Francis A. Boyle
Law Building
504 E. Pennsylvania Ave.
Champaign, Illinois 61820
217-333-7954 (voice)
217-244-1478 (fax)
(personal comments only)
-----Original Message-----
From: Boyle, Francis
Sent: Tuesday, May 24, 2011 10:34 AM
To: aalsmin-l
Subject: Prof. Francis Boyle: Israel Is Committing Genocide: Gaza
-----Original Message-----
From: Boyle, Francis
Sent: Tuesday, May 24, 2011 10:31 AM
To: Boyle, Francis
Subject: Prof. Francis Boyle: Israel Is Committing Genocide: Gaza
http://www.politicaltheatrics.net/2010/02/prof-francis-boyle-israel-is-c
ommitting-genocide/
"What we're seeing in Gaza now, is pretty much slow-motion genocide
against the 1.5 million Palestinians who live in Gaza.... If you read
the 1948 Genocide Convention, it clearly says that one instance of
genocide is the deliberate infliction of conditions of life calculated
to bring about the physical destruction of a people in whole or in
part," stated Francis A. Boyle, professor of International Law at the
University of Illinois in Champaign. "And that's exactly what has been
done to Gaza, since the imposition of the blockade by Israel; then the
massacre of 1,400 Palestinians, two-thirds of whom were civilians, in
Operation Cast Lead. And that also raises the element in the Genocide
Convention, of murder, torture, and things of that nature."
Boyle spoke to {EIR} on Jan. 15, 2010, giving his assessment of Gaza,
one year after the Israeli attacks. He stressed that he was speaking
only for himself.
While the Israelis stopped the artillery bombardment and air strikes
just before the inauguration of President Barack Obama in 2009, the
deaths of Palestinians continue-from lack of medicines, infrastructure,
clean water, and everything else that the world community-as shown in
emergency aid to Haiti-{knows} is necessary to sustain human life.
But no international action has been taken to stop genocide in
Gaza-despite the finding by the UN's Goldstone Report that Israel
committed war crimes in the wanton destruction of civilian
infrastructure, and in the killing of civilians, and despite the Jan.
21, 2010 letter by more than 50 members of the U.S. Congress to
President Obama that due to "the unabated suffering of Gazan civilians,"
he must press to end the Israeli blockade.
Similarly, according to Turkish Prof. Bulent Aras, there is almost no
hope for a peace agreement, or for ending the growing isolation of
Israel from the international community, unless Gaza is opened and
reconstruction begins. Aras was speaking on a Jan. 14 conference call,
sponsored by the Turkish SETA and New America Foundations in Washington,
D.C. He was addressing the recent tensions between Israel and Turkey
after the Israeli Foreign Ministry insulted the Turkish ambassador, and
on the collapse of the Turkish-mediated Israel/Syria negotiations, which
ended with the Israeli attacks on Gaza.
According to Boyle, the question of the Gaza opening must be immediately
taken up by the Obama Administration. "We need all the openings to Gaza,
the crossings from Egypt and Israel, opened immediately. {Massive}
provision of humanitarian assistance, medical supplies to Gaza-exactly
what Obama's doing today, with respect to Haiti-I support that! But why
aren't they doing it to Gaza? You have 1.5 million people over there.
"Unless this step is undertaken, certainly on Gaza, relieving the people
of Gaza with massive humanitarian relief supplies, I really think we're
going to see a dog-and-pony show," being run by the Obama White House,
and the sending of Sen. George Mitchell to the region.
So far, what the U.S. has done is, "once again, provid[ed] diplomatic
cover for Israel to stall and delay its objectives, and meanwhile, they
continue to steal Palestinian lands, destroy their orchards, destroy
their olive fields, and build more settlements. This has been going on,
right from the beginning of the Middle East peace negotiations in 1991,
when I was legal advisor to the Palestinians and the Syrians at that
time."
But, "miracles can always happen: Look at the darkest days of the
apartheid regime in South Africa, and all of that collapsed," said
Boyle. "Well, here we have another apartheid regime, Israel. It's
apartheid to its core, it always has been. This whole situation could
turn around and collapse very quickly-I just don't know. But I'll hang
in there, certainly, with the Palestinians."
And recent events in the field of international law lead Boyle to say
that, as in the case of Chilean fascist Pinochet, law may catch up with
Israeli criminals.
