Friday, January 2, 2015

Abbas's Latest Step: Accusing Israel of Alleged War Crimes

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                    
                                                                                                
Mahmoud Abbas, PA Head

This is NOT a case of the pot calling the kettle "black."  Israelis and Palestinians are opposites if ever there was two.  Israel and Palestine march to different drummers.  Israel intends to stay in Israel while Abbas intends to drive the Jews out and take over their land.  Right now Abbas intends to take Jerusalem as their capital but it happens to be Israel's capital and has always been since ancient times back to King David.  .

The first Friday (Shabbat tonight) of 2015 finds that Mahmoud Abbas, leader of the Palestine Authority/Fatah in Judea-Samaria had tried and failed to pass a mandatory Israeli withdrawal to pre-1967 lines at the UN Security Council. 
                                                                 

                                                                           
Netanyahu and Obama Talking about 1967 lines on TV
 President Obama did not understand the meaning of this line either, and had tried to get Netanyahu to go back, on television yet on May 20, 2011.   Netanyahu had to give him a lecture on why Israel could not do this, but I see that Abbas tried anyway.  " Friday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, for a second timerejected the 1967 borders as "indefensible" during a meeting that he and President Obama just concluded in the Oval Office."  What this means is to expect that "the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949,” another way of describing the 1967 boundaries."  

After having been attacked a few minutes after announcing statehood in 1948 and fending for their lives in the War of Independence which started on November 29, 1947 when the Arabs became violent upon hearing the UN resolution on Palestine, giving them their own state out of Israel's reduced by 80% piece, and wasn't over until Armistice Agreements were signed in 1949, Israel has had to deal with the Sinai War and the Six-Day War plus the War of Attrition from 1968 to 1970.  Then there was the Yom Kippur War of 1973 as well as many other attacks.  No, Israel is not going to go back to the pre-1967 lines which were just temporary anyway.   If the USA had to do that, they'd have to give back many states to Mexico, and maybe even Oregon and Washington to Canada.  Most wars are over land, and Israel fought for their lives over Israel which was awarded to them after years of meetings with the Allied forces who won WWI.  They had come into the Ottoman Empire who had lost the land.  By winning they had the right to divvy up the land, and decided to give Palestine to the Jews who had no land of their own.  
                                                                     
ICC in Netherlands
The day after this attempt and finding that it didn't pass, Abbas signed a Palestinian request to join the International Criminal Court.  He wants to bring the leaders of Israel before the court for alleged war crimes; obviously from Operation  Defensive Edge when Israel had to go into Gaza to stop the rockets, mortars and missiles as well as tunnels from Hamas' attack on them.

Can it be that Abbas doesn't see that the Palestinians have been the ones who have been the aggressors and have been attacking Israel in this manner since 2001?  Of course they have been attacking Israel in many ways since 1948 in an on-going war against Israel; more interested in attacking than in ever creating their own homeland and living in security.  To throw aspersions onto Israel when his own slate is cluttered with sins takes chutzpa.  I'm Jewish, but this comment from the New Testament comes to my mind:  "The "let he who is without sincast the first stone" incident is one of the most well-known lessons of the Bible.   Our Torah has  this to say to someone like Abbas.  Willful sinners have heaped false accusations upon me, but I keep YOUR precepts wholeheartedly, something RASHI commented on.  
                                                                     
The Palestinians should be fearing this international criminal court as they are the criminals.  Israel has only been defending their lives.  I would have Professor Eugene Kontorovich as my defense attorney for Israel who is a great international law lawyer.  "He is one of the world’s preeminent experts on international jurisdiction and criminal law, ... He is working on a book on international law for Harvard University Press. "  I would have several lawyers working together to defend Israel if it comes to that such as including International lawyers such as Eugene Rostow, Julius Stone, David Phillips, and  Alan Dershowitz   Israel has been defending the lives of their citizens, not being aggressive.  They have the right to defend themselves.  This tiny country has gone out of its way to preserve the lives of the Palestinians, and it is not their fault that these people would rather sacrifice their own lives in order to give Israel a bad rep.  

