{"id":3432,"date":"2010-11-22T01:46:38","date_gmt":"2010-11-22T09:46:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=3432"},"modified":"2010-11-22T01:46:38","modified_gmt":"2010-11-22T09:46:38","slug":"israel-atrocity-ignored","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2010\/11\/22\/israel-atrocity-ignored\/","title":{"rendered":"Israel: Atrocity Ignored"},"content":{"rendered":"

There are few governments as ready to commit war crimes as the US under Texas Torquemada, but the current government of Israel almost makes the Bush\/Republican regime seem legitimate.  An Israeli court has rendered a decision worthy of DOJ under Gonzales.<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\"22humanshield\"Two Israeli soldiers received suspended sentences and demotions on Sunday for using a Palestinian child as a human shield by making him check for bombs during the 2008-2009 Gaza war<\/strong>, army radio said.<\/p>\n

The radio’s correspondent, who attended the sentencing in a military court, said the two were each given suspended terms of three months imprisonment and were demoted from the rank of staff sergeant to sergeant<\/font><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

The military spokesman’s office had no immediate comment on the sentencing of the two men, who were convicted on October 3 for forcing a nine-year-old boy to search bags believed to be booby-trapped during Israel’s 22-day war on Gaza<\/strong> which erupted in December 2008.<\/p>\n

Gerard Horton, a spokesman in the West Bank for Geneva-based rights group Defence for Children International (DCI), described the sentence as "unbelievable."<\/p>\n

"Do the Israeli authorities think that a three-month suspended sentence is an appropriate punishment for two heavily-armed soldiers treating a nine-year-old boy as a human shield?"<\/p>\n

He told AFP that the trial appeared designed to deflect attention from accusations in the Goldstone report<\/strong>, a UN-mandated study by South African judge Richard Goldstone which accused both Israel and the Palestinians of war crimes during the three-week war.<\/p>\n

"It’s purely for international consumption," Horton told AFP.<\/p>\n

"It’s to look like you’re doing something busy after the Goldstone report, in order to get the UN off your back. It’s not a genuine attempt to enforce the law or to send a message that this is not appropriate conduct for the army to engage in."<\/p>\n

Goldstone recommended that the report’s findings be transferred to the International Criminal Court if Israel and the Islamist Hamas movement fail to conduct "credible" investigations into the war.<\/p>\n

Israel rejected the report as "biased."<\/p>\n

Israel’s Supreme Court banned the army from using human shields in October 2005\u2026 [emphasis added<\/em>]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Inserted from <Common Dreams<\/a>><\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know who are the bigger cowards, the soldiers who risked the life of a nine year old or the government that gave their acts tacit approval with this show-trial.  I would urge that the Goldstone findings be transferred to the ICC to properly prosecute these war criminals and their superiors.<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There are few governments as ready to commit war crimes as the US under Texas Torquemada, but the current government of Israel almost makes the Bush\/Republican regime seem legitimate.  An Israeli court has rendered a decision worthy of DOJ under Gonzales. Two Israeli soldiers received suspended sentences and demotions on Sunday for using a Palestinian […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3432","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3432","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3432"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3432\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3432"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3432"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3432"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}