After much public pressure, Santana cancels his concert in Israel. Another small victory in the march towards BDS:
Santana cancels Tel Aviv concert: igoogledisrael.com
Guitar legend Carlos Santana tonight canceled his summer gig in Tel Aviv, thanks largely to a busy schedule which has meant the reorganizing of a few shows and the canceling of some. Israel was one of the unlucky ones.
His management promised a full refund to the many thousands who had already purchased tickets. And Israeli promoter Shuki Weiss, the man behind nearly all of the big-name concerts in Israel, was surprised and disappointed to hear of the news.
The official statement went like this:
Due to unforeseen concert scheduling conflicts on the upcoming Middle East Tour, Santana regretfully announces the postponement of some dates previously scheduled. These dates include the previously announced performance in Israel, it was announced by management today.
“We are sorry that our schedule has forced the postponement of certain dates previously scheduled,” Michael Vrionis, CEO of Santana Management, said. “We look forward to performing in the many historic places that Santana has long wanted to return to.”
But don’t worry, the list of stars coming to perform in Israel in 2010 is only going to get longer! And Santana’s loss is surely, er, Rod Stewart’s gain…
Or so they tell themselves… soon no serious artist will even consider going there.
According to those two young Palestinians below, the Israeli invasion was indeed successful, turning their young brothers to little wariors…
Child’s eye: ‘My brothers think about weapons, not toys’:The Guardian
Two young Palestinian girls – 15-year-old Reem and 10-year-old Ameera – describe their ongoing fears in the aftermath of last year’s bombing of Gaza by Israel
To watch the short film, click here
Does Israel Use The Holocaust as a Blackmail Weapon?
Norman Finkelstein and Israel W. Charny discuss the issue in a heated debate.
Sixty-five years ago, Auschwitz was liberated by Soviet troops. Peter Lavelle asks his guests what the legacy of the Holocaust is today. Is its memory being abused? Does Israel use Holocaust as a blackmail weapon?
Posted January 27, 2010
With no ‘terrorists’ they arrest human rights activists, who are, after all, more dangerous to the occupation regime:
Bilin grassroots leader Mohammed Khatib arrested in late-night raid: Electronic Intifada
Press release, Popular Struggle Coordination Committee, 28 January 2010
The following edited press release was issued today by the Popular Struggle Coordination Committee:
Today, Mohammed Khatib, his wife Lamia and their four young children were woken up by Israeli soldiers storming their home, which was surrounded by a large military force. Once inside the house, the soldiers arrested Khatib, conducted a quick search and left the house.
Roughly half an hour after leaving the house, five military jeeps surrounded the house again, and six soldiers forced their way into the house, where Khatib’s children sat in terror. The forces conducted another very thorough search of the premises, without showing a search warrant. During the search, Khatib’s phone and many documents were seized, including papers from Bilin’s legal procedures in the Israel high court.
The soldiers exited an hour and a half later, leaving a note saying that documents suspected as “incitement materials” were seized. International activists who tried to enter the house to be with the family during the search were aggressively denied entry.
Mohammed Khatib was previously arrested during the ongoing wave of arrests and repression on 3 August 2009 with charges of incitement and stone throwing. After two weeks of detention, a military judge ruled that evidence against him was falsified and ordered his release, after it was proven that Khatib was abroad at the time the army alleged he was photographed throwing stones during a demonstration.
Khatib’s arrest today is the most severe escalation in a recent wave of repression again the Palestinian popular struggle and its leadership. Khatib is the 35th resident of Bilin to be arrested on suspicions related to anti-wall protest since 23 June 2009.
The recent wave of arrests is largely an assault on the members of the Popular Committees — the leadership of the popular struggle — who are then charged with incitement when arrested. The charge of incitement, defined under Israeli military law as “an attempt, whether verbally or otherwise, to influence public opinion in the area in a way that may disturb the public peace or public order,” is a cynical attempt to punish grassroots organizing with a hefty charge and lengthy imprisonment. Such indictments are part of the army’s strategy of using legal persecution as a means to quash the popular movement.
Similar raids have also been conducted in the village of al-Maasara, south of Bethlehem, and in the village of Nilin — where 110 residents have been arrested over the last year and half — as well as in the cities of Nablus, Ramallah and East Jerusalem.
Among those arrested in the recent campaign are three members of the Nilin Popular Committee, Said Yakin of the Palestinian National Committee Against the Wall, and five members of the Bilin Popular Committee — all suspected of incitement.
Prominent grassroots activists Jamal Juma’ (East Jerusalem) and Mohammed Othman (Jayyous) of the Stop the Wall nongovernmental organization, involved in anti-wall and boycott, divestment and sanctions campaigning, have recently been released from detention after being incarcerated for long periods based on secret evidence and with no charges brought against them.
A story of hope from Jenin, at least until the next IOF invasion:
Renovated cinema to bring new life to Jenin: BBC
Heart of Jenin followed the story of the death of the 11-year-old son of Ismail Khatib
Standing in the dusty, half-lit lobby of Cinema Jenin with paint splattered builders beavering away all around, it’s hard to imagine that this venue was once the place to be on the Jenin social scene.
The cinema in the centre of the West Bank city was first opened in 1957.
But over the years, Jenin has seen some of the worst violence between Israelis and Palestinians, and the cinema was eventually forced to close during the first Intifada, or Palestinian uprising, in the mid 1980s.
The whole project is a real positive change for Jenin. We have high unemployment here and it will provide jobs and boost the economy. Also its fun. People here need something to enjoy
But now it is being renovated, and is due to re-open in August 2010.
“It will be finished. It will definitely be finished,” says assistant project manager Mamoun Kanan with a cheeky smile, as he stands on the pile of rubble that will eventually be the cinema’s main entrance.
The cinema will seat more than 300 people, in the original chairs from the 1950s and 1960s, which are now being restored.
The inspiration for the cinema’s renovation followed the success of the film Heart Of Jenin.
The award-winning documentary directed by German filmmaker Marcus Vetter followed the story of Palestinian Ismail Khatib.
Five years ago, Mr Khatib’s 11-year-old son Ahmed was shot dead by Israeli soldiers who mistook his toy gun for a real one during the second Intifada.
The Israeli military expressed regret for the death.
