich behoorlijk inspande om Palestijnse burgerslachtoffers te vermijden, maar dit is vrijwel niet te voorkomen in een ongelijke strijd tegen een onzichtbare vijand in een dichtbevolkt gebied. En er zijn altijd soldaten bij die minder scrupules hebben; de vraag is of daartegen afdoende maatregelen worden genomen..

 

Wouter

____________

 

 

Site exposes IDF 'war criminals'  / Shanni Gurkevitch

Website reveals details of hundreds of Israeli soldiers it claims took part in Gaza war. 'I stand by everything I did in Operation Cast Lead, and I have nothing to be ashamed of,' says First Sergeant (res.) Ziv Danieli, one of toops included on list

Full story

 

Letter from a war criminal

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3987565,00.html

Op-ed: IDF reservist who served in Gaza war writes to person behind 'list of war criminals'

Yoav Keren

Published: 11.21.10, 19:12

To be honest, I was a little insulted. I looked for myself on the list of 200 Operation Cast Lead war criminals published online last week but didn't find what I was looking for. I performed almost a month of reserve duty during the operation, yet nothing; no mention. Not even a small one.

Even a low-ranking female soldier got to enter the list of war criminals, and was even graced with a Facebook photo in civilian clothing, engaged in yoga. Not to mention those pilots; finally we could see their faces (and also their addresses and military ID numbers)

As it turns out, the Israeli who produced the list – and there is almost no doubt it's an Israeli, who is intimately familiar with the IDF – did not do a particularly thorough job. In any case, he missed me.

I served in the Gaza Division war room for 26 days and saw everything in real time. I saw how every time we had to curb Qassam fire from populated areas, officials considered it seven times and meticulously calculated the firing range and angle, as not to hurt civilians by mistake.

I also saw how, to be on the safe side, the army consulted with its legal advisor and with a representative of the Coordination and Liaison Administration who were regularly deployed in the war room.

I saw the great seriousness in addressing a water pipe that burst in Rafah, and the kind of effort invested in order to bring food into the Strip and allow ambulances to evacuate wounded Palestinians from the war zone.

I also participated in assessment sessions with the division commander; a major part of them pertained to humanitarian issues.

I walked around Sderot, which looked like a ghost town after sustaining dozens of Qassam rockets, and I also saw the Grad missiles making their way to Ashkelon without anybody being able to stop them. Believe me, it's not a heart-warming sight.

I'm no longer afraid

In short, I was there, and according to the twisted standards of the various list producers this apparently turns me into a war criminal as well.

Here's a small confession: In the wake of Operation Cast Lead, I was thinking of posting photographs from my reserve service on my Facebook page. I'm not talking about photos alongside Palestinian detainees, heaven forbid; just regular images of me sitting with the guys at the division's canteen. I didn't do it because I was afraid that one day, when I travel abroad, these photos may incriminate me.

Yet I'm no longer afraid, because I realized that I'm in good company. Not only the army chief and Southern Command chief and Air Force chief, but also anyone who serves in the IDF is by definition a war criminal apparently. And as any soldier who walks the streets in uniform may find himself in one blacklist or another, even if he serves as a cook in an Air Force munitions base, I have no reason to hide.

So for the benefit of the producer of the abovementioned list: My name is Yoav Keren, I'm a reserve major, and my personal ID number is 5030397. You can find out my address on your own. So the next time you update the list of war criminals, you can add me too. But if you use a photo from Facebook, at least make sure it's a good one.

 

WikiLeaks en de statistieken van de Gaza Oorlog

 

"Slimme bommen" kunnen zorgen voor minder burgerdoden, maar oorlog blijft een vreselijk drama dat als het maar even kan vermeden moet worden. Het hele rekenwerk over de ratio schuldige en onschuldige doden heeft dan ook iets lugubers waar ik moeite mee heb, maar het punt van onderstaand artikel is dat in vergelijking met andere recente oorlogen, Israel het in de Gaza Oorlog zo slecht nog niet deed, maar met een andere maat wordt gemeten dan andere landen.

Gemeten naar dodental is het hele Israelisch-Palestijns/Arabische conflict maar een relatief klein conflict in verhouding tot Soedan, de oorlogen in Korea of Vietnam of Kongo, Irak of Afghanistan enz.

