Goldstone Report Finds Israeli Military Guilty of War Crimes in Gaza

Juan Cole has a rather optimistic point of view regarding the documentation of war crimes by Israel and Hamas. He thinks the prospects of economic sanctions may reign in the Israelis who continue to steal land in the West Bank. Ultimately, what Obama decides will make the final case. EU's response to this report could be muted at best if Obama continues Bush's policy towards Israel. So far, he has done nothing different except signal that all is not well in American Israeli relations because of West Bank settlements. The call for a freeze has been a political stalling tactic for American presidents for decades. We'll see what that means soon.

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

The Independent reports that a United Nations fact-finding inquiry has found that Israel committed war crimes during its attack on Gaza last winter, as did the Palestinian Hamas. The lion's share of blame in the report, however, falls on Israeli forces, which stand accused of planning out a disproportionate use of force, the punishing of a civilian population, and reckless disregard for civilian lives-- all of which are war crimes in international law. The report suggests that some Israeli actions may have gone beyond being mere war crimes to being crimes against humanity. The report will go to the UN Human Rights Commission, which will likely accept it. The findings could in theory drag Israeli officials before the World Court in the Hague, though in practice this outcome is highly unlikely.

Both the Israeli government and Hamas rejected the report as biased, which is a pretty good indication that it is even-handed.

Aljazeera English has video.

Both rightwing Israeli news sources and Aljazeera English are convinced that the report is so many words on paper and that it will have no effect.

I disagree. Amnesty International has endorsed and defended the conclusions of the report, and Human Rights Watch has also been a supporter of Justice Goldstone. Even the British House of Lords debate on this issue last May displayed a determination that there be no double standard and that Israel be held accountable for any crimes it committed-- likewise Hamas.

Israel's continued inhumane blockade of the people of Gaza and its drive to further colonize the Palestinian West Bank, as well as its tendency to launch wars at the drop of a hat, are increasingly making it an international pariah and impelling a boycott movement, especially in Europe but also Canada. The recent World Council of Churches resolution in favor of some boycotts is also a bellwether. (Nor can such boycotts be avoided by Jewish nationalists' attacks on the academic freedom of boycott proponents such as Neve Gordon; or by Stern Gang character assassination tactics deployed against US academics who protest the policies of the Israeli rightwing.)

Israel is deeply dependent on trade and technological sharing with Europe, and the Goldstone report will give a fillip to the boycott movement. It will also cast a long shadow on future Israeli wars on its neighbors and how they are perceived, as Aluf Benn argues in Haaretz.

The report will color how Israeli politicians' demands for a military attack on Iran are viewed internationally, and it weakens the position of Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, who is defying President Barack Obama by committing to build more Israeli housing on Palestinian land in the West Bank at a time when the US has called for a settlement freeze in preparation for restarting peace talks.'

More at Informed Comment.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Israel 'appalled' by Goldstone report (thejc.com)


• UN probe cites Israel, Palestinians for war crimes (nationalpost.com)


• Israelis and Palestinians present peace manual (telegraph.co.uk)


• Israel Fends Off Gaza War Crime Claims (news.sky.com)


• Jane Fonda: Expanding the Narrative (huffingtonpost.com)


• Gaza Rebuild Stalls Months After Conflict (news.sky.com)


• Will Mitchell Wring Concessions on Settlements? (abcnews.go.com)


• Israel's New Visa Rule for Foreigners: If You Want To Visit Palestine, Stay There (time.com)


• U.S. envoy in talks with Mideast leaders (cbc.ca)


• US's 'arc of instability' just gets bigger (citizengkar.wordpress.com)

Taliban's bombs came from US, not Iran

Image via Wikipedia

Doctored intelligence reports continue to come out of CIA and other sources that appear to continue to support the agenda of the Bush Administration. Given this article, it would appear that this intelligence is disinformation designed to further the neo-con agenda. Fortunately, we have the Federation of American Scientists who are more interested in the truth.

Could this intelligence really be promoted by Obama Administration sources? I suppose it could, but it strikes me as much more likely that this flimsy evidence is from rogue intelligence sources given how easily it can be refuted.

In support of the official United States assertion that Iran is arming its sworn enemy, the Taliban, the head of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), Dennis Blair, has cited a statement by a Taliban commander last year attributing military success against North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) forces to Iranian military assistance.

But the Taliban commander's claim is contradicted by evidence from the US Defense Department, Canadian forces in Afghanistan and the Taliban themselves that the increased damage to NATO tanks by Taliban forces has come from anti-tank mines provided by the United States to the jihadi movement against the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s.

The Taliban claim was cited by the ODNI in written responses to

questions for the record from the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence following testimony by Blair before the committee on February 12, 2009. The responses were released to the Federation of American Scientists under the Freedom of Information Act on July 30.

ODNI wrote that Iran was "covertly supplying arms to Afghan insurgents while publicly posing as supportive of the Afghan government". As evidence of such covert Iranian arms supply, the ODNI said, "Taliban commanders have publicly credited Iranian support for their successful operations against coalition forces."

That statement was taken almost word-for-word from the subtitle of an article published on the website of London's DailyTelegraph and Sunday Telegraph on September 14 last year. "A Taliban commander has credited Iranian-supplied weapons with successful operations against coalition forces in Afghanistan," read the sub-heading of the article "Taliban claim weapons supplied by Iran".

The single Taliban commander quoted became plural in the ODNI version.

via Asia Times Online :: Middle East News, Iraq, Iran current affairs.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Hakimullah Mehsud: Ruthless New Pakistan Taliban Leader Named (huffingtonpost.com)


• Afghan Taliban Commander Is Captured in Raid (nytimes.com)


• Pakistan army kills 45 Taliban; border reopens (ctv.ca)


• Afghanistan Envoys Neutral on Election (nytimes.com)


• Cash: A Softener in Afghan War Zone (abcnews.go.com)


• Pakistan: 30 Taliban killed in Swat battles (msnbc.msn.com)


• Two Soldiers Die In Afghanistan Explosion (news.sky.com)


• NATO air strike kills 90: Afghan officials (nationalpost.com)


• Are the Taliban Beating NATO on Logistics? Why Washington Needs Iran and Russia (citizengkar.wordpress.com)

US's 'arc of instability' just gets bigger

Pepe Escobar, the author of this article, writes his convictions. Truly his Chinese employers see their agenda served, but in this case, it would appear both Pepe and China have a point. The US has taken on the traditional role of Great Britain. The Brits maintained their dominance of the world by playing divide and conquer. The US is doing the same. Except, it would appear, the availability of information via the internet is undermining the US effectiveness.

Has Obama simply filled Bushes shoes as the world's bully? At this point I'm thinking this is an engine independent of government. Is it a "rogue" CIA operation blacked out to even Obama? Totally blacked out, probably not, but buried in piles and piles of similar operations with few directors and no accountability to maintain plausible denial ability and accessible to the new president only with time and focus. Do you thing Obama has enough on his plate?

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Asia Times Online

The New Great Game is not only focused on the face-off between the United States and strategic competitors Russia and China - with Pipelineistan as a defining element.

The full spectrum dominance doctrine requires the control of the Pentagon-coined "arc of instability" from the Horn of Africa to western China. The cover story is the former "global war on terror", now "overseas contingency operations" under the management of President Barack Obama's administration.

Most of all, the underlying logic remains divide and rule. As for the divide, Beijing would call it, without a trace of irony, "splittist". Split up Iraq - blocking China's access to Iraqi oil. Split up Pakistan - with an independent Balochistan preventing China from

accessing the strategic port of Gwadar there. Split up Afghanistan - with an independent Pashtunistan allowing the building of the Trans-Afghanistan Pipeline bypassing Russia. Split up Iran - by financing subversion in Khuzestan and Sistan-Balochistan. And why not split up Bolivia (as was attempted last year) to the benefit of US energy giants. Call it the (splitting) Kosovo model.

Kosovo, incidentally, is known as the Colombia of the Balkans. What Washington calls the "Western hemisphere" is a sub-section of the New Great Game. The linkage between the recent military coup in Honduras, the return of the living dead - that is, the resurrection of the US Navy's Fourth Fleet in July 2008 - and now the turbo-charging of seven US military bases in Colombia is not to be blamed merely on continuity from president George W Bush to Obama. Not really. This is all about the internal logic of Full Spectrum Dominance.

via Asia Times Online :: South Asia news, business and economy from India and Pakistan.

Related articles by Zemanta

• ACLU Says CIA at Odds With Obama Over Torture (wired.com)


• The Mind Behind Obama's Ramadan Dinner: George W. Bush (usnews.com)


• How the CIA Became Dangerously Dependent on Outside Contractors (usnews.com)


• Holder To Appoint Special Prosecutor To Investigate CIA Interrogators And Contractors (huffingtonpost.com)


• Obama to review Afghan report this week (windsorstar.com)


• FBI Whistleblower Sibel Edmonds Tells of Bribery, Espionage and Cover-up at the Highest Levels of US Government (citizengkar.wordpress.com)


• Bombshell: Bin Laden Worked for US Until 9/11 (citizengkar.wordpress.com)


• WTO Bleeding American Economy Dry (citizengkar.wordpress.com)


• Cheney: CIA Interrogators "Deserve Our Gratitude" (huffingtonpost.com)

Testimony of former "Comfort Women"

This video contains stunning interviews of Chinese women who suffered at the hands of the invading Japanese army during WWII. The right wingers in Japan have consistently denied these charges and the so called Rape of Nanking.

Clinton: It Is a "Great Regret" the US Is Not in International Criminal Court

Hillary Clinton has signalled a significant shift by the US in favour of the international criminal court, the world body that pursues war criminals but was strenuously opposed by the Bush administration.

In the most public expression of support yet from Barack Obama's administration, the US secretary of state expressed regret that the US has not yet joined the ICC.

The court, set up in 2002, has pursued dictators, mainly from Africa, who are alleged to have been engaged in genocide and other war crimes.

The US is at present not only not a member but government officials are theoretically banned from any engagement with the ICC whatsoever. An administration official predicted there will be increased US cooperation with the ICC but cautioned against expecting early entry.

Clinton, speaking at a public meeting in Kenya, the first leg of an African tour, indicated she hoped this would come sooner rather than later: "This is a great regret that we are not a signatory. I think we could have worked out some of the challenges that are raised concerning our membership. But that has not yet come to pass."

There is a divide in the Obama administration over entry. Clinton and some other senior figures at the White House and state department are passionately in favour, while others advocate caution, saying the president can afford not to rush membership and should wait to see how the ICC evolves.

Supporters of the ICC, including the UK, which is a member, have long advocated the US joining, saying this would immensely strengthen the body.

But President George Bush blocked American membership, expressing fears that US officials could be open to arrest for alleged war crimes. The Pentagon was concerned that US soldiers might end up in court in The Hague.

In December 2000, just before he left office, the former president Bill Clinton signed up to the ICC. But Bush two years later announced that the US would not be joining and a bill ratifying membership failed to get through Congress.

via t r u t h o u t.

He who is afraid of the justice of his peers is guilt of crimes.

Blackwater Founder Implicated in Murder

A former Blackwater employee and an ex-US Marine who has worked as a security operative for the company have made a series of explosive allegations in sworn statements filed on August 3 in federal court in Virginia. The two men claim that the company's owner, Erik Prince, may have murdered or facilitated the murder of individuals who were cooperating with federal authorities investigating the company. The former employee also alleges that Prince "views himself as a Christian crusader tasked with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe," and that Prince's companies "encouraged and rewarded the destruction of Iraqi life."

via Blackwater Founder Implicated in Murder.

Mercenaries, by definition, are hired killers. No one should be surprised when they misbehave.

Israeli soldiers 'used human shields' in Gaza

Image via Wikipedia

Times Online

A group of Israeli soldiers who fought in the recent war in Gaza have testified that the military allowed them to use reckless force.
The 26 soldiers published their anonymous accounts in a booklet compiled by Breaking the Silence, an Israeli soldiers' organisation.
They describe the Israeli army's use of human shields and deliberate targeting of civilian structures.
The soldiers' descriptions confirm information first published by The Times during the offensive that soldiers were given orders to shoot first and ask questions later.
In one typical account, a soldier said that in pre-invasion briefings his officers said it was better to hit an innocent than hesitate to attack an enemy. "If you're not sure, kill. Fire power was insane."
"You felt like a child playing around with a magnifying glass, burning up ants," another Israeli soldier said. "A 20-year-old kid should not be doing such things to people."
Several Israeli soldiers adescribed the use of white phosphorus in Gaza. One soldier described walking on the beach in Gaza and discovering an area covered in glazed sand from a white phosphorous bomb.
He said it was upsetting because "in training you learn that white phosphorus is not used, and you're taught that it's not humane".
A soldier from the Golani brigade said: "Sometimes a force would enter while placing rifle barrels on a civilian's shoulder, advancing into a house and using him as a human shield."
Another soldier related an incident in which he was ordered not to fire warning shots at a man approaching their position from some dozen yards away.
When they asked their commander why he told them not to fire warning shots, he said: "It's night time and this is a terrorist."
Israel has blamed Palestinian militant groups for the high death toll in Gaza, stating that they hid explosives in schools, hospitals, and other civilian structures.
They said that Palestinian militants often dressed as civilians and attempted to get close to forces before launching an attack.
More than 1,400 Palestinians died in the three-week offensive. Gaza health officials say 900 of those killed were civilians but Israel says that figure is closer to 300.
Thirteen Israelis were killed, including three civilians who died from rocket fire.
A military spokesman accused the group of "defaming and slandering the IDF [Israel Defence Forces] and its commanders" but said that he would investigate formal complaints of military misconduct.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Israel Accused of War Crimes in Gaza (abcnews.go.com)
• Amnesty accuses Israel, Hamas of war crimes (cbc.ca)
• Israel, Hamas accused of war crimes: Amnesty (nationalpost.com)

The Hush-Hush Story: Why They Tortured

The LA Progressive

The US Senate Armed Services Committee report, issued April 21, on the interrogation techniques employed against detainees following the September 11 terrorist attack, wrote Pepe Escobar in the Asia Times, "reads like deja vu all over again: the US establishment under Bush was a replay of the Spanish Inquisition. And it all started even before a single 'high-profile al-Qaeda detainee' was captured.
What Bush, vice president Dick Cheney, defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld and assorted little inquisitors wanted was above all to prove the non-existent link between Saddam Hussein's Iraq and al-Qaeda, the better to justify a pre-emptive, illegal war planned by the now-defunct Project for the New American Century (PNAC) in the late 1990s. The torture memos were just a cog in the imperial machine."
New York Times columnist Paul Krugman mentioned it in his column April 24, writing, "For the fact is that officials in the Bush administration instituted torture as a policy, misled the nation into a war they wanted to fight and, probably, tortured people in the attempt to extract 'confessions' that would justify that war. And during the march to war, most of the political and media establishment looked the other way." Krugman was more explicit in his blog, titled "Grand Unified Scandal" appearing the previous day, after the Senate report came out. "Let's say this slowly: the Bush administration wanted to use 9/11 as a pretext to invade Iraq, even though Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. So it tortured people to make them confess to the nonexistent link," he wrote. "There's a word for this: it's evil."
The impetus for the comment by Krugman and Escobar was a story carried April 21 in the McClatchy Newspapers by Jonathan S. Landay The story has made the rounds on the internet and in some of the foreign press but as of this writing has been ignored or obscured by most of the major U.S. media.
"The Bush administration applied relentless pressure on interrogators to use harsh methods on detainees in part to find evidence of cooperation between al Qaida and the late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's regime, according to a former senior U.S. intelligence official and a former Army psychiatrist," wrote Landay. "Such information would've provided a foundation for one of former President George W. Bush's main arguments for invading Iraq in 2003. In fact, no evidence has ever been found of operational ties between Osama bin Laden's terrorist network and Saddam's regime.
"The use of abusive interrogation - widely considered torture - as part of Bush's quest for a rationale to invade Iraq came to light as the Senate issued a major report tracing the origin of the abuses and President Barack Obama opened the door to prosecuting former U.S. officials for approving them."
Landay went on to quote "A former senior U.S. intelligence official familiar with the interrogation issue" saying former Vice President Dick Cheney and former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld 'demanded that the interrogators find evidence of al Qaida-Iraq collaboration.'
"There were two reasons why these interrogations were so persistent, and why extreme methods were used," Landay was told. "The main one is that everyone was worried about some kind of follow-up attack (after 9/11). But for most of 2002 and into 2003, Cheney and Rumsfeld, especially, were also demanding proof of the links between al Qaida and Iraq that (former Iraqi exile leader Ahmed) Chalabi and others had told them were there."

Few dare call Ahmed Chalabi what he is, an Iranian intelligence agent, who along with AIPAC officials, Israeli Intelligence agents duped Cheney-Rumsfeld cabal into invading Iraq.
And now the Israeli spies will get away with it because the truth of the huge security hole in the Bush Administration will become obvious to all.
Reuters

"Given the diminished likelihood the government will prevail at trial under the additional intent requirements imposed by the court and the inevitable disclosure of classified information that would occur at any trial in this matter, we have asked the court to dismiss the indictment," Dana Boente, acting U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, said in a statement.

Related articles by Zemanta

• There's No Good Argument for Torture (grantlawrence.blogspot.com)

The Sick Logic of the CIA Memos: Abuse Isn't Torture If a Doctor Is There

Image via Wikipedia

AlterNet

Perhaps the most chilling aspect is that medical professionals apparently conducted a form of research on the detainees, without their consent.
Former CIA Director Michael V. Hayden was fond of saying that when it came to handling high-value terror suspects, he would play in fair territory, but with "chalk dust on my cleats." Four legal memos released by the Obama administration make it clear that the referee role in CIA interrogations was played by its medical and psychological personnel.
According to the U.S. Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel, which authored the memos, legal approval to use waterboarding, sleep deprivation and other abusive techniques pivoted on the existence of a "system of medical and psychological monitoring" of interrogations. Medical and psychological personnel were assigned to monitor interrogations and intervene to ensure that interrogators didn't cause "serious or permanent harm" and thus violate the U.S. federal statute against torture.
The reasoning sounds almost circular. As one memo, from May 2005, put it: "The close monitoring of each detainee for any signs that he is at risk of experiencing severe physical pain reinforces the conclusion that the combined use of interrogation techniques is not intended to inflict such pain."
In other words, as long as medically trained personnel were present and approved of the techniques being used, it was not torture.
The memos provide official confirmation of both much-reported and previously unknown roles of doctors, psychologists, physician assistants and other medical personnel with the CIA's Office of Medical Services (OMS). The government's lawyers characterized these medical roles as "safeguards" for detainees.
Medical oversight was present from the beginning of the special interrogation program following the 9/11 attacks and appears to have grown more formalized over the program's existence. The earliest of the four memos, from August 2002, states that a medical expert with experience in the military's Survival Evasion Resistance, Escape (SERE) training would be present during waterboarding of detainee Abu Zubaydah and would put a stop to procedures "if deemed medically necessary to prevent severe medical or physical harm to Zubaydah." (All interrogation techniques, the memos said, were "imported" from SERE.)
Later, OMS personnel were involved in "designing safeguards for, and in monitoring implementation of, the procedures" used on other high-value detainees. In December 2004, the OMS produced a set of "Guidelines on Medical and Psychological Support to Detainee Rendition, Interrogation and Detention," a still-secret document that is heavily quoted from in three legal memos that were written the following year.
The CIA declined our request to comment further on the OMS' role in detainee treatment. The OMS employs physicians, psychologists and other medical professionals to care for CIA employees and their families.
Perhaps the most chilling aspect of the memos is their intimation that medical professionals conducted a form of research on the detainees, clearly without their consent. "In order to best inform future medical judgments and recommendations, it is important that every application of the waterboard be thoroughly documented," one memo reads. The documentation included not only how long the procedure lasted, how much water was used and how it was poured, but also "if the naso- or oropharynx was filled, what sort of volume was expelled ... and how the subject looked between each treatment." Special instructions were also issued with regard to documenting experience with sleep deprivation, and "regular reporting on medical and psychological experiences with the use of these techniques on detainees" was required.
The Nuremberg Code, adopted after the horrors of "medical research" during the Nazi Holocaust, requires, among other things, the consent of subjects and their ability to call a halt to their participation.
The memos also draw heavily on the advice of psychologists that interrogation techniques would not be expected to cause lasting harm. At times this advice sounds contradictory. While calling waterboarding "medically acceptable," the OMS also deemed it "the most traumatic of the enhanced interrogation techniques."
The fact that traumatic events have the potential to cause long-lasting post-traumatic stress syndrome has been well documented. Physicians for Human Rights, in interviews with eleven former detainees held in Iraq and Afghanistan, found "severe, long-term physical and psychological consequences." "All the individuals we evaluated were ultimately released without ever being charged," said Dr. Allen Keller, medical director of the Bellevue/New York University School of Medicine Program for Survivors of Torture.
The memos describe the techniques in highly precise and clinical detail, befitting a medical textbook. During waterboarding, in which a physician and psychologist were to be present at all times, "the detainee is monitored to ensure that he does not develop respiratory distress. If the detainee is not breathing freely after the cloth is removed from his face, he is immediately moved to a vertical position in order to clear the water from his mouth, nose and nasopharynx." Side effects including vomiting, aspiration and throat spasm that could cut off breathing were each addressed: "In the event of such spasms ... if necessary, the intervening physician would perform a tracheotomy."
While physician assistants could be present when most "enhanced" techniques were applied, "use of the waterboard requires the presence of a physician," one memo said, quoting the OMS guidelines.
Doctors were also described as having vetted the practices for safety. Certain limits on waterboarding were created "with extensive input from OMS." One memo states that OMS "doctors and psychologists" confirmed that combining the various techniques "would not operate in a different manner from the way they do individually, so as to cause severe pain."
Medical and psychological personnel were required to observe whenever interrogators came into physical contact with detainees, including slapping them and pushing them into flexible walls ("walling"). Whenever a detainee was doused with cold water, a medical officer had to be on hand to monitor for signs of hypothermia. Confining prisoners to cramped boxes required "continuing consultation between the interrogators and OMS officers." Prisoners made to stand for long periods to prevent sleep were to carefully monitor detainees for swelling of the legs and other dangerous conditions, and at least three times early in the program were switched, on medical advice, to "horizontal sleep deprivation."
This was one example of how medical personnel could, according to the CIA, help prevent "severe physical or mental pain or suffering" on the part of the detainees. However, the memos show that the OMS' role was not merely to limit the medical impact of interrogations, but also to consult on the effectiveness of interrogations. A May 30, 2005, memo quotes the OMS suggesting that cramped confinement was "not ... particularly effective" because it provides "a safe haven offering respite from interrogation."
Some medical professionals are calling for their colleagues to be investigated and sanctioned for participating in practices that professional medical and psychological organizations and officials in the Justice Department now call torture. "We stand ready to adjudicate these issues," said American Psychological Association spokesperson Rhea Farberman.
But finding out which professionals were involved in designing, monitoring and implementing the interrogation techniques may be difficult. The four memos were released almost in their entirety. The few redactions concerned mainly the names of the personnel involved.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Debunking the Torture Apologists' "Half the Intelligence" Claim (emptywheel.firedoglake.com)
• Senate Investigation: Coercive methods prepared before OK (seattletimes.nwsource.com)

Burnt, broken, silent: the child victims of Tamil war

Image via Wikipedia

Times Online

A SEVEN-YEAR-OLD Tamil girl with a severe leg injury was sharing a hospital bed yesterday with her elder sister, who had burns to her face. Their mother was dead and their father was in intensive care with a 50% chance of survival.
The children, their names lost in a hospital overwhelmed by trauma victims, were two of thousands being treated in Vavuniya, just outside the conflict zone where Sri Lanka's Tamil Tigers are making their last stand.
Emaciated, dehydrated and with terror etched on their faces, more than 100,000 refugees have surged into overcrowded camps and hospitals in the town after escaping the Tigers, who had held them as human shields for months.

Aid workers say the impact of the conflict on children has been devastating. Hundreds have been killed in crossfire and thousands more traumatised by horrific scenes and the loss of their families.
"We had one case of a four-year-old girl looking after her nine-month-old brother alone as her mother is in another hospital and her father in yet another," said Hugues Robert, head of a mission for Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), the aid agency. "Many children end up alone. They are forgotten about and they don't eat for days."
Vavuniya hospital, with a capacity of 450, was swamped last week as 1,700 patients crowded wards and corridors, desperately seeking treatment.
Paul McMaster, a British surgeon working for MSF, said staff working with limited supplies had seen an increase in patients suffering from blast and gunshot wounds.
"We're doing amputations on children . . . and sometimes we're operating on the mother and father and a child from the same family that had been wounded by the same explosion or mine," he said.
"We had a young woman of about 19 who is breast-feeding that I had to do a leg amputation on. I just wonder what the future for her life and child will be.
"These are deeply, deeply traumatised people. We have children sitting in the middle of emergency wards seeing people brought in with major blast and limb injuries, just sitting silently, emotionless."
The exodus began on Monday when the Sri Lankan army breached a mud defence wall built by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) to defend their last stronghold, a five-square-mile strip of land just north of Mullaittivu.
The breach created an escape route for tens of thousands of civilians who had been trapped under heavy shelling.
An estimated 50,000 civilians were believed to be still cornered yesterday in the tiny patch of jungle where Vellupilai Prabhakaran, the Tigers' leader, was boxed in with up to 900 rebels.
The government insisted that the rebels, who once controlled more than one-third of the island, were all but finished, heralding an end to three decades of ethnic conflict.
Sarath Fonseka, the army chief, claimed he knew the "general area" where Prabhakaran was hiding. "We are set to destroy him," Fonseka said, admitting his forces were facing stiff resistance that could end in hand-to-hand combat.
Last week a naval blockade was put on high alert amid speculation that Prabhakaran - feted by his followers as the "Sun God" - his son Charles Anthony and senior LTTE figures were planning an audacious escape by submarine.
The plan was leaked by the rebels' former media co-ordina-tor, who surrendered along with the LTTE political wing interpreter. The remaining leadership, known to wear cyanide vials around their necks, have vowed not to surrender.
Prabhakaran is one of the most effective and feared modern guerrilla leaders, but his renowned luck at outsmarting successive government offensives may have run out.
As it emerged that close to 6,500 civilians have died so far this year, survivors told of their perilous flight to government-controlled areas after being forced to live for months in shallow water-logged ditches in the battleground.
People opted to flee across the Puthumathalan lagoon when the army forced back the rebels. Parents tied children to their wrists with string in the neck-deep water but several did not make it alive.
Rajeshwarai, 40, said she had run with her five-year-old son towards the military-controlled area, knowing they might die in the attempt. They had been trapped under constant shelling for two months, with little to eat.
"I ran with my child, hoping even if I died my son will survive and be freed," she said.
Kamalakaran, 70, said people had been "craving safety for months" after being forced to move with the LTTE since the middle of 2008.
"The trauma in the first few months was bearable as we were repeatedly told by the Tigers that they would protect us at all costs," she said. "But in recent months we saw a transformation - every family was forced to send a youngster to fight for the Tigers."

Related articles by Zemanta

• 'No pause' in Sri Lanka fighting (news.bbc.co.uk)
• Mass Tamil exodus from rebel area (news.bbc.co.uk)
• UN call for Tamils to surrender (news.bbc.co.uk)

As multiple-death shootings surge, Congress looks away

Image via Wikipedia

Minnesota Independent

Last month in Southern Alabama, an unemployed twenty-something sheet-metal worker armed himself with two semi-automatic rifles, a shotgun and a pistol. He shot his mother and the four family dogs, and then drove to a neighboring town where he killed four more relatives, four passersby, and then himself. All in all, he sprayed more than 200 bullets across two Alabama counties. The ages of the victims ranged from 74 years to 18 months. It was the worst killing spree in state history.
Since then other parts of the country have suffered similar nightmares. Indeed, in recent weeks more than 60 people -- including seven police officers -- have been killed in multiple-death shootings from coast to coast. It's just the type of headline-grabbing trend that might usually get congressional lawmakers screaming from the rafters for policy reforms, like banning military-style assault weapons and forcing gun-show vendors to do background checks on prospective buyers. Gun control advocates argue that such steps would help stem the more than 30,000 gun deaths that plague the United States each year.
But that hasn't been the case. Instead, the reaction from congressional leaders -- even the most vocal gun-reform proponents -- has been a long, strange silence.
It wasn't always this way. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) was the author of the successful 1994 effort to install an assault weapons ban, which expired five years ago. Yet last week, less than a month after four police officers were killed in a shooting spree in Oakland, Feinstein told "60 Minutes" that, while she hopes to reintroduce the measure, "I wouldn't bring it up now."
Similarly, President Obama -- who campaigned on a platform of renewing the assault weapons ban -- reiterated his support for that prohibition during a visit to Mexico last week, but added that that he's not "under any illusions that reinstating that ban would be easy."
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is another long-time advocate for tightening gun laws. Yet pressed this month about the absence of any gun reform push in Congress, she offered only a vague explanation about the need "to find some level of compromise."
Spokespersons for both Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said there's no plan on the horizon for gun reform legislation this year.
The reason is no mystery. Although Democrats expanded their majorities in both chambers of Congress last year, they owe those gains largely to more moderate members, who picked up seats in a number of conservative-leaning states that have historically gone Republican. Indeed, when Attorney General Eric Holder in February announced his support for renewal of the assault weapons ban, 65 House Democrats wrote to the White House attacking the proposal.
"Law-abiding Americans use these guns for all the same reasons they use any other kind of gun - competitive shooting, hunting and defending their homes and families," the Democrats wrote.
Not only do those members not want to be seen threatening their constituents' Second Amendment rights, but Pelosi and other Democratic leaders are bending over backwards to ensure that those seats remain Democratic in elections to come. In this political environment, congressional aids say, even a gun reform push from liberal Democrats would only divide the party and undermine other legislative priorities.
"What's the sense in expending a good amount of political capital?" asked a House Democratic aide, who asked to remain anonymous due to the political nature of the topic. "You know you're going to lose. You know you don't have the votes ... It's never good when leadership loses a vote, and this is a vote they'll lose."
Then there's the issue of lobbying. The pro-gun National Rifle Association is among the most powerful forces in all of Washington. In the 2008 election cycle alone, the NRA's political action committee spent $15.6 million on campaign activities, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. And the group keeps tabs on every vote even remotely related to gun reform, threatening lawmakers with poor NRA rankings if they vote against the lobby's agenda.
The NRA did not reply to a call requesting comment, but the prowess of the gun lobby was in full display earlier this year during congressional debate on legislation to grant a voting representative to the residents of Washington, DC. That bill passed the Senate in February, but not before the NRA swayed lawmakers to attach language all but scrapping Washington's gun control laws, which are among the strictest in the nation. Faced with the gun-policy wildcard, stymied House Democrats have refused to bring the bill to the floor.
The reason is simple. The combination of support from Republicans and moderate Democrats all but ensures that the bill would pass. "On this issue, the NRA controls the House," said the Democratic aide. "It's that simple. We're in a political environment in which not much can be done because of the levels of power."
That's bad news for gun control advocates, who are pushing a series of reforms to tighten the nation's gun laws. Aside from reinstating the assault weapons ban, advocates want to force all gun-show vendors, even those unlicensed, to conduct background checks on potential customers to prevent felons and other violent criminals from obtaining weapons -- the same requirements currently in place for licensed gun sellers. A Senate bill, sponsored in the last Congress by Sens. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) and Jack Reed (D-Del.), would do just that, but it hasn't resurfaced this year.
Another proposed reform would force gun makers to adopt a new technology that engraves weapons microscopically with their make, model and serial number -- information that would be left imprinted on the bullet casing after the gun is fired. Such a proposal was pushed by Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-Calif.) in the last Congress, but it as well has yet to appear this year. All three reforms are supported by public service groups, like the International Association of Chiefs of Police, but have been assailed by the gun lobby as initial steps toward an all-out gun ban.
Lawmakers are insisting that gun reform hasn't fallen off their radar, but some gun control advocates are growing impatient. "There are a lot of politicians," said Doug Pennington, spokesman for the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, "even in the face of the mass shootings over the past six weeks, who aren't exactly sure how stiff their backbones are."
The debate arrives as a wave of high-profile gun violence has swept across the country in recent weeks. On March 29, a heavily armed gunman killed eight in a North Carolina nursing home. A day later, an IT professional opened fire on his family in Santa Clara, killing six people, including himself. In Binghampton, N.Y., on April 3, a gunman walked into a community center and killed 13 immigrants before turning a gun on himself. A day later, a 22-year-old Pittsburgh man barricaded himself in his home with a stash of assault weapons, killing three police officers in the stand-off. The list goes on.
Michael Bailey, political science professor at Georgetown University, pointed out that, despite the gruesome trend, there simply isn't the public outcry to inspire Congress to stick their necks out for something as controversial as gun reform. "As terrible as these tragedies were," Bailey wrote in an email, "there doesn't seem to be any appetite for thinking about them."
Even without the recent spate of gun deaths, the debate would be timely. Last Thursday marked the two-year anniversary of the shootings at Virginia Tech that left 33 people dead, including the gunman. And Tuesday marks the 10-year anniversary of Colorado's Columbine High School massacre, in which two seniors killed 12 students and a teacher before turning the guns on themselves.
In the absence of any federal movement, some state and local lawmakers have emerged in an effort to fill the void. Last week, New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg visited Virginia to urge state lawmakers to pass a bill closing the so-called "gun-show loophole."
"Criminals do not have the right to own guns, and the gun shows make it far too easy for them to acquire guns," Bloomberg said. "In fact, it's easier for a criminal to buy a gun at a gun show than it is for a 20-year-old to buy a beer or for anyone to rent a car."
In Pennsylvania, Gov. Ed Rendell (D) has thrust himself into the debate as well, pushing last week for lawmakers to take up the assault weapons ban -- a prickly topic in a blue-collar state where unlimited gun rights are deemed by many to be sacrosanct.
"They're made for only one purpose," Rendell said of assault weapons. "Not for sport, not for hunting, nobody uses them in a duck blind, nobody uses them at the Olympics. They are used to kill and maim."
Advocates for gun reforms are quick to concede that the proposed reforms wouldn't prevent many of the gun-related deaths that torment the United States. Only one of the guns used by the Alabama shooter, for example, would have been prohibited under the 1994 assault weapons ban. Still, they maintain, taking some steps to keep military-grade weapons off the streets -- and all weapons out of the hands of violent criminals -- would go a long way toward improving safety in a country where firearms kill more than 80 people every day.
"That's not normal," Pennington said of the enormous number of domestic gun deaths. "We shouldn't treat that as just the cost of living in America."
Mike Lillis is Congress reporter for the Washington Independent.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Mass Murder at Dare To Dream Blog
• Alabama gunman kills ten including his mother and grandparents (telegraph.co.uk)
• Mayors say towns in shock over slaying spree (cnn.com)
• German Massacre Raises Issue of Gun-Control in Europe (time.com)
• RCMP seize loaded firearms, assault rifles during Alberta raid (cbc.ca)

Columbine questions we still haven't answered: Isn't violence a predictable byproduct of our winner-take-all economy?

Image via Wikipedia

Salon.com
By David Sirota

As Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold's posthumous infamy turns 10 on April 20, I wish I were surprised that Columbine-like shootings are still happening, or even that our national discussion about violence hasn't yet matured past gun control and video games.
I wish I were surprised, but sadly, I'd be surprised if it were any different because we still refuse to ask the most uncomfortable questions.
Columbine was the "Pulp Fiction" of violence: not the first of its genre, but the model to which all contemporaries are compared. And lately, Columbine derivatives have been coming at a faster clip.
After each tragedy, it's the same thing. Liberals want us to wonder why gun laws let anyone access deadly weapons. Conservatives insist we question why video games supposedly turn down-to-earth kids into murderers.
These queries satiate two desires. In a country that ascribes hubristic "exceptionalism" to itself and berates self-analysis as "hating America," we seek absolution via scapegoat, and so we upbraid boogeymen like firearms and Xboxes. Similarly, in a democracy increasingly conducting its politics through red-blue filters and 140-character Twitter updates, we crave Occam's razors -- and none are sharper than oversimplified arguments about gun control and video games.
But what about the questions and answers that aren't so simple?
For example, isn't violence a predictable byproduct of our economy? When torture victims are waterboarded, they freak out. When a winner-take-all economy tortures society, should we be shocked that a few lunatics go over the edge?
For three decades, we converted our economy into one that enriches the rich and stresses out everyone else. Paychecks dwindled, debts accumulated, healthcare bills spiked. We now spend more hours working or seeking work, and fewer hours on parenting, family time and rest -- all while schools and mental-health services deteriorate.
Considering this, shouldn't we expect the recent Associated Press story telling us "the American home is becoming more violent" because of the recession? Shouldn't we expect the new Department of Homeland Security report saying that "the economic downturn" is "invigorating rightwing extremist activity, specifically the white supremacist and militia movements"? And, ultimately, shouldn't we expect the deep alienation that may lead the occasional troubled kid to turn video-game fantasies into real-world terror?
If these questions don't make you uneasy, then how about this one: Are those video games fantasies, or are they representations of real violence that we willfully organize our economy around?
Today, one in every three dollars the government spends goes to defense and security. The killing machine and adventurism that money manufactures has delivered 1 million Iraqi casualties, thousands of American casualties and an implicit promise of future wars -- indeed, of permanent war.
Perpetuating this expenditure, bloodshed and posture in a nation of dwindling resources, humanitarian self-images and anti-interventionist impulses requires a culture constantly selling violence as a necessity. It's not just video games -- it's the nightly news echoing Pentagon propaganda and "hawkish" politicians equating militarism with patriotism and "embedded" journalism cheering on wars and every other suit-and-tie-clad industry constantly forwarding the assumption that killing is a legitimate form of national ambition and self-expression. Is it any wonder that a few crazies apply that ethos to their individual lives, and begin seeing violence as a reasonable means to express their own emotions?
Sure, the assault weapons ban's expiration is an abomination. Absolutely, some video games are appalling. But we could ban all guns and video games and there would still be mass murders because neither the availability of firearms nor of Grand Theft Auto creates the original desire for violence.
Until we face that complex reality -- or at least ask different questions -- we'll continue being terrorized by Columbine killers.
© 2009 Creators Syndicate Inc.

Related articles by Zemanta

• A Columbine Victim's Spirit of Hope Grows (nytimes.com)
• The four most useful lessons of Columbine. (slate.com)
• As the Columbine assault raged, students barricaded a classroom and fought to keep a wounded teacher alive. (slate.com)
• School Shooters: 'Like Every Adolescent'? (abcnews.go.com)
• 10 Years After: Trauma Haunts Columbine (abcnews.go.com)
• Columbine killer Eric Harris plans the massacre. (slate.com)

