By Stuart Littlewood* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Millions would love to see the present crop of war criminals dangling from lamp-posts.

But somebody called "Ellie" writing on Medialens has put a damper on this happy prospect. She explained the difficulties in bringing the scum to book. One of the things the British government wants to do, she said, is "stop the possibility of private prosecutions for (international) crimes committed by foreign nationals, so that friendly war criminals can continue to sup tea in Buckingham Palace".

Unfortunately crimes that can supposedly be tackled under universal jurisdiction are limited and don't include waging a war of aggression (although they do include war crimes in general), "so we can't get anywhere with this charge (e.g. against Bush) in a domestic court".

Thanks "Ellie" for that. To pursue someone like Blair for war crimes in a British court it would be necessary to get the Crown Prosecution Service to take the case. However, our corrupted establishment are hardly going to initiate steps against one of their own, or make it easy for outsiders to do so. Efforts so far have met with little success. There could of course be good reasons for this. To make a war crimes charge stick it may be necessary to show, for example, that our armed forces carried out attacks disproportionate to any military gain. That's not as easy as it sounds.

Those who have tried to lay charges need to work on refining the way they formulate and present their case until they leave judges no wriggle-room.

The impression I get is that unless the prime minister and the hordes of MPs who clamour for illegal war and its consequential mega-deaths actually pick up a weapon and personally gun down a classroom of Iraqi kids in front of witnesses, British justice won't touch them.

The International Criminal Court at The Hague is not exactly blazing a trail for justice either. Its Chief Prosecutor, referring to a case before him in February 2006, remarked: "The events in question occurred on the territory of Iraq, which is not a State Party to the Rome Statute and which has not lodged a declaration of acceptance under Article 12(3), thereby accepting the jurisdiction of the Court.

"Therefore, in accordance with Article 12, acts on the territory of a non-State Party fall within the jurisdiction of the Court only when the person accused of the crime is a national of a State that has accepted jurisdiction." Bush isn't, Blair is. The Clinton administration, after much grumbling, signed the Rome treaty but the Bush administration announced afterwards that the US would not be party to the Rome Statute.

The Chief Prosecutor also pointed out that the ICC can examine conduct during the conflict, but not whether the decision to engage in armed conflict was legal. "International humanitarian law and the Rome Statute permit belligerents to carry out proportionate attacks against military objectives, even when it is known that some civilian deaths or injuries will occur. A crime occurs if there is an intentional attack directed against civilians (principle of distinction) or an attack is launched on a military objective in the knowledge that the incidental civilian injuries would be clearly excessive in relation to the anticipated military advantage (principle of proportionality).

"The available information established that a considerable number of civilians died or were injured during the military operations... [but] did not indicate intentional attacks on a civilian population." Furthermore there was a lack of information showing clear excessiveness in relation to military advantage or indicating the involvement of nationals of States Parties, therefore there was no reasonable basis for believing a crime within the jurisdiction of the Court had been committed.

Although any crimes within the jurisdiction of the Court are grave, the Statute required "an additional threshold of gravity" because the Court will only deal with situations where they are committed as part of a plan or policy involving mass crimes.

The Chief Prosecutor ended by saying: "Effectively functioning national legal systems are in principle the most appropriate and effective forum for addressing allegations of crimes of this nature." In other words, don't bother us.

It shows the sort of thing peace campaigners are up against. Of course, horrendous evidence has come to light since 2006. And just recently the states party to the Rome Statute finally agreed on a definition of "aggression".

The crime of aggression is "the planning, preparation, initiation or execution by a person in a leadership position of an act of aggression".

An act of aggression is "the use of armed force by one State against another State without the justification of self-defense or authorization by the Security Council". It must constitute a manifest violation of the Charter of the United Nations.

But before we start jumping for joy, the Court will have no jurisdiction to consider waging wars of aggression before 2017. So the circle of buck-passing and general paralysis remains unbroken.

There can surely be no greater crime than going to war illegally or on a false prospectus. The same criminal trash who did so before are bored with their murderous adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan and sulking because they haven't turned out to be as heroic as advertised. They are now impatient to do it all again only better... in Iran. Judging by the massive campaign of disinformation and reports of an imminent assault, they are determined not to be deflected from their evil path by the far distant prospect of being hauled up in front of the ICC.