 

Wouter

_____________


The Jerusalem Post
Analysis: Lies, leaks, death tolls & statistics
By YAAKOV KATZ
10/29/2010 01:26

http://www.jpost.com/International/Article.aspx?id=193196

Does the WikiLeaks Iraq War dossier prove Israel was unfairly treated over civilian deaths following Operation Cast Lead?


The release of the WikiLeaks logs on the Iraq War this week has led some Israelis to ask anew whether the country is the victim of a double standard in the way the international community views human rights.

The key question: Why did Israel, following Operation Cast Lead last year, come under such harsh international criticism culminating in the Goldstone Report, while the war in Iraq, which has claimed the lives of over 150,000 people, has yet to lead to the establishment of a similar UN-sanctioned probe?

First, it is important to point out that the world's three premier human rights organizations – Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and the International Committee of the Red Cross – do not have statistics on the number of combatants and civilians killed by coalition forces in Iraq and the consequent ratio between them.

The Jerusalem Post contacted all three organizations this week and not a single one had the necessary statistics. They do, however, have the numbers from the IDF operation in the Gaza Strip last year.

One researcher, in charge of the Iraqi desk for one of the NGOs, told the Post that no one had ever worked on tallying up the Iraq numbers. In addition, he said, it would be difficult to do so, since there are differences of opinion regarding the way to define combatants.

"The Iraqis define combatants one way and the US another way," the researcher said.

This sounds familiar, given the differences of opinion that emerged between Israel and its critics during and following Operation Cast Lead.

The IDF claimed that the Hamas policemen killed during the operation – totaling 264, according to Israel – should be defined as combatants since in many instances, according to the IDF, the policemen took up arms against IDF troops. The Palestinians rejected this claim and categorized the policemen as civilians. The Goldstone Report did the same.

The New York Times, in its main article on the WikiLeaks revelations, cited a study by the Red Cross, which concluded that in the average of 20th century warfare, 10 civilians were killed for every combatant.

One organization that did claim to have a tally of combatants and civilians killed by US and coalition forces throughout the war was the Iraq Body Count (IBC), a UK-based organization that has tracked civilian deaths since the 2003 invasion of Iraq. In total, over 150,000 people have been killed and 80 percent of them – more than 122,000 – were civilians, said the IBC.

According to John Sloboda, a founder of IBC, American and coalition forces have killed at least 22,668 combatants as well as 13,807 civilians.

The rest of the civilians were killed by terrorist groups, militias and insurgents.

According to Sloboda, this would mean that for every civilian killed, two combatants were killed, essentially a ratio of 1:2.

The number of people killed during Operation Cast Lead in the Gaza Strip is disputed by the different sides. Israel, for example, claims that 1,166 people were killed, including 709 combatants.

Based on this, the ratio of civilian to combatant deaths is 1:3 – one civilian for every three combatants.

Many, however, do not accept the Israeli numbers.

B'Tselem, The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, claims that 1,390 people were killed during the operation in Gaza. It says only 349 were combatants, 248 were policemen and 32 are unknowns since B'Tselem said it could not determine for certain whether they had participated in the hostilities.

Two more people are referred to as being killed in targeted killings – apparently a reference to Nizar Rayan, a Hamas cleric, and Said Siam, the Hamas interior minister.

If one adds all of these together, Israel killed 60% civilians during Operation Cast Lead – not greatly dissimilar to the ratio provided by the Iraq Body Count.

Notably, Operation Cast Lead came after a year during which the IDF had succeeded in lowering civilian deaths to an unprecedented ratio of 1:30. This was a far cry from 2002, when the ratio was 1:1, meaning that for every terrorist killed, one civilian was killed.

Partly behind Israel's improvement was the investment in special weapons systems, smart bombs that are large enough to kill a target but small enough to minimize collateral damage. There was also an upscaled Israeli effort to warn civilians to flee areas and to divert missiles at the last moment if civilians entered a planned strike zone.

In total, during Operation Cast Lead, the IDF dropped over 5,000 missiles in the Gaza Strip; over 81% of them were smart bombs, an unprecedented percentage in modern warfare.

In comparison, during the beginning of the Iraq War in 2003, coalition forces used smart bombs 68% of the time. During the Kosovo War of 1999, the percentage was 35%.

