Frazzled wrote:

 dæl wrote:
I did wonder how long before someone tried to justify these actions. I'm sorry but there is no justification for the torture of children, even child soldiers.

Not justifying anything. Just adding a little perspective. The only prudent thing for the US to do is stay the hell out.

 Orlanth wrote:
Not possible for the US to completely be removed from this issues because the US bankrolls the Israeli military machine.

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:

 Orlanth wrote:
Not possible for the US to completely be removed from this issues because the US bankrolls the Israeli military machine.

They also bankroll the Fatah Palestinian Authority (along with the EU).

Last year's report by the U.N. Fact-Finding Mission on the Gaza War, known more popularly as the Goldstone Report, is not going away. Originally, it was the initiative of the Geneva-based U.N. Human Rights Council, which named South African Justice Richard Goldstone to head it. It was promoted at the time by Cuba, Egypt, and Pakistan—not exactly the beacons of human rights—and had no support from Western democracies. However, the number of states backing the report has been growing. And yet, it remains one of the most potent weapons in the arsenals of international terrorist organizations seeking to render ineffective the capacity of the West to engage in self-defense.

Strictly speaking, the report was primarily directed against Israel, which was seeking to bring to a complete halt the indiscriminate rocket and mortar fire by the international terrorist organization Hamas against Israeli towns and villages that had been going on for more than seven years. The Goldstone Report alleged that Israeli troops had committed "war crimes" by attacking purely civilian targets in the Gaza War. To make matters worse, the report failed to link Hamas to any violations of the laws of war, even though its continuing rocket attacks on Israeli civilians caused the Gaza War to begin with. There is only mention of anonymous "Palestinian armed groups." It is probably for that reason that the Hamas second in command in Damascus, Musa Abu Marzuq, told the Saudi satellite channel Al-Arabiya that "the report acquits Hamas almost entirely."

Thus a report that has the stamp of the United Nations makes serious allegations about a state engaged in lawful self-defense, while letting the aggressor, an international terrorist organization, completely off the hook. Israeli President Shimon Peres understandably called the Goldstone Report "scandalous" when he met U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon in Jerusalem on March 20.

How did the Goldstone team produce such a result? It is essential to understand that its members had a very specific outlook of the nature of this kind of armed conflict that affected their conclusions. Colonel Desmond Travers of Ireland was the senior military figure on Goldstone's panel and probably its most important member after Justice Goldstone. In a wide-ranging interview in Middle East Monitor from February 2, 2010, he utterly rejects that there is something called "asymmetric warfare" in which insurgent forces are introducing civilians into the battlefield against modern armies in a way that changes the nature of warfare. He argues that these ideas are mainly coming from the United States and Israel and they are utterly wrong. This outlook directly affected what Travers and his colleagues looked for, as they gathered evidence, and how they went about the interviews that they conducted with Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

Take, for example, the case of Muhammad Abu Askar, a longtime Hamas member who served as the director-general of the ministry of religious endowments in the Gaza government. He appeared before the Goldstone Panel arguing that his house had been "unjustly" blown up by Israel, though he admitted that he was warned in advance by the Israel Defense Forces, who telephoned him directly informing him that his home was to be targeted and he had better vacate the area. The Goldstone Report concludes that Abu Askar's home was of an "unmistakably civilian nature." If that was the case then Israel would have violated one of the basic principles of international law by failing to discriminate between military and civilian objects and personnel during wartime.

Because the U.N. actually posted on its website video clips with the questioning of Abu Askar by the Goldstone Panel, it is possible to examine how panelists reached their conclusions. They asked him detailed questions about the warning he received. They also asked about the other homes in the area. But the most pivotal question that would help them determine whether Abu Askar's house was purely civilian in nature or was a legitimate military target was not asked. No one bothered to confront him with the unpleasant but necessary question of whether Hamas munitions were being stored in his house. They might have had an inkling that this was a serious possibility if they had also inquired as to whether Abu Askar was more than a Hamas religious functionary but was actually a member of the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, which he was.

