|
CounterPunch
February
22, 2003
War Crimes and Ariel Sharon
It's OK to Eat
Belgian Cholocate
by URI AVNERY
"Don't eat Belgian chocolate,"
the Israel consul in Florida ordered the large Jewish community
there.
In Israel, anti-Belgian curses reached
an ear-splitting new crescendo. Miserable Belgium! Mad Belgium!
Megalomaniac Belgium! And again and again, Anti-Semitic Belgium!
Neo-Nazi Belgium!
The Israeli ambassador was, of course,
recalled from Brussels. No wonder, how can Israel keep an ambassador
in the world capital of anti-Semitism?
The storm broke when a Belgian court
decided that Ariel Sharon can be sued for alleged war crimes,
but only after finishing his term as Prime Minister of Israel.
Israel army officers connected with the 1982 massacre in the
Sabra and Shatila refugee camps can be sued even now.
On an Israeli TV program, the anchorman,
a lawyer, put it this way: "Anti-Semitic Belgium wants to
judge the officers of a second country for crimes committed in
a third country, while the accused have no connection at all
with Belgium, are not on Belgium territory and the whole affair
does not concern Belgium. That is megalomania, really a matter
for psychiatrists!"
"Strange," I replied on the
program, "I seem to remember a case where country A kidnapped
in country B the citizen of country C for committing in country
D crimes against the citizens of countries E, F and G, all this
in spite of the fact the crimes were committed before country
A even existed."
I meant, of course, the trial of Adolf
Eichmann, to which we all agreed.
"How can you compare the two!"
the other participants on the program cried out in outraged unison.
And indeed, how can one compare the actions of Jews with actions
of goyim committed against Jews?
Well, it were the Jews who demanded,
after World War II, that all countries put Nazi war criminals
and their allies on trial. Eichmann was judged in Israel according
to the Israeli "Law for bringing the Nazis and their Helpers
to Justice", which does not recognize any borders. More
recently the Knesset enacted another law, enabling Israeli courts
to judge perpetrators of any crime committed against Jews anywhere
in the world. If so, what's wrong with the Belgian law of "universal
jurisdiction", that allows Belgian courts to judge was criminals
from all over the world?
Immanuel Kant promulgated the Categorical
Imperative: "Act as if the principle by which you act were
about to be turned into a universal law of nature". But
then, Kant was probably an anti-Semite.
Hundreds of years ago, the world adopted
a legal doctrine that allowed every country to judge and hang
pirates, irrespective of their ethnic identity, origin and area
of activity. The assumption was that the pirate is an enemy of
humanity at large, and that therefore every country has the right
indeed, the duty to judge him.
The Belgian law against war crimes is
a step in this direction, and I hope that many other countries
will follow suit. Of course, it would be better if the International
Criminal Court in The Hague would fulfil this duty, but much
time will pass before it will be able to. Immense political pressures
are being exerted, many limitations have been imposed, its hands
and feet have been shackled. Worse, the only super-power, the
United States, is openly trying to destroy it (as it destroyed
the League of Nations after World War I.)
My dream is that before the end of the
21st century a new, binding world order, headed by a world parliament,
will come into being. This order must include a world court and
a world police force, that will judge conflicts between nations
the way today's national courts judge conflicts between people.
The road there is long and full of obstacles, decades will pass
before humanity will reach this stage. But we must strive towards
this end. In the meantime, other countries must follow the Belgian
example, in order to progress along this way. Especially concerning
war crimes.
Some will say that we should not extradite
our fellow-citizens, that it is the duty of every state to judge
its war-criminals itself. But this is utopian: no country in
the world has really done so. That is quite natural: not only
are states disinclined to admit to such shameful crimes and try
to hide them, but generally such crimes are committed by agents
of the state itself.
The affair of Sabra and Shatila is a
good example. Here, briefly, are the facts:
In the summer of 1982, the Israeli army
invaded West Beirut, violating an explicit commitment given to
the American mediator, Phillip Habib, not to do so. By that time,
the PLO forces had already left the city.
From that moment on, West Beirut, including
the Palestinian refugee camps Sabra and Shatila, became an Israeli
occupied territory, making the Israeli army responsible for everything
happening there.
After the occupation, the IDF let the
"Phalangists", members of an extreme Maronite Christian
group, enter the two camps. These people has already committed
heinous massacres in other Palestinian refugee camps. They were
headed by a notorious mass-murderer, Eli Hweika.
All senior Israeli officials involved
with Lebanon knew that the Phalangists were committing atrocities
in order to panic the Palestinians into fleeing from Lebanon.
When the Israeli cabinet was informed
of the army's intention of letting the Phalangists in, Minister
David Levy, who was born in Morocco, warned that this would cause
a disaster. His colleagues ignored his warning.
Immediately upon entering the camps,
the Phalangists started to butcher men, women and children indiscriminately.
