Its in Israel's history Karma.
Doesnt this sound familiar.


Sharon's ability to scorn the Americans was always humiliating for Washington. Before the massacres of 1982, Philip Habib was President Reagan's special representative, his envoy to Beirut increasingly horrified by the ferocity of Sharon's assault on the city. Not long before he died, I asked Habib why he didn't stop the bloodshed. "I could see it," he said. "I told the Israelis they were destroying the city, that they were firing non-stop. They just said they weren't. They said they werent doing that. I called Sharon on the phone. He said it wasnt true. That damned man said to me on the phone that what I saw happening wasn't happening. So I held the telephone out of the window so he could hear the explosions. Then he said to me: 'What kind of conversation is this where you hold a telephone out of a window?'"


http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11479.htm

As long as the Israeli's will not admit to their crimes and indescrtion there is no hope to be had from them for ending the bloodshed.

When the day comes that they will admit it then there will come hope.
Until that day comes when they are willing to accept responsibility for their actions, why should they expect better from the Palestinians.
Why should the Palestinians be expected to have hope.

If we want Peace to happen in the ME the US, not the UN, will have to take a harder stance with Israel and force them to back off!

And just in case you have delusions that Israel has changed since the days of Sharon let me introduce evidence to the contrary. One from now,

JERUSALEM (CNN) -- Israel's government on Sunday approved a measure that will give legal protection to its military officers if they are accused of war crimes during the Gaza incursion, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said.

"The state of Israel will completely back anyone that acted in its name," Olmert said Sunday at the beginning of the weekly Cabinet meeting. "The soldiers and commanders that were sent on missions in Gaza need to know that they are safe from different tribunals.

http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/meast/01/25/gaza.legal.defense/


And from the days of Sharon's brutality,

Sharon's involvement in the 1982 Sabra and Chatila massacres continues to fester around the man who, according to Israel's 1993 Kahan commission report, bore "personal responsibility" for the Phalangist slaughter. So fearful were the Israeli authorities that their leaders would be charged with war crimes that they drew up a list of countries where they might have to stand trial - and which they should henceforth avoid - now that European nations were expanding their laws to include foreign nationals who had committed crimes abroad. Belgian judges were already considering a complaint by survivors of Sabra and Chatila - one of them a female rape victim - while a campaign had been mounted abroad against other Israeli figures associated with the atrocities. Eva Stern was one of those who tried to prevent Brigadier General Amos Yaron being appointed Israeli defence attaché in Washington because he had allowed the Lebanese Phalange militia to enter the camps on 16 September 1982, and knew - according to the Kahan commission report - that women and children were being murdered. He only ended the killings two days later. Canada declined to accept Yaron as defence attaché. Stern, who compiled a legal file on Yaron, later vainly campaigned with human rights groups to annul his appointment - by Prime Minister Ehud Barak - as director general of the Israeli defence ministry. The Belgian government changed their law - and dropped potential charges against Sharon - after a visit to Brussels by US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld, the man who famously referred on 6 August 2002 to Israelis' control over "the so-called occupied territory" which was "the result of a war, which they won".

Rumsfeld had threatened that NATO headquarters might be withdrawn from Belgian soil if the Belgians didn't drop the charges against Sharon.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11479.htm

Familiarity yes, change NO!

Eva Stern was one of those who tried to prevent Brigadier General Amos Yaron being appointed Israeli defence attaché in Washington because he had allowed the Lebanese Phalange militia to enter the camps on 16


Where have you heard that name before?

Stern?, Stern?
Oh yeah.....

Avraham Stern (1907-1942), leder of the extremist zionist organisation Lehi and former member of the direction of Irgun.

Are not forbidden as long as it is not being used as a weapon
which the Red Cross notes it was not!

Check that again. The Red Cross has made NO PUBLIC STATEMENT regarding the WP usage in Gaza.




The fact that international humanitarian law does not specifically prohibit phosphorous weapons does not imply that any specific use of weapons containing this substance is legal. The legality of each incident of use has to be considered in light of all of the fundamental rules I have mentioned. It may be legal or not, depending on a variety of factors.

Does the ICRC consider white phosphorous weapons as they have been used in Gaza to be legal under international humanitarian law?
If ICRC delegates in the field gather credible and precise evidence of violations, or if ICRC medical personnel corroborate reports by others, the ICRC would begin by discussing this with the party concerned – rather than speaking publicly – in keeping with our standard practices. We have not commented publicly on the legality of the current use of phosphorous weapons by Israel, contrary to what has been attributed to us in recent media reports.


http://www.icrc.org/Web/Eng/siteeng0.nsf/html/weapons-interview-170109

When you get tired of wasting your breath here Karma. Write Washington!

Done. AP source found quote attributed to ICRC's
Peter Herby.

ICRC: Israel's use of white phosphorus not illegal

By BRADLEY S. KLAPPER – Jan 13, 2009

GENEVA (AP) — The international Red Cross said Tuesday that Israel has fired white phosphorus shells in its offensive in the Gaza Strip, but has no evidence to suggest it is being used improperly or illegally.

The comments came after a human rights organization accused the Jewish state of using the incendiary agent, which ignites when it strikes the skin and burns straight through or until it is cut off from oxygen. It can cause horrific injuries.

The International Committee of the Red Cross urged Israel to exercise "extreme caution" in using the incendiary agent, which is used to illuminate targets at night or create a smoke screen for day attacks, said Peter Herby, the head of the organization's mines-arms unit.

"In some of the strikes in Gaza it's pretty clear that phosphorus was used," Herby told The Associated Press. "But it's not very unusual to use phosphorus to create smoke or illuminate a target. We have no evidence to suggest it's being used in any other way."