Lives saved
Cinema Jenin’s renovation will cost more than half a million pounds
Remarkably, Khatib chose to donate his son’s organs to five children and a woman in Israel. Ahmed’s kidneys, liver, heart and lungs were transplanted into Israeli citizens including Jews, Arabs and a Druze girl.
For five of them, the organ donations saved their lives.
“For me this new cinema is for Ahmed, ” Mr Khatib says. “It’s for all his friends. They can come here and feel Ahmed all around them.”
At the time, Mr Khatib said saving lives was more important than religion, adding “I feel that my son has entered the heart of every Israeli”.
I ask him how it would feel to one day watch an Israeli film in Cinema Jenin.
“No problem,” he says, “it’s all about respecting each others’ culture and learning.”
Until a few years ago, Jenin was a dangerous place. It was not uncommon to see gunmen from different Palestinian militant groups on the streets.
Five-year-old Safedin hopes Toy Story will top the new cinema’s bill
Incursions from the occupying Israeli army were frequent.
Now things seem relatively calm. The Palestinian Authority has stepped up security and Israel has relaxed some of the checkpoints into the city.
Some militants have sought work in the security forces. One has even opened a theatre company.
‘Red carpet’
It is estimated the new cinema will cost close to 500,000 euros. Much of the money has come from the Palestinian Ministry of Culture. The German government has contributed 170,000 euros.
The musician Roger Waters from Pink Floyd has also donated a state-of-the-art sound system for the cinema.
In August 2010, the cinema is due to host the first Jenin International Film Festival. Heart of Jenin will be shown on the opening night.
“The whole project is a real positive change for Jenin,” says Mr Kanan. “We have high unemployment here and it will provide jobs and boost the economy.”
“Also its fun. People here need something to enjoy.”
Kanan says the cinema will eventually show films from all around the world.
“Israeli films?” I ask him. “Yes of course, because we are looking for peace. International movies, Palestinian movies, Israeli movies. It’s all the same. We are all human above everything.”
A special council is being set up including the mufti, the local Muslim religious leader, to help decide the films that will be shown.
In the 1960s and 1970s, locals say the cinema used to show sex films one night a week.
“There’ll be none of that this time,” laughs projectionist Franz Macher, who’s over from Germany to train young Palestinian projectionists.
“These days society is much more conservative so we need to be careful what we show. We don’t want to censor films, but we would rather show a good film censored than not show it at all.”
“What about violent films?” I ask.
“Yes the mufti has not forbidden it but he has asked us to be careful about violent films. People have seen enough violence here already.”
That will be no problem for five-year-old Safedin, who I meet outside the cinema.
He is keen to see Toy Story – while his eight-year-old sister Kutel is hoping for Barbie on the opening night.
In a ramshackle room at the back of the building sits the old cinema’s projector.
Two metres high, the machine still whirs into action after a bit of tinkering from Mr Macher.
“In the summer we’ll be rolling out the red carpet,” says Felix Gebauer, who’s organising the 2010 Jenin Film festival.
He says they are expecting Hollywood star Leonardo Di Caprio and the former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to be among the guests, although neither have given public confirmation of their attendence.
But 15-year-old Rassan, who runs the food kiosk next to the cinema, is not impressed.
“I want to see the Barcelona football!” he demands, “I hear they are coming too.”
A thoughtful article about the Obama Peace Show, and the role of Mitchell in this play for fools. Fat chance, though, as the show must go on… the less substance there is to the process, the more important is to continue the appearance
Time for George Mitchell to resign: Rebel News
If Mideast special envoy George Mitchell wants to end his career with his reputation intact, it is time for him to resign. He had a distinguished tenure in the U.S. Senate — including a stint as majority leader — and his post-Senate career has been equally accomplished. He was an effective mediator of the conflict in Northern Ireland, helped shepherd the Disney Corporation through a turbulent period, and led an effective investigation of the steroids scandal afflicting major league baseball. Nobody can expect to be universally admired in the United States, but Mitchell may have come as close as any politician in recent memory.
Why should Mitchell step down now? Because he is wasting his time. The administration’s early commitment to an Israeli-Palestinian peace was either a naïve bit of bravado or a cynical charade, and if Mitchell continues to pile up frequent-flyer miles in a fruitless effort, he will be remembered as one of a long series of U.S. “mediators” who ended up complicit in Israel’s self-destructive land grab on the West Bank. Mitchell will turn 77 in August, he has already undergone treatment for prostate cancer, and he’s gotten exactly nowhere (or worse) since his mission began. However noble the goal of Israeli-Palestinian peace might be, surely he’s got better things to do.
In an interview earlier this week with Time’s Joe Klein, President Obama acknowledged that his early commitment to achieving “two states for two peoples” had failed. In his words, “this is as intractable a problem as you get … Both sides-the Israelis and the Palestinians-have found that the political environments, the nature of their coalitions or the divisions within their societies, were such that it was very hard for them to start engaging in a meaningful conversation. And I think we overestimated our ability to persuade them to do so when their politics ran contrary to that” (my emphasis).
This admission raises an obvious question: who was responsible for this gross miscalculation? It’s not as if the dysfunctional condition of Israeli and Palestinian internal politics was a dark mystery when Obama took office, or when Netanyahu formed the most hard-line government in Israeli history. Which advisors told Obama and Mitchell to proceed as they did, raising expectations sky-high in the Cairo speech, publicly insisting on a settlement freeze, and then engaging in a humiliating retreat? Did they ever ask themselves what they would do if Netanyahu dug in his heels, as anyone with a triple-digit IQ should have expected? And if Obama now realizes how badly they screwed up, why do the people who recommended this approach still have their jobs?
As for Mitchell himself, he should resign because it should be clear to him that he was hired under false pretenses. He undoubtedly believed Obama when the president said he was genuinely committed to achieving Israel-Palestinian peace in his first term. Obama probably promised to back him up, and his actions up to the Cairo speech made it look like he meant it. But his performance ever since has exposed him as another U.S. president who is unwilling to do what everyone knows it will take to achieve a just peace. Mitchell has been reduced to the same hapless role that Condoleezza Rice played in the latter stages of the Bush administration — engaged in endless “talks” and inconclusive haggling over trivialities-and he ought to be furious at having been hung out to dry in this fashion.