In January 2010, the Israel Defense Force completed its own internal investigation of many of the incidents that appear in the Goldstone Report, including the case of Abu Askar. Israeli representatives submitted their findings to the U.N. secretary-general. It turned out that the cellar and other parts of Abu Askar's house served as a storage facility for large stockpiles of weapons and ammunition, including Iranian-supplied Grad rockets that had been used against Israeli cities like Ashkelon, Ashdod, and Beersheba. Indeed, the area around the house had been used as a launch site for attacking many Israeli towns and villages. If someone in the U.N.'s research division would have bothered to check the Arabic website of the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades of Hamas they would have disclosed that Khaled Abu Askar, Muhammad's son, worked for the military supply unit of Hamas and provided its operatives with rockets and military equipment.

The Abu Askar case is only one of many incidents that appear in the Goldstone Report, but it is representative of a pervasive problem that appears throughout. In trying to reconstruct the reality of what occurred in the Gaza War, the team members refused to consider that Hamas was exploiting civilian areas to gain military advantage. In late October 2009, Colonel Travers confidently told Harper's: "We found no evidence that mosques were used to store munitions." He then added his own ideological position on the matter that helped him make such a conclusive assertion: "Those charges reflect Western perceptions in some quarters that Islam is a violent religion."

When Travers was asked how many mosques he inspected, he answered that he visited two. He did not even think that he needed to be more thorough for he dismissed the very possibility that anyone would hide munitions in a place of worship. In contrast, earlier this year, Col. Tim Collins, a British veteran of the Iraq War, visited Gaza for BBC Newsnight and actually inspected the ruins of a mosque that Israel had destroyed because it had been a weapons depot. He found that there was evidence of secondary explosions caused by munitions stored in the mosque cellar. Travers clearly did not think it was necessary to make the same effort.

In other theaters of war in the Middle East, the militarization of mosques was very common. In 2004, U.S. forces in Iraq found weapons and insurgents in no less than 60 mosques in the town of Fallujah. While the Goldstone Report itself stated that it was unable to make a determination whether mosques were used for military purposes by the Palestinians, it nonetheless concluded that mosques were a "civilian object" and that Israeli operations against them were a violation of international law.

More generally, the Goldstone team simply refused to accept the argument that Hamas had used the Palestinian population in the Gaza Strip, as well as its civilian infrastructure, as human shields—a hallmark of the asymmetric warfare used by insurgents. Speaking about Hamas, Travers in his 2010 interview states point blank: "We found no evidence for the human shield phenomenon…" Travers, in particular, was operating with ideological filters that prevented him from seeing evidence that contradicted his worldview.

From Israel's military experience, it was clear that Hamas used human shields effectively. A new report by Israel's Intelligence and Information Center contains Israeli Air Force video showing how on Dec. 27, 2008, the first day of the Gaza War, after the residents of a building serving as a munitions storehouse were warned of an imminent Israeli air operation, they did not evacuate but ran to the roof of the building. As a result, Israel aborted the air strike it had planned. Other Israeli Air Force videos show Hamas operatives deliberately moving toward groups of children or using them in the fighting in order to escape any possible Israeli attack. Detained Hamas combatants confirmed this had been part of their military tactics.

However, the Goldstone panel did not want to consider the possibility that the Gaza War was part of an emerging battlefield, in which private homes, mosques, and innocent civilians are being intentionally exploited by terrorist groups that seek to fight the West. In February 2010, Afghan officials reported that the Taliban were increasingly using human shields against U.S. and allied forces trying to make inroads in Helmand province. Similar tactics have been employed by the Taliban in Pakistan as well.

With respect to the Gaza Strip, the Goldstone Report recommended that states open up criminal investigations against those whom it alleges may have committed war crimes. It also seeks the intervention of the International Criminal Court. Already, British courts have sought the arrest of former Israeli officers on the basis of complaints issued by Islamic and radical left-wing groups in London. Might not U.S. and other NATO officers be exposed to the same treatment on the basis of these precedents? Hamas created a legal arm, called al-Tawthiq (lit. documentation), which fed information to the Goldstone panel and today provides British lawyers with material to seek the arrest of Israelis in Britain. Why can't the Taliban find lawyers to do the same?