Israeli Physician's Group Condemns Ethics of IDF

Al Jazeera English

Israel's army violated codes of ethics and international law during the war in Gaza by attacking medics and refusing to allow the treatment of wounded, a human-rights group says.
In a report published on Monday, the group Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) calls for an independent body to investigate the military's conduct during its 22-day war on Gaza, which ended on January 18. The actions reflect a "demonisation of Palestinians [which] bears a heavy price for Israeli society".
In its defence, the Israeli army said it had not yet concluded its investigation, but that fighters from Gaza's ruling Hamas had fought under the cover of ambulances and medical facilities.
'Indiscriminate attacks'
Among the offences listed by PHR are "attacks on medical personnel; damage to medical facilities and indiscriminate attacks on civilians not involved in the fighting". The report further says: "Israel placed numerous obstacles in the course of the operation that impeded emergency medical evacuation of the sick and wounded and also caused families to be trapped for days without food, water and medications.
"The actions ... violate directives of international law which forbid attacks on medical centres and medical teams during fighting" and "blatantly violated codes of ethics."
The PHR report is the latest in a string of accusations relating to the conduct of the Israeli army during the Gaza offensive. Lieutenant-General Gabi Ashkenazi, Israel's army chief of staff, dismissed on Monday allegations that civilians were killed during the assault, based on soldiers' testimonies published last week. "I do not believe that IDF troops hurt Palestinian civilians in cold blood," he said in a speech. We will wait the outcome of an investigation, but my impression is that the IDF acted morally and if such cases did take place they were isolated."
Family tragedy
During the offensive, Israeli fire killed 16 Palestinian medical personnel and wounded 25 others while eight hospitals and 26 primary care clinics were attacked, according to figures from the United Nations and the PHR. Among the specific incidents cited by the PHR report is that of a "Mr Shurrab" whose two sons were shot by Israeli forces while they drove towards the southern city of Khan Younis on January 16.
"One of the sons died immediately, the other bled to death for 12 hours," PHR said. "All that time the Israeli soldiers were within a short distance from the Shurrabs but did not provide any assistance despite the father's repeated requests."
PHR condemned the Israeli army, which it said "flaunts its morality", for "declining to help evacuate injured civilians and trapped families, when soldiers acted in a trigger-happy manner as they opened fire on ambulances, medical installations and medical personnel".
Dani Filc Chairman, Physicians for Human Rights, an Israel NGO said: "We have noticed a stark decline in IDF [Israeli Defence Forces] morals concerning the Palestinian population of Gaza, which in reality amounts to a contempt for Palestinian lives. It is critical that the investigation of Operation Cast Lead is completed by a neutral, external investigator without ties to the IDF."
The Israeli army said it is investigating the claims in a "thorough" manner. It insisted that soldiers were instructed to "act with the utmost caution in order not to cause harm to medical vehicles and medical facilities".
Hamas blamed
In a statement, the Israeli army blamed Hamas for putting health personnel and medical facilities in harm's way.
"Throughout the fighting, Hamas methodically made use of medical vehicles, facilities and uniforms in order to conceal and camouflage terrorist activity, and in general used ambulances to carry terror activists and weapons," it said. "Hamas used ambulances to "rescue" terror activists from the battlefield and used hospitals and medical facilities as hiding places". Such actions "greatly complicated the co-ordination of rescue and medical evacuation", the army said. "It must be emphasised that under international law, the protections afforded to medical teams or "protected institutions" ... cease to exist when these medical teams or institutions are not used for humanitarian purposes rather for carrying out actions intended to harm the state of Israel".

Related articles by Zemanta

• UN human rights chief accuses Israel of war crimes (guardian.co.uk)

Further Accounts of Gaza Killings Released

NYTimes.com

In the two months since Israel ended its military assault on Gaza, Palestinians and international rights groups have accused it of excessive force and wanton killing in that operation, but the Israeli military has said it followed high ethical standards and took great care to avoid civilian casualties.
Now testimony is emerging from within the ranks of soldiers and officers alleging a permissive attitude toward the killing of civilians and reckless destruction of property that is sure to inflame the domestic and international debate about the army's conduct in Gaza. On Thursday, the military's chief advocate general ordered an investigation into a soldier's account of a sniper killing a woman and her two children who walked too close to a designated no-go area by mistake, and another account of a sharpshooter who killed an elderly woman who came within 100 yards of a commandeered house.
When asked why that elderly woman was killed, a squad commander was quoted as saying: "What's great about Gaza -- you see a person on a path, he doesn't have to be armed, you can simply shoot him. In our case it was an old woman on whom I did not see any weapon when I looked. The order was to take down the person, this woman, the minute you see her. There are always warnings, there is always the saying, 'Maybe he's a terrorist.' What I felt was, there was a lot of thirst for blood."
The testimonies by soldiers, leaked to the newspapers Maariv and Haaretz, appeared in a journal published by a military preparatory course at the Oranim Academic College in the northern town of Tivon.
The academy's director, Dany Zamir, told Israel Radio, "Those were very harsh testimonies about unjustified shooting of civilians and destruction of property that conveyed an atmosphere in which one feels entitled to use unrestricted force against Palestinians."
The revelations caused an immediate uproar here, with some soldiers and reservists saying they did not recognize the stories being told as accurate.
Defense Minister Ehud Barak told Israel Radio that he believed such incidents to be exceptions, adding, "The Israeli Army is the most moral in the world, and I know what I'm talking about because I know what took place in the former Yugoslavia, in Iraq."
On Friday, Haaretz published much more extensive, although not complete, excerpts from the soldiers' testimonies. It said the names of the soldiers had been changed and that some details regarding the units involved had been left out.
The lengthier accounts showed something of a religious and cultural divide between the witnesses who spoke and the soldiers whose actions they were describing and criticizing.
One complained that the soldiers were being fed religious propaganda by the army's rabbi and that they thought they were waging a holy war.
"The whole sense many soldiers had in this operation was of a religious war," a soldier who was called Ram was quoted as saying.
None of the soldiers who described abuses acknowledging having taken part in them. Rather, they spoke of the actions of others with strong disapproval. It was evident that Mr. Zamir objected to the religious nature of some of the discussions and also felt that his concerns, which he had raised earlier in a letter to the military chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi, had not been taken seriously and that was why he published the testimonies.
Since the war ended, others have raised similar questions, generating a heated debate within military circles.
"According to the code, a soldier has to do his utmost to avoid civilian casualties and that involves taking some risk," said Moshe Halbertal, a Jewish philosophy professor at Hebrew University who, along with three others, rewrote the military ethics code eight years ago. "That is the question we have to struggle with. From the testimonies of these soldiers, it sounds like they didn't practice this norm."
Amir Marmor, a 33-year-old history graduate student in Jerusalem and a military reservist, said in an interview with The New York Times that he was stunned to discover the way civilian casualties were discussed in training discussions before his tank unit entered Gaza in January.
"Shoot and don't worry about the consequences," was the message from the top commanders, he said. Speaking of a lieutenant colonel who briefed the troops, Mr. Marmor said, "His whole demeanor was extremely gung ho. This is very, very different from my usual experience. I have been doing reserve duty for 12 years, and it was always an issue how to avoid causing civilian injuries. He said in this operation we are not taking any chances. Morality aside, we have to do our job. We will cry about it later."
Some 1,300 people were killed in the Gaza war, but how many of them were combatants remains a matter of controversy. Israel lost about 10 soldiers in Gaza, some because of fire by its own forces.
The Gaza-based Palestinian Center for Human Rights, which has documented the Gaza deaths, says that about two-thirds of the 1,300 were civilians, among them 121 women and 288 children, which it defines as anyone 18 and younger.
But the Institute for Counter-Terrorism in Israel said Thursday that it had analyzed the Palestinian center's names and found that some that it listed as civilians were identified as combatants on Hamas-related Web sites. Some listed as children were 17-year-olds with guns, it said, adding that more than 500 of those described by the center as civilians it considered "unknowns" because most were men of combat age whose activities could not be easily traced.
It argued that the proportion of women and children among the dead was relatively low, showing that Israel had not killed in an indiscriminate fashion.
Gur Rosenblat, a company commander during the Gaza operation, said in an interview: "To say that people were killed without justification -- the opposite was true. We put soldiers at risk to prevent harming their civilians."
Israeli experts noted that Palestinian women had served as suicide bombers in the past so that soldiers in Gaza did not always know when a woman was approaching whether she was a threat.
One of the soldiers' testimonies involved the killing of a family. The soldier said: "We had taken over the house, and the family was released and told to go right. A mother and two children got confused and went left. The sniper on the roof wasn't told that this was O.K. and that he shouldn't shoot. You can say he just did what he was told."
Much of what happened in Gaza, some military experts said, was in reaction to the way events unfolded in the second Lebanon war in 2006 when Hezbollah caused many Israeli casualties.
In that war, when Israeli soldiers took over a house, they sometimes found themselves shot at from a house next door. The result was that in Gaza, many houses next to those commandeered by troops were destroyed to avoid that risk.
Still, Israeli ethicists say they are troubled by what they have heard.
"Unfortunately, I think that selective use of killing civilians has been very much on the agenda for fighting terror," said Yaron Ezrahi, a political scientist at Hebrew University who has been lecturing at defense colleges. "The army believes that a weak spot of Israeli deterrence is its strong commitment not to kill civilians, and there has grown the sense that it might have to temporarily overcome that weakness in order to restore deterrence."
Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

