Continuing Zionist refusal to seriously participate in peace negotiations has condemned Palestinian Refugees from the aftermath of the 1967 war and occupation of the West Bank and Gaza to live in the refugee camp pictured in this link. http://picasaweb.google.com/ayman.qauder/TheLifeOfThePalestinianCamp#
forty two years on. Although Israel has left Gaza, the Gazan population live in a state of siege, controlled by Israel. The blockade of Gaza must stop to permit the Palestinians to receive aid in their rebuilding since the "Cast Lead" bombardment and obtain access to Health and Medical Services

next wrote: …they demonstrate how little Israel has learned from the history of the jews.

Dear Next,

What Israel has learned is the same thing other countries and groups have learned.

South Africans suffered terrible humiliation during the Boer War. Many died in the concentration camps the British set up to hold the wives and children of the Boers. When Afrikaaners took power they maintained the horrible apartheid regime.

Germany was dominated for France for years. The French regarded the Germans as barbaric. Germany was the battleground for the wars of the Reformation which went back and forth over its soil. When Germany became united in the nineteenth century. Payback time. Wars with Denmark, Austria and France, After a setback in WW1 Hitler.

The Romans persecuted the early Christians. "The Dark Ages" dated from 380 to about the 17th and 18th centuries. The beginning was on 27 February 380 when Theodosius declared "Catholic Christianity" the only legitimate imperial religion. The spirit of enquiry that existed in the classical world was criminalised at that point. In 384 Theodosius prohibited haruspicy, the inspection of the entrails of sacrificed animals, on pain of death, and unlike earlier anti-pagan prohibitions, he made non-enforcement of the law, by Magistrates, into a crime itself. Priscillian was the first person in the history of Christianity to be executed for heresy in 385.

Then followed a period of great violence as Christianity imposed its religion on most of Europe. The Crusades, the conversion of Europe by violence, the Wars of the Reformation, the Inquisition, justifying the despoiling of the Americas because the Treaty of Tordesillas divided the new discoveries between the Spanish and the Portuguese with the injunction to spread their faith, the Holocaust partially inspired by the centuries of Christian hatred and other examples of Christian misbehaviour show the lesson Christianity learned from the oppression of early history.

An abused child often grows up to be an abusing parent.

Why should Jews be different?

Sharene,

This is one of those pieces that is rightfully referred to as blatant PR pap.
No where did you engage in the substance of the the report. To be honest, I would have been surprised if you had.

Abominable behaviour is that, regardless of the emotional/religious justification.

Likewise the reality of invasion and unnecessary deaths is never the less true regardless the the countries who sanction criticism in The UN. Violent deaths are so and no amount of obfuscation will change that. Both sides need to be held accountable.

It is disingenuous for the Israel to claim victim status in this conflict.
NEITHER side is immune from justifiable criticism.

It is also fallacious, to claim the moral high ground by sole virtue of the US's obscenely blatant self interest support. Without which, Israel would have been justifiably sanctioned several times over for it's outrageous behaviour.

I have no doubt that the Jewish chauvinists will call me antisemetic in an attempt to silence a voice that doesn't accept the selectivity and dubiousness of the unacceptable.

I do accept the pragmatic reality of Israel's existence but not the validity of its origins, justification (both of which are largely moot) or its current myopic, belligerent, expansionist, government dominated as it is by a strategic extremist minority.

Having said that neither do I accept that the 3rd party proxy forces that are continuing the war for their own purposes are any less contemptible.

Nor do I accept the Palestinian right to terrorism. Although resistance to Israel's hegemonic intentions 'a death by a thousand cuts' is in one sense, understandable.

Just in case your Google earth is malfunctioning this is Australia, not the middle east.
We as a nation can ill afford is to be pro Israel's proxy wars, that might endanger or make us a target. Having a lapsed Jew as a daughter, I accept homeland emotional affiliations but Australia is not the appropriate place to fight a third country's war of expansion.

A message to both sides either argue the point objective with the intention to solve it or bugger off.

"Israel is a flower in a region of hopeless waste"-Oh my God!

The interesting about those who write and comment on such articles is seeing who their allies are on the international stage.

For those who condemn the "Zionist" enterprise and Israel, they side with Russia, China, Bangladesh, Cuba, Ghana, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Senegal and Zambia - at least according to those who voted for it.

For those who support Israel or reject a condemnation in this context, they are allied with The United States, Britain, France, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Slovakia, Ukraine and Australia.

If I had to put my values on Human rights with either of these two groups, I must choose the second. I am baffled how other apparently educated Ozzies align themselves and even defend the first.

There you go Brian Kollin, expressing yourself in typical Zionist logic. At least credit Australians with the capacity to not only see thru Zionist PR pap but the ability to make their own reasoned judgements on the issue of War Crimes. Not all Australians agree with the Australian Government's alignment with the United States uncritical support for the actions of Israel's excesses nor their history of military involvement in other countries in order to change regimes.