Hezbollah, Hamas and Israel: Everything You Need To Know
A perilous excursion into the distant past, starting seven whole weeks ago
Hezbollah, Hamas and Israel: Everything You Need To Know
By ALEXANDER COCKBURN; July 21, 2006 - Counterpunch
As the TV networks give unlimited airtime to Israel’s apologists, the message rolls out that no nation, least of all Israel, can permit bombardment or armed incursion across its borders without retaliation.
The guiding rule in this tsunami of drivel is that the viewers should be denied the slightest access to any historical context, or indeed to anything that happened prior to June 28, which was when the capture of an Israeli soldier and the killing of two others by Hamas hit the headlines, followed soon thereafter by an attack by a unit of Hezbollah’s fighters.
Memory is supposed to stop in its tracks at June 28, 2006.
Let’s go on a brief excursion into pre-history. I’m talking about June 20, 2006, when Israeli aircraft fired at least one missile at a car in an attempted extrajudicial assassination attempt on a road between Jabalya and Gaza City. The missile missed the car. Instead it killed three Palestinian children and wounded 15.
Back we go again to June 13, 2006. Israeli aircraft fired missiles at a van in another attempted extrajudicial assassination. The successive barrages killed nine innocent Palestinians.
Now we’re really in the dark ages, reaching far, far back to June 9, 2006, when Israel shelled a beach in Beit Lahiya killing 8 civilians and injuring 32.
That’s just a brief trip down Memory Lane, and we trip over the bodies of twenty dead and forty-seven wounded, all of them Palestinians, most of them women and children.
Israel regrets… But no! Israel doesn’t regret in the least. Most of the time it doesn’t even bother to pretend to regret. It says, “We reserve the right to slaughter Palestinians whenever we want. We reserve the right to assassinate their leaders, crush their homes, steal their water, tear out their olive groves, and when they try to resist we call them terrorists intent on wrecking the ‘peace process’”.
Now Israel says it wants to wipe out Hezbollah. It wishes no harm to the people of Lebanon, just so long as they’re not supporters of Hezbollah, or standing anywhere in the neighborhood of a person or a house or a car or a truck or a road or a bus or a field, or a power station or a port that might, in the mind of an Israeli commander or pilot, have something to do with Hezbollah. In any of those eventualities all bets are off. You or your wife or your mother or your baby get fried.
Israel regrets… But no! As noted above, it doesn’t regret in the least. Neither does George Bush, nor Condoleezza Rice nor John Bolton who is the moral savage who brings shame on his country each day that he sits as America’s ambassador (unconfirmed) at the UN and who has just told the world that a dead Israeli civilian is worth a whole more in terms of moral outrage than a Lebanese one.
None of them regrets. They say Hezbollah is a cancer in the body of Lebanon. Sometimes, to kill the cancer, you end up killing the body. Or bodies. Bodies of babies. Lots of them. Go to the website fromisraeltolebanon.info and take a look. Then sign the petition on the site calling on the governments of the world to stop this barbarity.
You can say that Israel brought Hezbollah into the world. You can prove it too, though this too involves another frightening excursion into history.
This time we have to go far, almost unimaginably far, back into history. Back to 1982, before the dinosaurs, before CNN, before Fox TV, before O’Reilly and Limbaugh. But not before the neo-cons who at that time had already crawled from the primal slime and were doing exactly what they are doing now: advising an American president to give Israel the green light to “solve its security problems” by destroying Lebanon.
In 1982 Israel had a problem. Yasir Arafat, headquartered in Beirut, was (getting) ready to announce that the PLO was prepared to sit down with Israel and embark on peaceful, good faith negotiations towards a two-state solution.
Israel didn’t want a two-state solution, which meant -- if UN resolutions were to be taken seriously -- a Palestinian state right next door, with water, and contiguous territory. So Israel decided (to) chase the PLO right out of Lebanon. It announced that the Palestinian fighters had broken the year-long cease-fire by lobbing some shells into northern Israel.
Palestinians had done nothing of the sort. I remember this very well, because Brian Urquhart, at that time assistant secretary general of the United Nations, in charge of UN observers on Israel’s northern border, invited me to his office on the 38th floor of the UN HQ in mid-Manhattan and showed me all the current reports from the zone. For over a year there’d been no shelling from north of the border. Israel was lying.
