JEWISH CRIME

"Of all the areas of Jewish enterprise," notes Gerald Krafetz, "none has been so overlooked as the field of crime. And it isn't because of a lack of Jewish criminality. For an introspective people, this oversight is significant. It is as if Jewish crime did not exist, an unsavory skeleton is best left in the family closet ... The sociopathology of Jews is not an acceptable notion since it runs counter to both religious precepts and preconceived ideas that Jews have of themselves." [KREFETZ, p. 112] "Jews were ... involved in many of the most visible and spectacular frauds of the post-Civil War period," notes Benjamin Ginsberg, "as well as in economic dislocations and financial manipulations that characterize the era." [GINSBERG, p. 75] In one much publicized scandal for instance, the Jewish governor of South Carolina, Franklin Moses, oversaw the issue and selling of $6 million in fraudulent state securities, as well as funneling hundreds of thousands of dollars in public funds into his own pocket. [GINSBERG, p. 75]

In a broader financial sphere, very visibly at the top of the socio-economic pyramid, Jewish businessman Joseph Seligman's nefarious activities in the late 1800s helped to create the infamous "Black Friday" stock market crash. Benjamin Ginsberg notes that the crash

"ruined thousands of investors, implicated President Grant, and led to a
Congressional investigation of [Jay] Gould and Seligman ... Similarly, in
the early 1890s, Jacob Schiff collaborated with E. H. Harriman in the
latter's attempts to wrest control of the Northern Pacific Railroad from J.
P. Morgan and James Hill ... When the price of the Northern Pacific
Stock collapsed, the entire market crashed in the notorious 'Black
Thursday' panic that led to a nationwide economic depression."
[GINZBURG, p. 73]

In 1885 the French-based project to build the Panama Canal collapsed, resulting in financial scandal that led, in part, to Seligman again. "Both the United States Congress and the French Parliament had inquiries," says Ginsberg, "In both countries major Jewish financiers were implicated: Baron Jacques de Reinach in Paris and Joseph Seligman in the United States. Many shareholders lost everything, but Seligman lost nothing. In contemporary parlance, the Seligmans engaged in influence peddling, insider trading, and corporate asset stripping and looting -- all at the expense of credulous investors." [GINZBURG, p. 74] The French end of the Panama Canal scandals, notes Albert Lindemann, "involved large amounts of French capital and threatened national prestige -- and Jewish agents were deeply involved. The intermediaries between the Panama company and parliament were almost exclusively Jews with German names and backgrounds, some of whom tried to blackmail one another." [LINDEMANN, p. 87]

The Jewish component of (Gentile) Huey Long's corrupt political machine in early 20th century Louisiana included Leon Weiss, an architect, who "was implicated in the financial scandals surrounding the administration and served prison time." [KIRKUS, 10-1-97] Herbert Stempel was willing participant in the 1950s television quiz show scandals until a Gentile, Charles Van Doren, usurped him in deceit. Jewish TV producer Lew Cowan, denying guilt, was one of the most prominent executives who lost his job in the wake of the scandals. Even at the heart of the World Zionist Organization, after founder Theodore Herzl's death, his wife Julie ("an extravagant and unstable woman") "threatened the Zionist leaders with scandals and lawsuits if they didn't meet her extravagant financial needs." [STERNBERGER, I., 8-15, 1995]

At the other end of the socio-economic world, "the scant attention [popular author Irving Howe] paid to Jewish crime in World of Our Fathers, his magisterial study of the [Manhattan Jewish] Lower East side," notes Charles Silberman, "is a good example of the amnesia American Jews show about this part of their history." [SILBERMAN, p. 128] In researching the level of Jewish crime during the early decades of this century in the Lower East Side, Albert Fried notes that "I discovered that an enormously complex, richly endowed culture of vice and criminality, made up mainly of young people, thrived on the Lower East Side, that most outsiders regarded it as Tammany's bastion of power [Tammany Hall, the corrupt New York city government of the era] that the Jews themselves eventually came to look upon it as an insufferable burden of shame and embarrassment." [FRIED, p. xiv] Such embarrassment included Jewish "fagins" (bands of pickpockets), thieves, pimps, prostitutes, opium dealers, gamblers, brothel-owners, racketeers, murderers, robbers, and others of virtually any persuasion. Arson for building insurance and horse-poisoning in extortion rackets were "two offenses associated almost exclusively with Jews." [JOSELIT, p. 36] "In the area of only one square mile [in the Jewish Lower East Side]," notes Jenna Weissman Joselit, "authorities estimated there were approximately two hundred disorderly [prostitution] houses, three hundred and thirty-six gang 'hang-outs,' and over two hundred pool halls-cum-betting establishments; dance halls, a rendezvous of pimps and procurers, were found every two and one-half blocks." [JOSELIT, p. 24]

Abe "the General" Greenthal, "was one of America's premier pickpockets ... Abe's home and base of operation was in New York City, but his gang traveled all over the United States picking pockets." Michael Kurtz (born in 1850) "was one of America's most celebrated burglars." Joseph 'Yoski Nigger' Toblinsky "led a gang that specialized in stealing and poisoning horses." Benjamin (Dopey) Fein "was the first gangster to make labor racketeering a full-time and profitable business. He institutionalized the practice of furnishing gangs of hoodlums to unions in their wars against employers." [ROCKAWAY, R., 1993, p. 88, 91, 94, 95]

"In 1908," notes the Jerusalem Post, "Jews were 25 percent of the four million residents in New York City but 50% of the prison population." [HENRY, M., 10-4-01] That same year, the police commissioner of New York City, Theodore A. Bingham, publicly noted that half of all the criminals in his city were Jewish. "Jewish leaders," notes Robert Rockaway, "worried that Jewish gangsters provided ammunition for Jew-haters. Consequently, they steadfastly refused to acknowledge the problem in public." [ROCKAWAY, R., 1993, p. 51] As stories of Jewish crime in New York City became increasingly publicized in the mainstream mass media, initially the "Yiddish press challenged the veracity of the evidence," [GOREN, p. 141] but "beginning in 1909 and reaching a climax in 1912," says Arthur Goren, "widely publicized disclosures of vice and crime among Jews created dismay and then alarm in Jewish circles. Protests of innocence were now impossible." [GOREN, p. 135]

The murder of a well-known Jewish gambler, Herman Rosenthal, was particularly horrifying for the Jewish community in that it opened up a Pandora's Box of trials and testimonies profoundly unflattering to local Jewry. Goren notes that

"The appalling fact was that the underworld segment which the trials
and the indefatigable press had so thoroughly laid bare consisted almost
entirely of Jewish gangsters and gamblers. No longer could Jewish
apologists find comfort in viewing the phenomena as a rare deviation
from the norm. In the accounts, the criminals appeared as
commonplace East Side figures. Sons of hard-working parents, most
had been exposed as children to religious training and had led average
family lives. Even considering the hired gangsters apart, one could point
to exceptional and touching instances of family loyalty, pride in one's
ethnic group, and knowledge of an affection for Jewish religious
tradition." [GOREN, p. 154]

"Jewish criminals," wrote Moses Rischin, "regularly made newspaper headlines. The appearance of an ungovernable youth after the turn of the century was undeniable and excited apprehension." [FRIED, p. xvi] In April 1911, for instance, 400 Jewish shopkeepers flooded a criminal court building to complain and testify before a grand jury about robberies and gangs in their neighborhoods. [FRIED, p. 26] In 1909 alone, 3,000 Jewish "youngsters" appeared before an area juvenile court. [FRIED, p. 41] Gangster Monk Eastman alone "bossed a Jewish street gang that could field as many as 1,200 men on short notice." [ROCKAWAY, R., 1993, p. 97] While many criminals were rooted in poverty, some prominent Jewish gangsters -- like Arnold Rothstein and Big Jack Zelig -- came from comfortable backgrounds. [FRIED, p. 40] The king of Jewish crime in the era, Arthur Rothstein, "was a rich man's son." [COHEN, R., p. 46] Monk Eastman's father "was solidly middle class, a restaurant owner." [COHEN, R., p. 45] Israeli scholar Robert Rockaway discounts the usual apologetics for Jewish gangsters, saying:

"More likely, these men selected careers in crime because they wanted
money, power, recognition and status; and they wanted it fast. Crime
offered them a quick way to realize their dreams." [ROCKAWAY, R.,
1993, p. 52]

"It was the Jews, by and large," says Norman Cantor, "not the Italians, who created what was later called the Mafia. In the 1920s the Italians began to replace the Jews in the New York organized crime industry, but as late as 1940 if you wanted a spectacular hit you were looking for a representative of the Lepke Buchalter Gang, also known as Murder Inc. Jews were also prominent in the gambling trade and developed Las Vegas in the 1940s. It was a Jewish gambler who fixed the 1919 baseball World Series -- what became known as the Black Sox scandal." [CANTOR, p. 389] The perpetrator of the scandal was Arnold Rothstein, notes Charles Silberman, "the inventor of organized crime." [SILBERMAN, p. 128]

"It was with some astonishment," notes Jewish critic Marvin Kitman,

"that I discovered what an integral part of American Jewish life crime
was. Our forefathers made names for themselves, such as they are,
as gangsters, murderers, musclemen, hit men, acid throwers, arm
breakers, bombers and all the other professions open to nice Jewish
boys. Prostitution, vice, alcohol, gambling, racketeering, extortion,
and all the other things that fill the newspaper today and that I gladly
have been attributing as character flaws in other groups of founding
fathers: Those were our things ... I was shocked at how deep our
roots are in all the sinks of depravity and corruption ... The Jews
were the first ones to realize the link between organized crime and
organized politics. They led the way in corrupting the police and city
hall. They first realized the value of gang/syndicate cartels in business
to reduce the killing of each other. They were monopolists of the
highest order ... We wrote the book, so to speak, on crime, but it's all
forgotten." [KITMAN, p. 9]

"Some disgruntled Jewish immigrants," says Jonathan Sarna, "chose crime as their vehicle of upward mobility. Through robbery and fencing operations, they created a parasitic counter-industry that lived off the garment trade, skimming its profits for personal benefit. Others made their living by exploiting Jewish religious practices (the standard history of the kosher-meat industry in New York is aptly entitled Fraud, Corruption, and Holiness)." [SARNA, Jewish, p. 53]

Kosher meat is food that is prepared according to traditional Orthodox religious standards; it presumably entails extra time and energy to prepare which escalates prices to be higher than non-kosher food. An investigation in New York City sponsored by a Jewish community organization in 1915 discovered that 60% of the meat sold as kosher was fraudulent: most rabbis who supervised kosher sanctions were under slaughterhouse employ and abandoned strict religious adherence. [GOREN, p. 79] Among 6,000 New York area butchers who allegedly only sold kosher meat to fellow Jews, there were "few who did not, at some point, deal in unkosher meat."[GASTWIRT, p. 113] The Jewish slaughterhouse system was also involved in price-fixing, extortion, racketeering, fist fights in the synagogue, and even murder. "The intense rivalry and competition in the kosher poultry business," notes Harold Gastwirt, "made it prey to racketeering and violence." [GASTWIRT, p. 46]

Jewish gangsters were also violently active in support of Jewish unions or employers, depending upon who paid them. "Some of the so-called Jewish unions," remarked a veteran of Jewish labor activities, "... fell early in their careers upon evil days: underworld characters, gangsters, got a foothold in the organization ... Unfortunately, the element engaged to help would refuse to clear out when their services were no longer wanted." [GOREN, p. 304] Rita Simon notes another of the political dimensions of underworld [and New York City governmental] corruption:

"In exchange for police protection of his gang, [gang leader] Monk
[Easton] employed 'repeaters' (repeat voters) at the polls in favor of
Tammany Hall, the local Democratic machine." [SIMON, p. 139]

Jewish crime was widespread in a number of the largest urban areas of America, some of it eventually "syndicated" throughout the country, at times even in cooperation with the Italian mafia. In Chicago the Westside Jewish underworld ward was known as the "Bloody Twentieth." A 1906 description of the area claimed that "murderers, robbers, and thieves of the worst kind are born, reared, and grow to maturity in numbers that far exceed the record of any similar district on the face of the globe." [FRIED, p. 90] (Even Al Capone's accountant, who later rose to further notoriety, was Jewish, Jake "Greasy Thumb" Guzik.) [LACEY, p. 18] In Cleveland, the Jewish community had its "noisome and brutal Woodland section"; in Detroit it was the eastside, most prominently ruled by the Purple Gang; in Boston it was the Chelsea quarter; Newark had its "fierce third ward"; and in Philadelphia Jewish crime, featuring boss Harry Stromberg, was largely located in the southeast area. These cities, with New York, says Albert Fried, "held the worst, that is the most criminalized, of the Jewish neighborhoods in America." [FRIED, p. 90] In London, England, notes Daniel Levy, "the Jews were involved in assorted criminal activities. They committed petty thievery, forgery, and illegal distilling of booze. Some sailed to eastern Europe and convinced young girls that jobs and bachelors awaited them in England, only to ship them off to Indian or Argentinean white slave markets." [LEVY, D, p. 20] Earlier forms of blackmail by non-Jewish British gangs were "developed by Jewish gangs (formed after the great immigration of the 1880s) into extortion from legitimate shopkeepers. Much as Jewish gangsters liked to portray themselves as honourable knights defending their co-religionists against anti-Semitic thugs, they were just as likely to live as predators upon their fellow Jews. A gang of extortionists known as the 'Bessarabians' were headed by a professional boxer who called himself Max Moses in private life and 'Kid McCoy' in the ring." [FIDO, M., 2000, p. 17]

Poland? In the early twentieth century, future Israeli prime minister David Ben-Gurion was jailed in Warsaw, Poland, for suspected radical political activism. "That was the first time," he said later,

"that I ever came into contact with the dregs of society. I was shaken
to the core at the language and behavior. I never had the slightest notion
that such people ever existed ... The thing that shook me most was that
these criminals were Jews." [Daniel Kurzon suggests that these included
members of a rival Jewish political group which Ben-Gurion considered
"more dangerous criminals" than the "brothel keepers." [KURZMAN, D.,
1983, p. 67]

Prominent Jews in Chicago's criminal underworld included Louis 'Diamond Louie' Cowan, Hymie 'the Loud Mouth' Levine, Sam 'Sammy the Greener' Jacobson, Maxie Eisen, Murray 'the Camel' Humphreys, and (non-Jewish) Al Capone's money man, Jake Guzik. [ROCKAWAY, R., 1993, p. 43] In 1924, "Chicago Jewish leader" S. M. Melamed warned about the "great number of Jews in the underworld." [ROCKAWAY, R., 1993, p. 49]

"Bootlegging in Boston," notes Robert Rockaway,

"was controlled by Charles 'King' Solomon ... He headed one of the
largest liquor, vice, and narcotics smuggling syndicates in New
England ... In the 1920s, Solomon ran the Boston underworld."
[ROCKAWAY, R., 1993, p. 34]

But even smaller cities, like Minneapolis and adjacent St. Paul, had serious problems with Jewish crime. In November 1927 the Minneapolis Saturday Press ran an article that enflamed local public opinion, quoting the remarks of a non-Jewish gangster:

"90% of the crimes committed against society in this city are committed
by Jew gangsters ... It is Jew, Jew, Jew, as long as one cares to comb
over the records. I am launching no attack against the Jewish people as a
RACE. I am merely calling attention to a FACT." [FRIED, p. 113]

Originally from Sioux Falls, Iowa, prominent Jewish gangsters in Minneapolis included "Kid" Cann (Isador Blumenfeld), Yiddie Bloom, and the Berman brothers (Davie and Chickie). [LACEY, p. 66] Cann is believed to have been responsible for the murder of Walter Ligget, publisher of Midwest America, for a series of articles the paper printed about the Minneapolis criminal underworld. Ligget was gunned down in front of his family while Christmas shopping. "Much of [Minneapolis'] illicit business," notes Robert Rockaway,

"was managed by Isadore 'Kid Cann' ... Blumenfeld and his all-Jewish
syndicate ... In 1942, the FBI identified Kid Cann as 'the overlord
of the Minneapolis, Minnesota underworld." [ROCKAWAY, R.,
1993, p. 48]

Cleveland mob leaders included Moe Dalitz, Morris Kleinman, Sam Tucker, and Lou Rothkopf. After prohibition, "the Cleveland mob joined with Lansky and his confederates ... and formed the core of the most sophisticated national crime syndicate in America." [BLOCK, A., p. 165] Shondor Birns (Szandor Birnstein) was another prominent Cleveland mobster, lasting in the criminal underworld for decades til 1975, when he was assassinated by a car bomb. In early years, he was part of the Maxie Diamond (also Jewish) gang. Among Birns' crime partners was Mervin Gold who "was accused of defrauding banks and the Small Business Administration by using stolen Canadian bonds as collateral for loans. He fled to Israel," but eventually returned. Birns, noted by the Cleveland Plain Dealer for his reputation as a "charming killer," was suspected of Gold's eventual murder. [MCGUANGLE, F., 7-11-99, p. 5H]

Reading, Pennsylvania? As non-Jewish mobster Patsy Lepera recounted in his autobiography:

"Reading at that time, in the thirties and forties, was run by the Minkers --
Abe and his brother Izzy. They had a nephew named Alex Fudeman
who fronted for them ... Even though my father was connected right
to Sicily, he had to do what the Jews wanted done in Reading, because
that was their town. They eliminated the Italians. At one time it was
a two-mob town ... One thing I learn as I go through life is if you come
up against a Jew or an Italian, you check him out. You don't do nothing
against him -- you check him out careful. Jews don't belong to the [Italian]
mob, but they're connected strong. An awful lot of Jews are connected
strong." [LEPERA, P., 1974, p. 7-8]

Missouri? Charlie Birger (born Sachna Itzik Berger), prominent bootlegger, was hung in 1928 for the murder of the mayor of West City, Missouri. He is believed to have been "responsible directly or indirectly for the murders of at least a dozen people, many of whom had been his loyal followers." One of the killed who was not a follower was a local Ku Klux Klan leader. [DE NEAL, G., 1998, p. xviii]

To what lengths Jewish fraud and crime could go might be measured in the chutzpah of Bernie Barton (originally Blaustein) who even set up a fake church with a junkie as preacher as a "front for fencing stolen goods." [DEUTSCH, G., p. 7]

A number of modern respectable Jewish fortunes were founded on links to the underworld in the Prohibition era. Most noteworthy, the Seagram's alcohol fortune (the Canadian Bronfman family) grew to power by getting their alcohol into criminal hands who smuggled it into the United States. Bronfman, who bristled when anyone called him a bootlegger, had a distribution deal for his booze with Jewish mobster Meyer Lansky. [BIRMINGHAM, p. 159] Detroit's largely Jewish Purple Gang was also extremely active in running illegal booze from Windsor across the river border. The Purple Gang's activities also included "gambling, prostitution, extortion, loan sharking, and rackets of every kind." [FRIED, p. 102] So much smuggling was going on between Canada and the United States across Lake Erie that it was known as "the Jewish Lake." [ROCKAWAY, R., 1993, p. 37] During prohibition too, "[Federal] officials labeled sacramental wine [for religious purposes] one of the chief sources of illegal liquor in the nation," notes Jenna Weissman Joselit, "Furthermore, calling the record level of usage a 'national scandal,' they saw the problem as largely a Jewish one." [JOSELIT]

Here's what Israeli scholar Robert Rockaway says about Detroit's Purple Gang, and Jewish gangs generally:

"During Prohibition (1920-1933), Jewish gangsters became major operatives
in the American underworld and played prominent roles in the creation of
organized crime in the United States. At the time, Jewish gangs dominated illicit
activiites in a number of America's largest cities, including Cleveland, Detroit, Minneapolis, Newark, New York, and Philadelphia. The gang dealt in bootlegging, gambling, extortion, drugs, and murder, and developed a reputation for being
more ruthless than Al Capone's mob in Chicago. The Purple's decade-long reign
of terror ended when most of the gang's members either went to prison or were murdered by rivals ... During the Prohibition era (1919-1933) 50 percent of the
country's leading bootleggers were Jews, and Jewish criminals financed and
directed much of the nation's narcotics traffic ... While Jews predominated in
their quarter [in Purple Gang-era Detroit], other immigrants and ethnic groups
lived there as well. One former resident of the old neighorhood joked that it was
of the old neighborhood joked that i was easy to distinguish the Jewish dwelling
from those occupied by non-Jews. 'The non-Jews grew flowers in front of their
houses,' he said. 'The Jews grew dirt.'" [ROCKAWAY, R., 2001, p. 113-]


Elsewhere, "bootlegging in Prohibition-era Philadelphia was directed by Max 'Boo Boo' Huff ... Huff's successor as Philadelphia's dominant Jewish mobster was Harry Stromberg, alias Nig Rosen ... He also led what was called the '69th Street Gang' that dealt in prostitution, extortion and labor racketeering. His influence extended as far as Washington, Baltimore, and Atlantic City ... When Stromberg left Philadelphia, he was superceded by his driver and bodyguard, Willie Weisberg, a long-time member of the city's Jewish underworld." [ROCKAWAY, R., 1993, p. 32, 34]

Another modern Jewish fortune similarly constructed is that of the Annenbergs, which was founded upon Moses Annenberg's horse racing news monopoly that he arranged with the criminal underworld. "That Annenberg and the Prohibition and gambling mobs had interests in common is indisputable," says Albert Fried, "An information monopoly, nominally independent, gave the mobs the wherewithal to police the complex, sprawling kingdom of the Book [i.e., gambling and bookies]; it was an instrument of their sovereignty. In return Annenberg was allowed to reap inordinate profits and become one of the richest men in the land, the founder of one of its singular dynasties." [FRIED, p. 118]

Another of the most prominent Jewish American family fortunes, the "fabulously rich Pritzker family from Chicago," had links, however indirectly, to organized crime even in more recent history. They were involved, as "clients of the [Bruce] Kanter firm," who ran a variety of shady Caribbean companies. Kanter, who "had direct ties to organized crime," [BLOCK, A., p. 162] served on the Hyatt hotel company's Board of Directors (Hyatt is one of many companies owned by the Pritzkers). [BLOCK, A., p. 191] Also, notes Allen Block,

"A little digging into their background produced troubling questions.
It was discovered that the source of some Pritzker money comes from
the racket-ridden Teamsters Pension Fund ... Investigators probing the
Pritzker empire were intrigued by its connection to the Pension Fund.
This was especially so when it discovered that both [mob-linked] Jimmy
Hoffa and Allen Dorfman personally worked on Pritzker loans."
[BLOCK, A., p. 192]

In 1997, major publishers afforded two legendary Jewish conmen of international (dis)repute respective biographies. Adam Worth started out re-joining and re-deserting various Civil War regiments (both Union and Confederate) for enlistment bonuses and later expanded his exploits into forgery, larceny, robbery, burglary, and other criminal mainstays. In England, Sir Robert Anderson, head of Criminal Investigations at Scotland Yard, observed in 1907 that "Adam Worth was the Napoleon of crime. None other could hold a candle to him." The Pinkerton security agency noted that "in the death of Adam Worth there probably departed the most inventive and daring criminal in modern times ... Among all the men Pinkertons have known in a life time, this man was the most remarkable criminal of them all." [MCINTYRE, p. 287] Novelist Sir Arthur Conan Doyle used Worth as his model for Professor Moriarty, Sherlock Holmes' arch-nemesis. An important associate in Worth's earlier years was "Mother" Mandelbaum, described in her era as "the great crime promoter of modern times," the "most successful fence in the history of Newy York" and the woman who "first put crime in America on a syndicated basis." Starting in 1862, over the next two decades she was reputed to have "handled between $5,000,000 and $10,000,000 worth of stolen property." [MCINTYRE, B., 1997, p. 29, 30]

A few years later another real-life rogue (and Jewish) notable, Morris Cohen (the subject of the second biography), rose from a life as a western Canadian circus barker and pickpocket to an adventurous life as an arms dealer, bodyguard, and general to Chinese leader Sun Yat-Sen. [LEVY, D.] Later he served under Chiang Kai-Shek. He also functioned as a liaison for Zionist influences to Chinese leadership. [UROFSKY, M., 1978, p. 99]
A similar Jewish con-man was Elias Abraham Rosenberg, a "rascal" who arrived in Hawaii in 1887. There, he

"ingratiated himself with King David Kalakaua by his chanting and so-called
occult powers. He soon became the King's soothsayer and astrologer, acquiring
such power over the monarch that the Hawaiian press bitterly denounced him
as a 'Holy Moses.' Rosenberg taught the King some Hebrew and was persuaded
to appoint him appraiser of customs. He was given quarters in the Iolani Palace,
where he practiced magic, read the stars, and chanted Bible stories in Hebrew."
[KOPPMAN/POSTAL, 1978, p. 229-230]

In 1998, Jewish fraudster Trebitsch Lincoln was also afforded a biography. Lincoln, noted a reviewer, was "the king of dupers" and "a thwarted megalomaniac who was also a champion con man." Born in Hungary in 1879, he immigrated to England and converted to Christianity. He became a member of Parliament, and later tried to become a British, and then a German, spy. He turned up as a supporter of the right-wing Kapp Putsch in Berlin in 1920, became an abbot of a Buddhist temple in Shanghai, fleeced his devotees, welcomed invading Japanese, became a Nazi apologist/propagandist and on and on in the life of a human chameleon. [BERRY, N., 5-8-98, p. 28]

In 1999, the (London) Daily Mail highlighted the Kray twins, Ronnie and Reggie, "of Jewish and Romany stock." Both were imprisoned in the 1960s. Only Reggie survives, "the best-known gangster in Britain ... By 1963, through their networks of thugs and thieves, Ronnie and Reggie were lording it over London's underworld and became figures in London society."

Decades after the likes of Worth and Cohen, famous Jewish underworld figures like Bugsy Siegel and Meyer Lansky made the American scene. Siegel was instrumental in creating the legalized crime-laden playground of Las Vegas, starting things off at the Flamingo Hotel. Joseph Sacher headed the nearby Sands Hotel; Sacher "was second only to Lansky in the [crime] Syndicate. Years ... [later] he fled the U.S. and went into exile in Israel." [KELLEY, K., p. 219] Allen Friedman notes another early Jewish criminal influence in Sin City: "The real potential of Las Vegas was not understood until Moe Sedway arrival in 1941." [FRIEDMAN, A., p. 82]

Meyer Lansky eventually "retired" from a successful life of crime with some $150-300 million after corrupt escapades that included Florida's "Gold Coast," the Bahamas, and a gambling resort in pre-Castro Cuba. "At the height of his notoriety," says Robert Lacey, "Meyer Lansky was reckoned to be, and was targeted by the U.S. Justice Department as, the biggest gangster in the United States -- a dangerous lawbreaker of extraordinary power. He was identified as the Mafia's banker, the boss of the National Crime Syndicate, the head of the Combination -- the Chairman of the Board." [LACEY, R., p. 10-11]

Las Vegas has long been a hotbed of underworld influence and a worldwide attraction for gambling and prostitution. The Italian Mafia has also, from the conception of Las Vegas as a leisure Mecca, held great sway in the city, but its most famous underworld personages have always been Jewish mobsters Bugsy Siegel and Meyer Lansky. The great scope of Jewish contribution to the creation, and dubious ethics, of Las Vegas may be measured by the words of professor Allen Balboni. Here he discusses the development of the desert city as a gambling resort area:

"Most of the [Las Vegas] hotel builders were Jewish Americans.
Jay Sarno and Nate Jacobson were associated with Caesar's Palace
[Sarno later created Circus Circus]; Moe Dalitz, Morris Kleinman,
and Sam Tucker with the Desert Inn (and, along with Jake Factor,
with the Stardust after [Italian-American Tony] Cornero's death);
Sidney Wyman, Al Gottesman, and Jake Gottleib with the early years
of the Dunes; Gus Greenbaum, Moe Sedway, and Charlie Resnick
with managing the Flamingo after Bugsy Siegel's death; Ben Goffstein,
Willie Alderman, and David Berman with the booking and running of the
Riviera; Milton Prell with the establishment of the Sahara and then with
the transformation of the Tally-Ho into the Aladdin; Hyman Abrams, Carl
Cohen, and Jack Entratter with the ownership and operation of the
Sands; and Ben Jaffe, Phil Kastel, and Jell Houssels (of Anglo-Saxon
background) with the construction and operation of the Tropicana ... A
few Italian-Amerians hold minor ownership shares in casinos."
[BALBONI, p. 27]

Jewish singer Eddie Fisher recalls a Las Vegas offer he had at the peak of his career that he now regrets turning down:

"When I was working at the Desert Inn I met with a man named Billy
Weinberger, who told me, 'We're building a new hotel and we want to
give you fifty percent of it.' In return I would perform there permanently
and would use my influence to attract other major stars. That sounded
interesting. 'What's it going to be called?' I asked. 'Caesar's Palace.'"
[FISHER, E., 1999, p. 292]


Bernie Rothkopf also owned the MGM Hotel. Allen Glick was, between 1974-79, "the mob's front man at the Stardust, Fremont, Hacienda, and Marina hotels." [MORRISON, J.A., p. 1A] "In July, 1979 Allen Glick was stripped of his Nevada gambling license and fined over $500,000 for a variety of improprieties." Glick sold his interests in casinos to Allan Sachs, who was, with a partner, "figureheads for the Chicago mob responsible for providing skim monies" from Las Vegas gambling operations. [MOLDEA, 1989, p. 336] Jerome Mack, past president of the Dunes and Riviera, was a former national chairman of the Israel Bonds Campaign. Jewish entrepreneur Hank Greenspon owned the Las Vegas Sun newspaper and a local TV station. [See his efforts for Israel in the mass media section]

In more recently years, Arthur Goldberg is the CEO of Park Place Entertainment, a conglomeration of 29 hotel-casinos [JENKINS, P., 5-30-99] worldwide (Caesar's Palace, Bally's, etc.) that is twice the size of its nearest competitor. Its Stardust division is the world's largest hotel company. Elsewhere, Sheldon Adelson, chairman of the Sands, is also the owner of Venetian, a new Las Vegas complex built in 1999 at a cost of $1.6 billion. Adelson is "one of richest men in America," in 1998 worth about $600 million. [STOLL, I., 1-7-00, p. 1] Adelson, noted the Las Vegas Review-Journal, "is one of the country's largest donors to Jewish groups and he has influence in the national Jewish community." [RALSTON] Adelson, notes the (Jewish) Forward, "has paid for 75 congressmen to visit Israel with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee [the pro-Israel lobbying organization]." [STOLL, I., p. 1] As Joe Gelman noted in 1999, "A number of these sin-palace operators are Jewish and strong supporters of Israel." [GELMAN, p. 15B] [Author Gelman complains about the use of this citation here].

The chairman of the Mirage, Steve Wynn, is also Jewish. (The funds for Wynn's first casino, the Golden Nugget, was in large part raised by convicted Jewish financier Michael Milken). [JOHNSTON, D., p. 74] The Las Vegas mayor, Oscar Goodman, elected in 1999, is the former president of Temple Beth Sholom. He also has a reputation as a "mob lawyer," defending, among others, Jewish mobster Meyer Lansky and Frank Rosenthal. Rosenthal, notes the Las Vegas Review-Journal, "is credited by some with founding the modern day Las Vegas sports book but was repeatedly denied a gambling license because of association with organized crime members." [ZAPLER, p. 1A]

All of this, in more recent years, has its mirror image in Atlantic City and, increasingly, other American gambling Meccas. Kenny Shapiro, for instance, was "the Atlantic investment banker for [Italian American mafioso] Nicky Scarfo, the vicious killer who ruled the Philadelphia Mafia, the most murderous mob family in America." [JOHNSTON, D., 1992, p. 82]

Another influential Jewish gambling mogul today is Sol Kerzner, founder and principal owner of Sun City (also known as "Sin City"), a resort playground created in 1979 in a poverty-stricken area of apartheid South Africa. Kerzner's modern empire has expanded with extravagant casinos in Atlantic City, New Jersey, the Bahamas, Mauritus, France, and a Native American site in Connecticut. An alleged bribery scheme involving the Jewish mayor of Capetown, David Bloomberg, in 1986 held up -- for a while -- his United States investments.

