US, Israeli leaders must be tried at International Criminal Court: Chavez

It is of course a just and noble idea. However the criminals are much more powerful than the police.
I am glad there is an least one person calling for murderers to be tried

Chavez says so?

I know from personal involvement that the devastating invasion of Gaza by Israel could easily have been avoided.

This quote is from Jimmy Carter. If it is true then then Israeli authorities are guilty of 3 war crimes.

1) a war of aggression
2) collective punishments
3) Bombing civilian areas.

There may be many other charges. Of course they will not come to trial. Two pariah states, the U.S. and Israel will not sign any treaty allowing justice. The Americans again will veto any UN action. Another blow for the cause of tyranny by uncle Sam.
The scale of the barbarity being enacted is a shame to all of us. I am ashamed the British Government has done nothing.

What? I thought the British brought the original displaced persons to Israel, rather than have them in London? You know, the old NIMBY (Not In My BackYard).

Study History. The first controls on immigration started in 1933. In America. Nicely timed to prevent Jews entering the country. Find out how many were sent back to their deaths in Germany. Britain had a large Jewish immigrant population. Jews were welcomed in Britain from the time of Oliver Cromwell. Ironically it was catholics the British wanted to persecute.

The end of no limit immigration from Europe was in 1924, I believe. The fact that the U.S. did not want Jews from Germany in the 1930's, or en masse after the war, does not negate the fact that it was the British that put the displace persons in London in the Holy Land.

You say Jews were welcomed in Britain from the time of Oliver Cromwell. Welcomed as Fagin, in Dickens' Oliver Twist? Dickens being a social commentator, wanting children to not be left as waifs, used the Jewish Fagin as the good reason to care for one's children, I believe - the evil Jew could get his hands on them. Some invitation you speak of.

welcome is relative: they weren't systemically persecuted. They had freedom to observe their religious beliefs. We have had a Jewish Prime Minister, Disraeli. Jews were not barred from trade guilds. Any Jewish presidents? Remember at the time was America was practising slavery; and genocide over the Indians. i don't believe there is any suggestion that the British forced Jews to go to Israel. The Battle of Cable Street, was of londoners uniting as a whole to support the Jews against Moseleys blackshirts, and oppose fascism.
Back to the present: A UN resolution passed. 14-0. Only country to not vote for a cease fire? Have a wild guess which pariah state that was.
I think there is hope. America has a new president who may try to turn away from the failed policies of the past. Fingers crossed

Yeh, yeh, the Brits have a funny way of accepting Jews more than others. But let us be honest. Like any good Gentile from any country, how much do they trust Jews? You know, keep an eye on them. That is called Judeophobia. It may have replaced anti-Semitism as the feeling of choice towards Jews amongst many western nations?

Regardless, not all Jews have the stomach for living one's life in an obvious Gentile world. The illusion in Israel, I believe, for the average working Jew is that he/she can ignore the Gentile world, and almost pretend the whole world is Jewish, from his or her perspective (when the postman, sanitation man, construction worker, etc., etc., is Jewish).

Plus, when one's grandparents where either second class citizens in an Arab country, or survivors of WWII, the choice of living one's life as an assimilated Jew in a western country may not be personally acceptable. Assuming that Jews are not a world commodity, they do need a place to live, and the Brits did accept that place to be Israel.

Jews are not special people either. They are simply people. It was wrong to steal others lands to give a religious group a country.



Are you telling us that they are racist?

Events may may overtaking us. Two events have been noted which may be war crimes. The UN has called for an enquiry with a view to having trials.
There have been many eye witnesses to an event happening. Around 100 palestinians were herded into a building. This building was shelled. Around 30 deaths. It would be a matter of gathering enough evidence.
A second episode was where ambulances were stopped from entering an area for 4 days. This happened under the eyes of UN observers

Your response above is ridiculous. Jews in Israel are no more racist than Spanish in Spain, French in France, Italians in Italy, Germans in Germany, etc., etc. You see everyone else gets to choose to live in a world of their own kind, except the Jews. That is what the Brits and the UN were trying to rectify in 1948.

Not everyone has a cosmopolitan bent. It has nothing to do with racism. If one travels throughout the U.S., one sees small towns that tended to be settled by one dominant group. So, in the South there are towns that tend to be of Anglo-Saxon descent and are all Protestant. In the Mid-West there are towns that tend to be settled by people of German descent of the same religions as Germany has today (Lutheran or Catholic). The world is not cosmopolitan, and my belief is that the least that the world can do, for two-thousand years of being comfortable with persecuting Jews, is allow those Jews that choose to live sans Gentiles to have a place (as small as NJ actually).