If our elaborate national and international justice machinery won't take out this stinking garbage, which has offended our nostrils for too long, who will?

Assassination made 'legal'

It wouldn't surprise me if angry citizens resorted to some kind of a private 'good riddance' service to get the job done. It conjures up a vision of members of the public, who feel themselves at war with these evil forces, queuing up for the services of an assassination bureau - an upright, socially responsible organization acting in the public interest to eliminate the world's worst tormentors.

Readers may remember the 1969 film The Assassination Bureau, a tongue-in-cheek romp set at the turn of the century a hundred years ago, a time for purging rotten monarchs and cruel tyrants. The Bureau's hit team is for hire provided that Ivan Dragomiloff, its founder and mastermind, deems the targeted killing "socially justifiable" and there's proof of the candidate's misdeeds.

The need for a purge hasn't changed. And these days assassination can be perfectly legal - ask Israel and the US.

Although US President Ford outlawed targeted political killings in 1976, White House and CIA lawyers claim that an intelligence 'finding' makes all the difference. The right sort of finding puts things on a war footing and allows the US, for example, to assassinate so-called terrorists. In the wake of 9-11, all the Americans have to do is invent a 'finding', label the folk who stand in their way 'terrorists' and claim the murder was an act of self-defence in a war situation, and they're home and dry.

Remember the US bombing Gaddafi's home in 1986 in the hope of rubbing him out? And the Clinton administration firing cruise missiles at suspected guerrilla camps in Afghanistan in 1998? And Bush instructing the CIA to engage in "lethal covert operations" (based on an intelligence 'finding') to destroy Bin Laden and his al-Qaeda organisation?

The Bush administration is believed to have sat down with the world expert in these matters - Israel - to work out a legal framework for a new targeted-assassination policy. Annoying pockets of resistance in the Occupied Palestinian Territories are answered with the wholesale imposition of Israeli-concocted warfare laws for the benefit of Israel's 'self-defence', which trample everyone else's rights. This was just the ticket for Bush's crooked nonsense as he pressed ahead with his war on terror.

Israel's liking for assassination goes back to pre-state days when such atrocities were committed against Arab and British targets by the Irgun, a Jewish terror organisation that resorted to murder and mayhem for removing obstacles to the Zionist cause and driving the Arabs off their lands.

The Israelis cleverly bumped off master bomb maker Yahya Ayyesh and Hezbollah's Imad Mughniyeh, 'the Fox', both in 1996.

In 1997 Mossad agents, apparently fans of Shakespeare's Hamlet, entered Jordan and injected a lethal nerve toxin into the left ear of Hamas boss Khaled Meshaal as he walked to his office. They were caught by the Jordanian authorities and King Hussein demanded the Israeli PM Netanyahu hand over the antidote. Netanyahu refused, but Bill Clinton intervened and forced the issue. Meshaal lived.

Assassination became official Israeli policy in 1999 to stop Yasser Arafat's militia, the Tanzim, firing on illegal Jewish settlers in the West Bank and Gaza. "If anyone has committed or is planning to carry out terrorist attacks, he has to be hit. It is effective, precise, and just," said Israeli minister Ephraim Sneh in 2001, not caring too much about the frequent lack of precision, the collateral casualties and the possibility that intelligence is wrong.

That same year Israel's security cabinet gave the army carte blanche to kill anyone suspected of being involved in armed activity, meaning that mere suspects on a 'list' became targets for extra-judicial execution.

The Israelis' preferred method is the air-strike, which is often lacking in finesse. In 2002 an Israeli F-16 warplane dropped a one-ton bomb on the house of Sheikh Salah Shehadeh, the military commander of Hamas, in Gaza City killing not just him but at least 11 other Palestinians, including seven children, and wounding 120 others.

In 2004 Hamas's spiritual leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, wheelchair-bound since the age of 12, and nine innocent bystanders were killed in a helicopter gunship attack. Yassin had survived an F-16 bomb blast the previous year. Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon called him "the mastermind of Palestinian terror" and a "mass murderer", which was comical coming from a war criminal who ran Israel's death squad, Unit 101, and was found indirectly responsible for the massacres in the Sabra and Chatila refugee camps.

