Tag: war crimes

Exposed: The US and Canadian Funding Behind Israeli Soldiers Accused of Rape

Cuffed and blindfolded 24 hours a day. Confined to animal pens. Attacked by dogs. This is reportedly the treatment of Palestinian detainees at Sde Teiman, an Israeli military base in the Naqab desert. While claims of torture and abuse at the facility began circulating in December, the Israeli military did not open an investigation into the allegations until July 29, when 10 Israeli soldiers were detained on suspicion of sexually abusing a detainee.

In response to the soldiers’ detention, a mob of right-wing extremists stormed Sde Teiman and later broke into the Beit Lid military base, where the detained soldiers were being held. Among those detained were soldiers from the Force 100 unit, which was resurrected at the onset of the war and has been responsible for guarding the detainees at Sde Teiman. Masked soldiers, wearing black shirts emblazoned with the unit’s logo—a snake inside the Jewish Star of David—were seen participating in the protests.

Several Israeli lawmakers took part in the riots, including Otzma Yehudit’s (Jewish Power) Heritage Minister Amichay Eliyahu, Religious Zionism member of parliament, Zvi Sukkot, and parliamentary members of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party, Nissim Vaturi and Tally Gotliv.

Protests have continued to erupt in support of the soldiers, including, most recently, outside an Israeli High Court hearing on the case on August 7, 2024.

As allegations of torture and sexual abuse at Israel’s Sde Teiman detention facility escalate and Israeli Military Police prepare to conclude their investigation and file indictments against the suspects, MintPress uncovers the financial and political infrastructure, including from the U.S. and Canada, backing these soldiers through tax-exempt organizations and crowdfunding platforms. This marks a disturbing shift in global support for human rights violations, now extending even to those implicated in the Israeli military’s acts of sexual violence.

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The Military Tried To Hide Evidence of a Massacre. A Lawsuit Just Exposed It.

The Haditha massacre was one of the worst U.S. actions during the Iraq War. After a roadside bomb killed a Marine in the town of Haditha in November 2005, the rest of his squad shot dead 24 unarmed Iraqi men, women, and children, many of them inside their own homes. The Marine Corps then lied about it, claiming that the victims were all killed by the bomb or by running gun battles with insurgents.

Only dogged reporting by Time Magazine forced the military to open an investigation. No one was ever jailed for the killings or the coverup. Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich, the commander of the squad, pleaded guilty to one count of dereliction of duty and was demoted.

The military avoided a public relations disaster, Gen. Michael Hagee would later brag, because graphic photos of the massacre were never published. Until now.

In the Dark, a true crime podcast published by The New Yorker, dedicated its latest season to re-investigating the Haditha massacre. The producers filed Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests for the U.S. military’s files on the incident, then sued when the military refused to hand them over.

Officials claimed they were withholding photos of the massacre out of respect for the victims’ families. Two survivors, Khalid Salman Raseef and Khalid Jamal, then went around Haditha collecting signatures for a petition to release the photos. They won the support of 17 relatives of the victims.

The military gave in. On Tuesday, with permission from the survivors, The New Yorker published several unredacted crime scene photos taken by investigators and by Lance Cpl. Ryan Briones and Lance Cpl. Andrew Wright, two Marines who arrived shortly after the massacre.

The FOIA files also included a recording of a 2014 interview between Hagee and a Marine Corps historian, meant for internal use. The massacre “could have been horrific for the Marine Corps if we did not handle that correctly. Another My Lai. Or another Abu Ghraib,” Hagee claims, referring to the My Lai massacre, which helped turn American opinion against the Vietnam War, and the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, where U.S. soldiers and CIA officers were photographed torturing and sexually assaulting inmates.

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Countries fueling Israel’s Gaza war may be complicit in war crimes, experts warn

Israeli tanks, jets and bulldozers bombarding Gaza and razing homes in the occupied West Bank are being fueled by a growing number of countries signed up to the genocide and Geneva conventions, new research suggests, which legal experts warn could make them complicit in serious crimes against the Palestinian people.

Four tankers of American jet fuel primarily used for military aircraft have been shipped to Israel since the start of its aerial bombardment of Gaza in October.

Three shipments departed from Texas after the landmark international court of justice (ICJ) ruling on 26 January ordered Israel to prevent genocidal acts in Gaza. The ruling reminded states that under the genocide convention they have a “common interest to ensure the prevention, suppression and punishment of genocide”.

Overall, almost 80% of the jet fuel, diesel and other refined petroleum products supplied to Israel by the US over the past nine months was shipped after the January ruling, according to the new research commissioned by the non-profit Oil Change International and shared exclusively with the Guardian.