In response, the Israeli military said Tuesday that it "wishes to reiterate that it uses weapons in compliance with international law, while strictly observing that they be used in accordance with the type of combat and its characteristics."

Herby said that using phosphorus to illuminate a target or create smoke is legitimate under international law, and that there was no evidence the Jewish state was intentionally using phosphorus in a questionable way, such as burning down buildings or consciously putting civilians at risk.

Wow, I really enjoy posts like this one, the selective outrage over one nation using a certain weapon while others get a free pass. When Saddam used gas on the Kurds in Northern Iraq, a number of people yawned, shrugged and I suppose justified it on the grounds that it was a civil war of sorts. It wasn't, and any attempt to argue otherwise will cause me to pass out from laughter but again, selective outrage is always fun.

By the way, if Israel used a chemical weapon, and if in so doing they violated international law then they should be held accountable. I'm not justifying anything here, only making the point that people really can't have it both ways.

-Drew

Did Saddam Hussein Gas His Own People?
Reality Checks Needed During War

No doubt, Saddam has mistreated Kurds during his rule. But it's misleading to say, so simply and without context, that he killed his own people by gassing 5,000 Kurds at Halabja.

Other Articles Related To This Topic

by Don Sellar
March 1, 2003 by the Toronto Star


Halabja (pop. 80,000) is a small Kurdish city in northern Iraq. On Wednesday, the Star reminded readers that Saddam Hussein's Iraqi army killed 5,000 Kurds in a 1988 chemical weapons attack on Halabja near the end of a bloody, eight-year war with Iran.

The statement that Saddam was responsible for gassing the Kurds — his own people — was straightforward.

Indeed, U.S. President George W. Bush has used similar language about the disaster at Halabja in making a case for a military strike to oust Saddam.

Yet the Star also reported, in a Jan. 31 Opinion page column, that there's reason to believe the story about Saddam "gassing his own people" at Halabja may not even be true.

Curious about those contradictory reports, and prodded by Star reader Bill Hynes, the ombud decided to examine how this paper covered the Halabja story 15 years ago, when Washington was tilting toward Saddam's side in the Iran-Iraq war.

The Star's early coverage was skimpy. I found no breaking news story about the March 16, 1988 gas attack on the city.

But four days later, a Reuters News Agency dispatch (filed from Cyprus) said Kurds, fighting on the Iranian side, had managed to seize Halabja and nearby villages "where Iran has accused Iraq of using chemical weapons against Kurds."

Two days later, Reuters reported, Iran was alleging that 5,000 Kurds were killed by chemical bombs dropped on Halabja by the Iraqi Air Force.

Iranian officials put injured Iraqi civilians on display to back up their charges. An Iranian doctor said mustard gas and "some agent causing long-term damage" had been deployed.

Burn victim Ahmad Karim, 58, a street vendor from Halabja, told a reporter: "We saw the (Iraqi) planes come and use chemical bombs. I smelled something like insecticide."

Two weeks later, the fog of war over Halabja thickened a little when the Star ran a Reuters story saying a United Nations team had examined Iraqi and Iranian civilians who had been victims of mustard gas and nerve gas.

"But the two-man team did not say how or by whom the weapons had been used," the Reuters story said.

It explained that Iraq and Iran were accusing each other of using poison gas in violation of the 1925 Geneva Protocol against chemical weapons.

In September, 1988, the Star quoted an unnamed U.N. official as saying the Security Council chose to condemn the use of gas in the Iran-Iraq war rather than finger Iraq, generally believed to have lost the war with Iran.

The same story said Iraq's claims that Iran also had used chemical weapons "have not been verified."

Buried in that story by freelancer Trevor Rowe was an intriguing piece of information. Rowe reported the Iraqi forces had attacked Halabja when it "was occupied by Iranian troops. Five thousand Kurdish civilians were reportedly killed."

Let's fast-forward to Jan. 31 of this year, when The New York Times published an opinion piece by Stephen C. Pelletiere, the CIA's senior political analyst on Iraq during the 1980s.

In the article, Pelletiere said the only thing known for certain was that "Kurds were bombarded with poison gas that day at Halabja. We cannot say with any certainty that Iraqi chemical weapons killed the Kurds."

Pelletiere said the gassing occurred during a battle between Iraqis and Iranians.

"Iraq used chemical weapons to try to kill Iranians who had seized the town ... The Kurdish civilians who died had the misfortune to be caught up in that exchange. But they were not Iraq's main target," he wrote.

The former CIA official revealed that immediately after the battle the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency investigated and produced a classified report that said it was Iranian gas that killed the Kurds.

Both sides used gas at Halabja, Pelletiere suggested.

"The condition of the dead Kurds' bodies however, indicated they had been killed with a blood agent — that is, a cyanide-based gas — which Iran was known to use. The Iraqis, who are thought to have used mustard gas in the battle, are not known to have possessed blood agents at the time."

"A War Crime Or an Act of War?" was the way The Times' headline writer neatly summed up Pelletiere's argument.

No doubt, Saddam has mistreated Kurds during his rule. But it's misleading to say, so simply and without context, that he killed his own people by gassing 5,000 Kurds at Halabja.

The fog of war that enveloped the battle at Halabja in 1988 never really lifted. With a new war threatening in Iraq, it's coming back stronger than ever.

Journalists risking their lives to cover an American-led attack on Iraq would face many obvious obstacles in trying to get at the truth.

In light of that, editors need to consider assigning staff back home to do reality checks on claims and counter-claims made in the fog of war.

As our retrospective on the Halabja story suggests, the bang-bang coverage — gripping though it may be — may not be enough to get the job done.

Don Sellar is the Toronto Star's ombudsman.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article1779.htm