The point is not that Obama’s initial peace effort in the Middle East has failed; the real lesson is that he didn’t really try. The objective was admirably clear from the start — “two states for two peoples” — what was missing was a clear strategy for getting there and the political will to push it through. And notwithstanding the various difficulties on the Palestinian side, the main obstacle has been the Netanyahu government’s all-too obvious rejection of anything that might look like a viable Palestinian state, combined with its relentless effort to gobble up more land. Unless the U.S. president is willing and able to push Israel as hard as it is pushing the Palestinians (and probably harder), peace will simply not happen. Pressure on Israel is also the best way to defang Hamas, because genuine progress towards a Palestinian state in the one thing that could strengthen Abbas and other Palestinian moderates and force Hamas to move beyond its talk about a long-term hudna (truce) and accept the idea of permanent peace.
It’s not as if Obama and Co. don’t realize that this is important. National Security Advisor James Jones has made it clear that he sees the Israel-Palestinian issue as absolutely central; it’s not our only problem in the Middle East, but it tends to affect most of the others and resolving it would be an enormous boon. And there’s every sign that the president is aware of the need to do more than just talk.
Yet U.S. diplomacy in this area remains all talk and no action. When a great power identifies a key interest and is strongly committed to achieving it, it uses all the tools at its disposal to try to bring that outcome about. Needless to say, the use of U.S. leverage has been conspicuously absent over the past year, which means that Mitchell has been operating with both hands tied firmly behind his back. Thus far, the only instrument of influence that Obama has used has been presidential rhetoric, and even that weapon has been used rather sparingly.
And please don’t blame this on Congress. Yes, Congress will pander to the lobby, oppose a tougher U.S. stance, and continue to supply Israel with generous economic and military handouts, but a determined president still has many ways of bringing pressure to bear on recalcitrant clients. The problem is that Obama refused to use any of them.
When Netanyahu dug in his heels and refused a complete settlement freeze — itself a rather innocuous demand if Israel preferred peace to land — did Obama describe the settlements as “illegal” and contrary to international law? Of course not. Did he fire a warning shot by instructing the Department of Justice to crack down on tax-deductible contributions to settler organizations? Nope. Did he tell Secretary of Defense Robert Gates to signal his irritation by curtailing U.S. purchases of Israeli arms, downgrading various forms of “strategic cooperation,” or canceling a military exchange or two? Not a chance. When Israel continued to evict Palestinians from their homes and announced new settlement construction in East Jerusalem and the West Bank in August, did Obama remind Netanyahu of his dependence on U.S. support by telling U.S. officials to say a few positive things about the Goldstone Report and to use its release as an opportunity to underscore the need for a genuine peace? Hardly; instead, the administration rewarded Netanyau’s intransigence by condemning Goldstone and praising Netanyahu for “unprecedented” concessions. (The “concessions,” by the way, was an announcement that Israel would freeze settlement expansion in the West Bank “temporarily” while continuing it in East Jerusalem. In other words, they’ll just take the land a bit more slowly).
Like the Clinton and Bush administrations, in short, the idea that the United States ought to use its leverage and exert genuine pressure on Israel remains anathema to Obama, to Mitchell and his advisors, and to all those pundits who are trapped in the Washington consensus on this issue. The main organizations in the Israel lobby are of course dead-set against it — and that goes for J Street as well — even though there is no reason to expect Israel to change course in the absence of countervailing pressure.
Obama blinked — leaving Mitchell with nothing to do-because he needed to keep sixty senators on board with his health care initiative (that worked out well, didn’t it?), because he didn’t want to jeopardize the campaign coffers of the Democratic Party, and because he knew he’d be excoriated by Israel’s false friends in the U.S. media if he did the right thing. I suppose I ought to be grateful to have my thesis vindicated in such striking fashion, but there’s too much human misery involved on both sides to take any consolation in that.
So what will happen now? Israel has made it clear that it is going to keep building settlements — including the large blocs (like Ma’ale Adumim) that were consciously designed to carve up the West Bank and make creation of a viable Palestinian state impossible. Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian Authority, and other moderate forces will be increasingly discredited as collaborators or dupes. As Israel increasingly becomes an apartheid state, its international legitimacy will face a growing challenge. Iran’s ability to exploit the Palestinian cause will be strengthened, and pro-American regimes in Egypt, Jordan, and elsewhere will be further weakened by their impotence and by their intimate association with the United States. It might even help give al Qaeda a new lease on life, at least in some places. Jews in other countries will continue to distance themselves from an Israel that they see as a poor embodiment of their own values, and one that can no longer portray itself convincingly as “a light unto the nations.” And the real tragedy is that all this might have been avoided, had the leaders of the world’s most powerful country been willing to use their influence on both sides more directly.
Looking ahead, one can see two radically different possibilities. The first option is that Israel retains control of the West Bank and Gaza and continues to deny the Palestinians full political rights or economic opportunities. (Netanyahu likes to talk about a long-term “economic peace,” but his vision of Palestinian bantustans under complete Israeli control is both a denial of the Palestinians’ legitimate aspirations and a severe obstacle to their ability to fully develop their own society. Over time, there may be another intifada, which the IDF will crush as ruthlessly as it did the last one. Perhaps the millions of remaining Palestinians will gradually leave — as hardline Israelis hope and as former House speaker Dick Armey once proposed. If so, then a country founded in the aftermath of the Holocaust — one of history’s greatest crimes-will have completed a dispossession begun in 1948 — a great crime of its own.
Alternatively, the Palestinians may remain where they are, and begin to demand equal rights in the state under whose authority they have been forced to dwell. If Israel denies them these rights, its claim to being the “only democracy in the Middle East” will be exposed as hollow. If it grants them, it will eventually cease to be a Jewish-majority state (though its culture would undoubtedly retain a heavily Jewish/Israeli character). As a long-time supporter of Israel’s existence, I would take no joy in that outcome. Moreover, transforming Israel into a post-Zionist and multinational society would be a wrenching and quite possibly violent experience for all concerned. For both reasons, I’ve continued to favor “two states for two peoples” instead.
But with the two-state solution looking less and less likely, these other possibilities begin to loom large. Through fear and fecklessness, the United States has been an active enabler of an emerging tragedy. Israelis have no one to blame but themselves for the occupation, but Americans — who like to think of themselves as a country whose foreign policy reflects deep moral commitments-will be judged harshly for our own role in this endeavor.