With or without a pretext Israel wanted to invade Lebanon. So it did, and rolled up to Beirut. It shelled Lebanese towns and villages and bombed them from the air. Sharon’s forces killed maybe 20,000 people, and let Lebanese Christians slaughter hundreds of Palestinian refugees in the camps of Sabra and Chatilla.
The killing got so bad that even Ronald Reagan awoke from his slumbers and called Tel Aviv to tell Israel to stop. Sharon gave the White House the finger by bombing Beirut at the precise times -- 2.42 and 3.38 -- of two UN resolutions calling for a peaceful settlement on the matter of Palestine.
When the dust settled over the rubble, Israel bunkered down several miles inside Lebanese sovereign territory, which it illegally occupied, in defiance of all UN resolutions, for years, supervising a brutal local militia and running its own version of Abu Graibh, the torture center at the prison of Al-Khiam.
Occupy a country, torture its citizens and in the end you face resistance. In Israel’s case it was Hezbollah, and in the end Hezbollah ran Israel out of Lebanon, which is why a lot of Lebanese regard Hezbollah not as terrorists but as courageous liberators.
The years roll by and Israel does its successful best to destroy all possibility of a viable two-state solution. It builds illegal settlements. It chops up Palestine with Jews-only roads. It collars all the water. It cordons off Jerusalem. It steals even more land by bisecting Palestinian territory with its “fence”. Anyone trying to organize resistance gets jailed, tortured, or blown up.
Sick of their terrible trials, Palestinians elect Hamas, whose leaders make it perfectly clear that they are ready to deal on the basis of the old two-state solution, which of course is the one thing Israel cannot endure. Israel doesn’t want any “peaceful solution” that gives the Palestinians anything more than a few trashed out acres surrounded with barbed wire and tanks, between the Israeli settlements whose goons can murder them pretty much at will.
So here we are, 24 years after Sharon did his best to destroy Lebanon in 1982, and his heirs are doing it all over again. Since they can’t endure the idea of any just settlement for Palestinians, it’s the only thing they know how to do. Call Lebanon a terror-haven and bomb it back to the stone age. Call Gaza a terror-haven and bomb its power plant, first stop on the journey back to the stone age. Bomb Damascus. Bomb Teheran.
Of course they won’t destroy Hezbollah. Every time they kill another Lebanese family, they multiply hatred of Israel and support for Hezbollah. They’ve even unified the parliament in Baghdad, which just voted unanimously -- Sunnis and Shi’ites and Kurds alike -- to deplore Israel’s conduct and to call for a ceasefire.
I hope you’ve enjoyed these little excursions into history, even though history is dangerous, which is why the US press gives it a wide berth. But even without the benefit of historical instruction, a majority of Americans in CNN’s instant poll –- about 55 per cent out of 800,000 as of midday, July 19 -- don’t like what Israel is up to.
Dislike is one thing, but at least in the short term it doesn’t help much. Israel’s 1982 attack on Lebanon grew unpopular in the US, after the first few days. But forcing the US to pressure Israel to settle the basic problem takes political courage, and virtually no US politician is prepared to buck the Israel lobby, however many families in Lebanon and Gaza may be sacrificed on the altar of such cowardice.
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Israel did not ask for this conflict
That Israel did not ask for this conflict is quite clear; it is equally clear that the attacks and kidnappings from the south and the north came from territories that Israel had withdrawn from in the name of compromise and for the purpose of peace. It appears to be equally true that now that this conflict has erupted, Israel is utilizing this opportunity to do to Hezbollah what the Lebanese government was unable or unwilling to do despite the call of the United Nations. Over the next period of time, we can expect Israel to use the window of political opportunity afforded it by the world community to do what it can to wipe out Hezbollah’s capacity to make war on Israel and her citizens.
Response re: Israel did not ask for this conflict
The fact that the above claims can even be taken seriously are a testament to the strength of the Zionist lobby and their supporters in government, politics, business, and the media.
Let’s look at each one of these claims:
1 "Israel did not ask for this conflict" – One could reasonably argue that by not withdrawing from ALL territories it occupied in 1967 (West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem), as demanded by numerous UN Resolutions and the overwhelming majority of the world’s peoples and governments, it is Israel that has “asked” for this conflict. Of course, “withdrawal” also includes not shelling, bombing, firing missiles at, shooting at, assassinating, and kidnapping Palestinians in their own homes and communities on a regular basis.