"Sun City," notes reporter Jay Clarke, "started out as a 'Sin City,' a place where South Africans could let their hair down because it was located then in the so-called 'independent homeland' of Bophuthatswana. Gambling, show-girl revenues, and prostitution were the lures." [CLARKE, p. TR1] "If ever there was an appropriate setting for corruption it is Sun City," noted the (London) Guardian, "situated as it is in one of nine homelands which represent the cornerstones of that most corrupt of social systems, apartheid." [BERESFORD, p. 18] One of the Israelis who made millions off the immoral socio-political system surrounding Sun City is Shabtai Kalmanovitch; he worked as an "economic advisor" to Bophuthatswana' s dictator. [BERESFORD, p. 18] )

In recent years Sun City has attempted to diversify by creating a family-oriented "Lost City" adventure park adjoining the casino. "The patent reason why the Lost City has been designed as a family playground and entertainment centre," says the (London) Guardian,

"is that it entices the public into gaming. The corridors leading to the
main casino even feature children's versions of slot machines -- game
machines -- which could with some justification be described as
nursery slopes inculcating the joys (or otherwise) of adult addiction
to the one-armed bandits packing the main 'treasure hall.'"
[BERESFORD, p. 18]

Many Jewish (and other) mob figures were also involved in the gambling industry in Cuba until the communist revolution destroyed their operations. "After the loss of Cuba and the clampdown on the Mafia by the Kennedy Justice Department," notes Dan Moldea, "Meyer Lansky and the organized crime syndicate had targeted the Bahamas as its new off-shore gambling and narcotics empire." [MOLDEA, 1989, p. 128]

In the casino/resort/hotel world of the Bahamas, and its criminal underworld, Jews have also been prominent. Among those who find a place in Alan Block's book about organized crime on these islands are

* Louis Arthur Chesler who "served as [mobster] Lansky's point man ...
Among Chesler's criminal specialties was the handling of stolen
securities." [p. 34-35]
* Morris Mac Schwabel, a Manhattan attorney, formerly convicted of
securities fraud. [p. 36]
* Joseph Jacob Frankel, who in the early 1960s "teamed up with Charles
'Ruby' Stein and [Italian mafioso] Nicholas 'Jiggs' Farlano who were
major organized crime figures." [p. 89]
* Arthur Millgram, president of Automated Ticket Systems (it had
contracts with the New York lottery system), who was murdered in
1977. [p. 91]
* Joel Mallin, a lawyer who had "ties to the mob." [p. 91]
* Irving Kahn, partner with "mob attorney Morris Shenker." [p. 95]
* C. Gerald Goldsmith, who "was the Board Chairman of the [Nassau]
Port Authority, DEVCO, and several related firms. This put him in
the middle of one of the largest political payoff scams in the Bahamas.
... One of his duties was the illegal siphoning of company funds into
the hidden bank accounts for political payoffs." [p. 95, 98]
* Ben Novack, owner of Miami's Fountainbleau hotel, who was an
"associate of prominent gangsters Lansky, Coppola, and others
including Max Eder, a loanshark and suspected labor racketeer
with a history of gambling, robbery, narcotics, and homicide
arrests." [p. 115]
* "Cleveland racketeers Morris Kleinman and Moe Dalitz." [p. 116]
* Burt Kanter, a lawyer who had "direct ties to organized crime. [p. 162]
He was a senior member of the law firm Kanter, (Milton) Levenfeld,
(Charles) Lippitz and (Roger) Baskes.
* Allen Dorfman, who was "murdered in 1985 to prevent him from
talking about mob investments ... [He] was in the same league as
Glick, Shenker, and Malnik." [p. 164]

Even among many of the most vicious Jewish thugs, worldwide collectivist Jewish loyalty usually finds expression. "During Israel's war of independence," says Gerald Krefetz, "[Meyer Lansky] killed an arms exporter who was selling to Arab countries. Lansky has contributed substantial funds from his gambling fortunes to Jewish causes, particularly to the United Jewish Appeal." [KREFETZ, p. 116] "A Jew should lead a normal life and a proud life," Lansky once remarked, "... I've been ready at any time in my life to defend myself against insults to Jews or to me as a Jew." [SARNA, Jewish, p. 55] In Russia, in warring leading to the Communist revolution, "real life gangster [Jewish] Misha Yaponchik ... helped to defend Odessa's Jews from the Whites [loyal to the Tsar] but was afterwards killed by the [Communist] Reds." [SICHER, p. 172] In England, Jewish criminal Jacob Comacho (aka Jack Spot) started "to establish the reputation for violence that would cause his rise. He called himself the "King of Aldgate." "When Oswald Mosley's Fascists started to infest the East End [of London] chanting, 'We gotta get rid of the Yids,' Spot became a local hero, taking a lead-weighted chair leg to inflict a savage beating on one of Mosely's roughnecks at the battle of Cable Street. Spot's exultant recollection of the incident from his placid law-abiding retirement in the '80s was still capable of startling a young journalist by the revelation of relished brutality ... He liked to think of himself as the strong man who could be sent for by any Jewish businessman in trouble anywhere, from Glasgow to London. He would then bash the businessmen's enemies, and in return help himself to clothing, food and drink, and spare cash as he needed it. Rabbis recommended him to their congregations, as Spot tells it." [FIDO, M., 2000, p. 32-33]


"During Prohibition," notes Israeli scholar Robert Rockaway, "fifty per cent of the leading bootleggers were Jewish, and Jewish criminals financed and directed much of the nation's narcotics traffic ... At the same time, a number of these mobsters, quietly and without publicity, defended and assisted the Jewish community. Despite their aversion to 'these black sheep of Israel,' many ordinary Jews appreciated the gangster's protection, whereas communal leaders accepted and sometimes solicited their aid.'" [ROCKAWAY, p. 215] Jewish mobster Mickey Cohen, for instance, was particularly active in raising money for the Jewish terrorist group IRGUN in its attacks against the British (and Arabs) in Palestine. [BIRMINGHAM, p. 281] "Just how aware, in 1947," says Stephen Birmingham, "American Jews were aware of the role of organized crime in the fight for an independent Israel is unclear. Probably most were not aware. Those who were, numbed by reports of the Holocaust that were at last appearing in the American media, preferred to look the other way or to take the attitude that the end justifies the means." [BIRMINGHAM, p. 284]

The Jewish criminal underworld was also helpful to Israel in getting weapons to Israel in its early years. Yehuda Arazi, an arms purchaser for the Haganah organization, even made contacts with the Jewish-based Murder, Inc. gang, looking for help. "In my busines," said Arazis, "We can't be too fussy who we do business with. Sometimes they're not nice people." [ROCKAWAY, p. 230] Other underworld contacts arranged for Israeli agents to conceal arms smuggling out of New York City. Jewish criminals even had links to the President of Panama who allowed illegal Israeli arms shipments to sail under the Panama flag. [ROCKAWAY, p. 231] In 1947 gangster Mickey Cohen helped fund-raising efforts for the terrorist Irgun gang fighting the British in Palestine. Jewish criminals pooled about $120,000 for the Irgun cause." [ROCKAWAY, p. 232-233] Jewish gangsters like Allie Tennebaum, says Rich Cohen, "did live to see the emergence of a strong Israel, and they must have seen it as something to rejoice over, proof that not everything the gangsters believed in was wrong." [KAUFMAN, G., p. 2]

Susan Berman, daughter of gangster David Berman, wrote that her father was, as Jonathan Sarna sardonically notes, "a Jewish role model." He was "extremely proud of being Jewish," notes Ms. Berman, " ... He felt that for a Jewish child to be properly brought up, there must be a synagogue, a rabbi, and a cantor in evidence." [SARNA, JEWISH, p. 55] Another Jewish author, Rich Cohen, romanticizes gangster murder as some kind of affirmative act of redemption, delighting in Jewish violence so strongly that he can write:

"When [Abe] Reles took a mark [murdered someone], he was not just
ending a life: he was expressing the essential freedom of the Jew in
America." [KAUFMAN, p. 2]

"America," wrote another Jewish author, Albert Fried, about Jewish gangsters,” is embracing Bugsy Siegel's vision; his martyrdom [he was murdered by other mobsters] was not in vain." [SARNA, JEWISH, p. 55] "Bombast of this sort," complains Jonathan Sarna in a review of Fried's volume, "is obviously meant, in part, to pander to a potential Jewish audience, trying to fashion for it folk heroes of the same 'gentleman-bandit' type as non-Jews enjoy. Jewish criminals are thus portrayed as being proud of their heritage, big givers to charity, and strong supporters of the state of Israel." [SARNA, JEWISH, p. 55]

Is this an artificial portrayal that Jewish gangsters were integral to, and respected by, many in Jewish neighborhoods, and loyal to the burgeoning state of Israel? After the assassination of gangster Big Jack Zelig in 1912, during his New York City funeral procession "the streets of all around Broome Street were jammed," said Jewish detective Abe Schoenfeld, "A choir consisting of twelve singers conducted by Cantor Goldberg of Newark, New Jersey, sang their Jewish hymns as the procession proceeded down Delaney Street to the bridge. There was an unbroken line of people covering the sidewalk watching the funeral. Only the funeral of Rabbi Joseph (a revered spiritual leader) surpassed this --the funeral of Jack Zelig." [ROCKAWAY, p. 217]

In Chicago, the death of criminal Samuel "Nails" Morton attracted "five thousand Jewish mourners, including rabbis [who] accompanied Morton's hearse to the cemetery. Local reporters wanted to know why so many Jews would attend the funeral of a notorious gangster." [ROCKAWAY, p. 218] The reason, argues Robert Rockaway, is an old one: Jewish unity against non-Jewish enemies.

Between both the Jewish criminal underworld and respectable Jewry, there were especially strong feelings of solidarity against anti-Jewish right-wing political movements. In the 1930s, for example, prominent gangster Meyer Lansky was solicited by a New York City judge and former Congressman, Nathan Perlman, and New York's most famous rabbi, Stephen Wise, to arrange violent attacks against pro-German groups in America. [ROCKAWAY, p. 220, COHEN, R., p. 190] ] As late as 1992 the Synagogue of the Suburban Torah in Livingston, New Jersey, sponsored a tribute occasion in honor of a Jewish gangster, Max "Puddy" Hinkes, who had decades earlier organized violent Jewish mobster attacks upon pro-Nazi sympathizers in the area. [ROCKAWAY, p. 223] In Minneapolis, "gambling czar" David Berman led Jewish underworld assaults upon pro-Nazi conferences in the 1930s [ROCKAWAY, p. 224]; likewise, Mickey Cohen instigated similar violence in Los Angeles. [ROCKAWAY, p. 227] For some Jews, Cohen's claim that he single-handedly beat up two Nazi-types locked in a jail cell with him is welcome legend. [COHEN, R., 1999, p. 191] Even Jack Ruby, assassin of JFK assassin Lee Harvey Oswald,

"with several friends, frequently attempted to disrupt rallies of the
German-American Bund. One acquaintance reported that Ruby
was responsible for 'cracking a few heads' of Bund members.
Apparently he joined in this activity for ethnic rather than political
reasons. The young men in the group were not organized adherents
of any particular political creed, but were pool hall and tavern
companions from Ruby's Jewish neighborhood who gathered on
the spur of the moment to present opposition when they learned that
pro-Nazi and anti-Semitic Bund movement was planning a meeting."
[WARREN COMMISSION, 1964, p. 696]

"From Arthur Rothstein and Meyer Lansky to their modern day successors in the Americas, Israel or the Soviet Union," says Joel Kotkin, "Jewish criminals have succeeded in everything from murder for hire to smuggling. Yet, even in crime, both emphasis and cultural preference lay with the successful use of sechel (smarts) rather than brute force." [KOTKIN]

It is curious that Kotkin concedes a Jewish criminal tradition but accepts another mythology about modern Jewry - that Jews were/are smart, but never violent. One of the many Jewish mobsters recruited to help Israel was Bugsy Siegel. "Siegel," says Robert Rockaway, "remained enthusiastic about violence. Even after he became a major crime boss, he wanted to do the killing himself rather than simply arrange matters. This may explain his willingness to help Israel once he learned that Jews were willing to kill to achieve their state." [ROCKAWAY, p. 231] Other exceptionally prominent Jewish murderers in America's criminal underworld included Louis "Lepke" Buchalter, head of Murder, Inc., and "one of the most vicious gangsters in the annals of American crime ... Between sixty and eighty men died on Lepke's orders. They were burned in gasoline, buried in quicklime, shot, stabbed with ice picks, or garroted." [ROCKAWAY, 1993, p. 17] Lewis "Pretty" Amberg "was one of New York's best known killers, having 'rubbed out' from eighteen to a hundred men, no one knew for sure." [ROCKAWAY, 1993, p. 22] Charley Workman "was said to have killed twenty men ... he was so expert at assassination." [ROCKAWAY, R., 1993, p. 193] Harry "Pittsburg Phil" Strauss was "perhaps the most famous professional killer in American gangster history ... [He] killed over 100 (some say over 400) men from the late 1920s to 1940s, making him the most prolific killer in New York." [ROCKAWAY, R., 1993, p. 149]

"Detroit police," adds Robert Rockaway, "credit the [the all-Jewish Detroit] Purple Gang with over 500 killings, more than the Capone mob. This caused Herbert Ausbury, a historian of American crime, to call the gang 'the most efficiently organized gang of killers in the United States.'" [ROCKAWAY, R., 2001, p. 113-]


Rich Cohen, who wrote a book about Jewish crime, noted his own family's reaction to what he discovered in his research:

"They really had no idea just how bad [Jewish criminals] were. I didn't
really know how violent they were, or how many people they killed
or how many times they were arrested. You come to see them as
people. Even within that world, some of them were worse than others.
With some, it was just the situation. And some of them were just
killers." [KERNICKY, p. 1E]

Cohen also noted that some of New York's Jewish gangsters gathered at his grandmother's restaurant:

"When I told [my grandmother] of my interest in writing about the
restaurant and also about the gangsters and their table in back, her
face clouded over, 'They'll kill you,' she said, 'These men, they're
not like you. They'll kill a boy like you.'
When I pointed out that these men --Reles, Strauss, Goldstein,
Maione, Abbandando -- were long dead, she shook her head and
said, 'They'll kill you.'" [COHEN, R., 1999, p. 35]

Yet, adds Cohen, "When [Abe] Reles and the boys were hanging out at my grandparents' diner and the cops came by, my great-grandmother would hide their guns in the onions. She hated gangsters, but she hated people she thought hated Jews more." The endemic anti-Semites Cohen refers to here are generic policemen. [COHEN, R., p. 156]

A Jewish columnist, Brian Viner, at Great Britain's Jewish Chronicle notes Rich Cohen's look into Jeish criminal history, like this:

"That I know all this is thanks largely to my estimable cousin Ben, a fount of information on Jewish gangster matters. I phoned him the other night and he told me, just as I might tell someone that Arensal are top the league by a point, that of 60,000 Jews living in Argentina by the 1920s, 9,000 were involved in prostitution rackets. You have to admit it's a conversation stopper. Ben -- a big fan of Rich Cohen's book 'Tough Jews,' not the least for its story of Red Levine, a hitman who wouldn't kill anyone on Shabbat -- is a Glaswegian, whose own father was threatened with imprisonment in 1916 for his involvement in a gambling den. And, according to Ben, some of the nastiest loan sharks in pre-war Glasgow were Jewish." [VINER, B., 11-29-02, p. 37]


Jewish author Gloria Deutsch also notes today's Jewish blinders to their inglorious turn-of-the-century American past:

"We were always conditioned to believe Jews didn't do these things, but
here is Sandy Sadowsky [author of My Life in the Jewish Mafia] with
her hair-raising stories of gangland murders, prostitution, rackets,
strong-arm men -- the shtarkers who exacted revenge and protected
their bosses -- and one wonders if believing in the myth of Jewish
crimelessness (other than a spot of fraud here and there) wasn't
anything more than a huge collective ostrich act." [DEUTSCH, p. 7]

Jewish violent criminality today also goes against the popular myths of an absolute non-violence in the Jewish community. "The concept of Jewish convicts serving serious jail time," noted the Los Angeles Times in 1995, "runs counter to a popular stereotype that Jewish felons tend to be nonviolent types who serve their sentences in minimum security cells ... Jews outside of prison often find this [fact of Jewish murderers] hard to deal with." "The people who know about it are kind of amazed," Howard Cohn, a part-time rabbi at the Pennsylvania State Corrections Institute told the Times. "They can't believe there are really Jews in a prison like this." [BEALE, p. A5]

In the most sensational genre, New York serial killer David Berkowitz ("Son of Sam") was Jewish (he was adopted by a Jewish family as an infant), as was Joel Rifkind [EFTMIADES, p. 75] of Long Island, who into the early 1990s strangled to death at least 17 women, mostly New York prostitutes. "He went, picked up a prostitute, had sex with her, killed her, and dumped her." [EFTIMIADES, p. 90-91] In the 1920s, one of America's most sensational crimes, splashed all over the country's newspapers, was that of the Leopold and Loeb boys: "A pair of wealthy young members of Chicago's Jewish bourgeoisie in the early 20s, they kidnapped a young man, Bobby Franks, and murdered him as a kind of Nietzchean experiment; after their arrest, it was revealed that they had a sexual relationship too." [BARBOUR, D., 1998] At the time, it was popularized as "the crime of the century." [ABRAHAMSEN, D., 1983, p. 41] Amy Fisher, who received a great deal of press in New York tabloids as the "Long Island Lolita," was jailed in 1992 for shooting the wife of her lover. [PORTER, B., 5-11-99, p. A6]

Even in an Orthodox religious community, in 1990, the Jewish Week ran an article about today's New York Satmar Chasidic community, "notorious for its violent actions against other Jewish groups [which] has imploded into a war against itself. Pitting supporters of the deceased Satmar Rabbi against supporters of his successor ... In the Brooklyn area of Williamsburg, home to more than 30,000 Satmars, four cars belonging to one faction were set on fire last week, while as many as 500 Satmars watched and cheered. Three Satmars, in one of the burning cars, needed to be rescued by police, who were also trying to control the Satmar onlookers." [MARK, J, Satmar]

Satmar violence against others has increasingly spread against non-Jewish neighbors. "Recent years," wrote Jonathan Mark in 1990, "have seen an explosion of tension between all chasidim and their Black and Hispanic neighbors. Most recently, Hispanic groups have complained that the Satmars act like they have the right of eminent domain over Brooklyn's Williamsburg neighborhood, where many Satmars reside. They have charged that chasidic men have sexually harassed non-Jewish women, that chasidic security patrols are actually racially motivated vigilantes." [MARK, SATMAR, p. 4]