The United States will suffer certain consequences as a result-decreased international influence, a somewhat greater risk of anti-American terrorism, tarnished moral reputation, etc.-but it will survive. But Israel may be in the process of drafting its own suicide pact, and its false friends here in the United States have been supplying the paper and ink. By offering his resignation-and insisting that Obama accept it-George Mitchell can escape the onus of complicity in this latest sad chapter of an all-too-familiar story. Small comfort, perhaps, but better than nothing.
Menachem Mazuz: Israel must probe Gaza war to counter Goldstone: Haaretz
The Goldstone report is a serious threat to Israel that will “continue to haunt us and take away our legitimacy,” outgoing Attorney General Menachem Mazuz told Haaretz in an interview.
“There is a danger here of a ‘Serbianization’ of Israel,” even though the report on the Gaza war was biased and contains unsubstantiated conclusions, Mazuz said. “Therefore I believe that Israel has a clear interest in conducting a serious, expert examination that will deal with the report and produce an opposing report. It would be a serious mistake not to establish some sort of committee. We must remove the shame of accusing Israel of being a country that commits war crimes.”
In the interview, published in Haaretz Magazine on Friday, Mazuz also discussed the scandals that rocked Israel during his term. He defended his decision to close the case on the so-called Greek island affair.
In that case, David Appel, an associate of former prime minister Ariel Sharon, then a Likud minister, was accused of having received favorable treatment from Sharon and others that let him and colleagues buy land on a Greek island for a resort.
“I have absolutely no regrets about that decision,” Mazuz said. “I consider it one of the important decisions I made. Maybe the most important. I think we would have collapsed in court with that case. And a collapse in an indictment against a prime minister has far-reaching implications.”
Mazuz also rejected the contention that he persecuted and unseated former prime minister Ehud Olmert.
“I can say that with the exception of one marginal episode, which did not make the headlines, not one of the things we latched onto turned out to be without foundation,” Mazuz said. “In each subject it emerged that the suspicions were real. Some of them led eventually to an indictment, while in others the findings we were able to arrive at were not at a level to justify an indictment. But none of the cases of management and behavior merit a prize for proper quality of government.”
Regarding the suspicions against Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, Mazuz said that the authorities were “dealing with considerable suspicions regarding meaningful acts over the past decade, and there is a clear public interest in completing the investigation. A decision in this matter is expected shortly.”
Mazuz said he was within a few weeks of completing the investigation when his term ended.
For Mazuz, the most dangerous affair was the Tax Authority case. “If this affair had not been uncovered and brought to a halt, we would have arrived at a phenomenon like the Mafia in the United States – when the Mafia buys a key figure in the judicial system, in the governmental system and in the legislative system.”
Mazuz says he has no misgivings about the charges brought against former president Moshe Katsav for sexual assault. “We opened the case, we went in with our eyes open to something that we knew was not simple. The Katsav case made an important contribution to the fight against sexual harassment, sex crimes and the abuse of authority. It also made a clear statement: No one is above the law, not even the president of Israel.”
In the interview, Mazuz criticizes for the first time the conduct of the state prosecution under Edna Arbel. He notes that in “certain cases, criminal law had been stretched beyond its rightful place,” giving the example of former chief of staff Rafael Eitan.
Mazuz says Eitan was put on trial for using information “that infringed on the protection of privacy. I thought it was absolutely not germane to file an indictment in a case of that kind. I also thought it was wrong to file an indictment in the case of [current justice minister] Yaakov Neeman .”
Hamas: Israel assassinated a senior Hamas commander in Dubai: Haaretz
Israel has assassinated a senior Hamas military commander, an official in the Palestinian Islamist group said on Friday.
Mahmoud al-Mabhouh was killed in Dubai on Jan. 20, Izzat al-Rishq told Reuters in the Syrian capital Damascus, but did not specify how the assassination was carried out.
Al-Mabhouh was suspected of having participated in the abduction and subsequent murder of two Israeli soldiers, Avi Sasportas and Ilan Saadon, in 1989.
Sasport and Saadon were abducted in two separate incidents in 1989, on the orders of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin who headed Hamas in the years following its establishment. Sasport was an infantry soldier who was abducted from an intersection near Ashkelon on February 16, 1989. His body was recovered later that year. Several days prior to the discovery of Sasport’s body, Saadon went missing. His body was only found in 1996, as a result of intelligence received from Palestinian sources.
Rishq said Mabhouh was an “important” member of Izz el-Deen al- Qassam brigades, Hamas’ military wing named after a Syrian religious leader who fought British colonial forces in Palestine in the 1930s.
He said Mabhouh, who had been living in Syria since 1989, was assassinated a day after he arrived in Dubai but that Hamas could not say more at present about how he was killed.
Deadline nears for second UN report on Gaza war: Haaretz
Friday marks three-month limit set by General Assembly for internal report; Israel prepares to issue own response.
Friday marks the three-month deadline set by the United Nations General Assembly for issuing its own report on the Israel-Hamas fighting in Gaza Strip.
But it was not clear if UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon will have received enough information from the two sides to produce the requested report. Ban had been asked by the 192-nation assembly to produce a report based on accounts to be provided by the two warring parties.
The General Assembly has already endorsed the controversial investigation led by South African Judge Richard Goldstone on the 22-day fighting between December 2008 and January 2009.
Israel said late on Thursday night that it would issue on Friday its own formal response to Goldstone’s findings, Israel Radio reported. The government is expected to present the UN with a justification for IDF actions in Gaza – without referring specifically to claims made in the document.
The Goldstone report, which was commissioned by the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, charged both Israel and Hamas with war crimes and acts that amounted to crimes against humanity, saying that the conflict dominated by Israel’s military superiority had killed 1,400 Palestinians and caused widespread damage to properties in Gaza.
The council had urged the General Assembly to debate the report and then refer the alleged crimes to the International Criminal Court at The Hague. That proposal has so far been ignored.
Instead, the General Assembly asked for its own report based on submissions from both sides – following another recommendation from the 547-page Goldstone report that both Israel and Hamas conduct their own investigations.
On Wednesday, Ban said he planned to produce the report.
But he added: “I have not seen anything yet, so I am not in a position to tell you what my report will be. I will have to report within three months, and the three months is now coming to an end.”
There were indications that Israel plans to send the results of its own investigation by Friday.