In Gaza Oorlog omgekomen medici waren lid van terreurgroepen

 

Alweer een scherpe blog van Elder of Ziyon. Amnesty International beschuldigt Israel ervan doelgericht medisch personeel te hebben gedood in Gaza. Uit onderzoek van Elder of Ziyon blijkt echter dat het merendeel van het medische personeel dat Israel in Gaza doodde ook actief was bij een van de terreurorganisaties waartegen Israel vocht. Wat ze bij Amnesty niet konden uitzoeken lukt Elder of Ziyon, zonder miljoenenbudget en uitgebreide staff, wel.

 

PCHR lists a total of 15 medics, nurses and physicians killed in Cast Lead.  14 out of the 15 were members of Hamas' military medical services. Ten of them were members of terrorist groups that NGOs pretend had nothing to do with Hamas.
If Amnesty is going to accuse Israel of deliberately targeting medical personnel, it needs to back it up with some serious evidence. As far as I can tell, it has not done that. Rather than indicating that Israel targeted medics, this data indicates the exact opposite - that the IDF targeted terrorists, and fairly effectively.
Physicians have been a major part of Arab terror groups for years, of course. Hamas leader Dr. Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi, responsible for some of the bloodiest terror attacks in history, was a pediatrician. Dr. Mahmoud Al-Zahar, current leader of Hamas, is a surgeon. Founder of Islamic Jihad Dr. Fathi Shiqaqi was a physician.

 

Maar de beschuldigingen van Amnesty worden wereldwijd gepubliceerd en de feiten van EoZ staan alleen op zijn blog.

 

RP

-------------

The Medics of Terror

http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2010/05/medics-of-terror.html

In the new Amnesty International annual report, Israel is specifically censured for having "targeted and killed medical staff" in Gaza.

I have seen accusations, by Goldstone and others, of IDF targeting of medical facilities, but I have never seen any reports by international NGOs that detailed any alleged Israeli targeting of medical personnel. The best I saw was Goldstone's facetious comment that "Of the ambulance staff members and their volunteer assistants that were killed or injured in the course of their duties, none was a member of any armed groups, so far as the Mission is aware." Yet even Goldstone didn't accuse Israel of targeting doctors or nurses.

What is Amnesty's source?

What I do know is that at least two thirds of the medical staff killed in Gaza were members of terrorist groups:

Azmi Abu Dallal. medic, was a member of the Nuseirat Battalion of the Al Qassam Brigades.
Ahmed Al-Khatib, nurse, was a field commander of the Popular Resistance Committees.
Mohammed Abu Hassir, medic, was a fighter for the Al Qassam Brigades:

Ihab 'Umar Khalil al-Madhoun, physician, was a fighter for the Al Qassam Brigades.
Yaser Kamal Shbeir, medic, was a fighter for the Al Qassam Brigades.
Anas Fadel Na'im, medic, was a fighter for the Al Qassam Brigades:

Ra'afat Sami Ibrahim, medic, was a fighter for the Al Qassam Brigades.His obituary says that he had been responsible for firing rockets at Israel.
Issa Abdul Rahim Saleh, physician, planted explosives and acted as a spotter for the Al Qassam Brigades.
Abdullah Sa'id Saleh al-'Imawi, nurse, was a fighter for the Al Qassam Brigades who specialized in armor. He also fought in the Fatah coup. He was killed together with his squad leader, Tareq Fadel Abdullah Ja'afar.
Ihab Jaser Ahmed al-Sha'er, physician, was an apparent fighter ("mujahid") for the Al Qassam Brigades.

PCHR lists a total of 15 medics, nurses and physicians killed in Cast Lead.  14 out of the 15 were members of Hamas' military medical services. Ten of them were members of terrorist groups that NGOs pretend had nothing to do with Hamas.

If Amnesty is going to accuse Israel of deliberately targeting medical personnel, it needs to back it up with some serious evidence. As far as I can tell, it has not done that. Rather than indicating that Israel targeted medics, this data indicates the exact opposite - that the IDF targeted terrorists, and fairly effectively.