In the more overtly political context (and not Orthodox), in an entire book about assassinations (limited only to those deemed "political") carried out by Jews in Palestine/Israel from 1882 to 1988, Israeli scholar Nachum Ben David itemizes 91 cases of "assassination events" committed by Jews. (An assassination is defined by this author in his title as "a rhetorical device for justice"). Most murder victims were other Jews who were considered "traitors/collaborators/squealers/informers." [BEN DAVID, p. 418] "We are not dealing with a lone fanatic killer [in these cases]," stresses Ben David, "but with a premeditated planned act, committed by a group or by a representative of a group." [BEN YEHUDA, p. xxi]

Aside from a possible volume about Jewish gangster murders, no doubt a similar volume could be created about Jewish assassinations under the auspices of Russian communism. Just before, and after, the creation of the Soviet state, assassinations by Jews, in one form or another, sometimes as secret police agents, are many. Mark Zborowsky, for instance, (a later immigrant to America where he became a university professor), in league with fellow Jews Naum Eitingon and Grigory Rabinovich, was instrumental in the operation to murder Trotsky's son, Lev Sedov. [VAKSBERG, p. 96] Arkady Vaksberg notes another case of Jews murdering Jews:

"The murder of two Jews whom Stalin hated [Efraim Sklyansky
and Isiah Khurgin] had been organized by two other Jews, Kanner
and Yagoda. Let us add that Kanner's assistant, Bombin, and
Mekhil's assistants, Makhovev and Yuzhak, were all Jewish."
[VAKSBERG, p. 28]

In 1904, the Russian Minister of Interior, Vlacheslav Plehve, also fell to a Jewish assassin. [LINDEMANN, A., 1997, p. 296] In 1906, in the Russian town of Grodno, "Jewish partisans assassinated the Russian district commander of police." In 1908, the chief of police from another town, Bialystok, came to Grodno. This time, "the Jew who tried to shoot him died in prison." [LACEY, p. 18] In September of 1911 another Jewish assassin, Dmitry Bogrov, shot and killed Pyotr Stolypin, a prominent Russian official, at the Kiev Opera Theatre. [SINGER, N, p. 2] Another Jewish would-be killer, Fanya Kaplan, also shot V. I. Lenin through the neck in a failed assassination attempt in early communist Russia, saying that he had "betrayed the Revolution." [LEVYTSKY, p. 29] On the same day, "the Cheka leader Uritsky was shot to death in August 1918 by a distinguished Jewish poet and army officer named Kannegiesser who 'was revolted by the fact that so many of the Bolsheviks were Jewish.'" [WEYL, N., 1968, p. 198]

In 1926, another Jewish assassin, Shalom Schwartzbard, murdered Ukrainian nationalist Symon Petlura, in Paris. (Petlura was in exile from his homeland; he formerly led the Ukrainian army against Bolshevik attack). As noted earlier, a Jewish woman was also a member of the team that assassinated Tsar Alexander II. And, as noted before also, those who directed (and participated in) the murder of the royal family during the Russian Revolution were also largely Jewish. Even in Argentina, "on May Day 1909, during a workers' demonstration in Buenos Aires, a Jewish anarchist murdered a local police chief," thereby igniting anti-Jewish rioting. [SACHAR, H., 1985, p. 281]

Elsewhere, during the rise of Nazi fascism in Germany, notes Franklin Ford, "paradoxically, during their movement's first years in power, Nazis were the victims, not the perpetrators of two sensational murders of German's residing in foreign parts." [FORD] In 1936 a Nazi official in Switzerland, Wilhelm Gustloff, was assassinated by a Jewish student, David Frankfurter. In 1938 Ernst von Rath, a German embassy official in Paris was killed by Herschel Grynszpan. The Nazis used this act as an excuse to respond with intensified savagery to the German Jewish population. Years earlier, in 1918, long before the Nazis came to power, a Russian Jew, Yakov Blumkin, assassinated the German ambassador to Moscow, Count Mirbach. [SUDOPLATOV, p. 189] Kurt Eisner, the Jewish prime minister of Bavaria, was also assassinated in 1918 by Count Arco Valley, "a young man who felt stigmatized by the fact that his mother was Jewish." [GRUNFELD, F., 1996, p. 123]'

As Leon Schapiro notes about late 19th century Russia and the formation of a communist base there:

"When Jews thronged into the party after 1881 the number of Jewish
terrorists was very high. There were important Jewish terrorists, like
Gershuni, for example, in the socialist revolutionary party which
evolved during the present century as the heir of the 'People's Will'
... In more recent times one could cite the extensive Jewish
participation in the savageries of the Red Terror of the Cheka [the
secret police] -- or even events in Palestine." [SCHAPIRO, L., 1961,
p. 152]

In America, in 1892 famous Jewish anarchist Emma Goldman and two comrades decided to assassinate millionaire Henry Clay Frick. "In desperation [Goldman] tried whoreing [sic] (unsuccessfully) on 14th Street [in New York] to raise the money for a gun, and [Alexander] Berkman went to Pittsburgh to pull the trigger." [SHULMAN, A., 1970, p. 10] The assassination attempt by Berkman was carried out, but Frick survived his wound.

Also in America, in 1974 Samuel Byck, another Jewish would-be assassin, embarked on a sensationally bizarre suicidal scheme to kill President Richard Nixon. He murdered a security guard at the Baltimore/Washington airport, stormed into a jet and demanded to the pilots that it take off and follow his orders. His plan was to crash the plane into the White House. Technically unable to accommodate him, Byck murdered the two pilots before he was, in turn, shot and killed by authorities. [CLARKE, J., p. 128-142]

More famous, of course, in Texas, was Jack Ruby (born Jacob Rubinstein), the (Jewish) murderer of Lee Harvey Oswald, the man who is believed to have killed John F. Kennedy. Ruby had interests in six Dallas-area strip-tease clubs. As Gerald Posner notes:

"Ruby often resulted to violence with his employees, and lost the tip
of his left index fingers when one bit it off during a scuffle. He beat
one of his musicians with brass knuckles, cracked another's head
with a blackjack, knocked another's teeth out, and put the club's
handyman in the hospital with a severe beating. To avoid paying the
club's cigarette girl $50 in back wages, he threatened to throw he
down the stairs until she relented her claim ... He was not above
attacking people from behind, kicking men in the groin or face once
he had them to the floor, or even striking women ... He was often
malicious, forcing beaten victims to crawl out of the club on hands
and knees." [POSNER, p. 357]
Paul Krassner also notes this about Ruby: "Lenny [Bruce, the famous Jewish comic] told me, 'I know other comics who have worked for Jack Ruby. Dig this. They say he has a tattoo of a vagina on his upper arm, and whenever he flexes his muscle, the vagina dilates open." [KRASSNER, P., 1993, p. 60]

Ruby's killing of Oswald erased his looming testimony, as well as any other person's or organization's involvement in the most famous political assassination in American history. "In Dallas, Texas," noted Jewish scholar Barnet Litvinoff, "a man born with the name Rubinstein who subsequently eliminated its Jewish-sounding suffix took it upon himself to avenge the martyrdom of a President. He gave his Jewishness as one of the reasons for doing so." [LITVINOFF, B., p. 18] At Ruby's trial, Patrick Dean (the police sergeant in charge of security where Oswald was killed) testified that shortly after the shooting he talked to Ruby about what he had just done. One of the reasons Ruby killed Oswald, the killer told him, was "because he wanted the world to know that Jews do have guts." [BELLI, p. 167] When Kennedy was shot, Ruby was in the advertising offices of the Dallas Morning News, troubled by a full page advertisement in that morning's newspaper. As Gerald Posner notes,

"The entire page was a black-bordered advertisement, headed in
large block letters, 'Welcome Mister Kennedy,' and the text accused
the President of being a Communist tool. It was signed by 'The
American Fact-Finding Committee, Bernard Weissman, Chairman.
Ruby was very disturbed that the News should have run such a
demeaning advertisement and was dismayed that it was signed by
someone with a Jewish name." [POSNER, 1993, p. 371]

Ruby mingled with a variety of underworld figures, and was involved in gun smuggling to Cuba, facts that has fueled in later years a variety of conspiracy theories about who really killed Kennedy. And for what reason. Jim Marris notes that

"The smuggling of arms to Cuba was overseen by Norman 'Roughhouse'
Rothman, a burly associate of Miami's mob boss Santos Trafficante who
managed Trafficante's Sans Souci in Havana. At the same time Rothman
reportedly was splitting Havana slot machines with [Cuban dictator]
Batista's brother-in-law." [MARRIS, p. 391]

In his 1989 investigation of the Kennedy assassination, Marris also devotes an entire chapter entitled, "Did Ruby and Oswald Know Each Other?," itemizing the testimony of those who claimed that the two were not strangers to each other. [MARRIS, p. 402-414]

"There were many signs that Ruby wasn't just a harmless scoundrel," noted Newsweek in 1993, "and the investigation into his background was remarkably -- almost willfully -- shallow. FBI agents interviewed hundreds of his acquaintances, but they barely followed up on obvious leads about his underworld friends and his trips to Cuba." [BECK, p. 94]

While Ruby was locked in prison and sentenced to death for the murder of Oswald, the London Guardian notes that Ruby

"was raving by the end -- there was no bigger conspiracy theorist than
Jack Ruby. He became convinced America had begun a pogrom against
the Jews because of what he, or Oswald, or both of them, had done."
[BYGRAVE]

Palestine Should Sue Israel for Genocide before the International Court of Justice

by Francis A. Boyle

Author's Note: The viewpoints expressed herein are solely those of the author and do not reflect the opinions of anyone else.

I would like to propose publicly here in Gaza, Palestine--where the Intifadah began ten years ago at this time--that the Provisional Government of the State of Palestine and its President institute legal proceedings against Israel before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague (the so-called World Court) for violating the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. I am sure we can all agree that Israel has indeed perpetrated the international crime of genocide against the Palestinian People. The purpose of this lawsuit would be to demonstrate that undeniable fact to the entire world. These World Court legal proceedings will prove to the entire world and to all of history that what the Nazis did to the Jews a generation ago is legally similar to what the Israelis are currently doing to the Palestinian People today: genocide.

There are three steps that should be taken for Palestine to sue Israel before the International Court of Justice for genocide. First, the President of the State of Palestine must deposit an Instrument of Accession to the 1948 Genocide Convention with the U.N. Secretary General, the depositary for the Convention. This Accession would become effective in ninety days.

Second, the President of the State of Palestine should deposit a Declaration with the International Court of Justice accepting the jurisdiction of the Court in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations and with the terms and subject to the conditions of the Statute and Rules of the Court, and undertaking to comply in good faith with the decisions of the Court and to accept all the obligations of a Member State of the United Nations under Article 94 of the United Nations Charter. Article 35(2) of the Statute of the International Court of Justice gives the Security Council the power to determine the conditions under which the World Court shall be open to states such as Palestine that are not yet Parties to the ICJ Statute. These conditions have been set forth by the Security Council in a Resolution of 15 October 1946. I would recommend that the State of Palestine consider making a "general declaration" accepting the jurisdiction of the World Court generally in respect of all disputes which have already arisen, or which may arise in the future, as permitted by paragraph 2 of this 15 October 1946 Security Council Resolution.

Pursuant to the terms of paragraph 5 of that Resolution, "All questions as to the validity or the effect of a declaration made under the terms of this resolution shall be decided by the Court." Therefore, it would be for the World Court itself to decide whether Palestine is a State entitled to exercise the powers conferred by the Security Council in its Resolution of 15 October 1946. For reasons explained in more detail below and elsewhere,1 I believe the World Court will decide in favor of Palestine on this matter of its Statehood.

To the same effect is Article 41 of the Rules of Procedure of the International Court of Justice:

Article 41

The institution of proceedings by a State which is not a party to the Statute but which, under Article 35, paragraph 2, thereof, has accepted the jurisdiction of the Court by a declaration made in accordance with any resolution adopted by the Security Council under that Article, shall be accompanied by a deposit of the declaration in question, unless the latter has previously been deposited with the Registrar. If any question of the validity or effect of such declaration arises, the Court shall decide.

The Security Council Resolution referred to in Article 41 that is now in force is the Resolution of 15 October 1946 mentioned above.

In addition, that same Article 35 of the Statute of the International Court of Justice also permits a State such as Palestine that is not a Party to the ICJ Statute to file a lawsuit against another State without making the above-mentioned Declaration provided that both States are parties to a treaty that contains a compromissory clause submitting disputes arising thereunder for adjudication by the World Court:

Article 35

1. The Court shall be open to the states parties to the present Statute.

2. The conditions under which the Court shall be open to other states shall, subject to the special provisions contained in treaties in force, be laid down by the Security Council, but in no case shall such conditions place the parties in a position of inequality before the Court. .... [Emphasis added.]

Article IX of the Genocide Convention, to be quoted in full below, contains such a "special provision" or compromissory clause.

Indeed, the World Court clearly envisioned and expressly approved such a lawsuit by a State Party to the Genocide Convention, which is not a Party to the Statute of the International Court of Justice and has not even made the aforementioned Declaration accepting the jurisdiction of the Court, by means of Paragraph 19 of its 8 April 1993 Order in Case Concerning Application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, (Bosnia and Herzegovina vs. Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro)), Request for the Indication of Provisional Measures, which I personally filed, argued, and won for the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina and its President Alija Izetbegovic:

19. Whereas Article 35 of the Statute, after providing that the Court shall be open to the parties to the Statute, continues:

"2. The conditions under which the Court shall be open to other States shall, subject to the special provisions contained in treaties in force, be laid down by the Security Council, but in no case shall such conditions place the parties in a position of inequality before the Court"; whereas the Court therefore considers that proceedings may validly be instituted by a State against a State which is a party to such a special provision in a treaty in force, but is not party to the Statute, and independently of the conditions laid down by the Security Council in its resolution 9 of 1946 (cf. S.S. "Wimbledon", P.C.I.J. 1923, Series A, No. 1, p. 6); whereas a compromissory clause in a multilateral convention, such as Article IX of the Genocide Convention, relied on by Bosnia-Herzegovina in the present case could, in the view of the Court, be regarded prima facie as a special provision contained in a treaty in force; whereas accordingly if Bosnia-Herzegovina and Yugoslavia are both parties to the Genocide Convention, disputes to which Article IX applies are in any event prima facie within the jurisdiction ratione personae of the Court; [Emphasis added.]

Notice that in the language emphasized above, the World Court ruled that a State Party to the Genocide Convention could file a lawsuit against another State Party even "independently of the conditions of the Security Council in its resolution 9 of 1946." In other words, Palestine can sue Israel for violating the 1948 Genocide Convention so long as Palestine becomes a Contracting Party to the Genocide Convention. For reasons explained in more detail below and elsewhere,2 I believe the World Court will find that Palestine is a State entitled to become a Contracting Party to the Genocide Convention. Out of an abundance of caution, however, I still recommend that Palestine file the above-mentioned Declaration generally accepting the jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice.

Third, and finally, the Provisional Government of the State of Palestine and its President must file an Application against Israel instituting legal proceedings for violating the Genocide Convention on the jurisdictional basis of Article IX thereof, which provides as follows:

Disputes between the Contracting Parties relating to the interpretation, application or fulfillment of the present Convention, including those relating to the responsibility of a State for genocide or any of the other acts enumerated in article III, shall be submitted to the International Court of Justice at the request of any of the parties to the dispute.

In accordance with Article 36(6) of the ICJ Statute, in the event of a dispute as to whether the World Court has jurisdiction over a lawsuit between Palestine and Israel on the basis of Article IX of the Genocide Convention, "the matter shall be settled by the decision of the Court."

Therefore, the filing of this genocide Application should be enough to get Palestine into the World Court against Israel for quite some time. And once Palestine is in the World Court, we can then consider requesting from the Court at any time an Indication of Provisional Measures of Protection against Israel to cease and desist from committing all acts of genocide against the Palestinian People. This international equivalent to a temporary restraining order would be similar to the two cease-and-desist Orders that I won from the World Court against the rump Yugoslavia on behalf of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina on 8 April 1993 and 13 September 1993.3

Furthermore, in its Judgment of 11 July 1996 in the Bosnia case, the World Court ruled in Paragraph 34 that there is no reservation ratione temporis to be implied into the Genocide Convention and in particular Article IX thereof, in the following language:

34. Having reached the conclusion that it has jurisdiction in the present case, both ratione personae and ratione materiae on the basis of Article IX of the Genocide Convention, it remains for the Court to specify the scope of that jurisdiction ratione temporis. In its sixth and seventh preliminary objections, Yugoslavia, basing its contention on the principle of the non-retroactivity of legal acts, has indeed asserted as a subsidiary argument that, even though the Court might have jurisdiction on the basis of the Convention, it could only deal with events subsequent to the different dates on which the Convention might have become applicable as between the Parties. In this regard, the Court will confine itself to the observation that the Genocide Convention -- and in particular Article IX -- does not contain any clause the object or effect of which is to limit in such manner the scope of its jurisdiction ratione temporis, and nor did the Parties themselves make any reservation to that end, either to the Convention or on the occasion of the signature of the Dayton-Paris Agreement. The Court thus finds that it has jurisdiction in this case to give effect to the Genocide Convention with regard to the relevant facts which have occurred since the beginning of the conflict which took place in Bosnia-Herzegovina. This finding is, moreover, in accordance with the object and purpose of the Convention as defined by the Court in 1951 and referred to above (see paragraph 31 above). As a result, the Court considers that it must reject Yugoslavia's sixth and seventh preliminary objections. [Emphasis added.]