Judge Goldstone’s 547-page report was promptly and strongly denounced by Israel and the United States as biased against Israel. They said its findings were flawed.
But the Israeli government last year answered some of the specific charges in the report, and last week sent the UN a check for 10.5 million dollars to compensate for damage to UN properties in Gaza. The UN had demanded more than 11 million dollars.
Hamas militants in Gaza roundly supported the Goldstone report.
Hamas: Gaza war rockets aimed at Israeli soldiers, not civilians: Haaretz
Gaza’s Hamas rulers on Wednesday defended their actions during Israel’s assault last winter, saying they did not target civilians while firing hundreds of rockets at Israeli towns, and rebuffing a UN call for a new inquiry.
A Gaza-based Hamas commission of inquiry also determined on Wednesday that captive Israel Defense Forces soldier Gilad Shalit is being treated fairly and is receiving the necessary medical attention.
The panel was formed as Hamas’ response to the Goldstone Report, which accused the Islamist group and the Israel Defense Forces of committing war crimes during last year’s military offensive in the Gaza Strip.
A report handed by a Hamas official to The Associated Press days before a UN deadline indicated Hamas will not convene an independent investigation of its rocket fire.
Both Israel and Hamas rejected charges by the UN inquiry of war crimes and possible crimes against humanity, and both appear ready to ignore the demand for internal investigations.
In the aftermath of the war, most criticism has been leveled at Israel, charging it with using disproportionate force and the destruction in Gaza. About 1,400 Gazans were killed, many of them civilians. The UN commission said Israel intentionally targeted civilians, an allegation Israel hotly denied.
The Hamas report will be submitted to the UN later this week, said the official, Mohammed al-Ghoul. Its argument is that rockets fired from Gaza were meant to hit military targets, but because they are unguided, they hit civilians by mistake.
Palestinian militants fired some 800 rockets and mortar shells into Israel during the war, killing three civilians, wounding about 80 and slightly injuring more than 800.
Hundreds of rockets pelted the border town of Sderot, where there are no military bases. They also hit cities as far away as Be’er Sheva, about 25 miles (40 kilometers) from Gaza. Most Israelis in rocket range stayed in bomb shelters, avoiding further casualties.
“Palestinian armed groups have repeatedly confirmed that they abide by international humanitarian law, through broadcasting in different media that they intended to hit military targets and to avoid targeting civilians,” the Hamas report stated, citing casualties from “incorrect (or imprecise) fire.”
The request for independent investigations was made by the UN General Assembly last November and it gave both sides until Feb. 5 to respond.
Israel also plans to ignore the demand for a full-fledged inquiry, according to Cabinet Minister Yuli Edelstein. The allegations of war crimes and possible crimes against humanity emerged from a UN commission headed by South African jurist Richard Goldstone that investigated the three-week war.
Israel did not cooperate with the commission and rejected its findings as biased and unfounded, claiming its actions were in self-defense, trying to stop years of almost daily rocket salvos from Gaza, and that it did everything it could to limit civilian casualties.
By rejecting calls for an independent inquiry, both Hamas and Israel could open themselves up to international war crimes proceedings.
In another development, Defense Minister Ehud Barak discussed Mideast peace moves and other issues with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak at the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheik on Wednesday, Barak’s office said in a statement. No further details were released.
Badge of terror: Haaretz Editorial
There is no way to describe the West Bank settlers’ attack on the Palestinian village of Bitilu but as a well-planned terror attack. The settlers’ “military” organization and violent resistance to the cabinet decision to destroy the illegal outpost of Givat Menachem, as described by Chaim Levinson in Haaretz yesterday, are no different from the activities of other terrorist organizations. This includes the incitement, ranting and raving preceding the act of vengeance on Bitilu, the attempt to set a house on fire, the injuring of villagers with stones, and the threat to continue these violent tactics.
These are not unusual acts. Israel Defense Forces officers report a significant increase in the number of settler attacks on Arab villages and communities following the decision to freeze construction in the settlements. The term “price tag” – once coined in reference to the IDF’s policy toward terror organizations – has long been adopted by the settlers and transformed to mean retaliation against the Israeli government’s policy.
The decision to dismantle the Givat Menachem outpost is commendable, although it is not sufficient in itself to implement Israel’s commitment to take down all illegal outposts. Still, one cannot but be amazed by the IDF Spokesman Office’s watered-down response to the settlers’ terror attack.
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“This activity is improper legally, morally and normatively,” the spokesman said. “Central Command is determined to take full, legal action against the rioters.” Is this merely improper activity? Would the IDF describe a similar act this way if it were carried out by Palestinians against a Jewish settlement? Wouldn’t the army impose a closure and immediately make arrests, not to mention shoot the perpetrators?
But the IDF’s evasive terminology is not to blame when the Knesset is enacting a law to pardon the transgressors who rioted during the Gaza disengagement. This law, which will even expunge the criminal record of those who assaulted soldiers, is now legitimizing the “price tag” actions. These terrorists already know, thanks to this distorted legislation, that they will not have to pay for their actions.
The government is not permitted to protect these offenders and must treat their actions as acts of terror, unless it wants to be seen as their partner.
Joe Stork: Obama and Human Rights in the Middle East – Suggestions for Act Two: IOA
United States President Barack Obama has used all the right words to underscore his view that human rights concerns are a core element of his Middle East policy. In his Cairo speech in June 2009, he highlighted the importance of freedom of religion and women’s rights, and spoke movingly of the “daily humiliations” and “intolerable” situation of Palestinians living under Israeli military occupation. And he suggested that the United States would work with an elected Islamist government that respected minority rights. In his Oslo speech accepting the Nobel Peace Prize in December 2009, Obama cited the necessity in war of “binding ourselves to certain rules of conduct” such as the Geneva Conventions, and voiced support for the aspirations of “hundreds of thousands who have marched silently through the streets of Iran.”
The Obama administration’s promotion of human rights with abusive Middle Eastern governments, however, has been ambiguous and, in some cases, negligent, raising concern that the United States is still operating in a universe of double standards when it comes to confronting serious human rights violations by important allies. Human rights have certainly not been part of the public diplomacy surrounding the president’s meetings with the leaders of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan. In Morocco in November 2009, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton praised her hosts regarding women’s rights and civil society, but said not a word, as far as we know, about recent prosecutions of journalists and human rights activists. Her interviews with Moroccan media indicated U.S. support for Rabat’s policies in the Western Sahara, with no expressed concern about the Moroccan government’s deeply flawed human rights record when it comes to Sahrawis and Moroccans who peacefully advocate independence for that disputed territory.