Physicians have been a major part of Arab terror groups for years, of course. Hamas leader Dr. Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi, responsible for some of the bloodiest terror attacks in history, was a pediatrician. Dr. Mahmoud Al-Zahar, current leader of Hamas, is a surgeon. Founder of Islamic Jihad Dr. Fathi Shiqaqi was a physician.

The idea that healers cannot be murderers is tied to the Western ideals of medicine, but has nothing to do with the thinking of Islamic and Arab terrorists. Amnesty should not make assumptions about targeting without knowing the facts.

 

 

Rechter Richard Goldstone in Apartheid Zuid-Afrika

 

De meningen zijn verdeeld over de rol die Richard Goldstone als rechter speelde in Apartheid Zuid-Afrika. Hieronder 3 artikelen.

 

Mijn (toegegeven oppervlakkige) indruk is, dat Goldstone waarschijnlijk zowel een oprechte democraat als een oprechte zionist is, en zijn redenering zou best te vergelijken kunnen zijn met die van een burgemeester in oorlogstijd: 'als ik die positie niet vervul, doet een ander het, en dan is het resultaat nog veel beroerder'. Vergelijk ik daarmee de VN met Apartheid Zuid-Afrika of zelfs met de nazi-bezetting van Nederland?

 

Zeker de VN 'Mensenrechtenraad' is een moreel failliete boel die grotendeels door (machts)politiek geleid wordt, en dat is de club die de commissie Goldstone haar opdracht gaf om mensenrechtenschendingen tijdens de Gaza Oorlog te onderzoeken, officieel zelfs UITSLUITEND Israelische mensenrechtenschendingen.

 

Goldstone lijkt gemeend te hebben dat hij een positieve invloed kon hebben door ook de schendingen door Hamas in het onderzoek te betrekken. Hij heeft daarmee, en door zijn medewerking überhaupt, echter vooral de geloofwaardigheid opgekrikt van een politiek proces waarvan de uitkomst al bij voorbaat vast lag: Israel moet hangen! Veel commissieleden hadden hun oordeel vooraf al klaar, en de 'Mensenrechtenraad' en de Algemene Vergadering van de VN ook. In zoverre als hij dat serieus heeft nagestreeft, heeft hij zelf ook behoorlijk gefaald om een degelijk en uitgewogen rapport af te leveren.

 

Wouter

__________________


Goldstone sentences dozens of Blacks to be hung
http://reshet.ynet.co.il/חדשות/News/Abroad/Worldnews/Article,42924.aspx

 

1. The dark past of Judge Richard Goldstone from the days of Apartheid in South Africa has been revealed. It turns out that the author of the report that accused Israel of war crimes and human rights violations in "Cast Lead" enforced racist laws while serving as a judge in the 80s and 90s, imposed lashes and sentenced 28 blacks in the country to death. The judge responded: "I was part of the system"

2. The man who wrote the critical report accusing Israel of war crimes during operation "Cast Lead" is the same man who was a judge in the Court of Appeal in South Africa during apartheid, enforced racist laws, decreed punishment by lashes and sentenced dozens of Blacks to be hanged  - so reported the newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth this morning..

3. Justice Richard Goldstone, who was appointed to investigate the alleged "war crimes" of the IDF and the alleged human rights violations committed by Israel, previously sentenced to death no less than 28 black defendants that appealed their murder conviction. Goldstone criticized countries that allow execution of the defendants, but while serving as a judge in South Africa in the 80's and 90 he actually expressed support for this policy. In one of his judgments the judge wrote that "the gallows is the only punishment that can deter murderers."

4. Furthermore, Goldstone also sentenced four black convicted on violent crimes to lashes, a punishment that has disappeared in civilized countries. Goldstone argues in response that he had always been against giving the death penalty but that during the apartheid era had to respect the laws of the state, and stated that he never discriminated against accused Blacks, even though at times he was forced to enforce laws  that he was morally opposed to. "I was always committed to maintaining equality and non - discrimination as well as the law," Goldstone said, "Sometimes those two principles collided very complex ways."

5. Compared with the many serious penalties that Goldstone imposed on South African Blacks, he actually decided to acquit four police officers who broke into the home of a white woman on the suspicion she was having sex with a Black man - an act that was then considered a serious crime in South Africa. Does this also sound like discrimination to you?