Israel's Airforce massacred Palestinian Cops in airstrike.

According to the Israeli human rights organisation B'Tselem 238 Palestinians have been assassinated and more than 160 innocents have died in the process, along with heaven knows how many injured or mutiliated, since the second Intifada (uprising) in 2000. "The use of state assassinations by Israel against Palestinian suspects is undermining the rule of law and fueling the cycle of violence in the region," warns Amnesty International.

The finger of suspicion points to Israel for the murder of Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri in 2005. We've recently seen Mossad's assassination of the Hamas commander in Dubai (their hit team using stolen British passports) and the execution of several crew members of the Mavi Marmara while on a humanitarian mission in international waters.

The US State Department similarly describes its own hits on Al-Qaeda as "legal and necessary."

If universal jurisdiction is not made to work then other means will probably be found. Assassination may not remain the private playground of shadowy CIA and Mossad operatives for much longer, so war criminals had better start looking over their shoulder.

A lamp-post awaits them.

* Stuart Littlewood is author of the book Radio Free Palestine, which tells the plight of the Palestinians under occupation. Read other articles by Stuart, or visit Stuart's website.

Related posts:

• Stuart Littlewood – Law and justice first, Mr Mitchell. Peace comes later
• Stuart Littlewood: Israel’s ‘friends’ still shamelessly swinging from the chandeliers at Westminster
• Britain more interested in saving Israelis from garden shed rockets than British citizens from Israeli pirates – by Stuart Littlewood

El Al racial profiling

By Jonathan Cook * | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Two Palestinian brothers with Israeli citizenship have won 8,000 US dollars in damages from Israel's national carrier, El Al, after a court found that their treatment by the company's security staff at a New York airport had been "abusive and unnecessary."

Abdel Wahab and Abdel Aziz Shalabi were assigned a female security guard who watched over them at the airport's departure gate for nearly two hours, in full view of hundreds of fellow passengers, after they had passed the security and baggage checks.

Later, El Al's head of security threatened to bar Abdel Wahab, 43, from the flight if he did not apologize to the guard for going to the toilet without first getting her approval. Abdel Aziz said he had been humiliated and "cried like I've never cried before in public."

Although surveys of Palestinian citizens, who comprise one-fifth of Israel's population, show that most have suffered degrading treatment when flying with Israeli carriers, few bring cases to the Israeli courts.

The brothers are now planning to sue El Al and its New York staff in the United States over Israel's racial profiling of passengers in a country where the practice is illegal.

"I'd rather go to New York by donkey than fly with El Al again," said Abdel Aziz, 44. "We will keep fighting this case until Israel is embarrassed into stopping its policy of discriminating against its Arab citizens."

The brothers, who live in northern Israel, were the only Palestinians in a party of 17 Israeli insurance agents on a two-week business trip to Canada and New York in 2007.

They arrived four hours early at John F Kennedy airport in New York for their return flight with Israir, an Israeli charter company, to allow time for the additional checks they expected from El Al's security staff.

El Al has special agreements with most countries' airports to carry out its own security checks for passengers flying with Israeli airlines.

The brothers said they were questioned, searched and had to wait two hours while their bags and carry-on luggage were subjected to lengthy inspections.

"The Jews with us went through in minutes," said Abdel Aziz, in his home in the village of Iksal, near Nazareth. "The difference in treatment was very clear."

Keren Weinberg, Israeli security agent

When Abdel Wahab visited a toilet without her permission, a noisy argument broke out between the two, with Ms Weinberg accusing him of "roaming freely." He said he told her to "either arrest me or go away."

Ilan Or, the head of El Al security, was then called and issued him an ultimatum that he apologise or be prevented from catching the flight. Abdul Wahab told a magistrate's court in Haifa this month that he broke down in tears and finally said he was sorry.

"I was in shock. One minute I was made to feel like a terrorist and then the next like a naughty child," he said.

Judge Amir Toubi said the security staff had admitted that neither brother was deemed a security threat and that Israeli law did not allow checks to continue after passengers had passed the security area.

"With all due understanding of security needs, there is no justification for ignoring the dignity, freedom and basic rights of a citizen under the mantle of the sacred cow of security," the judge ruled.

