And this really, would be laughable if it wasn't so damn disgusting. It is also a high-irony alert. From Jurist:
In an interview with a reporter, Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor said the probe is an attempt to demonize Israel and that it has no moral ground. Palmor also condemned the UNHRC as unreliable and having the worst history of all the organizations within the UN. The criticism came the same day that the UNHRC announced the appointment of South African judge Richard Goldstone to head the fact-finding mission. Israel has not said if it will cooperate with the probe, which was originally approved by the UNHCR in January.
The impetus for the probe was a report [authored by UN Special Rapporteur Richard Falk], which criticized Israel for failing to take adequate precautions to distinguish between civilians and combatants in their offensives in the region. Both Israel and the US criticized the report, calling the rapporteur's views "anything but fair." An internal Israeli military investigation found earlier this week that war crimes had not been committed in the offensive despite individual reports by Israeli soldiers. Israel has already disputed a previous report to the UNHRC that accused it of human rights violations. In January, the International Criminal Court (ICC) said that it lacked standing to investigate possible war crimes in Gaza.
Sweet Jaysus in a speedo..demonize Israel and that it has no moral ground? Dude, you are so full of shit, your eyes better be brown. Morally, Israel is so bankrupt, when it comes to Palestine..I can't even begin to point out the obvious here...but let me try..
Letting Israel's military investigate their own war crimes is tantamount to the fox guarding the henhouse.
Their own soldiers reported various war crimes during the latest Gaza seige.
Plenty of news reports are out there..including numerous videos of Israel bombing civilians homes.
More civilians were killed than Hamas soldiers in Gaza, by all news accounts. This one alone states 1,434 Palestinians, including 960 civilians were killed.
Violations of the Geneva Conventions which require the military to distinguish between military targets and surrounding civilians.
From The Guardian:
The Guardian has compiled detailed evidence of alleged war crimes committed by Israel during the 23-day offensive in the Gaza Strip earlier this year, involving the use of Palestinian children as human shields and the targeting of medics and hospitals.Israel isn't above the law or the Geneva Conventions. That they would kill more civilians than Hamas soldiers and use children as human shields turns my stomach. Watch all three parts of The Guardians investigation into Israel war crimes here.
A month-long investigation also obtained evidence of civilians being hit by fire from unmanned drone aircraft said to be so accurate that their operators can tell the colour of the clothes worn by a target.
*snip*
Some of the most dramatic testimony gathered by the Guardian came from three teenage brothers in the al-Attar family. They describe how they were taken from home at gunpoint, made to kneel in front of Israeli tanks to deter Hamas fighters from firing, and sent by Israeli soldiers into Palestinian houses to clear them. "They would make us go first so if any fighters shot at them the bullets would hit us, not them," 14-year-old Al'a al-Attar said.
