RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY CON COUGHLIN IN THE DAILY TELEGRAPH
Well, if the leaders of Israel are not war criminals, just who in the world qualifies?
Murdering 400 children in Gaza? Deliberately targeting UN observers bravely doing their job in Lebanon? Laying a blanket of nightmarish, barbaric cluster bombs across Southern Lebanon? And refusing to cooperate in removing them?
Keeping a million and half souls in Gaza under siege, even after killing 1,400 of them? Institutionalizing slow-motion ethnic-cleansing in Jerusalem and the West Bank? Stealing homes and farms from families who have lived there for centuries to hand over to immigrants from London or New York?
Over forty years of humiliation and abuse for the people of the territories occupied in 1967, captured in a war which Israel is known to have engineered to this very purpose? Many thousands held in prison with no proper legal procedures? Building a new Berlin Wall and building it on the property of others?
Arresting the members of a cleanly elected government – far more so than was the case for Mr. Bush - because you disagree with their party? Refusing even to talk to those you disagree with?
Assassinating scores of individuals with no charges or trial or legal procedure, an exact copy of the bloody activity of juntas in South America who made people disappear?
The only reason Israel’s leaders are not all severely dealt with by the Western world is the immense, smothering influence of the United States whose foreign policy in many parts is virtually written in Israel.
A United States, by the way, whose last president was the world's reigning living war criminal with a million dead souls to his credit.
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Footnote on the USS Liberty attacked by Israel in the 1967 war. Previous comments have made some ridiculous claims about bloody event.
The ship was extremely well marked. The lead pilot of the Israeli attack force made low passes over the ship before the attack, exchanging waves with sailors on deck.
Then, suddenly, a savage two-hour assault with every weapon the Israeli planes had - guns, bombs, and torpedoes. The lame claim made afterward: it was a mistake.
Of course, Israel was trying to get the US into the war. It would have blamed Egypt for the attack.
There is also speculation that Israel was destroying the recorded evidence – the ship was a sophisticated spy craft - of its atrocities in the Sinai where Israelis murdered hundreds of Egyptian troops who had surrendered rather than be burdened with them in advancing.