El Al told the court that it had been "asked by the state to conduct security checks abroad on behalf of [charter companies] Arkia and Israir airlines, and is acting under the security guidelines set by official bodies of the state."

Abdul Wahab praised the court's decision but said the damages were minor and would not act as a deterrent against El Al repeating such behaviour in future. He said the brothers would appeal to a higher court in Israel and were planning to initiate a legal action in New York, too.

"I will not rest until we get an apology from El Al and they acknowledge that what they did is wrong," he said. He called on all Palestinian citizens to boycott El Al until it committed to stop its discriminatory policy.

A 2007 report on racial profiling by Israeli carriers, published by the Arab Association for Human Rights and the Centre Against Racism, concluded: "This phenomenon is so widespread that it is hard to find any Arab citizen who travels abroad by air and who has not experienced a discriminatory security check at least once."

The two groups found that Arab and Muslim passengers typically faced long interrogations and extensive luggage searches, and were also regularly subjected to body and strip searches, had items including computers confiscated, were kept in holding areas and were escorted directly on to the plane.

The report noted that foreign countries that allowed Israel to carry out its own security checks at their airports failed to supervise them and preferred to "ignore their discriminatory nature and the human rights violations committed on their own soil".

New York's JFK airport was one of the airports that refused to answer questions from the groups about incidents of discriminatory treatment of Arabs and Muslims.

Israel has also come under harsh criticism for the standard racial profiling policies it uses against its own Palestinian citizens and foreign Arab nationals at Ben Gurion airport near Tel Aviv.

The practice of putting different color-coded stickers on Jewish and Palestinian passengers' luggage ended three years ago. However, airport guards still write a number on uniform white stickers indicating the level of security threat. Critics say higher numbers are reserved for non-Jews.

Faced with a lawsuit from Israeli human rights groups, Menachem Mazuz, the attorney general at the time, instructed the airports authority in early 2008 to implement "visible equality" by ending discriminatory screening policies.

However, observers have noticed no change in practice. "This was a very cynical exercise. ‘Visible equality' simply means making it look like there's equality when the inequality persists," said Mohammed Zeidan, director of the Association for Human Rights, based in Nazareth.

In December an airport official told the right-wing Jerusalem Post newspaper: "Profiling makes the biggest difference. A man with the name of Umar flying out of Tel Aviv, whether he is American or British, is going to get checked seven times."

Two years ago Israel's racial profiling policy made headlines when a member of an American dance troupe with a Muslim-sounding name was forced to dance at the airport to prove he was who he claimed.

The incident with the Shalabi brothers follows on the heels of a diplomatic crisis between Israel and South Africa over revelations that spies posing as El Al staff have been operating at Johannesburg airport, gathering information on non-Jewish passengers visiting Israel.

El Al has threatened to close the route after South African officials stopped providing the airport guards with diplomatic immunity.

South African TV reported last month that two of the Mossad assassins suspected of killing a Hamas commander in Dubai in January may have used Johannesburg airport to fly back to Israel.

* Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His latest books are "Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East" and "Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair".

Related posts:

• Paris airport bars Muslim staff
• Did you know?
• Even Israeli editorial admits what US media is deaf/blind to

By Daniel Machover* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

According to news reports, David Miliband plans to call the leader of the Israeli opposition, Tzipi Livni, to explain the British government's stance on the grant of an arrest warrant against her when she had been due to speak at a Jewish National Fund meeting in Hendon.

One reasonable version of this call to Livni is as follows:

"I am calling to explain why it would be wrong for me to apologise publicly or privately for the apparent decision by one of this country's independent judiciary to issue an arrest warrant against you.

"I should first explain that the British legal system has a strong tradition of fairness. All people under criminal investigation or criminal charge are entitled to the presumption of innocence: that is, they are presumed innocent unless and until convicted through a fair trial on the criminal standard of proof (that is, beyond reasonable doubt). Therefore, nobody here is saying you have been found guilty of any offence and any comments of this kind would be unacceptable.