In other words, Palestine would be able to claim in its World Court Application against Israel that the Israeli genocide against the Palestinian People commenced with the Zionist war, conquest, ethnic cleansing, and occupation of 1948--"the beginning of the conflict," to use the precise words of the World Court itself. Indeed, in the Bosnia case I already successfully argued to the World Court that ethnic cleansing is a form of genocide.

Article II of the 1948 Genocide Convention defines the international crime of genocide as follows:

In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group as such:

(a) Killing members of the group;

(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within a group;

(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. [Emphasis added.]

Certainly, Palestine has a valid claim that Israel and its predecessors-in-law--the Zionist Agencies and Forces--have committed genocide against the Palestinian People that actually started in 1948 and has continued apace until today in violation of Genocide Convention Article II(a), (b), and (c), inter alia.

For at least the past fifty years, the Israeli government and its predecessors-in-law--the Zionist Agencies and Forces--have ruthlessly implemented a systematic and comprehensive military, political, and economic campaign with the intent to destroy in substantial part the national, ethnical and racial group known as the Palestinian People. This Zionist/Israeli campaign has consisted of killing members of the Palestinian People in violation of Genocide Convention Article II(a). This Zionist/Israeli campaign has also caused serious bodily and mental harm to the Palestinian People in violation of Genocide Convention Article II(b). This Zionist/Israeli campaign has also deliberately inflicted on the Palestinian People conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction in substantial part in violation of Article II(c) of the Genocide Convention.

Of course, the downside of bringing this lawsuit is that at some point in the future the World Court could rule that the State of Palestine does not exist as a "State" entitled to accede to the Genocide Convention. But I think that there is a high probability that this World Court, as currently constituted, would rule in favor of the existence of the State of Palestine.

Today the State of Palestine is recognized de jure by about 125 states or so around the world, the only significant geographical exception being Europe. Even then, most of the states of Europe accord Palestine de facto recognition as an Independent State. The only reason why these European states have not accorded Palestine de jure recognition as an Independent State is massive political pressure that has been applied upon them by the United States Government. Palestine is also a Member State of the League of Arab States, which is the appropriate "Regional Arrangement" organized under Chapter VIII of the United Nations Charter. In addition, Palestine has Observer State Status at the United Nations Organization. Indeed, today Palestine would be a Member State of the United Nations Organization if not for illegal threats made by the United States Government to keep Palestine out of the United Nations.

Nevertheless undaunted, on 15 December 1988 the United Nations General Assembly adopted Resolution 43/177, essentially recognizing the then month-old State of Palestine. That Resolution was adopted by a vote of 104 in favor, the United States and Israel opposed, and 44 states abstaining. For reasons fully explained elsewhere,4 such General Assembly recognition of the State of Palestine is constitutive, definitive, and universally determinative.

I believe the World Court will rule in favor of the de jure existence of the State of Palestine for the purpose of mounting this lawsuit against Israel for genocide. We might not get the vote of the Judge from the United States who was a State Department Lawyer during the Reagan administration. But I believe that a majority of the fifteen Judges on the International Court of Justice will rule in favor of the de jure existence of the State of Palestine.

To be sure, we can expect that the United States Government will do everything possible to line up the votes of certain Judges against Palestine. But it is no longer the case that the United States Government controls the World Court. In this regard, recall the high degree of independence the World Court demonstrated by condemning the United States Government throughout the proceedings of Nicaragua v. the United States of America over a decade ago.5

Of course, if necessary, I could also sue the United States before the International Court of Justice for aiding and abetting Israeli genocide against the Palestinian People in violation of Article III(e) of the 1948 Genocide Convention that expressly criminalizes "complicity" in genocide. This separate lawsuit against the United States would be similar to the proceedings that President Izetbegovic of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina authorized me to institute against the United Kingdom on 15 November 1993 for aiding and abetting Serbian genocide against the Bosnian People. In this regard, you should consult the Statement of Intention by the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina to Institute Legal Proceedings Against the United Kingdom Before the International Court of Justice of 15 November 1993, which I drafted for the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina and filed with the International Court of Justice on that same day.

The Bosnian U.N. Ambassador Muhamed Sacirbey also circulated this Statement to the Member States of both the General Assembly and the Security Council as an official document of the United Nations Organization.6 This document should give the reader a fairly good idea of the legal basis for Palestine to sue the United States at the World Court for aiding and abetting Israeli genocide against the Palestinian People.7 In regard to this proposed lawsuit, the U.S. government's reservation to Article IX of the Genocide Convention is invalid and severable.

Quite obviously, I cannot promise the Palestinian People a clear-cut victory in these two lawsuits. But the mere filing of this genocide lawsuit against Israel at the World Court would constitute a severe defeat for Israel in the Court of World Public Opinion. The Palestinian filing of this genocide lawsuit in 1998 would deliver yet another body-blow to Israel along the same lines of the major body-blow already inflicted on Israel by the creation of the State of Palestine in 1988. Israel has never recovered from the creation of the Palestinian State. So too, Israel will never recover from this genocide lawsuit brought against it by Palestine before the International Court of Justice. Likewise, the United States government will never recover from a World Court lawsuit brought against it by Palestine for aiding and abetting Israeli genocide against the Palestinian People.

For these reasons, then, I would ask all the Palestinian People around the world to give the most serious consideration to backing my proposals: Tell the Provisional Government of the State of Palestine and its President to sue Israel for genocide before the International Court of Justice! Tell the Provisional Government of the State of Palestine and its President to sue the United States before the International Court of Justice for aiding and abetting Israeli genocide against the Palestinian People! May God be with the Palestinian People at this difficult time in your Nation's history. F.A.B.

Notes

1. See Francis A. Boyle, The International Legal Right of the Palestinian People to Self-determination and an Independent State of Their Own, 12 Scandinavian J. Development Alternatives, No. 2 & 3, at 29-46 (June-Sept. 1993); The Future of International Law and American Foreign Policy 135-96, 268-73 (1989) (Creating the State of Palestine).
2. Id.
3. See Francis A. Boyle, The Bosnian People Charge Genocide (1996).
4. See note 1 supra.
5. See, e.g., Francis A. Boyle, Determining U.S. Responsibility for Contra Operations Under International Law, 81 Am. J. Int'l L. 86-93 (1987); Defending Civil Resistance Under International Law 155-210 (1987).
6. See U.N. Doc. A/48/659-S/26806, 47 U.N.Y.B. 465 (1993).
7. See also John Quigley, Complicity in International Law: A New Direction in the Law of State Responsibility, 57 Brit. Y.B. Int'l L. 77-131 (1986).

Mr. Francis A. Boyle is a Professor in International Law. He wrote above viewpoints in honor of the 10th Anniversary of the Intifada Gaza City, Palestine 13 December 1997
Source:

Israel's Crimes against Palestinians

The International Laws of Belligerent Occupation
by Francis A. Boyle

(The author served as Legal Adviser to the Palestinian Delegation to the Middle East peace Negotiations from 1991 to 1993

Belligerent occupation is governed by The Hague Regulations of 1907, as well as by the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, and the customary laws of belligerent occupation. Security Council Resolution 1322 (2000), paragraph 3 continued: "Calls upon Israel, the occupying Power, to abide scrupulously by its legal obligations and its responsibilities under the Fourth Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in a Time of War of 12 August 1949;..." Again, the Security Council vote was 14 to 0, becoming obligatory international law.

The Fourth Geneva Convention applies to the West Bank, to the Gaza Strip, and to the entire City of Jerusalem, in order to protect the Palestinians living there. The Palestinian People living in this Palestinian Land are "protected persons" within the meaning of the Fourth Geneva Convention. All of their rights are sacred under international law.

There are 149 substantive articles of the Fourth Geneva Convention that protect the rights of every one of these Palestinians living in occupied Palestine. The Israeli Government is currently violating, and has since 1967 been violating, almost each and every one of these sacred rights of the Palestinian People recognized by the Fourth Geneva Convention. Indeed, violations of the Fourth Geneva Convention are war crimes.

So this is not a symmetrical situation. As matters of fact and of law, the gross and repeated violations of Palestinian rights by the Israeli army and Israeli settlers living illegally in occupied Palestine constitute war crimes. Conversely, the Palestinian People are defending Themselves and their Land and their Homes against Israeli war crimes and Israeli war criminals, both military and civilian.

The U.N. Human Rights Commission

Indeed, it is far more serious than that. On 19 October 2000 a Special Session of the U.N. Commission on Human Rights adopted a Resolution set forth in U.N. Document E/CN.4/S-5/L.2/Rev. 1, "Condemning the provocative visit to Al-Haram Al-Sharif on 28 September 2000 by Ariel Sharon, the Likud party leader, which triggered the tragic events that followed in occupied East Jerusalem and the other occupied Palestinian territories, resulting in a high number of deaths and injuries among Palestinian civilians." The U.N. Human Rights Commission then said it was "[g]ravely concerned" about several different types of atrocities inflicted by Israel upon the Palestinian People, which it denominated "war crimes, flagrant violations of international humanitarian law and crimes against humanity."

In operative paragraph 1 of its 19 October 2000 Resolution, the U.N. Human Rights Commission then: "Strongly condemns the disproportionate and indiscriminate use of force in violation of international humanitarian law by the Israeli occupying Power against innocent and unarmed Palestinian civilians...including many children, in the occupied territories, which constitutes a war crime and a crime against humanity;..." And in paragraph 5 of its 19 October 2000 Resolution, the U.N. Human Rights Commission: "Also affirms that the deliberate and systematic killing of civilians and children by the Israeli occupying authorities constitutes a flagrant and grave violation of the right to life and also constitutes a crime against humanity;..." Article 68 of the United Nations Charter had expressly required the U.N.'s Economic and Social Council to "set up" this Commission "for the promotion of human rights."

Israel's War Crimes against Palestinians

We all have a general idea of what a war crime is, so I am not going to elaborate upon that term here. But there are different degrees of heinousness for war crimes. In particular are the more serious war crimes denominated "grave breaches" of the Fourth Geneva Convention. Since the start of the Al Aqsa Intifada, the world has seen those inflicted every day by Israel against the Palestinian People living in occupied Palestine: e.g., willful killing of Palestinian civilians by the Israeli army and Israel's illegal paramilitary settlers. These Israeli "grave breaches" of the Fourth Geneva Convention mandate universal prosecution for their perpetrators, whether military or civilian, as well as prosecution for their commanders, whether military or civilian, including Israel's political leaders.

Israel's Crimes Against Humanity against Palestinians

But I want to focus for a moment on Israel's "crime against humanity" against the Palestinian People -- as determined by the U.N. Human Rights Commission itself, set up pursuant to the requirements of the United Nations Charter. What is a "crime against humanity"? This concept goes all the way back to the Nuremberg Charter of 1945 for the trial of the major Nazi war criminals. And in the Nuremberg Charter of 1945, drafted by the United States Government, there was created and inserted a new type of international crime specifically intended to deal with the Nazi persecution of the Jewish People.

The paradigmatic example of a "crime against humanity" is what Hitler and the Nazis did to the Jewish People. This is where the concept of crime against humanity came from. And this is what the U.N. Human Rights Commission determined that Israel is currently doing to the Palestinian People: Crimes against humanity. Legally, just like what Hitler and the Nazis did to the Jews.

The Precursor to Genocide

Moreover, a crime against humanity is the direct historical and legal precursor to the international crime of genocide as defined by the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. The theory here was that what Hitler and the Nazis did to the Jewish People required a special international treaty that would codify and universalize the Nuremberg concept of "crime against humanity." And that treaty ultimately became the 1948 Genocide Convention.

In fairness, you will note that the U.N. Human Rights Commission did not go so far as to condemn Israel for committing genocide against the Palestinian People. But it has condemned Israel for committing crimes against humanity, which is the direct precursor to genocide. And I submit that if something is not done quite soon by the American People and the International Community to stop Israeli war crimes and crimes against humanity against the Palestinian People, it could very well degenerate into genocide, if Israel is not there already. And in this regard, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is what international lawyers call a genocidaire--one who has already committed genocide in the past.

Mr. Francis A. Boyle is a Professor in International Law

الكاتب علي الصراف

أعداد ضحايا الحرب في العراق ما تزال موضع جدل، حتى بعد مضي ست سنوات على الغزو.
التقديرات التي تقدمها جمعيات غربية تزعم انها "مستقلة" تقول ان أعداد الضحايا يتراوح بين 100 و150 ألف عراقي. والمؤسسات الرسمية العراقية تكرر هذا الرقم لانه ليس من مصلحتها الكشف عن أبعاد المجزرة التي خاضتها قوات التحالف والمليشيات الطائفية المتعاونة معها ضد ما لا يحصى من الأبرياء. في حين أن التقديرات التي اعتمدها جامعة جون هوبكنز الاميركية عام 2006 لإحصاء عدد الضحايا قالت أن كل عام من أعوام الغزو أوقع ما بين 200 و250 ألف ضحية. وهو ما يعني أن أعداد الضحايا يبلغ اليوم ما بين 1.2 مليون و1.5 مليون قتيل.
صحيح أن موجات أعمال القتل ظلت تتراوح بين صعود وهبوط، إلا أنها ظلت مستمرة. والأهم في هذه الموجات هو أن أجواء الحقد والكراهية والانتقام ما تزال هي القوة الدافعة الرئيسية وراء تلك الأعمال.
هذه الأجواء لم تتغير. وهي تُمارس من قبل قوات الاحتلال والمليشيات الطائفية التابعة لها لأسباب مختلفة، إبتداءً من الثأر لمقتل جنود، الى الثأر لانتهاكات سابقة، الى الأحقاد الطائفية التي تشكل الأداة الرئيسية لكسب المحازبين لصالح أحزاب السلطة، الى الدفاع عن المصالح الجديدة لطبقة من الطفيليين والرعاع، الى أعمال الانتقام الشخصي، الى الخوف من انتقام الضحايا بما يدفع الى التضحية بالمزيد منهم، الى التعويض عن الحرمان ومشاعر النقص.
وتدفع هذه الأجواء الضحايا الى دائرة الانتقام المضاد أيضا.
هكذا تحول العراق الى حمام دم حقيقي وفعلي. حمام احمر تسيل الدماء على جدرانه وسقفه وأرضيته؛ صندوق مغلق يبطش فيه الاحتلال ومليشياته بالأبرياء، لأن أعمال القتل الجماعي هي الوسيلة الوحيدة للنجاة.
وهي أجواء عامة للغاية، يشترك فيها كل المسؤولين عن الاحتلال، وكل المشاركين في عمليته السياسية، ويمكن ملاحظتها في تصريحاتهم وتصرفاتهم والتوترات التي يثيرونها واعمال المحاصصة التي بنوا عليها نظامهم الجديد.
والدم ما يزال يسيل على جدران الحمام وسقفه وأرضيته، وبالكاد يمكن وقف المجزرة. فهي اكتسبت آليات وقوة دفع قائمة بذاتها. ولم تظهر حتى الآن، لا في السياسية ولا في السلوك ولا في تقسيم المصالح، آليات أو قوة دفع جديدة تبرر الاعتقاد انه صار بالإمكان الحد من المجزرة.
ومن تفجيرات انتقامية، الى غارات وحشية، الى أعمال قتل معلنة وغير معلنة، فان العراقيين صاروا يسبحون بدمائهم بالفعل. وتحت مجرى الدماء لا يجدون إلا الجثث.
لدى محاكمته في قضية اغتصاب وقتل الفتاة عبير قاسم الجنابي، قدم الجندي الاميركي السابق ستيفن غرين صورة لـ"دوامة من الجنون" كانت هي التي دفعته الى ارتكاب جرائمه.
محامي غرين هو الذي قدم هذا الوصف، ولكنه لم ينتبه انه وهو يدافع عن موكله، كان في الواقع يقدم وصفا للحرب برمتها، ولدوامة الجنون التي كان البيت الأبيض يقودها للانتقام من الأبرياء العراقيين لضحايا 11 سبتمبر، وانتقاما من القصف العراقي لإسرائيل.
الرغبة بالانتقام كانت هي الدافع الأول للحرب، لا البحث عن أسلحة دمار شامل. والقتل بلا حدود، وبلا توقف، كان هو العنصر "الشافي" الوحيد لتلك الرغبة في نفوس مليئة بالحقد والكراهية العمياء.
ولئن كان الحقد هو كل القصة، فقد تم إلباسها لباس المصالح، وأضيفت عليها دوافع أيديولوجية. وأبعد من ذلك، تم رفعها الى السماء أيضا بالقول أن الولايات المتحدة تؤدي رسالة ربانية، وان الله نفسه كان يتحدث مع جورج بوش ليقول له: "جورج، اذهب لتزيل الديكتاتورية من العراق".
وكلما كان التصعيد الأيديولوجي يرتفع الى أعلى أكثر، كلما كان البطش بدماء الأبرياء يتصاعد أكثر. وعندما أصبحت المهمة ربانية، كان ذلك يعني من الناحية العملية قتلا بلا حدود، وكان كل جندي أميركي يدور في "دوامة من الجنون"، حتى صار كل فرد من أفراد الجيش الاميركي هو ستيفن غرين، من ديفيد بيترايوس الى ديك تشيني، ومن بول بريمر الى جورج بوش، ومن أياد علاوي الى نوري المالكي. الكل في الحمام. والكل يبطش. والكل مؤمن بان القتل هو سبيله الوحيد للتشافي، وانه إذ يسفك دماء الأبرياء، فان عذره معه، لانه يؤدي مهمة رسالية، وان الله معه، حتى ليصبح مرأى الدماء والجثث سيمفونية تدفع الى الانتشاء. وذلك مثلما كان اغتصاب فتاة وحرق جثتها وقتل أمها وأبوها وأخوتها أمرا مثيرا للنشوة لدى الجندي غرين.
والجندي غرين، هو نفسه الجندي وايت، وبراون، وبلاك والحكيم وعلاوي والمالكي. فالبطش هو مصدر النشوة، ومجرى الدماء على جدران الحمام هو الرسالة.
غرين قال للمحكمة انه قاد عمليات القتل لانه كان مهتما فقط بقتل العراقيين "كل الوقت وبلا توقف". وكشف انه تفاخر خلال حفل شواء بعد ارتكاب الجريمة بأن ما فعل كان "عملا عظيما"، وانه "بث الرعب في النفوس".
وفي المحكمة خاطب محامي الدفاع المحلفين بالقول "يجب ان تفهموا الخلفية التي أدت الى دوامة مثالية من الجنون". وقال "لم يكن بوسعهم (الجنود) ان يعرفوا ما اذا كان سكان القرية والمزارعون من المتمردين والارهابيين".
جورج بوش نفسه لم يكن يعرف أيضا ما إذا كان العراق يملك أسلحة دمار شامل ام لا. ولم يكن ديفيد بيترايوس ولا أسلافه في المهمة الإلهية، قادرا على التمييز بين المدنيين والإرهابيين. والدوامة المثالية للجنون كانت دوامة أميركية بريطانية إيرانية عامة للانتقام من بلد قدم نفسه كتحد استراتيجي خطير، وكقوة قادرة على أن تفرض نفسها في المنطقة.
والغزو، ما يزال الى يومنا هذا، "عملا عظيما" من وجهة نظر الشركاء في التحالف. و"بث الرعب في النفوس" كان بالأحرى استراتيجية معلنة للحرب عنوانها الرسمي: "الصدمة والترويع".
على هذا الأساس صار غرين هو نفسه وايت، وبراون، وبلاك وبوش وبلير ورامسفيلد وغيتس.
الآن، يحاول الدفاع أن يثبت إن جرائم موكله وقعت لانه كان يعاني من "اضطرابات في الشخصية".
وسيأتي الوقت لتعترف الولايات المتحدة انها كانت مهتمة فقط بقتل العراقيين "كل الوقت وبلا توقف"، وانها كانت ترسل جنودها ومرتزقتها الى العراق لتمارس "الصدمة والترويع" لانها كانت تعاني من إضطرابات في الشخصية.
وها هم ما يزال يقتلون ويحرقون ويدمرون ويغتصبون ويعذبون ويغرقون في حمام الدم، لانهم يعتقدون انهم يقومون بعمل عظيم.
alialsarraf@hotmail.com