- No Immunity Under Nuremberg Codes -
Few international figures can speak in as much detail about the
decades-long fight against Israeli war crimes, and the political blocks
to prosecuting them, than Professor Boyle, who has led successful
campaigns at the United Nations to bring war criminals-for example,
those who committed crimes against the citizens of Bosnia-Herzogovina in
the 1990s Balkan War-before an international tribunal.
Even before "Operation Cast Lead," Boyle had proposed that the UN
General Assembly establish an International Criminal Tribunal for Israel
(ICTI) as a "subsidiary organ" under UN Charter Article 22. Boyle's
proposal has been endorsed by Malaysia and Iran, and supported in
General Assembly debates by some dozen Arab and Muslim nations.
His work on bringing Israelis to justice for war crimes goes back much
further-to the 1982 massacres at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in
Lebanon, conducted under the watch of top Israeli officials like Gen.
Ariel Sharon and Gen. Amos Yaron.
Boyle told {EIR}, "I think that I was probably the first lawyer ever to
file a lawsuit against a major Israeli war criminal-that was back in
about 1986, when I represented several women who were next of kin of the
victims of the massacre of Sabra and Shatila, and I sued General Yaron,
whose forces were occupying the Sabra and Shatila camps, and the whole
massacre took place under his direction and control."@s1
"I sued him ... about 1986. Eventually I lost the lawsuit, when the
Reagan Administration entered the lawsuit through the State Department,
and claimed that Yaron, since he was being admitted to the country and
accredited as Israel's military attache@aa to Washington-which we tried
to stop, and indeed, we held up for quite some time-had diplomatic
privileges and immunities, could not be sued."
"I dealt with that issue, saying that under the Nuremberg principles,
there are no privileges and immunities in the commission of war crimes
and crimes against humanity." But the court decided that because Yaron
got a "formal certification" by the Reagan Administration, "this was a
political question and the Court could not do anything to the contrary."
But that was not the end of it. Since then, he has followed "all the
lawsuits against Israeli war criminals" internationally, "and they've
really taken off, and they will take off" further. In the U.S. he says,
"because of the pretty much Zionist control and domination of the
American judiciary, none of these lawsuits have gotten anywhere," he
says, but "abroad, they are making progress.... "I advise the Belgian
lawyers. They filed another lawsuit, 20 years later [in 2002], against
Yaron, Sharon, Elie Hobeika, and [Gen. Rafael] Eitan for the massacre at
Sabra and Shatila," which was a criminal case. Boyle explained that the
2002 case came to an end {only after the Belgian law was changed by the
Parliament under pressure}-because someone else had sued U.S. Defense
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld under the same law. Rumsfeld threatened
Belgium and NATO unless that law was rescinded, and Parliament killed
it.
"But, at this point, it doesn't matter: The genie is out of the bottle.
Twenty-five years ago, or so, when I filed that lawsuit [over Sabra and
Shatila], there weren't too many lawyers qualified to do that work.
Today, with the expansion of the human rights community, you have all
sorts of lawyers qualified to do that work, and they're doing it." Asked
about recent arrest warrants issued in Britain against Israeli
officials, Boyle exclaimed, "That's starting now! They're going after
them in Britain; they're going after them in Belgium.... "So, I think,
eventually, we're going to get one of these people, just like the human
rights lawyers in Britain got General Pinochet. Indeed, now we know,
that before Israeli government officials travel abroad, they have to get
legal advice as to where they can travel-which is good. Unfortunately,
they can still pretty much freely travel here to the United States! And
that's all they really care about.
"But they're really in a sort of pariah status now, in many other
countries, especially in Europe. And that will continue, for sure."
- Open Gaza Now; End Apartheid -
Nearly 30 years after Boyle's first lawsuit, U.S. policy still gives
Israel impunity for war crimes, beginning with Gaza.
"In the Obama Administration, they are continuing to aid and abet the
genocidal Israeli policies against the 1.5 million Palestinians in
Gaza," Boyle told {EIR}. Just recently, the U.S. "pressured the
Egyptians to build a steel wall on the border of Gaza, to cut off Gaza,
to stop the tunnels that were bringing food, relief supplies, medicines,
and everything else to the people," he revealed. And it was done with
the assistance of U.S. Army engineers. This "makes a mockery of the
claim by the Obama Administration and the alleged efforts by Senator
Mitchell, to reconvene the Middle East peace negotiations," he said. And
unless Mitchell and the Obama Administration are prepared to do
something-immediately-to stop the war crimes in Gaza, then the mission
will be just another "dog-and-pony show."