"It does seem, however, that a judicial decision was taken that there exists a reasonable suspicion that you committed a grave breach of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which is a criminal offence under our Geneva Conventions Act 1957. Of course, I have not seen any of the evidence that a court would have seen when making that decision. This is entirely right and proper: British ministers cannot interfere in such individual judicial decisions, as we must respect our ancient democratic tradition of non-interference with our independent judiciary. I hold the utmost respect for our independent judges.

"I am sorry, but I hope you understand that it is not my job as foreign secretary or any part of this government's job to second-guess a judge's decision or to interfere with it. I can tell you, however, that no charges could be brought against you without a decision by the attorney general. We very carefully guard the legal role of the attorney general, as the senior law officer, in making such decisions. The attorney general would first need advice from the head of our independent prosecution body, the director of public prosecutions, that the evidential test of the code for crown prosecutors was thought to be met (ie that there was more than a 50% chance that a jury would convict a defendant, having found on the evidence that it was beyond reasonable doubt that she had committed the alleged offence). If this evidential test was met, the independence of the UK legal system from the executive and the rights of victims of alleged crimes to see a just outcome to their complaints would be seriously undermined if the attorney general made a decision that it was against the public interest to bring charges of war crimes against a foreign national, who did not otherwise enjoy immunity from prosecution.

"Moreover, the attorney general would have to take into account this country's solemn treaty obligations under Article 146 of the Fourth Geneva Convention which states that we are 'under the obligation to search for persons alleged to have committed, or to have ordered to be committed ... grave breaches, and shall bring such persons, regardless of their nationality, before [our] courts'. The mandatory wording (ie 'shall') creates a presumption that it is in the public interest for criminal charges to be brought under our Geneva Conventions Act 1957 if the evidential test is met. I cannot say what the attorney general's decision would be in your case, as it must be a matter for her, on advice from the DPP.

"I understand that this may be a difficult position for you to accept. However, it is only appropriate that I also draw to your attention to some very disturbing aspects of the report of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza conflict, headed up by the respected independent international judge Justice Richard Goldstone. As you know, the Goldstone report was adopted by the UN Human Rights Council in October and further endorsed at the general assembly in November. While the British government did not participate in the vote when the council adopted the report, we cannot ignore its conclusions that, from the facts that it gathered, grave breaches of the Fourth Geneva Convention do appear to have been committed by Israeli armed forces in Gaza, including wilful killing. Also, at paragraph 1975, the Goldstone report recommended that 'state parties to the Geneva Convention ... should start criminal investigations in national courts, using universal jurisdiction, where there is sufficient evidence of the commission of grave breaches ... where so warranted following investigation, alleged perpetrators should be arrested and prosecuted in accordance with internationally recognised standards of justice'.

"In the light of all this, Her Majesty's government must therefore carefully weigh everything in the balance when considering whether it would be appropriate to prevent alleged victims applying for judicial arrest warrants. As I have great faith in the standards of justice in this country and in the quality of our judiciary, the political embarrassment that is sometimes caused by standing by our legal traditions will have to be endured. Changing these provisions would undermine our strong democratic values and the rights of victims of alleged serious crimes to access to justice. I hope that the assurance that I have given you that criminal charges will only be brought for grave breaches if the most senior prosecutor in this country thought there was sufficient evidence to justify charges, will satisfy you that only where there appears to be a case to answer will someone be charged with such offences in this country.

"I implore you to join calls within Israel for compliance with the rule of law and for the establishment of an immediate and urgent independent and effective judicial investigation, which can conclude whether or not any of the Israeli leadership that made operational decisions during Operation Cast Lead, including you, should face criminal charges under your own laws. The same applies to the Gaza authorities. Alternatively, if you are concerned that Israel cannot meet this challenge, then Israel could refer itself to the only fully independent international body that has the resources and the ability to resolve such matters, namely the international criminal court.

"Only once the matters set out in the Goldstone report are brought to a just and satisfactory resolution, which may include the need for some individuals on both sides of the conflict to be held accountable for their alleged individual criminal responsibility, the whole region can perhaps benefit from a durable and lasting peace. Without justice there cannot be peace."

