As RobP pointed out, war crimes tribunals follow the logic of nation states. War crimes are committed by individuals acting as representatives of a nation state. This is a problem for Israel/Gaza issues.

Israel is a democratic nation state, recognised as such, with all the institutional governance setups including official defence forces and individuals in charge of those who it's possible to prosecute. Gaza has no such setup, putting debates about why to one side.

If you want to treat both sides as equal contenders for war crimes you'd first have to recognise the territory as a nation state with a system of government and officials who could be prosecuted. But if you did that, Israel would have more than war crimes to deal with.

This is one of the core problems. The state of Israel has the right/responsibility to protect the people and territory of Israel because it is a nation state. There is no recognised state with the same right/responsibility for the Palestinian people and territories.

To the extent that Gaza doesn't recognise Israel's right to exist, nor does Israel recognise Gaza's right to exist

Dear Foxy.. it is you who need to read my posts.

I demonstrated clearly from the article you linked us to...that your whole approach was biased....why?

BECAUSE....the article only referred to crimes by ISRAEL...'that's why.

Secondly.. your thread mentions only "GAZA".... you don't have to mention any side.... it is written in huge invisible ink in the cyber sky.

If your motivation was 'even handed justice' you would have called it 'War Crimes in the Middle East....HAMAS and Israel'

You would not have limited it to just 'GAZA' and linked us to an article which you describe as 'interesting'.. but which condemns the Israelis up front.

BALANCE. If you were interested in that.. you could have included THIS

2007
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/870584.html
The Human Rights Watch organization Wednesday condemned Hamas and Fatah for committing "serious violations of international humanitarian law, in some cases amounting to war crimes" in violence in Gaza in recent days.

You could have given an example of what is claimed against BOTH sides.. so we would see that you are not (by silence) just looking for some condemnation of Israel.

Because..if you had placed the above report into the mix.. we then have a 'moral context' to understand Israel's actions.

The trouble with Western bleeding hearts and UN 'obervers' and "Human Rights" orgs is that it's not THEIR children being blown to bits at the local Sderot KINDERGARTEN by HAMAS rockets.

HAMAS blame the 'blockade' and Israel points out that no genocidal/worse than Nazism regime, whether democratically elected or otherwise will get a SCRAP of support or acceptance by those who know only too well what such things mean.

Rocketing Kindergartens in Israel is NOT the answer to the problem...
RENUNCIATION OF A GENOCIDAL CHARTER "is".

BOAZ_David,

If you read my initial post - it said that
the issue of war crimes in Gaza has been
raised by senior UN officials, Human Rights
groups and World News Media... who want an
independent inquiry - I asked should it proceed?

End of story.

You just don't get it.

And, that's your problem, not mine.

Boazy,

Would you be willing to open the history books and consider War Crime accusations on both sides of ANY conflict - WW1, WW2, Korea, Vietnam, Aghanistan, Iraq?

There were atrocities carried out by both sides.

White Phosphorus used indiscriminantly against civilians trying to escape and deliberately targetting declared UN Safe-Havens says a lot more than words in a "Genocidal Charter".

Boazycrap - you can easily check whether you're banned or not. Just click on the Logout/in button on the left of your screen, then enter your OLO ID and password. If you've been banned, you'll get a message saying "This account has been suspended" or some such. It's been a while for me, but as I recall it's pretty obvious.

If you're aware that you've been suspended for exceeding the extreme latitude that OLO provides you to spread hatred and loathing, might I suggest that you conform with OLO's rules?

Otherwise, you could always take your bile, hatred and godbothering to some other forum, no?

. The trouble with Western bleeding hearts and UN 'obervers' and "Human Rights" orgs is that it's not THEIR children being blown to bits at the local Sderot KINDERGARTEN by HAMAS rockets.

In the interests of 'balance', nor are the hundreds of Gazan children blown up in UN SCHOOLS and their OWN HOMES by ISRAELI rockets THEIR children.

This YELLING at people business feels ODD.

Foxy, you should try incorporating some YELLING into your white space aesthetic. It does strange THINGS to the process OF communication.