"When President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton called for
Netanyahu to freeze the settlements, and Mitchell did, too, Netanyahu
stood up to them and forced them to back down.
"So-I'm not questioning Senator Mitchell's good faith and intentions and
experience-but if Netanyahu has already successfully stood him down on
the settlements, how is he going to get Netanyahu to do anything?
Secondly, how is he possibly going to engage in any type of good faith
negotiations between Israel and Palestine, brokering them, when
he-Senator Mitchell-Obama, and Clinton, are working with the Israelis
and the Egyptians, to starve 1.5 million Palestinians? How can this be
done?"
According to Boyle, Obama had already decided on the track of "toeing
the line" for Israel during the 2008 campaign, when in response to
Republican John McCain's claim that he was "soft" on supporting Israel,
Obama promised Jewish voters in Florida that he would appoint Rahm
Emanuel as his chief of staff. "Now, Emanuel is an agent of the AIPAC
[American Israel Public Affairs Committee], which, in turn, is an agent
of the Israeli government.... [David] Axelrod is a Zionist; Dennis Ross
is now at the White House, he's a Zionist.... [Most of] the cast of
characters there in the White House ... are Zionists," Boyle said.
"Fortunately, Senator Mitchell, in charge of these negotiations, is not.
But I really don't know how much freedom Senator Mitchell has to do
anything under these circumstances."
- The Two-State Solution -
There are international actions in the works to use every possible
avenue to stop the war crimes against the Palestinians, and Boyle is
involved in many of them.
"Right after Operation Cast Lead ended, I did advise Mahmoud Abbas, the
Palestinian President," says Boyle, "to send in a declaration, under
Article 12, paragraph 3, of the Rome Statute for the International
[Criminal] Court, accepting the jurisdiction of the Court, and
requesting prosecution of the Israelis, high-level Israeli officials,
for what they did to the people of Gaza. And President Abbas did do
this....
"Just recently the ICC prosecutor, [Luis] Moreno-Ocampo, did make a
public statement to the effect that he is investigating this, for two
reasons: 1) to determine, do the Palestinians have sufficient government
and state capacity to make this declaration; and then, 2) were war
crimes and crimes against humanity committed by Israel against the
Palestinians part of Operation Cast Lead?
"That statement by Moreno-Ocampo was [issued] before the Goldstone
Report came out, and Goldstone determined that, in fact, Israel had
committed war crimes and crimes against the Palestinians.... "Right now,
as we speak, the Council of Foreign Ministers of the League of Arab
States has proposed a resolution to be submitted to the Security Council
for Palestine to be admitted as a UN member-state, with the 1967
boundaries. "Admission to the UN is done by the General Assembly, but it
must be upon recommendation by the Security Council. The problem there,
is, of course, it could be subject to a veto by the Obama
Administration. I don't know what position they are going to take on
this: I would hope they are going to abstain. Certainly, the votes for
the admission of Palestine to the United Nations are there.
"Right now, today, the State of Palestine is recognized bilaterally {de
jure} by about 126 states. It has all the rights of a UN member-state,
except the right to vote; it has state membership in the League of Arab
States, the Islamic Council Organization [ICO], and then, also, in the
advisory proceedings by the World Court on Israel's [Separation] Wall,
the State of Palestine was invited to participate in a state capacity.
"So, that is another initiative. Now, the problem is, Israel is
claiming, fatuously, that somehow, this is going to interfere with the
peace process. Well, first, right now, there is no peace process. But,
second, this is ridiculous, because if Palestine is admitted to the
United Nations with the 1967 boundaries, we will have two states at the
UN: We will have Israel and we will have Palestine, and we will have the
[UN Resolution] 242 boundaries. Even Netanyahu has recently stated that
he is favor of two states, {mirabile dictu}! Obama has stated he's in
favor of two states. Even Bush said he was in favor of two states!
"This would be-as I saw it originally in my advice to President Abbas-a
way to produce two states, for two people, living in peace and both
bound by the requirements of the United Nations Charter for the peaceful
resolution of international disputes, that would overcome the fact that
there are no Middle East peace negotiations going on right now. So,
those are three initiatives, I want to have taken myself." Boyle has a
fourth initiative, which is gathering international steam-disinvestment.
"Back in 2000, I did call for the establishment of the Israeli
disinvestment campaign, and have worked quite hard to push that. That's
a grassroots movement. Certainly in my lifetime, which goes back to
civil rights for African-Americans, the only progressive change we have
ever seen in this country is by a grassroots movement by the common,
ordinary, everyday people of America. And, as of 2000, the Palestinians
did not have a grassroots movement in their support, so I decided to set
one off, and it's doing quite well. Indeed, it's take off worldwide."