With regard to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the administration’s record is mixed. President Obama said that the United States “does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements,” but the administration has backed off its insistence that Israel halt all new construction there. The administration’s policy of discrediting the findings and recommendations of the UN fact-finding mission report on laws of war violations by Israel and Hamas in Gaza authored by Richard Goldstone, the renowned South African jurist, was hardly in keeping with the president’s emphasis in his Cairo speech on “justice” and “rule of law.” Criticism of Israel’s blockade of Gaza has been muted at best, with no discernible effort to use U.S. leverage to end this policy of collective punishment, which violates international humanitarian law.
What would it entail if the president and his administration, heading into its second year, became serious about translating Obama’s words on human rights into action? The most far-reaching and important thing the president can do is ensure that the United States fulfills its obligations under international law, including the Geneva Conventions and the Convention Against Torture, to investigate and prosecute those U.S. officials responsible for ordering and implementing torture of detainees in U.S. custody. It is difficult for the United States to urge others, whether allies or adversaries, to do the right thing when it refuses to do so itself. Similarly, the administration should take care to ensure that the system that replaces Guantanamo does not compromise the prohibition against indefinite detention without charge or the right to a fair trial. In the absence of such steps, U.S. policy will amount to “do what we say, not what we do,” when it comes to torture and arbitrary detention, both serious abuses in many Middle Eastern countries.
Second, the administration needs to find a way, very soon, to show that what Secretary Clinton in a December 2009 speech at Georgetown University characterized as a “pragmatic and agile … pursuit of our human rights agenda” does not amount to a free ride for governments that loudly reject criticism of their abusive policies. U.S. desire to maintain President Hosni Mubarak’s support for U.S. policies towards Israel and the Palestinians, and official Egyptian resentment of the democratization efforts of the Bush administration, apparently account for Secretary Clinton’s statement that there would be no human rights “conditionality” in the U.S.-Egyptian relationship. Unfortunately, that seems to mean little or no human rights content whatsoever in the relationship.
This needs to change. Egypt, despite its reduced regional clout, is still a bellwether, positive and negative, for policies of other Arab states. Furthermore, 2010 and 2011 will see Egyptian parliamentary and presidential elections. With President Mubarak’s advanced age and uncertain health, Egypt is approaching a critical transition point. Free and fair elections are impossible under restrictive laws on political parties and candidacies, as well as an emergency law that for nearly three decades has allowed authorities to hold thousands, including peaceful critics, without charge or trial. Absent a firm Egyptian commitment to address these concerns, the president should, in a major speech or similar public occasion, make clear that elections under the emergency law and other restrictions on peaceful political activity will impede close U.S.-Egyptian relations, and U.S. assistance, in the future.
Third, the administration should make sure that other U.S. allies in the region also face consequences for serious human rights violations documented by U.S. officials as well as others. One example is Saudi Arabia’s official and systematic discrimination against the country’s Shi`i minority. The U.S. State Department, under a Congressional mandate, has been documenting this and other Saudi religious freedom violations for years, but until now there have been no policy consequences or public remonstrations from the White House. Especially given his emphasis on religious freedom in his Cairo speech, this should change under President Obama.
Finally, there is the Israel-Palestine conflict. Obama seems to grasp that many in the region see this as the touchstone for U.S. human rights policy. In that regard, Obama’s emphasis on the illegality of settlements under international humanitarian law has been welcome. The administration seems to have modified its curt dismissal of the Goldstone report, and should continue to stress the need for independent Israeli and Palestinian investigations into war crimes allegations, recognizing that the report provides an unprecedented opportunity to interrupt the cycle of impunity for abuses by all parties to this conflict. Obama also needs to take on the Gaza blockade, imposed by Israel and abetted by Egypt. If private diplomacy shows no results soon and Israel does not end its wholesale restrictions on the movement of goods and people, the president should publicly criticize the blockade as collective punishment and specify consequences, including reductions in military aid.
Joe Stork is Deputy Director for the Middle East at Human Rights Watch
Israel fast-tracking Indian immigrants to subvert settlement freeze : The Electronic Intifada
Jonathan Cook, 28 January 2010
The Israeli government is reported to have quietly approved the fast-track immigration of 7,000 members of a supposedly “lost Jewish” tribe, known as the Bnei Menashe, currently living in a remote area of India.
Under the plan, the “lost Jews” would be brought to Israel over the next two years by right-wing and religious organizations who, critics are concerned, will seek to place them in West Bank settlements in a bid to foil Israel’s partial agreement to a temporary freeze of settlement growth.
A previous attempt to bring the Bnei Menashe to Israel was halted in 2003 by Avraham Poraz, the interior minister at the time, after it became clear that most of the 1,500 who had arrived were being sent to extremist settlements, including in the Gaza Strip and next to Hebron, the large Palestinian city in the West Bank.
Dror Etkes, who monitors settlement growth for Yesh Din, an Israeli human rights group, said there were strong grounds for suspecting that some of the new Bnei Menashe would end up in the settlements, too.
“There is a mutual interest being exploited here,” he said. “The Bnei Menashe get help to make aliyah [immigration] while the settlements get lots of new arrivals to bolster their numbers, including in settlements close to Palestinian areas where most Israelis would not want to venture.”
The government’s decision, leaked this month to Ynet, Israel’s biggest news website, was made possible by a ruling in 2005 by Shlomo Amar, one of Israel’s two chief rabbis, that the Bnei Menashe are one of 10 lost Jewish tribes, supposedly exiled from the Middle East 2,700 years ago.
He ordered a team of rabbis to go to north-east India to begin preparing Bnei Menashe who identified themselves as Jews for conversion to the strictest stream of Judaism, Orthodoxy, so they would qualify to immigrate to Israel under the Law of Return.
The Bnei Menashe belong to an ethnic group called the Shinlung, who number more than one million and live mainly in the states of Manipur and Mizoram, close to the border with Myanmar. They were converted from animism to Christianity by British missionaries a century ago, but a small number claim to have kept an ancient connection to Judaism.