2. "It is clear that the attacks and kidnappings from the south and the north came from territories that Israel had withdrawn from in the name of compromise and for the purpose of peace" – This is rather disingenuous; the facts are that Hamas and the other resistance groups, with a few notable exceptions, had been strictly observing a ceasefire with Israel. The “kidnapping” (sic) of the Israeli soldier and the killing of two others happened only after the Israeli Navy shelled a beach in Gaza killing an entire family, along with other provocations.
3. "Israel is utilizing this opportunity to do to Hezbollah what the Lebanese government was unable or unwilling to do despite the call of the United Nations" – Regardless of what one thinks of Hezbollah – and I certainly have my criticisms, which are not relevant here – they are both a political organization and social service, humanitarian and relief organization, in addition to an armed resistance group. Hezbollah, again whether we like it or not, is firmly rooted in the Lebanese Shi’a community who, at 40 per cent, are the largest of Lebanon’s ethnic communities (the others being Christian, Druze, Sunni, along with a small Jewish community in Beirut). Israel will not be able to “destroy the Hezbollah cancer” (in the sickeningly racist language of Israel’s UN Ambassador) without, in fact, “destroying” almost the entire Lebanese Shi’a community or at least terrorizing them into submission. Both are war crimes and atrocities which in no way can be justified by military necessity or self-defense.
Besides, why should the Lebanese government “disarm” Hezbollah? Without their resistance, Israel would still be occupying southern Lebanon. Hezbollah didn’t even exist the last time Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982. They were a response to the on-going occupation of their lands and communities, again in defiance of international law and UN resolutions (while resistance against foreign occupation, distinct from terrorism, is not and is, in fact, enshrined in the UN Charter). As Middle East Scholar Gilbert Achar, who grew up in Lebanon, said in an interview yesterday (posted to Znet), it is only a small group of ultra-reactionaries in Lebanon who regard Hezbollah resistance to Israel as “terrorism” – which is not to say that many don’t have serious criticisms or believe even that the capture of the two Israeli soldiers was not an unnecessary provocation. At any rate, Hezbollah is firmly rooted in Lebanese political culture, has elected representatives in parliament and cabinet ministers in the Lebanese government.
Finally, it takes real chutzpah for Israel to demand Lebanon enforce the UN resolution disarming Hezbollah while they continue to flout and openly defy many UN resolutions since 1967, including those demanding the complete withdrawal of its occupation forces and settlements in not only Gaza (which Israel doesn’t want anyway), but the West Bank and East Jerusalem, as well.
4. "Over the next period of time, we can expect Israel to use the window of political opportunity afforded it by the world community to do what it can to wipe out Hezbollah’s capacity to make war on Israel and her citizens" – Comments such as this contain an underlying assumption that Israel is completely blameless in the current conflict and has done nothing to merit the situation in which it currently finds itself; such falsehoods can only be maintained by ignoring past, as well as much of current, history. In fact, Israel has as much as admitted that they’ve had plans in place all along to attack Lebanon and destroy Hezbollah and were simply waiting for the right opportunity (I guess this is what is meant by “expect(ing) Israel to use the window of political opportunity afforded it” in the comment above).
In any event, Israel is not merely “wiping out Hezbollah,” but “wiping out” much of Lebanon’s infrastructure: newly-built bridges and roads, transmission towers, power stations, ports, the Beirut airport, along with civilian targets such as markets, schools, and apartment buildings. Israeli aircraft have dropped leaflets warning Lebanese civilians to leave southern Lebanon only to attack them as they fled, in one instance incinerating a car full of fleeing Shi'a refugees with a missile fired from a helicopter gunship.
Israeli Army Chief of Staff Dan Halutz has been quoted as saying: “Nothing is safe in Lebanon.”
I’ll leave the final comment to former Zionist resistance fighter and veteran Israeli anti-war activist Uri Avnery, as it offers the only sensible way to end the violence and killing on both sides: "Whoever longs for a solution (to the Israel-Hezbollah conflict, as well as the wider Israel-Arab conflict) must know: there is no solution without settling the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And there is no solution to the Palestinian problem without negotiations with their elected leadership, the government headed by Hamas... that is the only way."
(Of course, for Israel to do this, they would have to release the democratically-elected Palestinian legislators they arested [or kidnapped], at the start of this conflict, along with several cabinet ministers).
I probably have absolutely...