What needs to be done is to recognize that Western armies are going to be dealing increasingly with situations in which terrorist groups are embedding their military capabilities in the heart of civilian areas. In these circumstances, Western armies have three choices if their countries come under attack: to give up and not defend their citizens, to act like the Russians in Chechnya and use indiscriminate firepower, or to find a way to separate the civilians from the military capabilities they hope to destroy. Israel clearly chose the last option, using a system of warnings to the population, by means of leaflets, breaking into Hamas radio broadcasts with special Arabic transmissions, and finally by telephone calls and text messages to the residents of a targeted area to evacuate and avoid danger.

The Goldstone Report never suggests how Israel was supposed to respond to seven years of rocket fire. Despite the warnings that Israel issued, the report has the audacity to charge that Israeli soldiers "deliberately" killed Palestinian civilians, basing this accusation on biased interviews with Gaza residents whom it admitted were in "fear of reprisals." But rather than being discredited, unfortunately the Goldstone report has been picking up steam. The U.N. General Assembly voted on the report on November 5. Countries with forces deployed in insurgent wars, like in Afghanistan, either opposed or abstained. In a second vote in late February 2010, Britain and France changed their vote from abstention to support for the Goldstone Report. In mid-March 2010, the European Parliament voted to endorse the report as well.

No one is suggesting that human rights be sacrificed on the altar of national security. The laws of war need to be carefully protected along with the lives of the innocent. The problem with the Goldstone Report is not the result of the need to revise those laws: They need to be applied correctly and not in a way that ignores what insurgent forces are doing on the ground. If a public building filled with munitions needs to be attacked at night when civilians are not present, it is not for reasons of revenge but rather from military necessity. The Goldstone panel did not want to consider that possibility because of its own prejudices and mind-set. Should that mind-set spread, then not only will Israel's security be endangered but also the security of the West as a whole.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/11/04/goldstone-report-irredeem_n_345570.html

The US House of Representatives has rejected as "irredeemably biased" the findings of a UN-sponsored report which says Israel committed war crimes during its military assault on the Gaza Strip.

The house on Tuesday voted 344 to 36 in favour of a non-binding resolution calling on Barack Obama, the US president, to maintain his opposition to the report, which was written by a panel led by Richard Goldstone, a South African judge.

The report accused Israel and the Palestinian Hamas group, which has de facto control of Gaza, of war crimes during the 22-day conflict in December and January.

But most of its criticism was directed towards Israel's conduct during the offensive, in which human rights organisations say about 1,400 Palestinians - many of them women and children - were killed.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alan-dershowitz/the-case-against-the-gold_b_442412.html

The Goldstone Report is much more scurrilous than most of its detractors (and supporters) believe. According to the report, Israel used the more than 8,000 rocket attacks on its civilians merely as a pretext, an excuse, a cover for the real purpose of Operation Cast Lead, which was to target innocent Palestinian civilians -- children, women, the elderly -- for death. This criminal objective was explicitly decided upon by the highest levels of the Israeli government and military and constitutes a deliberate and willful war crime. The report found these serious charges "to be firmly based in fact" and had "no doubt" of their truth.

In contrast, the Mission decided that Hamas was not guilty of deliberately and willfully using the civilian population as human shields. It found "no evidence" that Hamas fighters "engaged in combat in civilian dress," "no evidence" that "Palestinian combatants mingled with the civilian population with the intention of shielding themselves from attack," and no support for the claim that mosques were used to store weapons.

The report is demonstrably wrong about both of these critical conclusions. The hard evidence conclusively proves that the exact opposite is true, namely that:

Israel did not have a policy of targeting innocent civilians for death. Indeed the IDF went to unprecedented lengths to minimize civilian casualties; and
That Hamas did have a deliberate policy of having its combatants dress in civilian clothing, fire their rockets from densely populated areas, use civilians as human shields, and store weapons in mosques.
What is even more telling than its erroneous conclusions, however, is its deliberately skewed methodology, particularly the manner in which it used and evaluated similar evidence very differently, depending on whether it favored the Hamas or Israeli side.