The commander of the action, Eli Hweika,
oversaw the action from the roof of the Israeli divisional command
post, which was located right next to the camps. The officers
of the Israeli division commander, General Amos Yaron, overheard
Hweika instructing his men by walkie-talkie to kill women and
children, too. They hastened to inform Yaron, but he ignored
the message. (Later he admitted: "Our senses had become
blunted.")
During the night, while the massacre
was going on (it lasted altogether three days), the Israeli Chief-of-Staff,
General Raphael Eytan, ordered the army to accede to the Phalangists'
request and light the area with flares. He also provided the
Phalangists with a tractor (which served, it is assumed, to bury
the bodies).
A young Israeli officer who heard the
horrible stories of the shocked women who had succeeded in fleeing
from the camps, ran from one officer to another, begging them
to interfere. All of them refused.
After the massacre, the Begin government
refused to order an independent investigation. In a huge demonstration
in Tel-Aviv (the mythological 400-thousand-demo), we compelled
the government to appoint a high-level state investigation committee,
headed by Supreme Court judge Yitzhaq Kahan. It did a good job
and its report included all the facts mentioned above. In its
conclusions, it found that the Minister of Defense (Sharon),
the Chief-of-Staff and a number of other senior officers bear
"indirect responsibility" for the outrage. Some of
us argued even then that the committee had bent backwards in
order to protect the reputation of the state, and that from the
same facts much more far-reaching conclusions could have been
drawn.
The committee recommended, inter alia,
to dismiss the Minister of Defense from his office and to remove
Yaron from the active command of troops in the field. But the
committee did not recommend to dismiss Sharon altogether from
the government and from public life, neither did it dismiss Yaron
from the army. It did not take any step against the Chief-of-Staff,
because he was about to finish his term anyhow. Other officers
suffered minor penalties.
Today, Sharon is Prime Minister, practically
commanding the army and Amos Yaron is Director General of the
Ministry of Defense. As a matter of fact, all those accused by
the Kahan report have been promoted.
Most importantly, not one of those suspected
of responsibility for the massacre was ever put on trial (as
distinguished from a commission of inquiry).
After the enactment of the Belgian law
of universal jurisdiction, the survivors of the massacre sued
Sharon and the officers in Brussels. It's this case that has
caused the present uproar.
Nobody questions the integrity of the
Belgian judicial system. If Sharon and his men are confident
of their innocence, why shouldn't they stand trial and prove
it? After all, the Israeli government has put at their disposal
its senior attorneys, paid by the state. (One could ask, of course,
why I should pay for the legal defense of people put on trial
for alleged war crimes. But never mind.)
All this has nothing to do with anti-Semitism.
The use of this defamation against everybody who dares to criticize
Sharon and his colleagues reminds one of Dr. Samuel Johnson's
sayings: "Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel."
So you may eat Belgian chocolate. Even
if it is of the bitter kind.
Uri Avnery
has closely followed the career of Sharon for four decades. Over
the years, he has written three extensive biographical essays
about him, two (1973, 1981) with his cooperation. Avnery is featured
in the new book, The
Other Israel: Voices of Refusal and Dissent.
Yesterday's
Features
Jeffrey St. Clair
In
a Land Where Justice is a Game: Killing Amos King
Anne Gwynne
Raid
on Nablus: a Hero in the Midst of Horror
Nelson P. Valdés
Why Americans Can't Travel to Cuba
Jason Leopold
Martin Peretz to Bush: Bomb Iraq
Alan Maass
"A Revolutionary Spirit in a Hostile World":
The Real Martin Luther King, Jr
Jack McCarthy
Hitchens and Booze
Sonia Ebron
Why
Black Americans Should Oppose Bush's War
Russell Mokiber and Robert
Weissman
12
Reasons to Oppose Bush's War on Iraq
Abu Spinoza
Chomsky's Power and Terror
Website of the Day
Bush
AWOL
Keep CounterPunch Alive:
Make
a Tax-Deductible Donation Today Online!
home / subscribe
/ about us / books
/ archives / search
/ links /
CounterPunch Available Exclusively
to Subscribers:
- CounterPunch Special:
The Persecution of Gershon Legman by Susan Davis: Smut, the Post Office, Commies
and the FBI;
- Reeling Democrats: Is Pelosi the Answer?
- Gandhi v. Hitler: the Secret Race for the Nobel
Prize;
- Sullying Mario Savio's
Memory;
- Lynching Then and Now;
- Earn While You Learn: Chris Whittle and Child Labor;
The Case of the Pompous
Professor;
- The Class Struggle in
Boston: All that
Effort, But What Did They Get?
Remember, the CounterPunch website is
supported exclusively by subscribers to our newsletter. Our worldwide
web audience is soaring , with about seven million hits a month
now. This is inspiring, but the work involved also compels us
to remind you more urgently than ever to subscribe and/or make
a (tax deductible) donation if you can afford it. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe
Now!
Or Call Toll Free 1 800 840 3683
home / subscribe
/ about us
/ books
/ archives
/ search
/ links
/
|