Unfortunately, it seems that Miliband is unlikely to make the above phonecall to Tzipi Livni, but instead will repeat his statements of recent days, which implicitly criticise the role of our independent judiciary, and which fly directly in the face of this country's international legal obligations to "search out and prosecute" all those alleged to have committed war crimes. This sends a message that Britain is in fact a safe haven for suspected torturers and war criminals, especially if they come from a country which is identified as an ally of the United Kingdom. This is particularly alarming given that just one week ago, with his fellow EU foreign ministers, David Miliband endorsed a document promoting compliance with international human rights law which concluded with the promise that "The European Union will continue to do its utmost to promote an international order where no state or individual is above the law and no person is outside the protection of the law."

* Daniel Machover is chair of Lawyers for Palestinian Human Rights and a partner at London lawfirm Hickman Rose

Related posts:

• Britain’s Foreign Office wimps surrender to the thugs
• GET THE WAR CRIMINALS ARRESTED NOW
• Rannie Amiri – Livni’s Big Lie

By Stuart Littlewood* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

The British public must be wondering what has happened to the nation's backbone - and its moral compass - when they see news items like these.

"British Foreign Secretary David Miliband yesterday apologized to MK Tzipi Livni and Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman for the arrest warrant issued against Livni in London earlier this week. He also promised Lieberman to begin working immediately to change the UK laws that enable the issue of arrest warrants against Israeli officials accused of war crimes."

Who does this foreign secretary think he is, apologising in our name for the operation of British law, especially when the warrant was issued to answer well-founded charges of war crimes?

Livni claims it was not personal. "It's about the entire State of Israel and our ability to go on working together against common threats."

What common threats? We have nothing in common. The threats Israel faces are caused by its racist expansion, land theft, general lawlessness and hateful attitude towards its neighbours, and by the lethal threat Israel itself presents to others in the region. Our government puts us in harm's way by associating so closely with the regime and continually taking its side.

As for ex-night club bouncer Lieberman, a deranged loudmouth who lives in an illegal Jewish settlement in the Palestinian West Bank and thrives on extremist language, since when did he merit a British apology?

"Miliband called the warrant intolerable and said he had spoken to Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Justice Minister Jack Straw to find an urgent solution. Prosor [the Israeli ambassador in London] chastised the British secretary saying it was time the British government took action."

Prosor "chastised" a Minister of the Crown... demanded a change to our laws? Your own laws need changing more than ours, Prosor.

"Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office also released a statement: 'We will not agree to a situation in which [former prime minister] Ehud Olmert, [Defense Minister] Ehud Barak and [opposition leader and former foreign minister] Tzipi Livni will be summoned to the bench. We utterly reject the absurdity that is happening in Britain.'"

Get your tanks off Palestine's lawn, Netanyahu, and your squatters off Palestinian land before you criticize anyone else.

The Israelis' arrogance is breath-taking. Livni would gladly repeat the atrocities in Gaza last December-January. Her office issued a statement saying she was proud of Operation Cast Lead. And speaking at a conference at Tel Aviv's Institute for Security Studies, she said: "I would today take the same decisions."

Leave the law on arrest warrants alone

Miliband's grovelling, especially to the Lieberman and Livni, is enough to make any red-blooded UK citizen cringe with shame. Few of us, surely, would touch these people with a barge-pole.

This abandonment of principle and descent into the abyss is explained in the Foreign Office statement: "The UK is determined to be a strategic partner of Israel."

Why? I have always wanted to know how this serves our best interests.

The law on arrest warrants, of course, should be left undisturbed. It's all quite simple. If Israel behaved in a civilised manner there would be no need for them.

This diplomatic ruckus helps us to see clearly the lunacy of stacking the British Foreign Office with Israel-lovers. There's Miliband, of course, with his ethnic links. He voted enthusiastically for the Iraq war and against an investigation.

Then there's our minister in charge of Middle East affairs, Ivan Lewis. He's a former vice-chairman of Labour Friends of Israel. He too voted for the Iraq war and against any investigation. In January, with the sickening stench of Israel's blitzkrieg on Gaza in the world's nostrils, Lewis told a rally in Manchester: "This community stands shoulder to shoulder with the people of Israel in the good and the bad times. We do not apply double standards to Israel..."

The trouble is, his kind don't apply any standards at all.