I probably have absolutely no business involving myself in this discussion. The most I know is that it is not safe in this region and that someday I hope it will be safe enough for my family and I to visit Jerusalem. That said, here is my two cents worth. The biggest war being fought in this region is the war of words. Each side repeatedly places blame on the other. Every time something else happens it is the other sides fault. When will someone finally stop, look in the mirror, and start to place blame on one self. Everyone is to blame and all sides should be accountable for their own actions. War and killing and all of these attacks on each other? Reacting by inflicting more pain on each other as revenge for something the other side did because "they started it"? Who started it is not as important as who finishes it. Stop the violence. Everyone just needs to get along. Deal with attacks and violence with a justice system not bullets and missles.
Whilst I don't want to start
Whilst I don't want to start a flame war (there's enough war already) and I agree wholeheartedly with your sentiment that war begats more war (and peace cannot come of it, not the way things are going anyway), the 'justice' system you propose already exists in the form of the UN.
However, Israel holds such contempt for the UN and the greater world that they will and frequently do ignore every resolution targeting their uses of force and oppression against the Palestinians. Whilst I used to believe that the Palestinians (and Hezbollah) were wrong to use force in retaliation, my eyes have opened and I see now that it's not in retaliation at all, they're fighting just to stay alive. If they didn't fight back, the Israelis would just roll over them whether 'provoked' or not, and no law in the world would make them change this position.
I always thought that it was hypocritical of the Israelis to take the position they do in lieu of the attrocities many of their founding citizens faced in Europe during WWII - didn't they learn anything? It's patently clear now that they DID learn something. Indeed they learned a great deal - and they're using that knowledge now to devastating effect against the peoples of Palestine/Gaza and Lebanon. Collective punishment on this grand scale is akin to a certain vegitarian Austrian painter who tried to destroy judaism.
The Israeli people can do better for themselves than to have such Nazi leadership projecting this vile image of the country to the world and they are the ones who will suffer most in the end, which is a great injustice.
"Who started it is not as..."
"Who started it is not as important as who finishes it." you say - I'm afraid I can't agree with that since the only side who can 'finish' it, is precisely the one who has started it: Israel. For the Palestinians or the Lebanese to 'finish' it would mean accepting invasion and occupation, accepting massacres and theft, and this would, ultimately, give all the bullies of this world the green light to do exactly the same thing in other place, thus causing more massacres, wars and destruction. I can only agree with the obvious from the original article above: Israel does not want peace. The Arab world has shown signs of wanting peace (they have everything to win from it, including getting back the land that was stolen from them) but Israel can only lose out by seeking peace as it would have to give back land.
GO AFTER WEAPONS MANUFACTURERS
The Israeli war machine is funded by US aid and the main beneficiary are manufacturers of the various vicious weapons. The arms industry needs this war to go on and the Israelis are more than happy to keep it going. Not only do they get to replinish their armies with the latest weapons byut also tests them out for the US, steals their technology and then sells them to third world countries for billions more.
There must be a concerted effort to start a registry of victims of US made bombs and missiles and serve notice on the manufacturers that a day will come, sooner, not later, when they will be required to pay compensation for the suffering caused and their Boards will face criminal prosecution.
Do not do business with these companies and get the public to do the same.......
Well said, blackandred!
I find it interesting that those posting here who disagree with the author's thesis, either by supporting the Zionist position or by saying, in effect, "a pox on both your houses", seem unable to rebut any of the arguments made in the original piece. Indeed, it's almost as if they haven't read it.
Thank you, "blackandred" and others posting here, for restoring my faith in left-wing activists' abilities to intelligently argue their points without succumbing to the temptations of name-calling or use of excessively emotional language. Your arguments stand on their own merit. (Now if we could just get people in the mainstream to read them...)
Shame on all
I quite frankly dont give a monkeys who started this futile conflict and quite frankly I dont care but as usual its the innocent who suffer civillians on all sides who have no real gripe with anyone who just want to live there lives in peace but are bombed made homeless and killed becuase of inept and idiotic governments and world leaders.
As usual the blood of many is on the hands of few. Look in the mirror leaders of the so called free world can you sleep at night? I hope not.
You say your criticisms of
Blackandred, I don't want to deflect attention away from the poor, the old and the sick civilians who couldn't get out of the warpath, or from miserable, broken Lebanon whose citizens need to be left in peace to rebuild their lives.