I guess that was expecting too much from the world, based on the comfort level of the world, during the years of gratuitous rockets from Gaza, and the enormous condemnation when Israel attempts to end the rockets by dealing with an enemy that hides amongst civilians.

No one argues that racism is right> I can accept that racism happens, but once it becomes state policy if is wrong: that way lies Nazism.
Basically your idea is flawed. America is a land mostly made up of immigrants. To say communities moved to the mid West but wont accept immigrants is patently stupid. I have no trouble with a Jewish homeland. However you can't just steal land. If someone knocked on your door and said you had to leave because they had a message from God saying the house was theirs you'd fight it.
That is what the palestinians are doing.
Surely Gipsies should have a homeland too: they have been persecuted for as long. Possibly a homosexual homeland too? another persecuted group.
Basically it would be a lot easier if people had tolerance. I'm not saying they should be friends: just not to kill each other, and to have some kind of equality under law.
Incidently, the one group of people who didn't persecute the Jews were the Palestinians.

The U.S., aside from having big urban centers, also is a country of small towns onnected by highways and roads. To live in these towns, one has to buy land, or buy a house that is "on sale." If land or a house is not sold to someone, then they must live elsewhere. Yes, there are Jews in small town America. They tend to be adding to the local economy or society, by either owning a store, or being a professional (e.g., doctor/dentist). Also, small towns do not have the large Catholic communities that are today part of the surburban population around the large urban centers (with its minority population).

So, my point is that Protestant America may have more individuals living in small town America than other groups. Similarly, there are Jews that would like the same ability to live in an ethnically cloistered environment.

Which is fine: provided they buy the land: not steal it: basically you can't have a country run along racial lines: it doesn't work.

Turley: Obama 'owns' Bush 'war crimes' if he looks the other way by David Edwards and Muriel Kane
Published: Tuesday January 13, 2009

President George W. Bush's offhand acknowledgement in an interview Sunday with Fox's Brit Hume that he personally authorized the waterboarding of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed may create thorny legal and moral problems for incoming President Barack Obama.

Constitutional law professor Jonathan Turley told MSNBC's Keith Olbermann on Monday, "We now have President Bush speaking quite candidly that he was in the loop, we have Dick Cheney who almost bragged about it. The question for Barack Obama is whether he wants to own part of this by looking the other way."

Obama told ABC's George Stephanopoulos on Sunday, "We have not made final decisions, but my instinct is for us to focus on how do we make sure that moving forward we are doing the right thing. That doesn't mean that if somebody has blatantly broken the law, that they are above the law. But my orientation's going to be to move forward."

"If waterboarding is torture -- and Barack Obama has said that it is torture," Turley emphasized, "and torture is a war crime, then the president has committed a war crime if he did order waterboarding. You have to do some heavy lifting to avoid the simplicity of that logic."

Turley noted that individual CIA officers who carried out torture may be able to invoke the so-called "Gestapo defense" -- that they only followed orders they were assured were legal -- but that defense does not hold for those who gave the orders.

"It only works if you can reasonably rely on the advice, and it generally does not protect people like Bush," Turley explained. "You really can't go out and get radical or extreme lawyers, like John Yoo and Viet Dinh, and get them to enable you to do things that you know is a war crime."

"There's no real question that crimes were committed here by {Obama's] predecessor," concluded Turley, "and he can either begin his administration as a man of principle, and allow the law to take us wherever it may lead, or he will inherit the same type of moral relativism that really corrupted the previous administration. I'm going to say a silent prayer for principle."

This video is from MSNBC's Countdown, broadcast Jan. 12, 2009.
http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Turley_Obama_will_own_Bush_war_0113.html

Waterboarding is better known as tortura de agua. It was invented by the Spanish inquisition> To claim it isn't torture is stupid. Put it this way: would you like to be interrogated this way. Without access to a lawyer. Or knowing what charges you face.
At least at Salem the people knew they were being tried for witchcraft. Basically any evidence is now inadmissable in anything that would remotely approach a fair trial.
There obviously is no evidence as they haven't been sent for trial. The defence of only obeying orders doesnt hold: if you are asked to commit a war crime you have a duty to refuse.