DNA samples taken from the Bnei Menashe have failed so far to establish any common ancestry to Jews.
The immigration of the Bnei Menashe following Amar’s ruling was quickly halted after the foreign ministry expressed concerns that it was causing a diplomatic falling out with India, which has laws against missionary activity.
Ophir Pines-Paz, the interior minister in 2005, who opposed what he called the “clandestine” arrival of the Bnei Menashe, said in an interview last week: “I was against a policy that sends [Jewish] immigrants to the settlements. I hope that could not be the case today with a settlement freeze in place. I want to believe that is the case.”
However, the Bnei Menashe have won two powerful right-wing sponsors: Shavei Israel, led by Michael Freund, a former assistant to Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister; and a religious group known as the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, which draws on wide support from evangelical Christians in the United States.
Freund began lobbying for the immigration of the Bnei Menashe to Israel while he was an adviser to Netanyahu during his previous premiership, in the late 1990s. Freund is believed to have used his connections in the current government to push the group’s case again.
Arik Puder, a spokesman for Shavei Israel, refused to comment, saying the organization had decided to keep “a low profile” on the decision to bring the Bnei Menashe to Israel. It is believed that Shavei Israel is concerned that the government may come under pressure to reverse its decision if there is too much public scrutiny.
According to Ynet, Israel is planning to avoid diplomatic complications with India by sending groups of Bnei Menashe to Nepal for a fast-track conversion.
The brand of Judaism the Bnei Menashe have been exposed to during their “Jewish education” in special camps in India was indicated by Rabbi Eliyahu Avichail, who has worked closely with the tribe since the early 1980s. He said he believed in the biblical prophecy of a coming apocalypse — one shared by “End of Days” evangelical Christians — in which “all the world is against Israel” in a battle to be decided in Jerusalem.
“I believe we are very close to the time when the Messiah will arrive and we must prepare by making sure that all the Jews are in the Land of Israel. There are more than six million among the lost tribes and they must be brought to Israel as a matter of urgency.”
Shimon Gangte, 33, who was helped by Avichail to come to Israel 13 years ago, is among 500 Bnei Menashe living in Kiryat Arba, an extremist settlement whose armed inhabitants regularly clash with Palestinians in neighboring Hebron. He said: “It is important that the 10 tribes are brought here because the time of the Messiah is near.”
Gangte added that the Bnei Menashe were attracted to the West Bank because life was cheaper in the settlements than in Israel and the settlers “give us help finding housing, jobs and schools for our children.”
Etkes of Yesh Din said “past experience” fed suspicions that the Bnei Menashe would be encouraged to settle deep in the West Bank, adding that the so-called settlement freeze, insisted on by the United States as a prelude to renewed peace talks, was having little effect on the ground.
“There is no freeze because it is being violated all the time. The settlers had lots of time to prepare for the freeze and spent the four to five months before it in a frenzy of construction activity.”
Shavei Israel lobbies for other groups of Jews to be brought to Israel, including communities in Spain, Portugal, Italy, South America, Russia, Poland and China.
Israeli peace groups were outraged in 2002 when Shavei Israel placed a group of 100 Peruvian immigrants, whose ancestors converted to Judaism 50 years ago, in the Gush Etzion settlement bloc in the West Bank.
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 (Pluto Press) and Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair (Zed Books). His website is www.jkcook.net.
A version of this article originally appeared in The National, published in Abu Dhabi.
Hamas denies targeting Israeli civilians during war in Gaza: The Guardian
New claims against Hamas come from Human Rights Watch, a group Israel has accused of bias against the Jewish State
A Hamas security facility in Gaza City burns after an Israeli strike. Photograph: Khalil Hamra/AP
A US-based human rights group today rejected a Hamas claim that it did not target civilians during last year’s war against Israel, putting new pressure on the Islamic militant group days ahead of a UN deadline to respond to war crimes allegations.
The new claims against Hamas could carry extra weight because they came from Human Rights Watch, a group Israel has accused of bias against the Jewish state.
The criticism drew fresh attention to Hamas actions in the three-week war, during which about 1,400 Palestinians – most of them civilians – and 13 Israelis were killed. Most international criticism, including that by Human Rights Watch, has been directed towards Israel.
Both Israel and Hamas have until5 February next Friday to respond to allegations in a UN report that they committed war crimes and possible crimes against humanity during the fighting.
The report, put together by former war crimes prosecutor Richard Goldstone, accused Israel of using disproportionate force and deliberately targeting civilians. It also accused Hamas of firing rockets indiscriminately towards communities in southern Israel.
The UN investigation called on each side to conduct independent investigations into the allegations. Neither has delivered a formal response and both have signalled they will not comply.
An Israeli official said Israel would deliver a letter to the UN tomorrow, explaining the scope of Israel’s internal investigations and declaring that Israel complied with international law.
Hamas said in an internal document obtained by the Associated Press that its rocket and mortar fire were directed solely at military targets and that any civilian casualties were accidental.
Palestinian militants fired about 800 rockets and mortar shells into Israel during the conflict, killing three civilians and wounding about 80. A frequent target was Sderot, next to the Gaza border, where there are no military bases. The rocket fire forced hundreds of thousands of Israelis to seek cover in bomb shelters.
Human Rights Watch said its criticism was a response to Hamas’s internal report. “Most of the rocket attacks on Israel hit civilian areas, which suggests that civilians were the target” and Hamas’s claim of aiming for military targets “is belied by the facts,” said Bill van Esveld, a researcher for Human Rights Watch. He said statements from Hamas leaders during the fighting made clear they intended to harm Israeli civilians.
He said Hamas also committed war crimes by launching rockets from populated areas, which endangered the local population in Gaza by raising the likelihood of Israeli retaliation. Hamas officials were not available for comment.
Arab MK slams Holocaust denial, wins praise from Jewish colleagues: Haaretz
Israeli Arab MK Ahmed Tibi (United Arab List – Ta’al), one of the most vocal critics of government policy in the Palestinian territories, evoked praise from his fellow lawmakers after delivering what Knesset speaker Reuven Rivlin called “one of the best speeches he has ever heard in the plenum” about the Holocaust.
During the parliament special session to mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day, Tibi said that the victims of the slaughter must be attentive to the suffering of others, a remark which hinted at the Palestinian casualties of the Israeli offensive in the Gaza Strip last year.