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Yemen: Hodeidah port attack by Israel was a ‘potential war crime’

Last month’s Israeli air strikes on Yemen’s port city of Hodeidah could constitute a war crime, Human Rights Watch said on Monday.

The rights group described the attacks as potentially “unlawful, indiscriminate or disproportionate”, and said they were likely to impact civilians in the country.

Israel carried out air strikes on the Yemeni city after a drone launched by the country’s Houthi movement, also known as Ansar Allah, hit central Tel Aviv, killing one person.

The Houthis, who control Sanaa and most of northern and western Yemen, have been launching drone attacks towards Israel in response to its ongoing military campaign against Palestinians in Gaza.

“Serious violations of the laws of war committed wilfully, that is deliberately or recklessly, are war crimes,” HRW said.

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NATO member to join genocide case against Israel

Türkiye intends to formally join a genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague on Wednesday, Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan has announced, at a news conference in Cairo.

The ICJ case was launched in December by South Africa, which accused the Jewish state of committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. Since then, over a dozen countries have announced their intention to join the case. The Hague court has yet to issue a final ruling, but has ordered Israel to refrain from any acts that could fall under the UN Genocide Convention.

Fidan stressed that the Middle East can no longer tolerate Israel’s “provocations,” including its attacks on Lebanon and Iran, and accused the Jewish state of pursuing violence and “expansionism” while Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu aims “to set the entire region on fire.”

The minister condemned the “treacherous” assassination in Tehran last week of the Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh – who served as the Palestinian armed group’s chief negotiator in indirect ceasefire talks with Israel. 

Iran and Hamas have accused Israel of being behind the strike, although the Jewish state has refused to confirm or deny involvement.

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Soldiers Do Have a Choice

On August 6, 1945, the United States detonated an atomic bomb (“Little Boy”) over Hiroshima, Japan. Another atomic bomb (“Fat Man”) was dropped on Nagasaki on August 9. It was the first and only time that nuclear weapons were used as weapons of war.

The bombs did not drop themselves. The first bomb was dropped by an extensively modified B-29 (“Enola Gay”) with a crew of twelve and piloted by Colonel Paul Tibbets (1915-2007). The second bomb was dropped by a similar B-29 (“Bockscar”) with a crew of ten and piloted by Major Charles Sweeney (1919-2004). Both planes were accompanied by other B-29s for observation and photography.

The result of the bombing, as succinctly summarized by historian Ralph Raico, was barbaric: “Probably around two hundred thousand persons were killed in the attacks and through radiation poisoning; the vast majority were civilians, including several thousand Korean workers. Twelve US Navy fliers incarcerated in a Hiroshima jail were also among the dead.”

Sweeney decried “cuckoo professors” and the “cockamamie theories” of those who believed the atomic bombing of Japan was unnecessary. He stated: “There’s no question in my mind that President Truman made the right decision.”

Many high-ranking military officers at the time disagreed.

Adm. William Leahy, Truman’s chief of staff, wrote in his 1950 memoir I Was There that “the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender.… In being the first to use it, we…adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children.”

Fleet Adm. Chester Nimitz, the commander in chief of the Pacific Fleet, stated in a public address at the Washington Monument two months after the bombings that “the atomic bomb played no decisive part, from a purely military standpoint, in the defeat of Japan.”

Gen. Dwight Eisenhower stated in his memoirs that when notified by Secretary of War Henry Stimson of the decision to use atomic weapons, he “voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives.” He later publicly declared, “It wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing.”

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EU’s top diplomat condemns Gaza starvation that Israeli minister called ‘moral’

European Union High Representative Josep Borrell on Monday condemned the worsening humanitarian situation in Gaza, urging Israel to halt actions that could further imperil the besieged region’s starving civilian population.

“The ever-worsening humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza is creating life-threatening conditions for an already severely weakened civilian population that continues to be subject to starvation and repeated displacement,” the European External Action Service (EEAS) chief wrote in a statement.

Borrell also raised concerns about the destruction of key civilian infrastructure, such as the sanitation and health systems, which are causing the spread of infections and diseases among the population.

“We recall that targeting critical life-saving infrastructure constitutes a war crime and urge all parties to take all feasible precautions to avoid harm to civilians, humanitarian workers, and critical civilian infrastructure,” his statement continued.

Borrell’s statement came hours after Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich suggested letting Gazan civilians die of starvation was “justified and moral” in response to Hamas keeping Israeli hostages.