إدارة أوباما والإستراتيجية الأميركية: الأيام المائة الأولى.. بقلم علاء بيومي

www.alaabayoumi.com
يتوصل التقرير الحالي الصادر عن مركز الدراسات الإستراتيجية والدولية بواشنطن لعدد من النتائج الهامة بخصوص بصمة إدارة أوباما على الإستراتيجية الأميركية خلال أيامها المائة الأولى في السلطة، حيث يرى التقرير أن مهمة استعادة مكانة أميركا الاقتصادية الدولية سوف تطغى على ولاية أوباما الأولى، وأن التركيز على أفغانستان وباكستان هو أكبر تغيير أدخله أوباما على الإستراتيجية الأميركية في الوقت الراهن، وأن إستراتيجية أوباما في العراق تعاني من غموض ونقص واضحين خاصة في حالة تدهور الوضع الأمني هناك

وفي البداية يؤكد مؤلف التقرير أنطوني كوردسمان أنه لا يوجد رئيس أميركي قادر على تغيير إستراتيجية أميركا خلال مائة يوم لأسباب عديدة، فالرئيس يدخل الحكم بدون فريق عمل ويحتاج لشهور لبناء فريق الأمن القومي الخاص به، كما أنه يدخل الحكم في ظل ميزانية أقرت في العام السابق لتوليه الحكم، والميزانية هي من تتحكم في واقع السياسات على الأرض، كما أنه يواجه مشاكل دولية يعود بعضها لأكثر من نصف قرن على غرار أزمة الشرق الأوسط في حالة إدارة أوباما

لذا فإن أقصى ما يمكن أن يحققه الرئيس - خلال أيامه المائة الأولي بالبيت الأبيض - هو أن يعيد التفكير في أهداف ومبادئ الإستراتيجية الأميركية، ومحاولة إعادة تقييم تلك الأهداف، وفي هذا السياق يتوصل كوردسمان إلى النتائج الهامة التالية

أولا: أن حل الأزمة الاقتصادية داخليا واستعادة مكانة أميركا الاقتصادية الدولية - والتي تعد ركيزة هامة من ركائز إستراتيجية أميركا ونفوذها حول العام - سوف "تسيطر على ولاية أوباما الأولى" خاصة وأن علاج الأزمة الاقتصادية لن يكون عملية سهلة وسوف يتطلب "تجارب" أو محاولات عديدة قد يكتب لها النجاح أو الفشل

ثانيا: تحرك أوباما سريعا وبشكل يحسب له في توجيه اهتمام أميركا نحو الحرب في أفغانستان وباكستان وتغيير بعض أدوات الإستراتيجية هناك مثل المطالبة بزيادة الجنود الأميركيين، وتقديم مزيد من المساعدات لباكستان، والدعوة لدبلوماسية إقليمية نشطة لحل المشكلة الأفغانية تضم الدول المحيطة بما فيها إيران

ثالثا: على عكس أفغانستان، تعاني إستراتيجية أوباما تجاه العراق من عجز واضح، فلم يعلن أوباما عن إستراتيجية جديدة للحرب، ولم يناقش إستراتيجية الإدارة في حالة انزلاق العراق نحو مزيد من التوتر الطائفي أو العرقي مع انسحاب القوات، هذا في الوقت الذي أبدى فيه أوباما مرونة كبيرة في إتباع نصائح قادة القوات الأميركية بالعراق فيما يتعلق بوتيرة الانسحاب

رابعا: بصفة عامة نجح أوباما في التحرك سريعا لمواجهة التدهور الخطير في صورة أميركا حول العالم خلال عهد الرئيس جورج دبليو بوش، حيث نجح أوباما في تصوير إدارته على إنها أكثر استعدادا للحوار والإنصات والتعاون الدولي

خامسا: لم يحصل أوباما على دعم كبير من دول حلف الناتو من أجل مساعدته في حرب أفغانستان، ولكنه أعاد توجيه أهداف الناتو نحو الدفاع عن أمن أعضائه بدلا من التركيز بشكل أساسي على التدخل في حربي العراق وأفغانستان

سادسا: أعلن أوباما نيته المضي قدما في جهود نزع أسلحة الدمار الشامل من خلال التعاون مع روسيا بهذا الخصوص

سابعا: فيما يتعلق بالصراع العربي الإسرائيلي أعلن أوباما عن نيته التركيز على إيجاد حل للصراع خلال ولايته الأولى ورفضه تسويف القضية لنهاية ولايته الثانية كحال الرؤساء الأميركيين السابقين، كما أعلن حرصه على دفع جهود السلام بين سوريا وإسرائيل ودعم مبادرة السلام العربية

ثامنا: توقف أوباما عن استخدام مصطلح "الحرب العالمية على الإرهاب" احتراما لمشاعر العالم الإسلامي، حيث رأى البعض أن المصطلح موجه ضد الإسلام والعرب في جوهره، وفي هذا السياق حرص أوباما على إبراز حرصه على التعاون مع الحكومة التركية كنموذج لدولة مسلمة تقودها حكومة إسلامية

تاسعا: بخصوص إيران، أعلنت إدارة أوباما معارضتها لشن إسرائيل ضربة جوية ضد منشئات إيران النووية، في الوقت الذي أكدت فيه الإدارة معارضتها الشديدة لاستمرار إيران في برامج التسلح النووي وفي دعم حركات كحزب الله وحماس

أخيرا: وبخصوص الجيش الأميركي طالبت إدارة أوباما بأموال إضافية خلال العام الحالي مقدرها 75.5 بليون دولار توجه بالأساس لدعم حربي أفغانستان والعراق خلال عام 2009، وذلك على الرغم من الأزمة الاقتصادية، ويفسر ذلك أن ميزانية عام 2009 والتي أقرت في عهد الرئيس بوش لم تتضمن مصاريف الحربين، وذلك كعادة إدارة بوش والتي كانت تبقي تكاليف تمويل الحرب خارج الميزانية وتمولها من خلال مخصصات مالية إضافية تطلب تباعا

لذا حرصت إدارة أوباما على أن تقر مصاريف الحربين في الميزانية الجديدة، حيث طالبت الإدارة بميزانية دفاع قدرها 663 بليون دولار في عام 2010 تخصص 130 بليون دولار منها لحربي أفغانستان والعراق في محاولة من قبل إدارة أوباما للتحكم في تكاليف الحربين من البداية وتخفيضها

كما أكدت إدارة أوباما عزمها تطوير الجيش الأميركي في اتجاه دعم قدراته في مجال حروب العصابات والحرب داخل المدن مما يستدعي الاهتمام بالقوات البرية وعدم التركيز فقط على القوات الجوية الأميركية كما كان الحال في الماضي، وكذلك التخلي عن برامج الأسلحة عالية التكنولوجيا والتكاليف (الطائرات والصواريخ) لصالح برامج الأسلحة الأقل تكنولوجيا وتكلفة والتي يحتاجها الجيش في الفترة الحالية (مثل أنظمة الاستخبارات الحربية والعربات المصفحة التي تسير عن بعد)، وهو تحول هام وضخم سوف يستغرق سنوات وخطط عديدة ودقيقة لتنفيذه

كما توقع التقرير أن يساهم تولي هيلاري كلينتون لوزارة الخارجية الأميركية في زيادة ميزانية الخارجية الأميركية وفي تنشيط دور الدبلوماسية في الإستراتيجية الأميركية بشكل عام

وفي النهاية أكد التقرير على أن إعلان النوايا وحده لا يكفي، وأن الأهم هو الميزانيات والخطط المفصلة والخطوات الحقيقية التي سوف تتخذها إدارة أوباما للتعامل مع القضايا الإستراتيجية التي تواجهها، وأن حصيلة الأيام المائة الأولي لأوباما في الحكم هي مجموعة من البدايات والمفاهيم والنوايا التي قد يحتاج بعضها لسنوات لتحقيقه وإن كان هذا لا يقلل من أهمية رصدها – كما حدث في التقرير الحالي – والبحث عن تبعاتها وتطوراتها في تقارير مستقبلية

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للإطلاع على النص الكامل للتقرير يرجى زيارة

http://www.csis.org/component/option,com_csis_pubs/task,view/id,5411

مصر وحزب الله : ٣ سنوات من الحرب

ما بين مصر و«حزب الله»، ومنذ ثلاث سنوات، سجال علني وحرب بالوكالة. إنها فصول تتلاحق في المواجهة المصرية ـ الإيرانية على امتداد المنطقة. القاهرة توجّه اتّهامات وإهانات الى قائد المقاومة اللبنانية، وهو يردّ بعبارات من العيار الثقيل، وإسرائيل في النهاية هي المستفيد الأول. هذه المرة بنيامين نتنياهو هو الذي يضحك ومهمّته في واشنطن الشهر المقبل لن تكون صعبة. يكفي أن يحمل معه الصحف المصرية كي يدعم وجهة نظره القائلة: التسوية يفترض أن تنتظر، والأولويّة لـ«حزب الله» و«حماس» وإيران.




بدايات السجال كانت كالآتي:

نصر الله: الموقف المصري هو حجر الزاوية في ما يجري في غزّة. يا ضباط وجنود القوّات المسلّحة المصرية أنتم ما زلتم على أصالتكم العروبية وعلى موقفكم المعادي للصهاينة. إضغطوا على القيادة السياسية لفتح المعبر.

أبو الغيط: أحدهم ممن تحدّثوا بالأمس طالب شعب مصر بالنزول الى الشارع وإحداث حالة من الفوضى في مصر، مثلما خلقوا هذه الفوضى في بلادهم... كما تحدّث الى القوّات المسلّحة المصرية مطالباً إياها بالتمرّد. هذا الشخص لا يعي من أمره شيئاً، ولا يعي أن هذه القوّات هي قوّات شرعية للدفاع عن مصر، وأقول له هيهات، لأن هذه القوّات شريفة وقادرة على الدفاع عن هذا الوطن ضد أمثالك. ومتوجّهاً الى نصر الله من دون أن يسمّيه قائلاً: أنت ترغب في الفوضى في هذا الإقليم خدمة لمصالح ليست في مصلحة أهل الإقليم.

وفي مقابلة مع التلفزيون المصري قال أبو الغيط: إن «حزب الله» دمّر لبنان في حرب العام ٢٠٠٦، وصواريخ الكاتيوشا والقذائف الصاروخية التي يستخدمها لا تضاهي ما يملكه الجيش المصري. وسأل: هل تعرف ما هي القوّات المسلّحة المصرية؟ هل هي ١٥ صاروخاً من نوع كاتيوشا أو ٨٠ مدفعاً من نوع «آر بي جي»؟ إن القوّات المصرية أكبر من كل من يتحدّث عنها.

هكذا بدأت، لكن لهذه البداية بدايات أخرى. البداية المكشوفة كانت في العام ٢٠٠٦ حين وجّهت القاهرة انتقادات صريحة الى الحزب تتهمه بالتهوّر، وتحمّله بصورة مباشرة مسؤولية اندلاع الحرب على لبنان. وقد تم في حينه احتواء الموضوع باتصالات جرت بين «حزب الله» والسفارة المصرية في بيروت. في هذه الاتصالات، ذهبت القاهرة الى أبعد، إذ دعت قيادات «حزب الله» الى زيارة مصر والتعرّف عن قرب الى وجهة النظر المصرية من حرب تموز (يوليو) ٢٠٠٦ ومن حرب غزّة، والموقف الرسمي المصري بكل أبعاده السياسية والأمنيّة والاستراتيجية، لكن قيادة الحزب رأت أن الوقت لم يحن بعد لتلبية هذه الدعوة، فسكنت الأمور على زغل من دون تطبيع.

ومن أين يأتي الزغل؟

إنه يأتي من مصادر متعدّدة لعل أهمّها: القطيعة التي تتواصل منذ ما يقرب الثلاثين سنة بين القاهرة وطهران منذ انتصار الثورة الخمينية. منذ ذلك التاريخ و«تطبيع التباعد» يفرض نفسه شعاراً في العلاقات الثنائية. في شرح أسباب هذا التباعد قيل إن القاهرة عاتبة بسبب تركيز لوحة جدارية في أحد شوارع العاصمة الإيرانية تحمل اسم خالد الإسلامبولي، أحد المتّهمين الرئيسيين في اغتيال الرئيس أنور السادات. وقيل إن ضريح شاه إيران في القاهرة هو السبب. قيل أيضاً إن مصر تشترط لإعادة الوصل حلّ قضية الجزر الإماراتية الثلاث التي تحتلّها إيران منذ أربعة عقود، الى جانب ملفّات أمنيّة وسياسية أخرى أبرزها الملف النووي الإيراني وطموحات طهران الإقليمية.

بعض هذه الاجتهادات سقط من تلقاء نفسه، عندما شارك الرئيس الإيراني محمود أحمدي نجاد في القمّة الخليجية في الدوحة، وطرح على القادة الخليجيين الحاضرين مبادرة شاملة للتقارب تتضمّن ١٢ اقتراحاً، ودعاهم الى زيارة طهران من أجل مناقشتها. الرد الخليجي لم يكن سلبياً، بدليل أن دول مجلس التعاون تريّثت في الاستجابة لمطالبة روبرت غيتس وزير الدفاع الأميركي باعتبار إيران مصدر التهديد الأول لدول المنطقة (بدلاً من إسرائيل)، وأكدت أهميّة التواصل مع إيران بالنسبة الى الأمن الخليجي. في تلك المرحلة، توقّع عدد غير قليل من المراقبين أن تعيد مصر علاقاتها مع إيران انسجاماً مع الموقف الخليجي، إلا أنها لم تفعل.

