Israel's criminal use of white phosphorus on civilian areas was blatant and obvious to television viewers around the world.
by Christopher Bollyn
October 23, 2009
Richard Goldstone, author of the UN report accusing Israel of serious war crimes and crimes against humanity during its assault on Gaza, has openly challenged the Obama administration to justify its claims that his findings are flawed and biased.
ISRAELI ASSAULT "DESIGNED TO TERRORIZE"
The UN fact-finding mission headed by Goldstone concluded that the Israeli assault on the civilian population of the Gaza Strip was "a deliberately disproportionate attack designed to punish, humiliate and terrorize 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."
Israel's criminal use of white phosphorus on civilian areas was blatant and
obvious to television viewers around the world.
The Israeli government is particularly
worried because the Goldstone report concluded that the Israeli military, headed
by Ehud Barak, committed serious war crimes that constitute a "grave breach" of
the Geneva Conventions:
From the facts gathered, the Mission found that the following grave breaches of the Fourth Geneva Convention were committed by the Israeli armed forces in Gaza: wilful killing, torture or inhuman treatment, wilfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health, and extensive destruction of property, not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly. As grave breaches these acts give rise to individual criminal responsibility. The Mission notes that the use of human shields also constitutes a war crime under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.
The Goldstone fact-finding report is extremely important because it puts every law-abiding government on notice that they are obliged under international law to consider the leadership of the Israeli government and military as criminal. This means that people like Ehud Olmert and Ehud Barak should be arrested as soon as they arrive in any country that upholds international law. In the same way that Roman Polanski was arrested in Switzerland, the Israeli political and military leaders should be arrested and held for a war crimes trial. This is what international law demands. If these individuals were to be arrested and interrogated we would also find the truth about who carried out the false-flag terror attacks of 9-11.
Wanted for war crimes: Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert (center) and defense
minister Ehud Barak (right) with foreign minister Tzipi Livni, daughter of an
Irgun terrorist. Barak and Olmert are also senior architects of the 9-11
attacks in the United States.
The UN report on Israeli war crimes during the assault on Gaza is in three parts and can be read by clicking on the following links: