• Day of reckoning may be nearing for Israeli leaders if charges are leveled in International Criminal Court.
By Richard Walker —
Economic and political blackmail by Israel and its backers in Washington has failed to prevent the one thing Israel has always feared: being branded a war criminal by the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague. And that is sure to happen now that the Palestinians have joined the ICC, despite threats of economic sanctions from pro-Zionist politicians in Washington and Tel Aviv.
One thing is certain in the minds of leading international jurists: Israel is already a war criminal and its crimes will fit into the legal framework established by the court to define what constitutes war crimes. In particular, Israel’s settlement policy will come under immediate scrutiny.
The international jurist, Professor Emeritus Eric David of Brussels University, believes Israel is a “real rogue state” and the ICC could go after its political leaders. He told the Jewish news and commentary website “Mondoweiss” that Israel does not comply with international law and has been “committing war crimes since 1967 or 1968.” Those crimes could be judged by the ICC, he added.
“All war crimes that have been committed by Israel in the Gaza Strip could be judged by the ICC,” he said. “Furthermore, the settlements in the West Bank,which are war crimes, could be judged by the ICC.”
Israel is not a member of the ICC, though it likes to portray itself as a democracy concerned with justice.
In 1998, when the ICC was set up under what was termed the Rome Statute, the United States and Israel were members. In 2002, however, they “unsigned” themselves from the ICC. At the time, the Bush-Cheney administration feared it might find itself in the crosshairs of the court. Bush described the court as “un-American” and threatened to use force against it if any U.S. citizens were brought before it.
To that end, he had congressional legislation drafted to protect all U.S. service personnel from prosecution. He also gave Congress authority to withdraw U.S. military backing for any country ratifying the ICC treaty.
Later, Israel followed suit, aware that its settlement policy alone was a war crime the court might address.
The Bush-Cheney opposition to the court is one that still holds true today even though the Obama White House has hypocritically called for the leaders of the Libyan and Syrian governments to be hauled before the ICC for war crimes. Such a position has exposed the glaring dishonesty of Washington’s position. In effect, the U.S. principle has always been that the ICC is a good weapon to be deployed against its enemies but should never be directed at the U.S. or at its allies, especially Israel. That is exactly why the State Department recently warned the Palestinians against joining the court and backed Israel’s claim that such a move would end any chance of a peaceful settlement.
While Israeli figures like its economy minister, Naftali Bennett, have arrogantly dismissed the court as “an empty gun that will never stop Israeli settlement building,” there is genuine dread within the Israeli leadership and body politic about what lies ahead.
Washington will not remain unscathed in any future ICC case because of Washington’s history of backing Israeli war crimes through support for settlement building and providing weapons to the Israeli military.
Since 1988, the U.S. has consistently wielded its veto power on the United Nations Security Council to block sanctions against Israel or to prevent Israel from being held accountable for engaging in genocide in the Palestinian territories.
Israel’s Clandestine Alliance with Mideast Terrorists Revealed
By Richard Walker
Efforts to keep the role Israel plays in the bloody Syrian civil war hidden from the world are coming unraveled. According to recent United Nations reports, the Israelis have been actively supporting the al-Nusra Front, a violent organization carrying out terrorist attacks across Syria in an effort to overthrow the government there.
To date, the American mass media has ignored Israel’s role in the conflict, a fact that has emboldened it and has enabled President Barack Hussein Obama and figures on Capitol Hill to claim Israel has never been part of the Obama coalition of Arab and Western nations trying to overthrow the Syrian regime and destroy the Islamic State (ISIS). Bizarrely, ISIS is another major rebel group engaged in trying to force regime change in Syria.
From an Israeli and Obama administration perspective, Israel’s involvement in the Syrian war has been kept secret for the simple reason that Arab nations fighting ISIS and Assad in Syria would be none too happy to learn they were part of a Western coalition with Israel in its midst.
Israel has been following the old strategy of “my enemy’s enemy is my friend” in order to maintain instability in Syria. To that end, it has been working with al-Nusra, which ironically has also been battling ISIS. When ISIS insisted on wrapping al-Nusra into its ranks, the two sides began fighting. Al Qaeda’s leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, eventually intervened to broker a ceasefire, but it has not held. Nevertheless, the two sides have continued to attack the Syrian military.
In what may be a clever ploy, al-Nusra has made no threats against the West. One of its early adherents, Sunni Muslim cleric Dr. Sami Oraidi, stressed the group should avoid doing anything that would lead to it being labeled terrorist. Its leader, Abu Mohammad al-Julani, is believed to be from the Golan Heights, Syrian territory seized in 1967 by Israel and held illegally by it ever since.
Since 1967, the UN has had the United Nations Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF), patrolling Golan, and its reports are the ones that have now exposed Israel’s alliance with the al-Nusra-backed militia.
A UNDOF report from June 10, 2014 highlighted Israel’s proxy alliance with terrorism:
On 59 occasions, particularly, during periods of heavy engagement between the Syrian armed forces and members of the armed opposition, UNDOF observed armed members of the opposition transferring 89 wounded persons from the Bravo side across the ceasefire line to the IDF [Israel Defense Forces] and IDF on the alpha side handing over 19 treated and two deceased individuals to the armed members of the opposition on the Bravo side. On one occasion, UNDOF observed IDF on the alpha side handing over two boxes to armed members of the opposition on the Bravo side.
The alpha side is Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. The bravo side is Syrian territory.
Israel has also breached international law by attacking Syrian military positions, even close to the capitol, Damascus, in the past year and has protected al-Nusra fighters in the Golan region from Syrian airstrikes.
In another UNDOF report, it was noted that on September 13, 2014, a Syrian jet fighter was shot down by Israel close to the Golan boundary between Israel and Syria. It had been attacking al-Nusra positions. The IDF told the UN the plane had crossed into Israeli territory.
UN observers at the scene concluded otherwise: “United Nations personnel did not observe the fighter aircraft over the area of separation or crossing the ceasefire line but saw a mid-air explosion followed by debris falling to the ground in an area east of Jaba in the area of limitation on the bravo side.”
Richard Walker is the pen name of a former N.Y. news producer.
Israeli Swindlers Steal Millions from French Businesses
• Chinese criminals abet massive fraud
By Ronald L. Ray
The cities of Netanya, Ashdod and Herzliya, in Israel’s “Silicon Valley” on the Mediterranean coast, are home not just to high technology and—in Herzliya’s case—a major propaganda and intelligence recruitment center. They are also the center of a nefarious, international confidence racket, which has defrauded around €500 million from at least 700 businesses in France, making Nigerian email scammers look like schoolchildren by comparison.
According to reports in Germany’s National-Zeitung (NZ), a person with a “perfect” French accent will telephone an employee in a company’s accounting department. His voice will have an air of authority. Perhaps it is a foreign “vendor” demanding payment, or—a particular favorite—it will be the “president” of the multinational corporation. A large tax payment is due suddenly, he might say. It is essential for a significant sum of money to be transferred to a particular bank account outside of France. Utmost discretion is required. An email follows to confirm the conversation. It appears legitimate, and soon the funds—tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars—are on their way, not to another company account, but into the hands of unscrupulous Israelis.
The “perfect” French—essential to fooling the linguistically hyper-sensitive Gauls—is provided typically by Jews who grew up in France and then emigrated to Israel, reports French website AlterInfo.net. Besides self-enrichment, another “advantage” the perpetrators see in their activities may also be that of indirectly aiding the Zionist cause. Apparently, some of the set-ups make it appear as though Arabs are responsible, throwing blame onto Israel’s archenemies when the con is found out.
And it is by no means only small companies which fall victim to the swindlers, says NZ. Corporations listed on the French stock exchange are favored targets. The Paris branch of the international legal firm, Baker & MacKenzie, was relieved of around €900,000. The Michelin tire company suffered losses of €1.6 million. And the world’s largest producer of steel products, Group Vallourec, which employs 24,000 people, was cleaned out of a massive €20.6 million. These crooks are no amateurs.
While funds may be routed through any number of countries, accomplices in Communist China are often part of the operation. NZ quotes a French source: “An agreement has been established between two mafias. . . . Every Israeli fraud corresponds with a Chinese laundering of the money.”
Stopping the fraudsters is far from easy. Mutual cooperation between China and France has yet to be established, although the French minister of justice recently sent a delegation to Beijing as a first step. Israeli law enforcement, however, seems less than helpful. Information supplied by Israel to France has come to a “dead stop.” A high-ranking police official stated that, “The solution [now] has to be a political one.”
Israel has developed an international reputation for corrupt business dealings with both foreigners and fellow countrymen. Whether it is collusion in tax evasion, cellular telephone overcharges, “finding” automobile problems to fix, or making life miserable for apartment tenants, it is Israeli “business as usual.” Americans, in particular, seem susceptible to Israeli online gambling scams, which are rigged to prevent winning. Even the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s warnings about mass-marketing fraud earned Israel a special mention.
That Israeli avarice should be carried to such extremes as the French have experienced, however, is somewhat astonishing, although it ought not be. A people which have no scruples about annihilating the mostly defenseless native Palestinians in the Holy Land by bombing, shooting, poisoning of water supplies, destruction of farms and homes, human organ harvesting, withholding of humanitarian aid, and even freezing Arabs to death—such a degraded people will not worry about the morality of stealing millions of dollars from others.
Ronald L. Ray is a freelance author and an assistant editor of THE BARNES REVIEW. He is a descendant of several patriots of the American War for Independence.
About 3,500 years ago, in the lands now called the Near East, a small band of nomads wandered with their flocks into Palestine. After many adventures, their
descendants conquered the land and made it a seedbed of a new religion. In the course of time, their new world view and their sacred writings became a basic element in the thought of western man. The long road they traveled to greatness begins in the ancient past, amid the civilizations that once flourished along the rivers Trigris and Euphrates.
Great Ages and Ideas of the Jewish People, edited by Leo W. Schwartz: Random House, 1956.
Hopefully Craig will read this and understand that not one rabbi in the world will disagree with the of Israel.
In other words, if you claim to be a Christian descendant from “Palestine,” you’re really Jewish from Israel.