[Nettime-bold] War Crimes Debate in Israel Heats Up

["Ivo Skoric" <ivo@reporters.net>]

The U.S. merely wants to coerce others into not prosecuting   Americans who commit war crimes. Israel is close to going a step   further: making it a crime to co-operate with prosecution of war   crimes. If Zeev Boim gets his way in Knesset, cooperation with ICC  will carry a 10 years sentence in Israel.  

Not only they don't have any intention of prosecuting war criminals,  but they also want to prosecute anybody who would attempt to go   after war criminals. Holocaust victims must be rolling over in their   graves.  

Not to mention that if Boim succeeds, this initiative will likely   quickly find fertile ground among right-wing representatives in both   Croatian and Serbian parliament, seeking same penalties for   cooperation with the ICTY. Why would they be any better than   Israel, indeed? 

Currently, co-operation with the ICTY is highly unpopular in both  Croatian and Serbian societies. The governments there risk losing  elections by co-operating with The Hague. In future, if Knesset  votes for Boim's law, they may be also facing long prison  sentences.

Yet, there is no talk about economic sanctions against Israel,  should Knesset pass Boim's law - not in the U.S. and not in the  E.U. And both the U.S. and the E.U. were more than ready to wag  their index finger at Croatian prime minister Racan for not sending  general Bobetko to The Hague, where he is wanted for crimes  against humanity committed under his command in the Medak  pocket.

Fortunately, Israel has people like Uri Avnery, a strong tradition of   peace activism and independent press (actually, the press in Israel  is far more critical of Sharon than the press in the U.S. is, the later  being obviously more easily intimidated by aggressive lobbying of   various pro-zionist organizations in the U.S.). And we shall hope   that they shall prevail. 

ivo

ps - On the other hand, Croatia may be better off under economic  sanctions - because the "help" that it got from the West so far  transfered most of the conutry's strategic assets (most notably  94% of banks, merchants fleet, state power distribution and  telecommunications...) under the ownership of foreign capital. The  results was a price hike, yet with no increase in revenues (with  profits being collected by foreign owners), producing the net  increase in amount of people dropping below the poverty level. One  would think, at least, that the new management would expand  operations and help reduce Croatia's 15% unemployment rate. Not  so. Foreign owners tend to bring their own management teams. To  offset the higher cost of management, they also tend to bring  workers from third countries that are prepared to work for less - like  Turkish workers that built roads in Croatia for the U.S. construction  company Bechtel - later Bechtel is probably going to charge  Croatian citizens to use those roads.




------- Forwarded Message Follows ------- 

Cooperation with ICC - a crime in Israel? 

War Crimes Debate in Israel Heats Up Again 
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 

Wed Oct 30,10:39 AM ET 

Jim Lobe,OneWorld US 

A three-month-old controversy in Israel over a peace group's efforts  to collect 
evidence of alleged war crimes committed by the Israel Defense  Forces (IDF) 
against Palestinians intensified Tuesday when a senior member of  the ruling 
Likud Party submitted a bill in Israel's parliament that would make  it a crime 
for any Israeli citizen to provide assistance, documents or  information to the 
new International Criminal Court (ICC) at the Hague. 

The bill, which was presented by Zeev Boim, chairman of the  governing coalition, 
attaches a 10-year prison 
sentence to the proposed crime, and would ban any group found to  be engaged in 
the activities it covers. 

The coalition government, which may collapse before the bill can  be voted on by 
all members of Israel's parliament, or Knesset, has not yet decided  whether it 
will support it, although its provisions appear consistent with recent  demands 
by the Minister of Justice, Me'ir Sheetrit, that a new law proscribing  such 
activities be enacted, according to Israeli analysts. 

But submission of the bill itself raises the controversy, which has  become a 
major topic of talk shows and newspaper columns in Israel, to a  new level. 

"This bill betrays the memory of six million Holocaust victims,"  declared former 
Knesset member and peace activist Uri Avnery. "After the  Holocaust, the Jewish 
people fought with all its strength for the creation of an International  War 
Crimes Court, and now the Sharon Government tries to destroy it.  This is 
tantamount to an admission that they have something to hide." 

Israel is a signatory to the Rome Protocol that establishes the ICC-- the world's 
first permanent international court to try war crimes, crimes against  humanity, 
and genocide--but has not yet ratified it. The Protocol took effect  after its 
ratification by 60 nations last spring, and the ICC is expected to  begin its 
work early next year. 

The United States, which signed it in the last days of Bill Clinton's 
presidency, renounced its signature last May and has sought a  blanket exemption 
from the ICC's scope. In addition, Washington is now actively  seeking bilateral 
commitments from countries around the world not to turn over U.S.  troops or 
officials to the ICC. Israel was among the first of a dozen nations  that have 
signed such an agreement with Washington which pledged in  return not to turn 
over any Israeli soldiers to the new court. 

The proposed law is believed to be directed mainly against Gush  Shalom, the 
Israeli Peace Bloc, which last summer warned 15 senior IDF  officers in writing 
that certain operations they conducted against Palestinians as  reported by the 
Israeli media could be considered war crimes and that Gush  Shalom was gathering 
information about those incidents. 

The reported incidents included summary executions, dropping  bombs on 
residential areas, indiscriminate destruction of houses, and  punishing families 
for the acts of one of their members. They also included incidents-- many of 
which were detailed in a major new report released by the Israeli  chapter of 
Physicians for Human Rights in Jerusalem Tuesday--when the IDF  prevented medical 
help from reaching those injured or shot at. 

"The primary purpose of the letters was to make clear to the  commanders the 
severity of such actions, in terms of Israeli and international laws,  and to 
persuade them to desist from these actions," according to Gush  Shalom whose 
letters also warned that the Israeli government's failure to prosecute  such 
cases in the future left open the possibility that they might be  referred to the 
ICC. 

The letters set off a furious debate, with Prime Minister Ariel  Sharon (news - 
web sites) demanding that criminal action be pursued against  Gush Shalom members 
engaged in the project. An investigation by Attorney General  Elyakim Rubinstein, 
however, concluded that the group's actions did not violate any  existing law. 
Sheetrit then called for a new law. 

Gush Shalom has also been widely denounced as Israel's  equivalent of Kapos, the 
special Jewish police who helped the Nazis keep order in  concentration camps, 
and traitors guilty of "stabbing the army in the back." 

The Boim bill was denounced Tuesday by Gush Shalom as  "despicable" and 
dangerous. If passed in its current form, the group said, it could be  used to 
prosecute human rights organizations for collecting evidence of  abuses on the 
pretext that their reports might be taken up by the ICC. 

"It would turn Israel into an international outcast - a country which  first 
signed the Rome Treaty and would now forbid its own citizens on  pain of dire 
punishment from helping the same court," said spokesman Adam  Keller, who 
appealed to the Labour Party, which is considering leaving the  governing 
coalition, to oppose the bill. 







-- 

________________________________________________________ _________ 
"Never underestimate the power of very stupid people in large  groups." 


Ivo Skoric
1773 Lexington Ave
New York NY 10029
212.369.9197
ivo@balkansnet.org
http://balkansnet.org

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