I have written a detailed analysis of the Goldstone Methodology, which is now available online here [PDF]. It is being sent to the Secretary General of the United Nations for inclusion in critiques of the Goldstone report received by the United Nations. This analysis documents the distortions, misuses of evidence and bias of the report and those who wrote it. It demonstrates that the evidence relied on by the report, as well as the publicly available evidence it deliberately chose to ignore, disproves its own conclusions.

The central issue that distinguishes the conclusions the Goldstone Report reached regarding Israel, on the one hand, and Hamas, on the other, is intentionality. The report finds that the most serious accusation against Israel, namely the killing of civilians, was intentional (and deliberately planned at the highest levels). The report also finds that the most serious accusations made against Hamas, namely that their combatants wore civilian clothing to shield themselves from attack, mingled among the civilian populations and used civilians as human shields, was unintentional. These issues are, of course, closely related. If it were to turn out that there was no evidence that Hamas ever operated from civilians areas, and that the IDF knew this, then the allegation that the IDF, by firing into civilian areas, deliberately intended to kill Palestinian civilians, would be strengthened. But if it were to turn out that the IDF reasonably believed that Hamas fighters were deliberately using civilians as shields, then this fact would weaken the claim that the IDF had no military purpose in firing into civilian areas. Moreover, if Hamas did use human shields then the deaths of Palestinian civilian shields would be more justly attributable to Hamas then to Israel.

Since intentionality, or lack thereof, was so important to the report's conclusions, it would seem essential that the report would apply the same evidentiary standards, rules and criteria in determining the intent of Israel and in determining the intent of Hamas. Yet a careful review of the report makes it crystal clear that its writers applied totally different standards, rules and criteria in evaluating the intent of the parties to the conflict. The report resolved doubts against Israel in concluding that its leaders intended to kill civilians, while resolving doubts in favor of Hamas in concluding that it did not intend to use Palestinian civilians as human shields. Moreover, when it had precisely the same sort of evidence in relation to both sides -- for example, statements by leaders prior to the commencement of the operation -- it attributed significant weight to the Israeli statements, while entirely discounting comparable Hamas statements. This sort of evidentiary bias, though subtle, permeates the entire report.

In addition to the statements of leaders, which are treated so differently, the report takes a completely different view regarding the inferring of intent from action. When it comes to Israel, the report repeatedly looks to results and infers from the results that they must have been intended. But when it comes to Hamas, it refuses to draw inferences regarding intent from results. For example, it acknowledges that some combatants wore civilian clothes, and it offers no reasonable explanation for why this would be so other than to mingle indistinguishably from civilians. Yet it refuses to infer intent from these actions.

Highly relevant to the report's conclusion that militants did not intend for their actions to shield themselves from counterattack is that the Mission was "unable to make any determination on the general allegation that Palestinian armed groups used mosques for military purpose," "did not find any evidence to support the allegations that hospital facilities were used by the Gaza authorities or by Palestinian armed groups to shield military activities," did not find evidence "that ambulances were used to transport combatants or for other military purposes," and did not find "that Palestinian armed groups engaged in combat activities from United Nations facilities that were used as shelters during the military operations." There is, however, hard evidence that Hamas did operate in mosques and, at the very least, near hospitals. Circumstantial evidence (precise weaponry) was used to prove Israeli intent. Regarding Hamas, the circumstantial evidence even stronger in inferring intent. It is beyond obvious that militants do not fire rockets in the vicinity of mosques or hospitals because it is easier to launch rockets near community institutions. Rather, they do so only because of the special protections afforded to hospitals and religious centers in war.

The report -- commissioned by an organization with a long history of anti-Israel bigotry, and written by biased "experts," with limited experience and a pre-ordained result -- is one-sided and wrong in its fundamental conclusions. This should not be surprising since conclusions can be no better than the methodology employed, and the methodology employed in this report is fundamentally flawed.

So now it is up to Richard Goldstone to explain the evidentiary bias that is so obviously reflected in the report, and that is documented in my lengthier analysis available online. The burden is on him to justify the very different methodologies used in the report to arrive at its conclusions regarding the intentions of Israel and the intentions of Hamas. Failure to assume that burden will constitute an implicit admission that the conclusions reached in the Goldstone report are not worthy of consideration by people of good will.