- Dershowitz Accused of War Crimes - On one issue-the Jewish settlements
in the occupied lands-Israel has {already} been found, by an
international court, to be in violation of international law. This has
caused a firestorm of reaction from Israel, and its apologists, like
Harvard's Alan Dershowitz. But, Boyle and a number of other American
human rights advocates have taken Dershowitz on, and are ready to do it
again.
The settlements are "clearly illegal and criminal," said Boyle. "All the
settlements, as the World Court ruled in the advisory opinion on the
[Separation] Wall, all these settlements violate the Fourth Geneva
Convention, and a violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention is a war
crime. All these so-called settlers are committing war crimes, except
the children, who are obviously not old enough to formulate a criminal
intent.
"Indeed, Alan Dershowitz began attacking the World Court for this ruling
and attacking their credibility, and this, that, and the other.
"Well, Dershowitz is not a trained international lawyer; he's not a
trained human rights lawyer. I debated him once, and he sort of
gratuitously conceded that I was the expert on these subjects. "But in
any event, what Dershowitz was not aware of, was that in the advisory
committee proceedings, the American judge, Thomas Buergenthal, {who is a
Holocaust survivor, himself}, joined the ruling-he dissented against a
lot of other things by the World Court [International Court of
Justice]-but Judge Buergenthal ruled that the settlements violate the
Fourth Geneva Convention. And to Judge Buergenthal's credit-I've known
him for many years; I have a lot of respect and admiration for him-he
made this ruling.
"So, in other words, Dershowitz was attacking the integrity of a
Holocaust survivor. But of course, that doesn't surprise me: He attacked
[Prof.] Norman Finkelstein's mother; he also attacked Prof. Israel
Shahak, one of the leaders of the peace movement in Israel, himself a
Holocaust survivor, unfortunately, no longer with us, but a great man.
"I've dealt with [Shahak], I have great respect, and indeed, he was
going to have a lecture tour here in the United States, in, I guess, the
Fall of 1990, and he was coming to speak in Champaign, [Ill.], and the
organizers of his lecture tour asked me if I would put him up in my home
as my guest, in order to conserve on expenses, and I agreed. And I was
greatly looking forward again to meeting Professor Shahak.... But as you
know, with the Gulf crisis, Professor Shahak decided to cancel his
lecture tour and stay home with his own people, which was certainly
understandable.
"Dershowitz couldn't care less. Whatever kind of outright character
assassination he has to apply to anyone, even Holocaust survivors like
Judge Buergenthal, Professor Shahak, Norman Finkelstein's mother, it
doesn't bother Dershowitz. Indeed, my understanding is, he's trying to
run to become President of Israel, to take Peres's place. Well, fine, it
would be great to get him out of Harvard Law School-my dis-alma
mater!-and ship him over to Israel with all the other war criminals over
there. "In fact, I say that, because Dershowitz admitted, publicly, that
he is part of a Mossad committee that authorized the assassination of
Palestinians.
"You can find that article on counterpunch.org, by Prof. [Liquat Ali]
Khan. Well, the Palestinians are all protected persons under the Fourth
Geneva Convention, and for Dershowitz to authorize their murder is a war
crime. So, Dershowitz is a {prima facie} war criminal, who should be
prosecuted himself. [Footnote 2]
"And there he is, teaching at the Harvard Law School, and advocating
torture, crimes against humanity, war crimes against the Palestinians.
As you know, he said, `Well, we should just be obliterating their
villages. You know, if they do this, there's a terror bombing here, we
[should] destroy one of their villages.'
"And, of course, Dershowitz also advocates torture here, in America. The
guy's shameless.
"I remember, [when] I started [at Harvard], Dershowitz started as an
assistant professor, and his first big case was defending a pornographic
film star in `Deep Throat.' Dershowitz likes to present himself as some
great defender of the First Amendment.... Well, as Catherine McKinnon
has, I think, taught us all, pornography is a form of violence against
women: It's a human rights matter. So, it doesn't surprise me that
Dershowitz started his career defending pornographers and pornography,
and was and still is greatly proud of it-and now he moves on to
defending war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide, and in
addition, over the years, became a war criminal himself.
"But the sum of it is, he's still teaching there at Harvard Law School.
So, I hope he goes back to Israel and becomes President, sure! Be great
to see him go: Bon voyage."