“There is no more natural an occurrence than for the Knesset and all its factions to unite and mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day,” Tibi said. “The forces of evil sent tens of millions of people – Jews, Soviets, Poles, Gypsies, and political rivals – to an awful death. This wasn?t a simple death, but an industry of death, which was borne of an ideology of hate, racism, and ethnic cleansing.”
Tibi was congratulated by government ministers, including Minister without Portfolio Yossi Peled, himself a Holocaust survivor. “As a survivor, I say to you that you moved me,” Peled told Tibi. “Thank you from the bottom of my heart, Ahmed.”
Other MKs and ministers said Tibi’s speech was “dazzling.” Conversely, Shas MK Nissim Ze’ev was evicted from the plenum after interrupting Tibi’s remarks, accusing the MK of comparing Holocaust victims to those injured in Gaza.
“An excess of power is very corrupting,” Tibi said. “Aggression, messianic nationalism, Fascism, and racism are the methods used to attract people on a massive scale in order to support a policy which in practice is intended to crush them, and to crush us all.”
“There is nothing more foolish or amoral than Holocaust denial,” Tibi said. “For what purpose? What end is served exactly by those who do so? We are here in the era of realizing rights for self-determination and freedom, not dismantling states or peoples.”
“People must stand courageously against instances of denial of the other, oppression of the other, denial of the Holocaust,” Tibi said. “I, Ahmed Tibi, a tall, proud Arab, is happy to be on the same side as prominent Arab intellectuals who came out forcefully against Holocaust denial in the Middle East and other places around the world.”
“We must stand and warn with a loud voice against all instances of discrimination, racism, and the politics of hate,” Tibi said. “Racism and hatred for anything that is different, including Arabs, have raised their heads here in Israeli society. Racism has long become ‘mainstream.'”
“Those who were victims of that horrible death, which is a byproduct of a malicious exercise of power – a destructive, absolute power ? must be attentive to the cries of the bereaved mother whose home was destroyed and whose children were buried underneath it; to the pain and cries of a doctor who lost his daughters; to the victims of the other, even if the other is his victim, the victim’s victim.
Prosecuting war crimes: the courts must be independent: OurKingdom online
Clive Baldwin, 28 January 2010
The British government claims to defend basic principles of justice for grave international crimes. So its reaction to arrest warrants issued by independent courts, acting on evidence showing an arguable case, should be straightforward: respect the courts’ rulings even if they cause political embarrassment.
However, the reactions of ministers to the arrest warrant issued, and then withdrawn, by Westminster magistrate’s court against Tzipi Livni, the former Foreign Minister of Israel, have been neither straightforward nor edifying. Most embarrassing of all, Patricia Scotland, the Attorney General, gave a speech in Jerusalem on 5 January declaring that the government was “determined that Israel’s leaders should always be able to travel freely to the UK.” Her statement leaves the impression that no matter what crimes may have been committed, no matter what British courts may say, ministers will find a way to bypass justice if it suits them. And it is hardly likely that the government will limit its infringements of the rule of law to the case of Israel.
In response to criticism of the warrant against Livni, the government is reportedly considering increasing the Attorney General’s power to intervene in cases, giving her the power to approve an arrest warrant issued by a court on the basis of an application by a private party. The crossbench peer and QC David Pannick has called this the “simple” solution, to avoid embarrassing arrest warrants against Israelis or Americans that are unlikely to result in prosecutions, given that the Attorney General already has the power to block the prosecutions themselves.
But these proposals ignore that the power of the Attorney General, a government minister, to intervene in cases is an anomaly in an independent justice system. After a decade of change to comply with European human rights principles, English justice has been dragged into the 21st century, with most ministers losing their power to directly interfere in cases. The Lord Chancellor no longer sits as head of the judiciary and there is a Supreme Court outside the House of Lords. Successive Home Secretaries have been forced, reluctantly, to surrender their powers to intervene on sentencing in individual cases.
The Attorney General is the only remaining minister who can still intervene in individual cases. Soon after taking over as Prime Minister in 2007 Gordon Brown said that the “role of Attorney General which combines legal and ministerial functions needs to change.” He was right: a minister should not have the power to stop prosecutions, especially when they are embarrassing to the government or their allies (as with the Serious Fraud Office investigation into charges of corruption involving Saudi Arabia and BAE). Council of Europe member states, including the UK, agreed a decade ago that the power of governments to give instructions not to prosecute in a specific case “should, in principle, be prohibited”.
Patricia Scotland was supposedly appointed as a reforming Attorney General. Unfortunately no serious reform of the office has taken place; the Attorney General remains a government minister with the power to halt any prosecution of a large number of offences. Some of these offences, such as advertising cancer treatments or failing to erect fencing around a mine, seem merely anachronistic. But crucially the Attorney General retains the power to approve all prosecutions for the key international crimes: torture, crimes against humanity, genocide and war crimes.
If the purpose is to protect the public interest, there is no need to have the Attorney General interfere in cases. Decisions on sensitive prosecutions are made daily by the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), who is required to take such decisions both on the basis of the likelihood of conviction (i.e. the evidence) and on the public interest. That is how it should be: an independent prosecutor weighing up the need for prosecution, bearing in mind that where there is evidence of the most serious crimes having taken place, the public interest in prosecution is high. Once the DPP has decided to prosecute, the additional veto granted to the Attorney General, a political figure, adds nothing more than a power to stop prosecutions that are embarrassing to the government. This applies as much for prosecutions of British nationals as of foreign citizens.
Last year, Human Rights Watch revealed evidence of the complicity of British agents in torture by the Pakistani intelligence services. This could and should be investigated as a crime. Any eventual prosecutions could well reveal severe incompetence, at the very least, of government in allowing such complicity to take place. Yet, even if the evidence were overwhelming, prosecutions would require the consent of the Attorney General, a member of the very government that risks political embarrassment from a prosecution.
Britain is in fact the only country in western Europe that permits such naked political interference in the prosecution of international crimes. The solution is not to extend the Attorney General’s power, giving the government the right to meddle in the rulings of the courts themselves. It is to remove the Attorney General’s power to interfere altogether, and allow the independent prosecutors and courts to decide, on the basis of the evidence and an impartial view of the public interest, who should be prosecuted for the most serious crimes, whatever their nationality and no matter how embarrassing for the government of the day.