"The International Criminal Court (ICC or ICCt)  is an intergovernmental organization and international tribunal that sits in The Hague in the Netherlands. The ICC has the jurisdiction to prosecute individuals for the international crimes of genocidecrimes against humanity, and war crimes."

122 states are members.  They have to  sign and ratify the Rome statute.  Is Palestine an actual state now?  They're so busy attacking Israel through the UN that they don't seem to be running their state.  "Israel, Sudan and the United States—have informed the UN Secretary General that they no longer intend to become states parties and, as such, have no legal obligations arising from their former representatives' signature of the Statute.  

I believe Israel has the right to sue the Palestinians.  Article 6 defines the crime of genocide as "acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group"  They have been trying to do away with Jews living in Israel since before 1948.  They have attacked to kill.  

"There are five such acts which constitute crimes of genocide under article 6:
  1. Killing members of a group (bombing them with mortars, rockets, missiles) 
  2. Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group
  3. Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction
  4. Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group
  5. Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group
The definition of these crimes is identical to those contained within the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide of 1948."  Operation Defensive Edge was Israel's decision when all of Israel were in bomb shelters.  The attacks on Israel  pre-operation had been unbearable.  Netanyahu will answer with :“Hamas is committing a double war crime by intentionally trying to hit Israeli citizens, and using the local Gaza population as human shields,” adding that Hamas thus bears responsibility for civilian casualties in the conflict."

The Palestinians made the mistake of not accepting land in 1947 

when it was offered to them by Great Britain. They've made the 

mistake of not accepting Israel as a Jewish state and instead 

attacking Israel at every opportunity.   They're making the mistake 

of joining the criminal court to bring charges against Israel.  People 

that live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones, Abbas.  

Resource:  http://www.debka.com/newsupdate/10060/
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/20/world/middleeast/20mideast.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Criminal_Court
http://www.thewire.com/global/2011/05/what-obama-meant-1967-lines-why-irked-netanyahu/37977/
http://www.jnf.org/about-jnf/in-your-area/speakers/eugene-kontorovich.html
http://www.law.northwestern.edu/faculty/profiles/EugeneKontorovich/
http://int.icej.org/news/headlines/netanyahu-defends-operation-defensive-edge
 Reference: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ub2x5UvjUs4  Prof. Kontorovich


3 comments:

  1. What the Palestinian Authority Did Not Tell the UN Security Council
    by Khaled Abu Toameh • December 29, 2014 at 5:00 am

    What the Palestinians did not tell the Security Council is that the state they seek to establish is one that does not respect public freedoms, first and foremost freedom of expression. It will be a state where the president or any of his senior officials could order the arrest of anyone who dares to speak out against lack of democracy or reforms.

    Nor does the Palestinian Authority want the international community to know that 2014 witnessed the worst assaults on freedoms since its establishment two decades ago.

    The Palestinian Authority is trying to send a message that no one is immune to arrest or harassment, even if it is a woman.

    ReplyDelete
  2. From Honest Reporting: 1. Mahmoud Abbas signed the Rome Statute, requesting membership in the International Criminal Court. It paves the way for a possible war crimes probe of Israel by the International Criminal Court. The Israeli cabinet is meeting today to consider responses — presumably withholding tax transfers to the PA, rescinding Palestinian officials’ VIP travel permits, settlement activity, as well as legal steps to shield IDF personnel from possible ICC inquiries.

    But take a deep breath before imaging the worst. The Jerusalem Post, in a must-read piece, explains the hoops the PA would have to go through to trigger real activity in The Hague. And the Washington Post points out something else:

    The signing of the Rome ­Statute in itself does not have any legal effect until ratified by the Palestinian Authority, which could delay it indefinitely.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu commented on the decision of the Palestinian Authority to accede to various international treaties: “It is the Palestinian Authority – which is in a unity government with Hamas, an avowed terrorist organization that, like ISIS, perpetrates war crimes – that needs to be concerned about the International Criminal Court in the Hague."

    ReplyDelete