 Frazzled wrote:
No money to anyone within three thousand miles of Jerusalem. How's that?

better yet no money to anyone...

 Manchu wrote:
OP's article makes bold claims but gives no sense of their basis.

Sounds like ... "Palestinians told UN that Israel is bad; UN repeats that" to me.

Torture and other cruel or degrading treatment or punishment

The Committee expresses its deepest concern about the reported practice of torture and ill-treatment of Palestinian children arrested, prosecuted and detained by the military and the police, and about the State party’s failure to end these practices in spite of repeated concerns expressed by treaty bodies, special procedures mandate holders and United Nations agencies in this respect. The Committee notes with deep concern that children living in the OPT continue to be:
(a) Routinely arrested in the middle of the night by soldiers shouting instructions at the family and taken hand-tied and blindfolded to unknown destination without having the possibility to say good bye to their parents who rarely know where their children are taken;
(b) Systematically subject to physical and verbal violence, humiliation, painful restraints, hooding of the head and face in a sack, threatened with death, physical violence, and sexual assault against themselves or members of their family, restricted access to toilet, food and water. These crimes are perpetrated from the time of arrest, during transfer and interrogation, to obtain a confession but also on an arbitrary basis as testified by several Israeli soldiers as well as during pre-trial detention; and
(c) Held in solitary confinement, sometimes for months.

 dæl wrote:
It would appear that the UNICEF report was used in gathering this information, as well as testimonies gathered from Israeli soldiers.

 Frazzled wrote:
(a) Routinely arrested in the middle of the night by soldiers shouting instructions at the family and taken hand-tied and blindfolded to unknown destination without having the possibility to say good bye to their parents who rarely know where their children are taken;
***That’s called being arrested. Sounds like your average drug bust.

(b) Systematically subject to physical and verbal violence, humiliation, painful restraints, hooding of the head and face in a sack, threatened with death, physical violence, and sexual assault against themselves or members of their family,
****Depending on what that actually is, its something.

restricted access to toilet, food and water.
***Welcome to working at McDonalds.

(c) Held in solitary confinement, sometimes for months.
***Just like a jail cell. Meh.

 Manchu wrote:

 dæl wrote:
It would appear that the UNICEF report was used in gathering this information, as well as testimonies gathered from Israeli soldiers.

By all means, explain how.

 Mr Hyena wrote:
Things like this happen when your struggling to survive surrounded by a sea of enemies with no ally support. In a situation like this, this is the least of peoples problems.

 Frazzled wrote:
How about either side using children as pawns in their reindeer games?

Come on people, we have coal mines that need workers here.

 dæl wrote:
Yeah, but both sides are using Palestinian children, and that's just not cricket.

 Mr Hyena wrote:
Things like this happen when your struggling to survive surrounded by a sea of enemies with no ally support. In a situation like this, this is the least of peoples problems.

 Kovnik Obama wrote:

 Mr Hyena wrote:
Things like this happen when your struggling to survive surrounded by a sea of enemies with no ally support. In a situation like this, this is the least of peoples problems.

Having your kids kidnapped is the least of people's concerns?

 Kovnik Obama wrote:

 Mr Hyena wrote:
Things like this happen when your struggling to survive surrounded by a sea of enemies with no ally support. In a situation like this, this is the least of peoples problems.

Having your kids kidnapped is the least of people's concerns?

Both sides have allies.

What would you suggest is more important than the torture of children then?

 Ensis Ferrae wrote:

 Kovnik Obama wrote:

 Mr Hyena wrote:
Things like this happen when your struggling to survive surrounded by a sea of enemies with no ally support. In a situation like this, this is the least of peoples problems.

Having your kids kidnapped is the least of people's concerns?

not kidnapped... arrested. That implies some form of crime being committed.

 Frazzled wrote:
How about either side using children as pawns in their reindeer games?

Come on people, we have coal mines that need workers here.

The Guardian’s June 17 edition of ‘Picture Desk Live’ included the following photo depicting a day in the life of Gaza residents:

Here’s the caption:

A Young Palestinian crawls under barbed wire during a summer physical training camp run by Hamas in Gaza City

Now, it doesn’t take too much investigative work to note that the Palestinian youth attending this “summer physical training camp” is crawling beneath barbed wire, not exactly a routine activity at a regular youth summer camp. In fact, the original image (at Getty) by the same photographer, Mohammed Abed, includes a caption which notes that the youths are indeed engaged in “military exercises”.