-------------

SA ex-chief justice defends Goldstone
http://www.jpost.com/International/Article.aspx?id=174820
By HAVIV RETTIG GUR
06/05/2010 05:01


Man who headed Cast Lead c'tee reportedly served as apartheid judge. 
 
Former South African chief justice Arthur Chaskalson defended former judge Richard Goldstone on Wednesday from criticism in Israel's largest newspaper that as a judge in the 1980s, he willingly enforced the racial laws of the apartheid regime.

In a report published on Wednesday in Yediot Aharonot, which announced a larger feature that would be published in the paper's Friday edition, journalists Techiya Barak and Tzadok Yehezkeli presented judicial rulings made by Goldstone that, they said, showed a willing and uncritical support for the race-based legislation of apartheid.

Furthermore, they wrote, Goldstone either ordered or sanctioned as an appellate judge at least 28 death penalty executions, and wrote in support of the practice in his judicial rulings.

"That is absolute nonsense," Chaskalson told The Jerusalem Post by phone from Johannesburg. Goldstone "was never part of the apartheid regime."

During the 1980s, at the height of apartheid's most violent and brutal period, "there was a whole discourse about judges staying on the bench," Chaskalson explained. Some anti-apartheid voices supported the move, some opposed.

Specifically, the reporters cited a ruling from 1981 in which Goldstone, then a judge on the Transvaal Supreme Court, acquitted four policemen who had conducted an illegal night raid on the home of a white woman because she was suspected of having had sexual relations with a non-white person – a crime under the apartheid statutes of the time.

"He acquitted the four officers for technical reasons, despite ruling that they had illegally entered the home. Yet in doing so, he did not refer to the law itself as racist or problematic. In fact, he simply enforced a racial law," said Yehezkeli.

Goldstone could not be reached for comment for this article because he was traveling. However, he had given a response to Barak and Yehezkeli in which he said that the officers' appeal had been upheld not because he supported the racist laws, but because there had been legal mistakes made in the case.

"It is clear, however, from the portion of the judgment [cited by the reporters], that [the other presiding judge] and I found that the entry of the police officers had been unjustified and unlawful. Their appeal was upheld on the technical grounds that the legal provision under which they were charged did not create a criminal offense," Goldstone wrote.

Still, said Yehezkeli, "we're saying that it was Goldstone's choice to be a judge under apartheid, and because of this decision, he ended up doing things that served the apartheid laws."

Others disagree.

Jules Browde, a founding member of Lawyers for Human Rights and a campaigner against apartheid during the period in question, insisted that "you can't draw any clear adverse inference from the fact that [Goldstone] became a judge [under apartheid]. In fact, while he sat as a judge, he gave judgments that were very progressive."

Browde himself refused to become a judge, "but there were others of real caliber who accepted it because they felt they could do good as judges, rather than having judges of extreme right-wing views."

Goldstone was such a judge, he said.

Chaskalson, too, insisted that Goldstone "was regarded by everyone who knew him as a liberal judge. Many people felt it was better to have an honest judge on the bench than another kind."

The article also challenges Goldstone's record on death penalty convictions, stating that "the man now campaigning for adherence to human rights [law] ordered the executions of at least 28 black defendants while serving as a judge in South Africa during the apartheid era. He speaks often about the death penalty, but has not yet publicly admitted his own deeds."

Yehezkeli points to his March 1993 ruling in the case of Purpose Bongani Khumalo, in which Goldstone seemingly justified the death penalty as a deterrent.

Khumalo had killed and robbed a restaurant owner in Johannesburg who had fired him. Despite saying that Khumalo was only 23 years old and could be rehabilitated, Goldstone wrote that the outrage of the surrounding community "is a relevant factor in the imposition of a proper sentence... A proper sentence should act as a deterrent to others who may be tempted to murder or rob defenseless and innocent people... The murder calls for the maximum sentence allowed by the law. It follows in my opinion that on that account the only proper sentence is the death sentence."

"Here he expressed outright support for the death sentence, and even brought public opinion as a factor in imposing it," Yehezkeli said.

Goldstone is quoted in the Yediot article as saying that he "always opposed the death penalty, but I was part of a system that had such a punishment."

Chaskalson concurred: "The death sentence was compulsory for murder. There were no extenuating circumstances. If you got [a ruling of murder], you were compelled by law to impose it."