لماذا؟ ببساطة، لأن القاهرة قلقة من دور إيران الإقليمي الآخذ في التوسّع، وقلقة أيضاً من اعتراف أميركي محتمل بهذا الدور. فالنفوذ الإيراني في العراق يبدو أكثر وضوحاً من أي وقت مضى، وهو أقوى من نفوذ الولايات المتحدة، وفي واشنطن من يرى أن القاهرة عاجزة عن الوصول الى هذا المستوى من التأثير. والنفوذ الإيراني لا يقتصر على العراق، ويمكن تلمّسه بوضوح كامل في لبنان كما في فلسطين المحتلّة وبعض دول الخليج. وبسهولة يمكن ملاحظة أن مصر لا تملك خطة محدّدة وهادفة لمواجهة التوسّع الإيراني، وأن تعاملها مع هذا التوسّع يقتصر على ردود الفعل، في حين أن إيران تمسك بزمام المبادرة. وفي ظل هذا الوضع، تبدو المعارك السياسية التي تخوضها القاهرة، بأشكال مختلفة، محدودة التأثير وعشوائية الى حد بعيد، وبسبب عشوائيّتها فهي تؤدّي في معظم الحالات الى نتائج عكسية تفيد منها إيران.

ويقول العارفون إن معارك القاهرة «الصغيرة» لا تساعد كثيراً على تحسين العلاقات، لا سيما وأن هناك اتجاهين في طهران: الأول يريد ترميم العلاقات، ويتحرّك فعلاً في هذا الاتجاه منذ أواخر الثمانينيات، أي منذ انتهاء الحرب العراقية ـ الإيرانية. والاتجاه المناوئ يعمل على تخريب أي جهد يقوم به المعتدلون لتنقية الأجواء، وكل مشكلة تفتعلها القاهرة تعيق جهود الفريق الحواري.

هذا الارث التاريخي من اللاودّ بين القاهرة وطهران، أكبر بطبيعة الحال من قضية التنظيم الأصولي الموالي لـ«حزب الله» في مصر، بدليل أن السلطات المصرية سبق أن ضبطت في السنوات الأخيرة تنظيمات مشابهة من دون أن تعلن عنها، تفادياً لمزيد من الأزمات مع إيران. هذه المرة، تعمّدت الاعلان وإعداد مضبطة اتّهام ضد الحزب، وكأنها لم تغفر بعد للسيد حسن نصر الله دعوته للجيش المصري الى «الخروج على النظام». أمر آخر لم تغفره القاهرة هو تنامي العلاقة بين طهران وجماعة الإخوان المسلمين وحركة «حماس». وخلال زيارات خالد مشعل الأخيرة لطهران حرص على الاشادة بالدعم الإيراني لغزّة في معرض التأكيد على هذا التقارب، وهذا يعني أن النفوذ الإيراني داخل مصر مرشّح للتوسّع، ويرجّح أن تكون الانتقادات الحادّة التي وجّهتها إيران الى الرئيس المصري حسني مبارك قد لقيت صداها لدى الإخوان المصريين. واقتناع القاهرة أنه إذا نجحت إيران في توثيق علاقاتها مع «الإخوان»، فإن النفوذ الإيراني سوف يكسب مساحة أكبر على امتداد العالم العربي.

ومعروف أن القاهرة تشكّك منذ فترة طويلة بعلاقة الإخوان مع طهران، وهي علاقة تتمظهر في الدعم الذي تلقاه «حماس»، وعندما يقول مشعل في إيران إنها لعبت دوراً كبيراً في انتصار أهالي غزّة، وإنها شريك في هذا الانتصار، فإن لهذا الكلام أبعاداً خطرة في نظر المسؤولين المصريين.

الى هذه المسألة، لا بدّ من إضافة قضية أخرى قد تكون في المستوى نفسه من الأهميّة، وهي حملة «التشيّع» التي يشكو منها المسؤولون المصريون ومؤيّدوهم. ولهذه الشكوى بعد تاريخي أيضاً، لأن المصريين أكثر تقبّلاً للفكر الشيعي من غيرهم من السنّة، وأحد الأسباب هو حكم الأسرة الفاطمية الذي عرفته مصر في القرن العاشر. وقد تركت فترة الخلافة الفاطمية داخل مصر انفتاحاً على الممارسات الشيعية وتقاليدها، وهي حالة ليست موجودة في العالم السنّي الكبير. على سبيل المثال، يؤمن المصريون بأن الحسين (ع) الإمام الشيعي الثالث وأسرته دفنوا في القاهرة وليس في كربلاء (العراق)، وأن مدافن الحسين (ع) والسيدة زينب (شقيقته) والسيدة سكينة (ابنته) هي الأماكن الأكثر قدسيّة في الإسلام بعد مكة والمدينة المنوّرة. وكما يفعل الشيعة، فإن كثيرين من السنّة في القاهرة يؤدّون طقوس عاشوراء في ذكرى استشهاد الإمام الحسين (ع) كل عام. وفي السنوات الأخيرة تتكرّر الشكوى المصرية من تصاعد المد الشيعي وظاهرة التشيّع، مما حمل الحكومة المصرية ووسائل الاعلام الرسمية على شنّ حملة ضد الرموز الشيعية. وليس سرّاً أن العالم الديني البارز الشيخ يوسف القرضاوي رئيس اتحاد علماء المسلمين حذّر من «المد الشيعي» والأنشطة التبشيرية الشيعية خصوصاً في مصر، ومما قاله: إن تزايد عمليات تسلّل المذهب الشيعي في مصر، قد يؤدّي الى حرب أهليّة مثل تلك التي يشهدها العراق. ولا توجد إحصاءات حول عدد الشيعة المصريين. مركز ابن خلدون للدراسات الانمائية يقدّر أن الشيعة يشكّلون أقلّ من واحد في المئة من الشعب المصري، إلا أن محمد الدريني، وهو سنّي اعتنق المذهب الشيعي، يقدّر هذا العدد بمليون ونصف مليون.

نصل الى السجال الأخير. هذا السجال أحدث تصاعداً في حدّة التوتّر بين مصر و«حزب الله» على خلفيّة اعتقال أحد عناصر الحزب، ومعه خليّة من ٤٩ شخصاً ينتمون الى أربع دول عربية دخلوا مصر بطريق غير شرعية، واستخدموا جوازات سفر مزوّرة، وأسماء حركيّة بهدف تضليل أجهزة الأمن، وبعضهم عن طريق الأنفاق بين مصر والقطاع. ويقول المصريون إن القيادي في «حزب الله» محمد قبلان واسمه الحركي «محمود»، أقام في مصر بين عامي ٢٠٠٧ و٢٠٠٨ للبدء في تجهيز واستقطاب «العناصر الارهابية» (التعبير للمصدر المصري)، وأن خطة الحزب التخريبية اعتمدت إرسال عناصر على دفعات لتنفيذ عملياتها في الموعد المحدّد. استمر ذلك الى أن وقعت حرب غزّة، وتم الدفع مرة أخرى بقيادي اخر من «حزب الله» هو محمد يوسف منصور الذي استخدم اسماً حركياً هو «أبو يوسف»، وهو من الضاحية الجنوبية في بيروت، ليقود المخطط التخريبي داخل مصر، وكان يحمل جواز سفر مزوّراً.

الأمين العام لـ«حزب الله» أقرّ بأن سامي شهاب الذي اعتقلته السلطات المصرية أخيراً عضو في الحزب، وكان يقدّم دعماً لوجستياً لفلسطينيي غزّة، معتبراً أن الادانة هنا يفترض أن توجّه الى النظام المصري، لكنه نفى أن يكون لدى الحزب أي مخطّط تخريبي، وأضاف: إن الأخ سامي تعامل مع عدد قليل من الأفراد يصل الى عشرة، ولا يملك الحزب معلومات حول باقي المعتقلين. وأضاف: إذا كانت مساعدة الفلسطينيين المحتلّة أرضهم والمشرّدين جريمة، فأنا أعلن رسمياً أنني أعترف بهذه الجريمة، فهي ذنب لا نستغفر منه بل نتقرّب به الى الله، وليست هذه أول مرة يتم فيها القبض على عناصر من «حزب الله» يحاولون تقديم مساعدة للفلسطينيين.

الرواية المصرية مختلفة تماماً، وهي تسوق على لسان النائب العام الاتّهامات الآتية:

< تأسيس مشاريع تجارية لاتّخاذها سائراً لتنفيذ عمليات ضد الأمن المصري.

< مسح القرى والمدن على الحدود المصرية ـ الفلسطينية.

< استئجار بعض العقارات المطلّة على المجرى الملاحي لقناة السويس لرصد السفن التي تعبر القناة.

< رصد المنشآت والقرى السياحية في محافظتي شمال وجنوب سيناء.

< توفير كميّات من المفرقعات وإعداد العبوات المفرقعة.

< تزوير جوازات السفر والبطاقات الشخصية واستئجار الشقق والسيارات اللازمة لتحرّك عناصر التنظيم.

< استئجار شقق مفروشة في بعض الأحياء الراقية واستخدامها لاجتماعات عناصر «حزب الله»، وعقد الدورات التدريبية لعناصر التنظيم.

< نشر الفكر الشيعي داخل مصر.

وفي انتظار أن تنتهي النيابة العامة المصرية من ترتيب أوراق المحاكمة، يميل عدد من المراقبين الى أن ملف مصر مع «حزب الله» بدأ سياسياً وانتهى قضائياً، بسبب تداخل مشاكل غزّة مع المعادلة المصرية الأمنيّة، وتشابك عدد من القضايا المطروحة وأبرزها علاقات «حماس» بإيران بـ«حزب الله» وبالإخوان المسلمين، الأمر الذي يعطّل الرؤية على المديين القريب والمتوسط. وفي أي حال، فإن الأزمة الحالية تصبّ كلّها في مصلحة إسرائيل، وبصورة خاصة في مصلحة حكومة نتنياهو الجديدة. في هذا السياق تقول «هآرتس» إن من شأنها أن تعزّز التعاون الاستخباري والتنسيق الأمني بين الأجهزة الأمنيّة الإسرائيلية والمصرية.

أكثر من ذلك، يرجّح المعلّق العسكري للصحيفة عاموس هارئيل، أن تكون الأجهزة الأمنيّة المصرية قد نجحت في إلقاء القبض على المجموعة بناءً لمعلومات تلقّتها من الاستخبارات الإسرائيلية، بدليل أن الكشف عن الخليّة جاء في ذروة تعاون أمني بين تل أبيب والقاهرة في مجال الكشف عن أنفاق التهريب بين إسرائيل وقطاع غزّة.

من جهته، اعتبر حنان كريستال المعلّق السياسي في قناة التلفزيون الأولى والاذاعة الإسرائيلية، أن السجال بين «حزب الله» ومصر «فرصة ذهبية» لحكومة نتنياهو، لأنه يصرف الأنظار عن الطابع المتطرّف لهذه الحكومة، ومواقفها من القضية الفلسطينية التي لا تلقى قبولاً دولياً. ومما قاله: منذ أن تشكّلت الحكومة تصدّرت جدول الاهتمام العالمي تصريحات وزير الخارجية أفيغدور ليبرمان المثيرة للسخرية، أما الآن وفي ظل الأزمة، فإن في وسع نتنياهو أن يكسب شرعية لحكومته، بعد أن ينجح في خياطة فم ليبرمان كي تبقى الأضواء مسلّطة على مصر و«حزب الله».

عن مجلة "المشاهد السياسي"

Israel’s war crimes

For the first time since the establishment of Israel in 1948 the government is facing serious allegations of war crimes from respected public figures throughout the world. Even the secretary general of the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon, normally so cautious about offending sovereign states – especially those aligned with its most influential member, the United States – has joined the call for an investigation and potential accountability. To grasp the significance of these developments it is necessary to explain what made the 22 days of attacks in Gaza stand shockingly apart from the many prior recourses to force by Israel to uphold its security and strategic interests.

In my view, what made the Gaza attacks launched on 27 December different from the main wars fought by Israel over the years was that the weapons and tactics used devastated an essentially defenceless civilian population. The one-sidedness of the encounter was so stark, as signalled by the relative casualties on both sides (more than 100 to 1; 1300-plus Palestinians killed compared with 13 Israelis, and several of these by friendly fire), that most commentators refrained from attaching the label “war”.

The Israelis and their friends talk of “retaliation” and “the right of Israel to defend itself”. Critics described the attacks as a “massacre” or relied on the language of war crimes and crimes against humanity. In the past Israeli uses of force were often widely condemned, especially by Arab governments, including charges that the UN Charter was being violated, but there was an implicit acknowledgement that Israel was using force in a war mode. War crimes charges (to the extent they were made) came only from radical governments and the extreme left.

The early Israeli wars were fought against Arab neighbours which were quite literally challenging Israel’s right to exist as a sovereign state. The outbreaks of force were of an inter-governmental nature; and even when Israel exhibited its military superiority in the June 1967 six day war, it was treated within the framework of normal world politics, and though it may have been unlawful, it was not criminal.

But from the 1982 Lebanon war this started to change. The main target then was the presence of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) in southern Lebanon. But the war is now mainly remembered for its ending, with the slaughter of hundreds of unarmed Palestinian civilians in the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila. Although this atrocity was the work of a Lebanese Christian militia, Israeli acquiescence, control and complicity were clearly part of the picture. Still, this was an incident which, though alarming, was not the whole of the military operation, which Israel justified as necessary due to the Lebanese government’s inability to prevent its territory from being used to threaten Israeli security.

The legacy of the 1982 war was Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon and the formation of Hizbullah in reaction, mounting an armed resistance that finally led to a shamefaced Israeli withdrawal in 1998. This set the stage for the 2006 Lebanon war in which the announced adversary was Hizbullah, and the combat zone inevitably merged portions of the Lebanese civilian population with the military campaign undertaken to destroy Hizbullah. Such a use of hi-tech Israeli force against Hizbullah raised the issue of fighting against a hostile society with no equivalent means of defending itself rather than against an enemy state. It also raised questions about whether reliance on a military option was even relevant to Israel’s political goals, as Hizbullah emerged from the war stronger, and the only real result was to damage the reputation of the IDF as a fighting force and to leave southern Lebanon devastated.

The Gaza operation brought these concerns to the fore as it dramatised this shift away from fighting states to struggles against armed resistance movements, and with a related shift from the language of “war” to “criminality”. In one important respect, Israel managed to skew perceptions and discourse by getting the media and diplomats to focus the basic international criminal law question on whether or not Israeli use of force was “disproportionate”.

This way of describing Israeli recourse to force ignores the foundational issue: were the attacks in any legal sense “defensive” in character in the first place? An inquiry into the surrounding circumstances shows an absence of any kind of defensive necessity: a temporary ceasefire between Israel and Hamas that had been in effect since 19 July 2008 had succeeded in reducing cross-border violence virtually to zero; Hamas consistently offered to extend the ceasefire, even to a longer period of ten years; the breakdown of the ceasefire is not primarily the result of Hamas rocket fire, but came about mainly as a result of an Israeli air attack on 4 November that killed six Hamas fighters in Gaza.

Disproportionate force?
In other words, there were no grounds for claiming the right of self-defence as Israel was not the object of a Hamas attack, and diplomatic alternatives to force existed and seemed credible, and their good-faith reliance was legally obligatory. On this basis the focus of legal debate should not be upon whether Israeli force was disproportionate. Of course it was. The focus should be on whether the Israeli attacks were a prohibited, non-defensive use of force under the UN charter, amounting to an act of aggression, and as such constituting a crime against peace. At Nuremberg after the second world war, surviving Nazi leaders were charged with this crime, which was described in the judgment as “the supreme crime” encompassing the others.

The Gaza form of encounter almost by necessity blurs the line between war and crime, and when it occurs in a confined, densely populated area such as Gaza, necessarily intermingles the resistance fighters with the civilian population. It also induces the resistance effort to rely on criminal targeting of civilians as it has no military capacity directly to oppose state violence. In this respect, the Israeli attacks on Gaza and the Hamas resistance crossed the line between lawful combat and war crimes.

These two sides should not be viewed as equally responsible for the recent events. Israel initiated the Gaza campaign without adequate legal foundation or just cause, and was responsible for causing the overwhelming proportion of devastation and the entirety of civilian suffering. Israeli reliance on a military approach to defeat or punish Gaza was intrinsically “criminal”, and as such demonstrative of both violations of the law of war and the commission of crimes against humanity.

There is another element that strengthens the allegation of aggression. The population of Gaza had been subjected to a punitive blockade for 18 months when Israel launched its attacks. This blockade was widely, and correctly, viewed as collective punishment in a form that violated Articles 33 and 55 of the Fourth Geneva Convention governing the conduct of an occupying power in relation to the civilian population living under occupation. This policy was itself condemned as a crime against humanity, as well as a grave breach of international humanitarian law.

