Sunday, January 25, 2009

PHONEY WAR CRIMES ACCUSATION

The acusations against Israel are now coming in thick and fast. from "war crimes" to "illegal use of phosphorous bombs, "indiscriminately attacking civilians" ad nauseum.

Allan Dershowitz, the eminent internationally renowned lawyer writes "Every time Israel seeks to defend its civilians against terrorist attacks, it is accused of war crimes by various United Nations agencies, hard left academics and some in the media. It is a totally phony charge concocted as part of Hamas' strategy --supported by many on the hard left -- to delegitimize and demonize the Jewish state."

"Israel is the only democracy in the world ever accused of war crimes when it fights a defensive war to protect its civilians. This is remarkable, especially in light of the fact that Israel has killed far fewer civilians than any other country in the world that has faced comparable threats. In the most recent war in Gaza fewer than a thousand civilians -- even by Hamas' skewed count -- have been killed. This, despite the fact that no one can now deny that Hamas had employed a deliberate policy of using children, schools, mosques, apartment buildings and other civilian areas as shields from behind which to launch its deadly anti-personnel rockets. "

"Just to take one comparison, consider the recent wars waged by Russia against Chechnya . In these wars Russian troops have killed tens of thousands of Chechnyan civilians, some of them willfully, at close range and in cold blood. Yet those radical academics who scream bloody murder against Israel (particularly in England) have never called for war crime tribunals to be convened against Russia. Nor have they called for war crime charges to be filed against any other of the many countries that routinely kill civilians, not in an effort to stop enemy terrorists, but just because it is part of their policy."

The full article can be read at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alan-dershowitz/the-phony-war-crimes-accu_b_160050.html. The punch is in the last statement that should worry every citizen of the world. Dershowitz writes "If the laws of war in particular, and international human rights in general, are to endure, they must be applied to nations in order of the seriousness of theviolations, not in order of the political unpopularity of the nations. If the law of war were applied in this manner, Israel would be among the last, andcertainly not the first, charged".

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