Chaskalson added that he disagreed vehemently with the image created by the reporters, insisting that Goldstone had used his judicial powers to mitigate the abuses of the apartheid regime.

As an example, he cited the 1986 Govendor case, which challenged the Group Areas Act, a piece of legislation that attempted to enforce separate living areas for whites and non-whites.

The case came before Goldstone in the midst of the period of emergency laws imposed to enforce apartheid against growing protests.

While he could not overturn the legislation, Goldstone ruled that ejecting non-whites deemed to be living in the areas proscribed to them by law was not compulsory, but at the discretion of the court. He added that exercising this discretion should take place only after the court had considered the personal harm that would come to the evicted party and the existence of alternative living arrangements. He placed the burden of proof for these considerations on the state.

In effect, "the state's campaign to enforce the Group Areas Act in Johannesburg ground to a halt," Chaskalson said. "Many of those of the 'wrong color' remained in the premises they were occupying."

Chaskalson rejected the Yediot report as "scandalous" for its failure to capture the context of the times.

"It's one thing to disagree with [Goldstone's Gaza] report, but quite another to go after him personally like this," he said.

Yehezkeli believes the record speaks for itself.

"It may be true that judge Goldstone was more willing to listen [to defendants in race-based cases] than some other judges. But as a judge he had to work for the apartheid laws. You can't get away from it. Even if he was opposed to the laws of South Africa, he agreed to serve them."

Among the responses Goldstone submitted to the two reporters, Goldstone wrote, "I was always committed to safeguarding equality and nondiscrimination, as well as the law. Sometimes these principles clashed in very complex ways."

 

 

-------------

 

The Jerusalem Post
Ayalon slams Goldstone over apartheid
By JERUSALEM POST STAFF
06/05/2010 22:11
http://www.jpost.com/Israel/Article.aspx?id=174940

 

Deputy foreign minister rejects jurist's response to report he sent 28 black South Africans to death.


Reports that international jurist Richard Goldstone sent 28 black South Africans to death during the apartheid regime prove he wasn't impartial when compiling the UN report on Operation Cast Lead, Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon said Thursday.

Speaking to Israel Radio, Ayalon said that, "after [Goldstone's] dubious background was revealed, there is no reason not to think" that the judge had ulterior motives in composing the UN report accusing the IDF of perpetrating war crimes in Gaza.

Goldstone presided in South Africa during the 1980s and 1990s, and reportedly wrote in one of his rulings that the gallows are the only deterrent for killers.

"This so-called respected judge is using this [Gaza] report in order to atone for his sins and gain international legitimacy," Ayalon opined, referring to rumors that had Goldstone sought work as a judge in the International Court of Justice in The Hague.

The deputy foreign minister said that he did not accept Goldstone's response to the [South Africa] report that he was a part of the system and had to respect the laws of the state, occasionally having to enforce laws he was opposed to.

"I don't want to exaggerate, but these are the same explanations we heard in Nazi Germany after World War II," Ayalon said. "That is not an explanation that justifies his actions."

Reacting to criticism that Israeli daily Yediot Aharonot unearthed the information on Goldstone, and not the Foreign Ministry, Ayalon blamed his predecessors, especially former foreign minister Tzipi Livni.

"Without instruction from the political level, sensitive operations are not carried out on the administrative level," Ayalon explained. "The instruction had to come from the leadership of the Foreign Ministry at that time.

"If we could have used this in 'real time,' it would have been more effective," the deputy foreign minister said. "Even if Israel has no political gain," from releasing the information now, "it's important for people to know, for it to be on record."

Hamas leiding in Gaza bepaalde Israelische burgerdoelen voor Qassam raketten

 

Dit is natuurlijk in feite allemaal duidelijk en bekend, en zoiets als uitleggen dat het in de winter kouder is dan in de zomer. Maar helaas geloven sommige normaal gesproken intelligente mensen klakkeloos de propaganda van Hamas, zelfs als die zichzelf tegenspreekt. Men gelooft eigenlijk alleen die propaganda van Hamas die men graag wil geloven, en negeert alles, ook uit 'sympathieke' bronnen, dat dat tegenspreekt. Hieronder dus nog maar eens het bewijs dat Hamas het bewust op Israelische burgers heeft gemunt en dit een belangrijk element is van haar ideologie en strategie, zoals die op haar website en door haar leiders vaker is uitgelegd.