That said, I have to respond to your throwaway comment that criticisms of Hezbollah aren't relevant here - why not? Glossing them as you do suggests that your argument is based on a double standard - that Hezbollah is a force of nature while Israel is entirely accountable. Resistance to occupation is to be expected and your reasons for the existence of Hezbollah stand up (although you don't mention the role and agenda of Iran). But the complication is that this resisting force aims not merely to drive Israel back behind its borders, but has pledged to put an end to it entirely, and holds fascist views on Jews (http://hurryupharry.bloghouse.net/...) . Hezbollah threatens not just to be reckless with the lives Israeli citizens but to expunge them. Not a great negotiating climate.
Hezbollah's and Hamas' pledges to end Israel's existence are central to this conflict and makes things harder to resolve than you make out. And we do agree that Israel has a right to exist, right?
Age old conflict
I am generally a conservative but I find that the current conflict is driving us further away from a solution rather than closer to a solution, so I joined this site to see what other people think.
It appears that the original post-er for this thread has brought to light some interesting facts that Israel might perhaps not like to admit. I come from a lineage of American Protestant settlers. I am sure that the holocaust and persecution of Jews was indeed a horrible, horrible thing, in spite of what Iran may claim in jest.
However, I think that modern Israel has become so shell-shocked and reactionary that they are not only drawing the world further from peace, injuring innocent civilians in the process, but they are also turning many Arab people against the United States.
Since the breakup of the Ottoman Empire the Arab people have not had a substantial centralization of power. Prior to this, we have the 2,000 year old conflict over the city of Jerusalem. Before this the Jews claim to have controlled the area which they now wish to "take back" as they see it.
However, the Arab people appear to think that since they were the occupying nation in Jerusalem after the breakup of the Crusades, that these "Zionist Occupiers" must leave as well.
Neither side appears interested in agreeing to the "Two State" solution. Both sides pretend to offer an olive branch of compromise, while they secretly and covertly lob a couple of rockets at the other side of the fence, or sneak in and take a few prisoners.
Meanwhile, the extremist faction of Islamic Terrorists, have finally managed to bring the conflict to the United States (9/11).
We lost quite a number of innocent civilians there. We are losing soldiers daily in Iraq. Yet Israel cannot look the other way for two soldiers? If the facts claimed above are indeed accurate it would seem that they had been conducting a campaign of taunting Hezbollah, hoping to provoke a response that would lead to a rationalizeable offensive. This sort of political offensive is not the sort of defensive strategy and humanitarian willpower that has generally been the policy of western democracies in the last two hundred years.
Are we losing sight in what is considered ethical defensive behavior? Are we agreeing with Pat Robertson that assassination is a good thing?
What happened to Thou Shalt Not Kill?
Granted, the US is not innocent due to the mess we are sorting out in Iraq, however, Saddam Hussein was indeed a horribly brutal man.
But if this conflict expands into Syria, Iran will respond in support of it's neighbor, and Iran raises the stakes quite a bit. Israel does not have enough manpower to take on Iran one on one. The United States would be drawn in, and we would have WW III on our hands.
Wasn't the UN created to avoid WW III? We need to stop Israel's Mike Tyson like counterpunch response mechanism to have at least a CHANCE at diplomacy before taking any further action.
all I didn't want to know....
Alexander Cockburn's piece was an excellent summary of all that I needed by way of confirmation of the pure evil that is occuring as I type. I just discovered this site and am glad to have found such a valuable and dedicated resource. I wish we didn't have to have sites like this and could all interact for better reasons - such exceptional writers and commentary wasted on words of war.
What now? Where do we go? How do we act? I write to politicians, march when I can, write poetry, established and anti-war protest and site ........but still I see brutality everywhere. What are we leaving for our children? It is so damned awful to watch as politicians chat and smile for photo opportunities whilst babies die, civilians are terrorised and half the world screams unheard in protest and the rest stay sleeping. I wish us peace - but even as an eternal optimist, do so with doubt as to the outcome :(
Namaste, Tina Louise
War in Lebanon
Two nights ago I saw the film 'Rabbit Proof Fence' about the sufferings of Aborigines under the administration of Australia in the early 20th century. Towards the end of this film the Englishman in charge of these policies commented '...if only these people understood what we are trying to do for them...' Last night I listened to Tony Blair trying to justify his 'war of values' on the hit list of nations in the Middle East - in almost 100 years, the White Man's burden hasn't changed much, has it?
downfall of the arab states
The USA,is a member of the anglo-saxon predatorily block of countries .