Additionally, the photojournalist site Demotix includes several photos of the same ‘camp’, and includes a title: ‘Palestinians participate in military style exercises run by Hamas‘.

Here’s Yahoo reporting on the same camp, which include captions clearly stating its military purpose. This photo at Yahoo, for instance, has a caption clearly indicating that these youths are being taught how to properly fire a rocket-propelled grenade.

A peak beyond the Guardian obfuscation clearly indicates that the ‘camp’ provides training for future jihadists. Indeed, every summer both Hamas and Islamic Jihad reportedly train more than 100,000 Palestinian children (as young as six) in “resistance” (terrorism), the destruction of Israel, the “right of return” and other elements of the groups’ radical Islamist ideologies.

The decision by editors at ‘Picture Desk Live’ not to inform readers of the paramilitary nature of the youth camp represents yet another example of Palestinian child abuse that the Guardian won’t report.

(See also a post at the blog ‘This Ongoing War‘ on a similarly misleading caption at The Telegraph beneath a photo of ‘summer jihad’ in Gaza.)

 Mr Hyena wrote:


What does that matter...if your country, people and way of life is exterminated?

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:

 Orlanth wrote:
Not possible for the US to completely be removed from this issues because the US bankrolls the Israeli military machine.

They also bankroll the Fatah Palestinian Authority (along with the EU).

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:
Indeed, every summer both Hamas and Islamic Jihad reportedly train more than 100,000 Palestinian children (as young as six) in “resistance” (terrorism), the destruction of Israel, the “right of return” and other elements of the groups’ radical Islamist ideologies.

 Orlanth wrote:
Fatah gets food aid, the IDF gets military hardware, there is a difference you know.

The majority of aid to the Palestinian Authority comes from the United States and European Union. According to figures released by the PA, only 22 percent of the $530,000,000 received since the beginning of 2010 came from Arab donors. The remaining came from Western donors and organizations. The total amount of foreign aid received directly by the PA was $1.4 billion in 2009 and $1.8 billion in 2008.[143]
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said the Palestinians haven't seen "one cent" of the hundreds of millions of dollars the Arab countries promised during the 2010 Arab League summit in Libya.[citation needed] Palestinian leaders stated the Arab world was "continuing to ignore" repeated requests for help.[144]
Following the 2006 legislative elections, won by Hamas, Israel has ceased transferring the $55 million tax-receipts to the PA; since the PA has no access point (ports, airports, etc.) to receive taxes, it is Israel that is charged with this duty. These funds accounted for a third of the PA's budget, two thirds of its proper budget, and ensure the wages of 160,000 Palestinian civil servants (among them 60,000 security and police officers), on which a third of the Palestinian population is dependent.[citation needed]
The US and the EU responded to Hamas' political victory by stopping direct aid to the PA, while the US imposed a financial blockade on PA's banks, impeding some of the Arab League's funds (e.g. Saudi Arabia and Qatar) from being transferred to the PA.[145] On 6 and 7 May 2006, hundreds of Palestinians demonstrated in Gaza and the West Bank demanding payment of their wages.
In 2010, the Palestinian Authority has managed to decrease dependence on "foreign aid-from Europe, the US, and Arab countries" by $600 million.[citation needed]
In 2013 there are 150,000 government employees. Income to run the government to serve about 4 million citizens, comes from donations from other countries.

The US House for Foreign Operations announced a foreign assistance package to the Palestinian Authority that included provisions that would bar the government from receiving aid if it seeks statehood at the UN or includes Hamas in a unity government. The bill would provide $513 million for the Palestinian Authority.[151]

 Kovnik Obama wrote:
According to this, we have less than 16 years until every single palestinian becomes a terrorists. Everyone.

 Mr Hyena wrote:

Both sides have allies.

What would you suggest is more important than the torture of children then?

Isreal's allies don't have the balls to put boots on the ground to help.

Whats more important is survival.