 

During the Gaza conflict, the Qassam Brigades, acting as Hamas's military arm, launched some 600 rockets against Israel. This was high-trajectory fire by inherently inaccurate weapons, covering a broad swath of southern Israel. Targets included the major cities of Ashdod, Ashkelon, and Beersheba (combined population 850,000), as well as numerous smaller towns and settlements. Hamas has boasted that more than one million Israelis live within range of its rockets. The Qassam Brigades website recorded 147 Grad launches against cities and towns during the conflict, with the following distribution:

     * The "occupied" city of Ashkelon: 57
     * The "occupied" city of Ashdod: 41
     * The "occupied" city of Beersheba: 25
     * The "usurped" town of Netivot: 17
     * "Usurped Azata": 4
     * "Eshkol": 3

 

RP

------------------

Washington Institute for Near East Policy / PolicyWatch #1635
Resistance and Rockets: Hamas Targeting of Israeli Civilians
By Jeffrey White
February 25, 2010
http://washingtoninstitute.org/templateC05.php?CID=3179

 

Recently, Hamas has gone to extraordinary lengths to prove that it did not attack civilian targets in Israel during the December 2008 to January 2009 Gaza conflict. But a review of the organization's own media -- including the website of its military arm, the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades (qassam.ps), and the Hamas-associated monthly journal Filastin al-Muslima (fm-m.com) -- shows that Hamas knowingly and repeatedly fired on Israeli population centers in southern Israel. To accept Hamas's latest claim that it did not launch rockets at civilians is to deny its numerous past claims to the contrary.

Claim vs. Conduct

On February 3, 2010, Hamas released a fifty-two-page response to the UN's Goldstone report regarding its conduct during the Gaza war (called the "Battle of al-Furqan" in the organization's commentary). According to this document, the killing and wounding of Israeli civilians was unintentional -- Hamas forces had targeted only military installations during the fighting. This claim was based on a supposed internal investigation conducted by Hamas and led by its justice minister, Faraj al-Ghoul.

Historically, however, Hamas's targeting of Israeli civilians goes beyond wartime exigencies -- it is a fundamental aspect of the group's struggle against Israel. Civilian casualties are neither regretted nor lamented. To the contrary, they are approved and applauded within Hamas's internal publications and its propaganda aimed at Arab audiences. For example, in one Arabic article on the Qassam Brigades website (alqassam.ps/arabic/news1.php?id=14256), the group discusses rocket operations during the al-Furqan battle and cites the heroism of the Qassam Brigades personnel who conducted the attacks. Hamas subsequently declared that its February 3 report should not be interpreted as an apology for inflicting Israeli civilian casualties.

Indeed, rocket attacks against southern Israel were the Qassam Brigades' primary offensive operation during the Gaza conflict. Hamas planned for such strikes as an integral part of its war preparations, and its rocket system was well resourced and exercised prior to Israel's Operation Cast Lead (for details, see Policy Focus #97, Hamas in Combat: The Military Performance of the Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement).

Hamas rocket forces are controlled through a chain of command running from the top leadership down to individual firing units. Decisions about when to fire on Israel and what types of targets to bombard were made at a high level: by the military "cabinet" comprising senior Hamas leaders in Gaza, including the commander of the Qassam Brigades. Operational orders were then sent down to combat brigade and battalion firing units and their attached rocket units.

The Hamas rocket inventory contained some 1,500 unguided artillery rockets, including short-range "Qassam" types of 90, 107, and 115 millimeters and long-range 122-millimeter "Grad" rockets. The Grads are the most destructive rockets in the Hamas arsenal, capable of reaching 22 to 40 kilometers.