This block of countries, and their Mercenaries are world renown for their ability to liberate weak nations, and peoples from their wealth.
They will liberate the Arab states from their oil.
Arab nations are not yet prepared to recognize that an enemy of their rival brother, is also their enemy. Should they fail to protect that brother it always is to their soon to be demise. (Read history of the Native American peoples, India colonized )
Iran must be made to go nuclear, supported by all the Arab states, in return Iran must be made to pledge support for all the Arab States, then and only then all the Arab peoples will be given the respect they justly deserve, and the protection of all its peoples.
The establishment of ICTI
The establishment of ICTI would provide some small degree of justice to the victims of Israeli war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide against the Peoples of Lebanon and Palestine--just as the ICTY has done in the Balkans. Furthermore, the establishment of ICTI by the U.N. General Assembly would serve as a deterrent effect upon Israeli leaders such as Prime Minister Olmert, Defense Minister Peretz. So make conclusions
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software
Demand an Immediate International Criminal Tribunal for Israel
To: The United Nations General Assembly
The brutal bombings and invasion of Lebanon and Gaza are acts of Israeli state terrorism. The U.S. invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq, and the present U.S.-Israeli threat to Syria and Iran indicate their ruthless struggle for hegemony in the oil-rich Middle East, which would escalate into a global war.
At least 900 people have been killed in Lebanon, more than one-third children, and 3,000 wounded. The number of refugees in Lebanon has already exceeded one million. Whole residential areas, roads, bridges, ports, power stations, factories and other infra-structure have been destroyed by Israeli precision bombing. Lebanon’s economic and infrastructure damage tops $2.5B as of 4 August 2006.
In Gaza hundreds have been killed. Homes, greenhouses, bridges, water and sewerage treatment plants and electricity generators have been destroyed in the latest acts of Israeli genocide sadistically code-named ‘Operation Summer Rain,’ which began on 27 June 2006. Israel continues its brutal air strikes on the Gaza Strip almost daily.
Israel must be prosecuted immediately for its war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide against the Peoples of Lebanon and Palestine to stop the war escalating into a global catastrophe. Frances A. Boyle, Professor of Law, University of Illinois, has asserted the legal framework for The United Nations General Assembly to immediately establish an International Criminal Tribunal for Israel (ICTI).
“The United Nations General Assembly must immediately establish an International Criminal Tribunal for Israel (ICTI) as a ‘subsidiary organ’ under U.N. Charter Article 22. The ICTI would be organized along the lines of the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia (ICTY), which was established by the Security Council.
“The purpose of the ICTI would be to investigate and prosecute Israeli war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide against the Peoples of Lebanon and Palestine--just as the ICTY did for the victims of international crimes committed by Serbia and the Milosevic Regime throughout the Balkans.
“The establishment of ICTI would provide some small degree of justice to the victims of Israeli war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide against the Peoples of Lebanon and Palestine--just as the ICTY has done in the Balkans. Furthermore, the establishment of ICTI by the U.N. General Assembly would serve as a deterrent effect upon Israeli leaders such as Prime Minister Olmert, Defense Minister Peretz, Chief of Staff Halutz and Israel’s other top generals that they will be prosecuted for their further infliction of international crimes upon the Lebanese and the Palestinians.
“Without such a deterrent, Israel might be emboldened to attack Syria with the full support of the Likhudnik Bush Jr. Neoconservatives, who have always viewed Syria as ‘low-hanging fruit’ ready to be taken out by means of their joint aggression.
“The Israeli press has just reported that the Bush Jr administration is encouraging Israel to attack Syria. If Israel attacks Syria as it did when it invaded Lebanon in 1982, Iran has vowed to come to Syria’s defense.
“And of course Israel and the Bush Jr administration very much want a pretext to attack Iran. This scenario could readily degenerate into World War III.
“For the U.N. General Assembly to establish ICTI could stop the further development of this momentum towards a regional if not global catastrophe.”
We, the undersigned, demand that The United Nations General Assembly immediately establish an International Criminal Tribunal for Israel (ICTI) as a ‘subsidiary organ’ under U.N. Charter Article 22 to prosecute the Israeli Prime Minister Olmert, Defense Minister Peretz, Chief of Staff Halutz and Israel’s other top generals and war criminals for their infliction of international war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide against the Peoples of Lebanon and Palestine.
Sign the petition at
http://www.petitiononline.com/un040806/petition.html