UN mission to Jenin

[Sprayber]

Originally posted by Dalgetti
Sprayber : there is no point in arguing with him, he's a stupid nazi.

but don't listen to me . After all, I am not quite human , remember?

Well, I'm assuming that the it was a DL.

[Az]

why bother answering to him , then?

[Sprayber]

Originally posted by Dalgetti
why bother answering to him , then?

I was using the quote to explain a point. that what others aren't quit brave enough to go that far, but get close.

[Saint Marcus]

oh , dear, human rights violations. If the west condemned everytime there are human rights violations, the arab countries would have ceased to exist a long time ago.

So you say it's ok "cause the arabs do it too"? Two wrong never make a right.

[Eli]

Originally posted by Saint Marcus
So you say it's ok "cause the arabs do it too"?

It's not ok. But when 20 people make a crime, 19 of them murder and 1 kills by accident(the relation between deliberate massacres done by Arab states and the relatively low number of "collateral damage" done by Israel) and only the 1 Jew gets accused, interrogated and sent to jail...

[Az]

exactly.

or are you ogranizing an embargo on Saudi Arabia as we speak?

[Oldenbarnevelt]

Here's an excellent summary of Israel's objections against the UN "fact-finding mission". Worth reading, especially for those of you who take a sincere and unbiased interest in the (future) findings of such a mission. The big problem is that the UN itself has always been heavily prejudiced against Israel, and Israel's distrust in this case seems fully justified.

Apr. 29, 2002
Prepare for war crimes indictments
EVELYN GORDON


An outside observer could be forgiven for concluding that Israel must have something to hide in Jenin. Why else would it suddenly refuse to cooperate with a UN fact-finding commission to which it had previously consented? And why else would it demand that Israelis testifying to the commission be promised immunity from prosecution?

Israel’s explanation – that UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has designed a commission so slanted as to be virtually incapable of returning any finding but guilty – seems too paranoid for belief. And yet, there appears to be sound basis for this fear.

To start with, even if one could overlook the UN’s normal anti-Israel bias, it is hard to believe in the objectivity of a fact-finding commission when the same UN that is sending the commission has already, without waiting for its conclusions, passed a resolution condemning Israel for “mass killings” of Palestinians in Jenin. Yet that is precisely what the UN Human Rights Commission did last Monday, three days after the Security Council approved the fact-finding mission.

Also problematic is the presence of Cornelio Sommaruga, former head of the International Red Cross, as one of the three commission members. Reports that he has made anti-Semitic statements in the past, such as comparing the Jewish star to a swastika, are obviously troubling. Yet even discounting these reports, the fact remains that as head of the Red Cross, he approved and publicly defended the organization’s singling out of Israel as the only country in the world whose emergency medical service is denied membership. In any court of law, such evidence of bias would disqualify Sommaruga from the jury.

Paradoxically, however, the most serious problem of all is that the facts of the case are not actually in dispute. The Palestinian charge of a massacre has already been discredited, and Israel has never denied the other allegations: Buildings were damaged and destroyed, some civilians were accidentally killed, and people’s civil rights (such as freedom of movement) were violated. All of the above are inevitable when pitched battles are fought in built-up areas. The debate is thus not over what happened, but rather over how to construe it: as legitimate military action or a war crime.

WHAT DISTINGUISHES the former from the latter is not the objective scope of the destruction: Large-scale battles usually cause more damage, but may still be perfectly legitimate. Rather, it is the proportionality of the destruction, as measured by three critical questions: Did the operation have a valid military objective, or was its purpose merely to cause pain to the enemy population? Was the property damage and curtailment of residents’ rights commensurate with the needs of the operation, or did the army engage in wanton destruction and repression? Were reasonable precautions taken to minimize civilian casualties, or were civilians considered fair game?
The answers to all of these questions require fairly specialized military knowledge. The first involves evaluating the extensive intelligence data that led Israel to conclude that the refugee camp was a base for terrorist groups that murdered dozens of Israelis, and therefore a legitimate military target. The second requires determining whether, given the scope of the Palestinian resistance (they killed 23 Israeli soldiers while roughly losing twice that number themselves), the IDF could, with reasonable certainty, have achieved its objectives with less collateral damage to the environment, without also exposing its forces to risks unacceptable in standard military practice. And the third requires determining whether, in light of the armed resistance, the army’s precautions against civilian casualties were consistent with reasonable military concern for its own soldiers’ safety.

