PIFWC/piffwik/ n. Person Indicted for War Crimes
The international community is increasingly seeing itself responsible to identify, to indict, to arrest, to try, and to convict those whom they see, in their great good wisdom, and their need to address the critical issues of human rights betrayals by governments and their lawmakers and legislators, in a supra-territorial or extra-territorial manner. The initiative undertaken in good faith, as though to state that we are indeed, all of us, our brothers' keepers.Who is to deny that the sentiment is not a noble one? Perhaps long overdue, in light of the great injustices, the heinous atrocities that governments and their representatives are capable of resorting to in their efforts to control, their need to apprehend insurrections, or merely to ensure that their tyrannical rule cannot be interrupted by others with more humanistic goals.
Although countries cannot, under international rules of conduct, undertake to march into an affected country to remove the offending leader, they can issue an injunction within their own territory, to recognize the instances of perceived crimes against humanity and seek to arrest the offender should he or she ever be sufficiently incautious as to make their presence available where they can be arrested.
Radovan Karadzic has been the subject of just such a procedure; called to account for his part in fomenting and encouraging horrible crimes, as the Bosnian Serb leader during the 1990 conflicts in the former Yugoslavian territories. Sudan's president, Omar al-Bashir has also been indicted by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity and attempted genocide - yet ongoing - in Darfur.
And then there is another, similar situation, where the National Court in Spain has seen fit to accede to a court suit brought for its consideration by the Palestinian Authority to indict key members of the Israeli government, past and present. For their part in accomplishing the removal - by government approved assassination - of a supreme terrorist, Palestinian Salah Shehada.
The man was killed in an Israel Air Force hit in 2002, undercutting his plan to dispatch a 600 kilogram explosives-loaded truck to a target in Gush Katif. He was also responsible for countless successful attacks against Israeli civilians and soldiers, resulting in dozens of Israeli deaths.
Arrest warrants have been issued for former IDF Chief of Staff Moshe Yaalon, along with other officials, including the current Minister of Infrastructures, Ben-Eliezer. Arrests to be implemented instantly the named set foot on Spanish soil. The gist of the claim is that the one-ton bomb was overkill, in a residential neighbourhood.
Despite the need to foil the planned attack, the IDF took due precautions, attempting to ascertain that no civilians would be in the building at the time. With the full knowledge that it was common practise for Shehada, along with other terrorist leaders to deliberately take refuge among civilians, including children.
Attempts were made to ensure that there would be no additional bloodshed, as a result of which the mission had been postponed on a number of occasions. And despite which precautions having taken place, 14 civilians were killed by the explosion, earning Israel widespread condemnation.
It's hard to find excuses when innocent lives are needlessly lost in situations of war. On the other hand, far more innocent lives would have been taken had the planned attack by the terrorists succeeded. As so many others had before. All countries take necessary steps to protect their populations. Not all countries are continually beset by terror attacks from within and without their borders.
Spain has itself been riven with terror attacks from diverse sources. The government has had a long campaign against its Basque separatists (ETA), which target the country's security and military, attributing 800 deaths to ETA terrorism. The country grapples with an urban left-wing terror group, GRAPO, whose purpose is to establish a Marxist state.
Additionally, there are known al-Qaeda cells operating there, held to have been responsible for detonating ten bombs on packed commuter trains in 2004, killing 191 Spaniards.
It's puzzling, to say the least, that Spain has undertaken such a dramatic and drastic step to differentiate itself in its struggle to contain the terrorist groups within the country, with those that a Middle Eastern Israel feels itself forced to take, to contend with the terror groups, many of which are in fact proxy militias for neighbouring states, some of which make no secret of their agenda to expunge the country from the landscape.
If England, which has also issued a similar indictment against an Israeli general, and Spain, which has most recently signed on to the Palestinian Authority's request, see fit to isolate and condemn Israel's system of emergency defence measures, perhaps they might wish to look elsewhere in the civilized world and beyond, to condemn instances of nations undertaking grave ventures that establish internal defence needs, as recognized by Britain and Spain.
Take China's president Hu Jintao, for example, to be held to account for his and his government's actions toward the people of Tibet; surely to be accounted as grave human rights offences. And while we're at it, how about former Russian president, now its prime minister-cum president, Vladimir Putin, for his Chechnya adventures and subsequent suspected obliteration of reporters intent on revealing the entire truth of the matter.
Then there's America's redoubtable president, George W. Bush, whose administration insisted on the necessity to invade Iraq and whose venture has been responsible for the deaths of countless civilians in that country, let alone the fall-out from increased terrorist attacks world-wide, as a result of that singular occupation. Let us not neglect the reality of Robert Mugabe whose megalomaniac rule has burdened his countrymen beyond redemption.
We could go on; there's Pakistan's Pervez Musharraf, whose patience for the presence of al-Qaeda and the Taliban in the country's tribal regions has contributed to the ongoing trials and misfortunes in Afghanistan - all impacting deleteriously on NATO-affiliated and UN troops stationed there for the purpose of rescuing Afghanistan from Islamist fundamentalist backwardness.
If Israel is to be held accountable for targeting Palestinian terrorists who revel in murdering its citizens, those of Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, and Fatah's al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, why not hold the Palestinian Authority's Mahmoud Abbas responsible also for encouraging a culture of martyrdom among his people? Officially-sanctioned and -prepared textbooks teaching children the acceptability of hatred and murder?
Encouraging young men and women to continue their "struggle" against the "occupier", becoming exalted martyrs, and exhibiting maps that do not portray the State of Israel as a real presence, but rather an entire state of Palestine, more than adequately delivering the message of intent. Broaden the search, widen the landscape, to encompass all those deserving of having abandoned their humanity in the search for dominance.
And then recognize the difference between the agenda to dominate and institute a larger geographic Muslim autocracy to replace a Democratic and free country and disperse its people in a reflection of ancient history.
Labels: Israel, Political Realities, Terrorism, World Crises
posted by Pieface @ Thursday, July 24, 2008
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