Further Accounts of Gaza Killings Released

NYTimes.com

In the two months since Israel ended its military assault on Gaza, Palestinians and international rights groups have accused it of excessive force and wanton killing in that operation, but the Israeli military has said it followed high ethical standards and took great care to avoid civilian casualties.
Now testimony is emerging from within the ranks of soldiers and officers alleging a permissive attitude toward the killing of civilians and reckless destruction of property that is sure to inflame the domestic and international debate about the army's conduct in Gaza. On Thursday, the military's chief advocate general ordered an investigation into a soldier's account of a sniper killing a woman and her two children who walked too close to a designated no-go area by mistake, and another account of a sharpshooter who killed an elderly woman who came within 100 yards of a commandeered house.
When asked why that elderly woman was killed, a squad commander was quoted as saying: "What's great about Gaza -- you see a person on a path, he doesn't have to be armed, you can simply shoot him. In our case it was an old woman on whom I did not see any weapon when I looked. The order was to take down the person, this woman, the minute you see her. There are always warnings, there is always the saying, 'Maybe he's a terrorist.' What I felt was, there was a lot of thirst for blood."
The testimonies by soldiers, leaked to the newspapers Maariv and Haaretz, appeared in a journal published by a military preparatory course at the Oranim Academic College in the northern town of Tivon.
The academy's director, Dany Zamir, told Israel Radio, "Those were very harsh testimonies about unjustified shooting of civilians and destruction of property that conveyed an atmosphere in which one feels entitled to use unrestricted force against Palestinians."
The revelations caused an immediate uproar here, with some soldiers and reservists saying they did not recognize the stories being told as accurate.
Defense Minister Ehud Barak told Israel Radio that he believed such incidents to be exceptions, adding, "The Israeli Army is the most moral in the world, and I know what I'm talking about because I know what took place in the former Yugoslavia, in Iraq."
On Friday, Haaretz published much more extensive, although not complete, excerpts from the soldiers' testimonies. It said the names of the soldiers had been changed and that some details regarding the units involved had been left out.
The lengthier accounts showed something of a religious and cultural divide between the witnesses who spoke and the soldiers whose actions they were describing and criticizing.
One complained that the soldiers were being fed religious propaganda by the army's rabbi and that they thought they were waging a holy war.
"The whole sense many soldiers had in this operation was of a religious war," a soldier who was called Ram was quoted as saying.
None of the soldiers who described abuses acknowledging having taken part in them. Rather, they spoke of the actions of others with strong disapproval. It was evident that Mr. Zamir objected to the religious nature of some of the discussions and also felt that his concerns, which he had raised earlier in a letter to the military chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi, had not been taken seriously and that was why he published the testimonies.
Since the war ended, others have raised similar questions, generating a heated debate within military circles.
"According to the code, a soldier has to do his utmost to avoid civilian casualties and that involves taking some risk," said Moshe Halbertal, a Jewish philosophy professor at Hebrew University who, along with three others, rewrote the military ethics code eight years ago. "That is the question we have to struggle with. From the testimonies of these soldiers, it sounds like they didn't practice this norm."
Amir Marmor, a 33-year-old history graduate student in Jerusalem and a military reservist, said in an interview with The New York Times that he was stunned to discover the way civilian casualties were discussed in training discussions before his tank unit entered Gaza in January.
"Shoot and don't worry about the consequences," was the message from the top commanders, he said. Speaking of a lieutenant colonel who briefed the troops, Mr. Marmor said, "His whole demeanor was extremely gung ho. This is very, very different from my usual experience. I have been doing reserve duty for 12 years, and it was always an issue how to avoid causing civilian injuries. He said in this operation we are not taking any chances. Morality aside, we have to do our job. We will cry about it later."
Some 1,300 people were killed in the Gaza war, but how many of them were combatants remains a matter of controversy. Israel lost about 10 soldiers in Gaza, some because of fire by its own forces.
The Gaza-based Palestinian Center for Human Rights, which has documented the Gaza deaths, says that about two-thirds of the 1,300 were civilians, among them 121 women and 288 children, which it defines as anyone 18 and younger.
But the Institute for Counter-Terrorism in Israel said Thursday that it had analyzed the Palestinian center's names and found that some that it listed as civilians were identified as combatants on Hamas-related Web sites. Some listed as children were 17-year-olds with guns, it said, adding that more than 500 of those described by the center as civilians it considered "unknowns" because most were men of combat age whose activities could not be easily traced.
It argued that the proportion of women and children among the dead was relatively low, showing that Israel had not killed in an indiscriminate fashion.
Gur Rosenblat, a company commander during the Gaza operation, said in an interview: "To say that people were killed without justification -- the opposite was true. We put soldiers at risk to prevent harming their civilians."
Israeli experts noted that Palestinian women had served as suicide bombers in the past so that soldiers in Gaza did not always know when a woman was approaching whether she was a threat.
One of the soldiers' testimonies involved the killing of a family. The soldier said: "We had taken over the house, and the family was released and told to go right. A mother and two children got confused and went left. The sniper on the roof wasn't told that this was O.K. and that he shouldn't shoot. You can say he just did what he was told."
Much of what happened in Gaza, some military experts said, was in reaction to the way events unfolded in the second Lebanon war in 2006 when Hezbollah caused many Israeli casualties.
In that war, when Israeli soldiers took over a house, they sometimes found themselves shot at from a house next door. The result was that in Gaza, many houses next to those commandeered by troops were destroyed to avoid that risk.
Still, Israeli ethicists say they are troubled by what they have heard.
"Unfortunately, I think that selective use of killing civilians has been very much on the agenda for fighting terror," said Yaron Ezrahi, a political scientist at Hebrew University who has been lecturing at defense colleges. "The army believes that a weak spot of Israeli deterrence is its strong commitment not to kill civilians, and there has grown the sense that it might have to temporarily overcome that weakness in order to restore deterrence."
Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company