In July, with the blood of 1,400 dead Gazans (including 320 children and 109 women) on the hands of the Zionist devils, and with thousands more horribly maimed, the insensitive Lewis told the House of Commons: "Israel is a close ally of the UK and we have regular warm and productive exchanges at all levels."

Lewis is also chief executive of the Manchester Jewish Federation and a trustee of the Holocaust Educational Trust. Along with Miliband, he is the face of British diplomacy in the explosive Middle East.

Add to the team Miliband's Principal Private Secretary, Matthew Gould, just promoted as Britain's first Jewish ambassador to Israel with effect from next year. Gould told Haaretz that he and his wife will keep a Jewish household and bring up their kids in the Jewish tradition. "The fact that I'm Jewish means I will come with a particular insight and sympathy and understanding, because the story of my family is in certain respects the story of the people of the State of Israel. But fundamentally I'm going as the British ambassador, to pursue British policies and advance British interests."

That's difficult to believe, and some will point to a hopeless conflict of interests not only for Gould but also Miliband, Evans and others who feel an affinity with the appalling "story" of Israel.

Presiding over all this is our disaster-prone prime minister Gordon Brown, a Zionist sympathizer and patron of the Jewish National Fund, which is an organization set up to facilitate the confiscation and development of illegally occupied Palestinian lands.

As if to illustrate just how far Britain will go to appease Israel's ‘Criminal Tendency', the Jewish Chronicle reported a few days ago how the Foreign Office stamped on an initiative by the Department for Communities and Local Government to reassure the Muslim community that the British government did not support Israel's actions in Gaza. Foreign Office officials considered it pandering to the Muslim community's prejudices about Israel, especially when it was discovered that some Muslim leaders around the country wanted the government to recognise Hamas's right to armed resistance. Tut-tut. Oh dear, no. Everybody knows that only Israel is entitled to self-defence. And Britain panders only to Israel.

British-Jewish MP Sir Gerald Kaufman recently threw a bucket of cold water over this obscene Anglo-Israeli love-in by branding the Israeli government a gang of amoral thugs. These are the undesirables Miliband wants to accommodate with a change in the law. Well, I doubt if the British public would welcome the idea of such vile people, who think nothing of burning women and children to the bone with white phosphorus, coming and going as they please in our capital city.

These same thugs won't even allow thousands of Palestinian students like Berlanty Azzam the freedom to travel within their own homeland to attend university and finish their degree.

Mr Miliband, your cruel friends are not welcome here.

* Stuart Littlewood is author of the book Radio Free Palestine, which tells the plight of the Palestinians under occupation. Read other articles by Stuart, or visit Stuart's website.

Related posts:

• GET THE WAR CRIMINALS ARRESTED NOW
• LSE Students Disrupt Israeli Foreign Minister Lecture
• Is it a flogging offence to send friendly greetings to Gaza’s beleaguered PM?

By Khalid Amayreh* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

The recent arrest warrant issued in London for former Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni is more than justified.

This woman, along with two other Israeli leaders, Ehud Olmert and Ehud Barak, stood at the helm of the Israeli government that ordered, supervised and charted the genocidal onslaught against the Gaza Strip this time last year.

She was a chief participant in the decision-making process who also supervised the progress of the hideous massacre from the beginning to the end.

Needless to say, the decisions taken by Livni, and other suspected Israeli war criminals, did lead to the murder of more than 1440 people, including hundreds of innocent children whose lives were terminated by indiscriminate bombings from air, land and sea. This is in addition to the pornographic destruction of a huge part of Gaza’s civilian infrastructure, including tens of thousands of homes, mosques, and public buildings of every kind.

The monstrous, satanic and evil lady knew perfectly what she was doing. She knew that her SS-like army was murdering kids in their mothers’ laps, annihilating entire families, frightened and huddling in their refugee shanties or whatever other places they thought would shield them from death.

She saw the pornographic death and destruction on television screens. She was alerted by human rights organizations, including Israel’s own B’tselem, that the Israeli army was murdering civilians knowingly and deliberately. But she chose to ignore what was too obvious to most people.

And instead of ordering an immediate halt to the massacre, she resorted to mendacious propaganda by blaming the victims and accusing Hamas of using civilians as human shields.

There is a huge mountain of evidence indicting this evil woman. She is an Adolph Hitler in a feminine form. She carries on her sinful hands tons of blood of innocent children and innocent men and women.