During the Gaza conflict, the Qassam Brigades, acting as Hamas's military arm, launched some 600 rockets against Israel. This was high-trajectory fire by inherently inaccurate weapons, covering a broad swath of southern Israel. Targets included the major cities of Ashdod, Ashkelon, and Beersheba (combined population 850,000), as well as numerous smaller towns and settlements. Hamas has boasted that more than one million Israelis live within range of its rockets. The Qassam Brigades website (alqassam.ps/arabic/operations2.php?id=63) recorded 147 Grad launches against cities and towns during the conflict, with the following distribution:

     * The "occupied" city of Ashkelon: 57
     * The "occupied" city of Ashdod: 41
     * The "occupied" city of Beersheba: 25
     * The "usurped" town of Netivot: 17
     * "Usurped Azata": 4
     * "Eshkol": 3

In addition, an estimated 400 Qassam-type rockets were fired at Israeli targets closer to Gaza, including "usurped" Sderot. On the same page on its website, Hamas claims to have fired a total of 213 Grads during the conflict; in other words, nearly 70 percent were aimed at civilian population centers (i.e., the 147 launches mentioned above). The highest number of Grad strikes claimed against a military target was 26 at the "Ofakim military base."

The Qassam Brigades considers its bombardment of large population centers deep within Israel as one of its major accomplishments of the war. Its website trumpets the breaking of the 40-kilometer range barrier and the shelling of Beersheba as major achievements (alqassam.ps/arabic/news1.php?id=14256). And the January 2009 issue of Filasteen al-Muslima (fm-m.com/2009/feb/8-1.php) includes a chronology of events during the al-Furqan conflict that lists rocket activity, including the following:

December 28, 2008: "The Qassam Brigades and the resistance factions continue to launch rockets at Israeli towns and settlements."

December 30, 2008: "Al-Qassam Brigades bombing, Beersheba, Ashdod, Ashkelon, and 'Sederot,' and the settlements 'Ofakim,' 'Kiryat Gat,' and 'Kiryat Malachi.'" J

January 1, 2009: "Al-Qassam Brigades bombed the Zionist military air base 'Ansrim' [Hatserim?] and the ports of Ashdod and Ashkelon."

January 2, 2009: "Al-Qassam Brigades and resistance groups bombard Ashkelon and other Zionist towns and settlements, which led to the wounding of four Zionists."

The chronology also contains a number of other entries describing attacks on "Zionist" cities, towns, and settlements and attributing them to unspecified "resistance" factions or groups. These strikes were probably conducted at least in part by the Qassam Brigades.

Hamas's War against Israel

Attacks on civilian targets are in keeping with Hamas's concept of war against Israel. Hamas views the war in both Palestinian nationalist and Islamist terms. Not only is it a war of liberation for all of Palestine, fought against the "occupiers" or "usurpers," it is also a jihad. Qassam Brigades personnel killed in action are described as having been on "Jihad Missions," and the group uses the slogan "It is a Jihad, victory or martyrdom" on its pubic statements. In a recent interview on the Brigades website, a spokesman stated, "We have prepared previously and we are still preparing for jihad against the enemies of God"
(alqassam.ps/arabic/dialogue.php?id=265).

When addressing its internal membership and Arab audiences, Hamas frequently invokes "resistance" as a principal means of achieving its goals. For example, in a January 22, 2010, speech, senior Hamas leader Khaled Mashal, stated, "Hamas will keep rejecting the occupation and refuse to recognize the legitimacy of the Zionist entity. Priority will remain building and developing the resistance." Many observers tend to dismiss such rhetoric as mere posturing; but that is far too easy a rationalization. Resistance and jihad are mutually reinforcing concepts, and Hamas uses them to legitimize acts of violence against civilian occupiers, including rocket attacks and terrorism. These are essentially offensive, not defensive, concepts -- the usurped land must be fought for, and the usurpers driven from it.

Conclusion

Hamas targeting of civilians is not an Israeli fabrication -- the group has used its own elaborate media networks to publicize and praise rocket operations throughout the conflict. Hamas views attacks on civilians as legitimate, appropriate, effective, and even heroic. Such strikes are fundamental to its operations -- part of the Hamas way of war.

It is primarily because Hamas's weapons are limited in accuracy and destructive power that more civilians are not killed and wounded. Hamas is working hard to address these limitations, however, through the acquisiton of more-effective and longer-range rockets; as recently as January 15, 2010, Mashal threatened to turn Israel into a cemetery once the next round of major hostilities erupts. Such ambitions should be remembered as Western leaders evaluate Hamas's conduct of war and consider their positions toward the group.

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Jeffrey White is a defense fellow at The Washington Institute, specializing in the military and security affairs of Iraq and the Levant.