Yet none of the three commission members appointed by Annan – former president of Finland Martti Ahtisaari, former UN high commissioner of refugees Sadako Ogata, and Sommaruga – has the requisite experience and expertise to even begin to answer any of these questions. (The panel’s one military expert, though upgraded last week from mere adviser status, is still not a full member). Indeed, Ogata and Sommaruga are conditioned by training against even asking such questions. For humanitarian relief agencies, whether the damage was commensurate with military necessity is irrelevant; what matters is its objective scope (which determines what is needed to repair it). But since Israel’s defense rests entirely on the claim that the destruction was commensurate with the needs of a legitimate military operation, a commission incapable of, or uninterested in, considering the validity of this claim can only find it guilty.

Altogether, therefore, there is depressingly strong evidence for the conclusion reached last week by Daniel Bethlehem, an expert in international law from England’s Cambridge University: that the commission is coming not to ascertain the facts, but to prepare the ground for war crimes indictments the UN has already decided it wants. And if so, Israel’s refusal to cooperate is eminently proper.

[Saint Marcus]

really unbiased article

[Saint Marcus]

and 1 kills by accident

oh please. accident my ass. Israel have executed and assasinated plenty of people without any kind of trial.

[Oldenbarnevelt]

Originally posted by Saint Marcus
really unbiased article

Please point out the untruths and inaccuracies in it, rather than uttering empty slogans.

[Az]

civilians? sure. the head of Islamic Jihad in Nablus, the 2nd in command in Jenin. and those are all before the latest operation.

do you consider them civilians?
this is low-intensity warfare.

[Ecowiz Returns]

And those palestinian guards shot in Ramalah in the head. Was this an accident too? Did it occur in a gunfight? Or were they palin executions?

I never could understand how, when fighting inside a building the Israelli forces are so precise as to hit a moving target exactly on the forehead!

[Oldenbarnevelt]

Originally posted by Ecowiz Returns
And those palestinian guards shot in Ramalah in the head. Was this an accident too? Did it occur in a gunfight? Or were they palin executions?

I never could understand how, when fighting inside a building the Israelli forces are so precise as to hit a moving target exactly on the forehead!

Never heard of David and Goliath?

[Ecowiz Returns]

Originally posted by Oldenbarnevelt
Please point out the untruths and inaccuracies in it, rather than uttering empty slogans.

Good chalenge! Let's try:

Inacurate and biased
"To start with, even if one could overlook the UN’s normal anti-Israel bias..."

Plain inacurate
"...the same UN that is sending the commission has already, without waiting for its conclusions, passed a resolution condemning Israel for “mass killings” of Palestinians in Jenin..."
The report itself say that the commision was formed before the statement. And a statement from a commision does not bind those of another. Finally, 23 killings, such as it was arleady mentioned in a thread is already a mass murder.

"Yet none of the three commission members appointed by Annan – former president of Finland Martti Ahtisaari, former UN high commissioner of refugees Sadako Ogata, and Sommaruga – has the requisite experience and expertise to even begin to answer any of these questions."
I hope there is no doubts on why this is inacurate.

Inacurate and strongly biased:
"WHAT DISTINGUISHES the former from the latter is not the objective scope of the destruction: Large-scale battles usually cause more damage, but may still be perfectly legitimate. Rather, it is the proportionality of the destruction, as measured by three critical questions: Did the operation have a valid military objective, or was its purpose merely to cause pain to the enemy population? Was the property damage and curtailment of residents’ rights commensurate with the needs of the operation, or did the army engage in wanton destruction and repression? Were reasonable precautions taken to minimize civilian casualties, or were civilians considered fair game? "
These are obviouly not the full amount of issues to account when identifying possible war crimes.
Warcrimes may have been perpetrated outside the scope of commands issued (in most cases they are).
More seriously is the fact that this argument is a simple repetition of the Israelli arguments, without one single shread of critical or even origianl thought.

Even more serious, and this critic is to you Oldenbarnevelt, is the fact that the most serious problem identified in this article was actually solved. The commision had not 3 but 5 membres, 2 of which had military background.

Finally, the acusations of anti-semitism agains former president of the Red Cross didn't have any bearing on his action or on being recognized by any nation, other than Israel as a possibly biased member. The reporter draws conclusions about the decision of not incorporating the Israelli medical support inside the Red Cross organization without presenting one single information about the reasons clamed to justify it. She simply proposes us to believe it was out of prejudice.
That much is also strongly inacurate and biased.

-V-
Well, looks like it wasn't that big a chalenge, after all.

Saint Marcus remark was pretty accurate. It is hard to find sometihing that isn't biased, other than the introduction.

[Ecowiz Returns]

Not the one where Goliath actually wins, no.