Livni may have a diplomatic immunity, but diplomatic immunity is not a license allowing bearers to murder children in cold blood as Livni did nearly 12 months ago.

It is sad that the British government is behaving in a perplexed manner, reluctant to tell Israel that Israel and its leaders are not above the laws of nations, including the British law.

Well, the UK should never compromise its own laws for the sake of shielding a war criminal, a mass murderer and child killer, from justice.

A crime is a crime is a crime, irrespective of the religion or race of the perpetrator. I know that certain diplomatic and political considerations may be pressing 10-Downing Street to seek a solution that would appease Israel.

However, appeasement, it should be understood by all, would only embolden Israel to commit more genocidal crimes against the helpless Palestinians and other peoples of the Middle East. After all, crime unpunished is crime encouraged.

In any case, the British government, including Foreign Secretary David Milliband who reportedly described the arrest warrant against Livni as “insufferable” will find itself in an unviable situation, having to defend Israel’s Nazi-like behavior against the people of the Gaza Strip.

First, the British government would have to prove beyond doubt that the 21-day onslaught against Gaza, during which all weapons of death, including white phosphorus, precision missiles and laser-guided bombs were used against the nearly totally unprotected inhabitants of Gaza, didn’t constitute war crimes or crimes against humanity.

However, a claim as such wouldn’t be viewed seriously as it has been established beyond doubt by the UN-mandated investigating commission headed by judge Richard Goldstone that what Israel did in Gaza in last December and January did constitute war crimes and crimes against humanity.

However, if the government does accept the Goldstone report, but still refuses to allow the British justice system to prosecute the diabolical lady because of certain diplomatic and political considerations, then it will be showing extraordinary flaccidity toward Israel and utter contempt for the entire system of justice in the UK.

After all, a justice system that is selective in applying justice, is not a true system of justice.

This is why, the British government should not cower before the Israeli bully or be intimidated by Israeli threats such as the often-made threat that Israel wouldn’t allow the UK to take part in the so-called “peace process” in case Israeli war criminals were arrested or prosecuted for war crimes before British courts.

Britain must not allow itself to be bullied by this bullying criminal entity whose very existence is based on murder, ethnic cleansing, land theft and lying.

A last word to those known and unknown soldiers who monitor the movement of Israeli war criminals. You are God’s means to make these hateful criminals realize that murdering innocent people has a price.

So, chase them wherever they go, hound them, narrow their horizons, and try to get them apprehended and arrested.

We owe it to these innocent children, who were mercilessly annihilated by the Nazis of our time, to seek justice for them and their families. We betrayed them when they were alive by failing to protect them from the Nazis of our time, we must not betray them again by denying them justice, even as they are dead.

* Khalid Amayreh a journalist based in the Occupied Palestinian town of Dura. He obtained his MA in journalism from the University of Southern Illinois in 1983.

Related posts:

• Khalid Amayreh – Criminals shouldn’t be allowed to investigate themselves
• Paul Craig Roberts – War Criminals Are Becoming Arbiters of the Law: Israel and the Goldstone Report
• WANTED: Israeli War Criminals

No, not in Arabian Land, not in America. Not Guantanamo and NOT Abu Gharib for sure!

When you think of a prison, the first thing comes to your mind is stoned walls and a huge gate with armed watch towers. That's not the case in Leoben Justice Centre, Steiermark, Austria. In fact here you can find the world's best looking prison, which houses a complex of courts, offices of Judges, and prison.

Unlike prisons we see in movies and documentaries, this one looks to be better than dorms of many universities, at least mine :-)

So, if you are thinking to have a criminal record soon, wait until you visit Austria!

(Click thumbnail to enlarge)

The question is: Would such a luxury prison turn out to be encouraging to committing a crime? And would the people inside the prison be leading a better life in there than outside?

Anyway, I guess only the worse of worst guys get to stay here, so you are probably better off committing crimes when you are in Austria.

Now tell us about prisons in YOUR country.

Related posts:

• 2-yr old Palestinian released from Israeli prison!
• Human bait: Accused teen in Syrian prison!
• Forced labor for Palestinian children in Israeli prison