“We are bringing in aid because there is no choice,” he said Monday at a conference in the town of Yad Binyamin, according to Israeli media. “Nobody will let us cause 2 million civilians to die of hunger even though it might be justified and moral until our hostages are returned.”

Over 100 Israeli hostages abducted by Hamas on Oct. 7 are still unaccounted for.

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Israel Might Well Fall Apart

A somewhat premature comment on the conflict between the Israeli Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant and Minister of National Security (and convicted radical) Itamar Ben-Gvir:

10:36 AM · Jul 30, 2024 Hussein @EyesOnSouth1 – 10:36 AM · Jul 30, 2024

The disintegration of the Zionist society is happening earlier than expected. This will exacerbate the more Israelis become aware that war failure is inevitable. Civil war is very likely, but almost a third of the population (liberals & affiliates) would leave rather than fight.

This is not a clash between two officials, this is an ideological clash between two schools of thought who are at the complete opposite spectrum.

This will not stay between Ben-Gvir & Gallant/Halevi, it will become a conflict between the army and the police/militias.

The current conflict between Gallant and Ben-Gvir comes after the Military Police arrested nine soldiers accused of raping a Palestinian prisoner.

The Israeli investigation of the rape became necessary after reports by CNN, the New York Times (archived) and the Washington Post (archived) about prisoner abuse and murder in Israeli jails. The reports threatened to trigger international investigations:

Judicial officials told Ynet that the serious suspicions must be investigated. “An internal Israeli investigation is better than an international probe,” the said.

“Abuse of prisoners could cause unprecedented damage internationally. Internal investigations protect Israel from the International tribunals in the Hague. If we do not investigate, we are ensuring the political and military leaders end up before those courts and Israel subjected to grave steps. The suspects were detained for questioning and not arrested. They will receive a fair and just due process.”

Lawyers for the suspected reservists denied the accusations of rape and said the prisoner refused a search when he was moved to the Sde Teiman facility and was restrained by force.

To describe a brutal anal gang rape as “restrain by force” requires some chutzpah.

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Only a failing US empire would be so blind as to cheer Netanyahu and his genocide

There is only one country in the world right now, in the midst of Israel’s slaughter in Gaza, where Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is guaranteed dozens of standing ovations from the vast majority of its elected representatives.

(Article by Jonathan Cook republished from MiddleEastEye.net)

That country is not Israel, where he has been a hugely divisive figure for many years. It is the United States.

On Wednesday, Netanyahu was back-slapped, glad-handed, whooped and cheered as he slowly made his way – hailed at every step as a conquering hero – to the podium of the US Congress.

This was the same Netanyahu who has overseen during the past 10 months the slaughter – so far – of some 40,000 Palestinians, around half of them women and children. More than 21,000 other children are reported missing, most of them likely dead under rubble.

It was the same Netanyahu who levelled a strip of territory – originally home to 2.3 million Palestinians – that is expected to take 80 years to rebuild, at a cost of at least $50bn.

It was the same Netanyahu who has destroyed every hospital and university in Gaza, and bombed almost all of its schools that were serving as shelters for families made homeless by other Israeli bombs.

It was the same Netanyahu whose arrest is being sought by the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity, accused of using starvation as a weapon of war by imposing an aid blockade that has engineered a famine across Gaza.

It was the same Netanyahu whose government was found last week by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to have been intensifying Israel’s apartheid rule over the Palestinian people in an act of long-term aggression.

It was the same Netanyahu whose government is standing trial for committing what the ICJ, the world’s highest judicial body, has termed a “plausible genocide”.

And yet, there was just one visible protester in the congressional chamber. Rashida Tlaib, the only US legislator of Palestinian heritage, sat silently grasping a small black sign. On one side it said: “War criminal”. On the other: “Guilty of genocide.”

One person among hundreds mutely trying to point out that the emperor was naked.

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Israel bombs Gaza field hospital massacring dozens of displaced Palestinians

Israeli jets launched airstrikes on a girls’ school in central Gaza’s Deir al-Balah being used as a field hospital on 27 July, killing at least 30 Palestinians and injuring dozens more.

Following the latest massacre of Palestinian civilians, the Israeli army claimed its attack was targeting a “Hamas command and control center.”

“The occupation continues to lie by claiming that the Khadija school is a leadership complex for the movement. What happened in Deir al-Balah is a continuation of the genocide plan practiced by the Israeli occupation,” Hamas leader Osama Hamdan said on Saturday afternoon.

“We agreed to the serious proposals of the mediators, but the occupation does not want to stop its aggression. The occupation is trying to pressure the resistance by escalating its military operations,” Hamdan added.

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