It also had resulted in serious nutritional deficiencies and widespread mental disorders on the part of the entire Gaza population, leaving it particularly vulnerable to the sort of “shock and awe” attack mounted by Israel from land, air and sea. This vulnerability was reinforced by Israel’s unwillingness to allow Gaza civilians to seek safety while the tiny Strip was under such intense combat pressure. Two hundred non-Palestinian wives were allowed to leave, which underscored the criminality of locking children, women, the sick, elderly and disabled into the war zone, and showed its ethnically discriminatory character. This appears to be the first time in wartime conditions that a civilian population was denied the possibility of becoming refugees.

In addition to these big picture issues, there are a variety of alleged war crimes associated with Israeli battlefield practices. These charges, based on evidence collected by human rights groups, include IDF firing at a variety of civilian targets, instances where Israeli military personnel denied medical aid to wounded Palestinians, and others where ambulances were prevented from reaching their destinations. There are also documented claims of 20 occasions on which Israeli soldiers were seen firing at women and children carrying white flags. And there are various allegations associated with the use of phosphorus bombs in residential areas of Gaza, as well as legal complaints about the use of a new cruel weapon, known as DIME, that explodes with such force that it rips body parts to pieces.

These war crimes concerns can only be resolved by factual clarifications as to whether a basis exists for possible prosecution of the perpetrators, and commanders and political leaders to the extent that criminal tactics and weaponry were authorised as matters of Israeli policy. In this vein too are the Israeli claims relating to rockets fired at civilian targets and to Hamas militants using “human shields” and deliberately attacking from non-military targets.

Even without further investigation, it is not too soon to raise questions about individual accountability for war crimes. The most serious allegations relate to the pre-existing blockade, the intrinsic criminality and non-defensiveness of the attack itself; and the official policies (eg confinement of civilian population in the war zone) have been acknowledged. The charges against Hamas require further investigation and legal assessment before it is appropriate to discuss possible arrangements for imposing accountability.

A question immediately arises as to whether talk of Israeli war crimes is nothing more than talk. Are there any prospects that the allegations will be followed up with effective procedures to establish accountability? There are a variety of potentially usable mechanisms to impose accountability, but will any of these be available in practice? This issue has been already raised by the Israeli government at the highest levels in the form of official commitments to shield Israeli soldiers from facing war crimes charges.

The most obvious path to address the broader questions of criminal accountability would be to invoke the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court established in 2002. Although the prosecutor has been asked to investigate the possibility of such a proceeding, it is highly unlikely to lead anywhere since Israel is not a member and, by most assessments, Palestine is not yet a state or party to the statute of the ICC. Belatedly, and somewhat surprisingly, the Palestinian Authority sought, after the 19 January ceasefire, to adhere to the Rome Treaty establishing the ICC. But even if its membership is accepted, which is unlikely, the date of adherence would probably rule out legal action based on prior events such as the Gaza military operation. And it is certain that Israel would not cooperate with the ICC with respect to evidence, witnesses or defendants, and this would make it very difficult to proceed even if the other hurdles could be overcome.

The next most obvious possibility would be to follow the path chosen in the 1990s by the UN Security Council, establishing ad hoc international criminal tribunals, as was done to address the crimes associated with the break-up of former Yugoslavia and with the Rwanda massacres of 1994. This path seems blocked in relation to Israel as the US, and likely other European permanent members, would veto any such proposal. In theory, the General Assembly could exercise parallel authority, as human rights are within its purview and it is authorised by Article 22 of the UN charter to “establish such subsidiary organs as it deems necessary for the performance of its function”. In 1950 it acted on this basis to establish the UN Administrative Tribunal, mandated to resolve employment disputes with UN staff members.

The geopolitical realities that exist within the UN make this an unlikely course of action (although it is under investigation). At present there does not seem to be sufficient inter-governmental political will to embark on such a controversial path, but civil society pressure may yet make this a plausible option, especially if Israel persists in maintaining its criminally unlawful blockade of Gaza, resisting widespread calls, including by President Obama, to open the crossings from Israel. Even in the unlikely event that it is established, such a tribunal could not function effectively without a high degree of cooperation with the government of the country whose leaders and soldiers are being accused. Unlike former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, Israel’s political leadership would certainly do its best to obstruct the activities of any international body charged with prosecuting Israeli war crimes.

Claims of universal jurisdiction
Perhaps the most plausible governmental path would be reliance on claims of universal jurisdiction (1) associated with the authority of national courts to prosecute certain categories of war crimes, depending on national legislation. Such legislation exists in varying forms in more than 12 countries, including Spain, Belgium, France, Germany, Britain and the US. Spain has already indicted several leading Israeli military officers, although there is political pressure on the Spanish government to alter its criminal law to disallow such an undertaking in the absence of those accused.

This path to criminal accountability was taken in 1998 when a Spanish high court indicted the former Chilean dictator, Augusto Pinochet, and he was later detained in Britain where the legal duty to extradite was finally upheld on rather narrow grounds by a majority of the Law Lords, the highest court in the country. Pinochet was not extradited however, but returned to Chile on grounds of unfitness to stand trial, and died in Chile while criminal proceedings against him were under way.

Whether universal jurisdiction provides a practical means of responding to the war crimes charges arising out of the Gaza experience is doubtful. National procedures are likely to be swayed by political pressures, as were German courts, which a year ago declined to proceed against Donald Rumsfeld on torture charges despite a strong evidentiary basis and the near certainty that he would not be prosecuted in the US, which as his home state had the legally acknowledged prior jurisdictional claim. Also, universal jurisdictional proceedings are quite random, depending on either the cooperation of other governments by way of extradition or the happenchance of finding a potential defendant within the territory of the prosecuting state.

It is possible that a high profile proceeding could occur, and this would give great attention to the war crimes issue, and so universal jurisdiction is probably the most promising approach to Israeli accountability despite formidable obstacles. Even if no conviction results (and none exists for comparable allegations), the mere threat of detention and possible prosecution is likely to inhibit the travel plans of individuals likely to be detained on war crime charges; and has some political relevance with respect to the international reputation of a government.

There is, of course, the theoretical possibility that prosecutions, at least for battlefield practices such as shooting surrendering civilians, would be undertaken in Israeli criminal courts. Respected Israeli human rights organisations, including B’Tselem, are gathering evidence for such legal actions and advance the argument that an Israeli initiative has the national benefit of undermining the international calls for legal action.

This Israeli initiative, even if nothing follows in the way of legal action, as seems almost certain due to political constraints, has significance. It will lend credence to the controversial international contentions that criminal indictment and prosecution of Israeli political and military leaders and war crimes perpetrators should take place in some legal venue. If politics blocks legal action in Israel, then the implementation of international criminal law depends on taking whatever action is possible in either an international tribunal or foreign national courts, and if this proves impossible, then by convening a non-governmental civil society tribunal with symbolic legal authority.

What seems reasonably clear is that despite the clamour for war crimes investigations and accountability, the political will is lacking to proceed against Israel at the inter-governmental level, whether within the UN or outside. The realities of geopolitics are built around double standards when it comes to war crimes. It is one thing to proceed against Saddam Hussein or Slobodan Milosevic, but quite another to go against George W Bush or Ehud Olmert. Ever since the Nuremberg trials after the second world war, there exists impunity for those who act on behalf of powerful, undefeated states and nothing is likely to challenge this fact of international life in the near future, thus tarnishing the status of international law as a vehicle for global justice that is consistent in its enforcement efforts. When it comes to international criminal law, there continues to exist impunity for the strong and victorious, and potential accountability for the weak or defeated.

It does seem likely that civil society initiatives will lead to the establishment of one or more tribunals operating without the benefit of governmental authorisation. Such tribunals became prominent in the Vietnam war when Bertrand Russell took the lead in establishing the Russell Tribunal. Since then the Permanent Peoples Tribunal based in Rome has organised more than 20 sessions on a variety of international topics that neither the UN nor governments will touch.

In 2005 the World Tribunal on Iraq, held in Istanbul, heard evidence from 54 witnesses, and its jury, presided over by the Indian novelist Arundhati Roy, issued a Declaration of Conscience that condemned the US and Britain for the invasion and occupation of Iraq, and named names of leaders in both countries who should be held criminally accountable.

The tribunal compiled an impressive documentary record as to criminal charges, and received considerable media attention, at least in the Middle East. Such an undertaking is attacked or ignored by the media because it is one-sided, and lacking in legal weight, but in the absence of formal action on accountability, such informal initiatives fill a legal vacuum, at least symbolically, and give legitimacy to non-violent anti-war undertakings.

The legitimacy war
In the end, the haunting question is whether the war crimes concerns raised by Israel’s behaviour in Gaza matters, and if so, how. I believe it matters greatly in what might be called “the second war” – the legitimacy war that often ends up shaping the political outcome more than battlefield results. The US won every battle in the Vietnam war and lost the war; the same with France in Indochina and Algeria, and the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. The Shah of Iran collapsed, as did the apartheid regime in South Africa, because of defeats in the legitimacy war.

It is my view that this surfacing of criminal charges against Israel during and after its attacks on Gaza resulted in major gains on the legitimacy front for the Palestinians. The widespread popular perceptions of Israeli criminality, especially the sense of waging war against a defenceless population with modern weaponry, has prompted people around the world to propose boycotts, divestments and sanctions. This mobilisation exerts pressure on governments and corporations to desist from relations with Israel, and is reminiscent of the worldwide anti-apartheid campaign that did so much to alter the political landscape in South Africa. Winning the legitimacy war is no guarantee that Palestinian self-determination will be achieved in the coming years. But it does change the political equation in ways that are not fully discernable at this time.

The global setup provides a legal framework capable of imposing international criminal law, but it will not be implemented unless the political will is present. Israel is likely to be insulated from formal judicial initiatives addressing war crimes charges, but will face the fallout arising from the credibility that these charges possess for world public opinion. This fallout is reshaping the underlying Israel/Palestine struggle, and giving far greater salience to the legitimacy war (fought on a global political battlefield) than was previously the case.
http://mondediplo.com/2009/03/03warcrimes

القاهرة : اسرائيل هي التهديد النووي الاول في المنطقة

أعلن متحدث رسمي مصري، أمس، أن القاهرة لن توقع البروتوكول الإضافي لمعاهدة منع الانتشار النووي قبل إقرار مشروع بإخلاء منطقة الشرق الأوسط من أسلحة الدمار الشامل.وقال المتحدث باسم الخارجية المصرية حسام زكي للصحافيين “إن مصر وفي إطار حفاظها على أمنها لا تزمع الانضمام إلى أية اتفاقيات جديدة في مجال نزع السلاح ولن تمضي في التصديق على الاتفاقيات حتى يتم اتخاذ خطوات جدية لإخلاء الشرق الأوسط”.وأضاف زكي “أن تحقيق الأمن والاستقرار في الشرق الأوسط يتطلب التطبيق العادل والشامل لمعاهدة منع الانتشار (النووي)”. وتابع أن “السياسات الغربية القائمة على الضغط على إيران للتخلي عن برنامجها النووي لن يكتب لها النجاح بسبب تجاهلها للقدرات النووية “الإسرائيلية” التي تمثل من وجهة نظرنا، التهديد الأول والأكبر للأمن في المنطقةوقال زكي “إن السبيل الوحيد لمعالجة مشكلة أسلحة الدمار الشامل في المنطقة، بما فيها الملف النووي الإيراني يتمثل في مطالبة “إسرائيل” بالانضمام إلى معاهدة منع الانتشار”، مشدداً على أن الدول العربية لا يمكن أن تقف مكتوفة الأيدي أمام انتشار الأسلحة النووية

كاتب مصري اسلامي يشيد بموقف البابا شنودة من قضية الخنازير ... وينتقد موقف اقباط المهجر

تحت عنوان اقباط المهجر . . والخنازير اشاد الكاتب المصري الاسلامي اسامة حافظ بموقف البابا شنودة المؤيد لاعدام الخنازير ... وندد الكاتب بموقف اقباط المهجر الذين استغلوا القضية لاثارة الفتنة والزعم بان اعدام الخنازير يهدف الى ضرب الاقتصاد القبطي ,,, وقال حافظ في مقاله الذي نشره في جريدة المصريون الالكترونية :


كانت تجربة التعامل مع إنفلونزا الطيور جديدة على الأجهزة المعنية بالبلد وقد كانوا مترددين بين مخاطر المرض التى لم تكن واضحة تماما وبين الخسائر الإقتصادية الهائلة التى يستلزمها التعامل بحسم مع المرض فى بلد يعانى إقتصاده من متاعب شديدة .وكان للخطوات المترددة التى تعاملت الأجهزة المعنية مع إنفلونزا الطيور ما بين إقدام وإحجام أثرها فى أن صارت مصر فى طليعة الدول التى استوطن بها الوباء القاتل وصار ضحاياه فى مصر على القمة بين الدول الذين تأثروا بهذا الوباء ورغم أن مصر خسرت حوالى 17 مليار جنيه – كما صرحت بذلك بعض المصادر الإخبارية – فى مقاومة هذا الوباء إلا أنه لا زال مستوطنا فى بعض البؤر فى البلاد وإن حاول الإعلام التهوين من أثر ذلك

فلما ظهرت إنفلونزا الخنازير كان ضروريا أن نكون قد تعلمنا الدرس فالمرض جد خطير إجتاح بعض البلدان التى ظهر فيها فى وقت قصير وتساقط من ضحاياه العشرات من القتلى مع إصابات انتشرت فى كثير من الدول حتى رفعت بعض هذه الدول من درجة استعدادها إلى الدرجة الخامسة من بين ست درجات هى الطريق للوصول إلى مرحلة الوباء التام .ورغم أن بلادنا لم يصلها المرض بعد – كما تؤكد الأجهزة الرسمية – إلا أن الموقف عندنا شديد الخطورة لأن الخنازير فى بلادنا تربى على أكوام القمامة وتتكاثر فى المناطق العشوائية المليئة بالقاورات وبالتالى فهى أنسب مكان وأفضل بيئة لنمو وإنتشار الأمراض والميكروبات خاصة وأنها ظهرت وانتشرت فى حظائر الغرب النظيفة ورعايتهم البيطرية الفائقة فكيف لو ظهرت ها هنا

واضاف حافظ :لذلك فقد هبت الحكومة سريعا للتصدى للبلاء قبل وقوعه وعرض الموضوع على مجلس الشعب ليشارك فى إتخاذ القرار .وبالفعل وافق المجلس بالإجماع على إعدام الخنازير وكان أول من شارك وبحماس فى هذه الموافقة الأعضاء النصارى وتحدثوا بمسئولية وحماس داعمين لهذا القرار .وقد كان البابا شنودة على مستوى المسئولية أيضا إذ دعا المسيحيين فى عظته الأسبوعية إلى عدم أكل الخنازير رغم أنها كما يقول غير محرمة فى ملتهم وذلك نظرا لأضرارها وبارك خطوات الحكومة لمواجهة الوباء . فهو يدرك تماما أخطار هذا الوباء على شعب مصر وأن أول من سيضارون منه هم المسيحيون إذ أنهم الذين يقومون على تربية الخنازير وإيوائها فى بيوتهم فى أحضان أبنائهم ونسائهم

وليس هذا فقط . , بل أن المجتمع كله ساعتها سوف يتهم النصارى بأنهم السبب فى هذا الوباء بخنازيرهم التى يربونها ويأكلونها وأنهم سيتعرضون للكراهية التى قد تصل للإعتداء من كل من سيموت له قريب أو جار أو صديق بسبب هذا الوباء

إذن . . فالتصدى لإعدام الخنازير مسألة أمن قومى لحماية المجتمع من الوباء ولحماية وحدته من التمزق والإنهيار .لذلك كان الجميع على مستوى عال من الإدراك والمسئولية تجاه هذه المشكلة . . ووافق جميعهم سواء المسئولون السياسيون أو الدينيون على خطوات الحكومة فى هذا المجال .وهكذا اصدر رئيس الجمهورية امره بذلك موافقا لارادة الشعب بكل طوائفه ولكن واه من لكن هذه لا زال هناك من يترصد لأى خطوة تكون موضع وفاق وطنى وتتغيا مصلحة الوطن ليعبث فيها لإحباطها وابتزاز الدولة فيها

وقال حافظ :أقباط المهجر ومن اشتروهم بأموالهم من متثاقفينا المتأسلمين – على رأى صاحبنا الشيوعى صاحب المصطلح – بدأوا فى شن حملة تستنكر على الحكومة ذبح الخنازير .. لماذا – لأنهم كما قالت احداهن – يشمون فيها رائحة التمييز والطائفية . . كذا.ولأن الخنازير حيوانات مسيحية لذا يجرى ذبحها . . وأنها لو كانت بقرا أو جاموسا ما كنا اتخذنا هذا القرار .. وأن المقصود بهذا القرار هو أرزاق الزبالين وجامعى القمامة المسيحيين الذين يتقوتون من تربية هذه الخنازير وبيع لحومها . . وأنه كان ينبغى الإنتظار ما دام الوباء لم يصل إلى مصر بعد وإن كان فى الطريق إليها – وصل إلى إسرائيل – بل وصل الأمر ببعضهم أن أعلن أنه سيرفع قضية كعادته ضد هذا الإجراء الطائفى الذى يؤثر فى وحدة الوطن فيضطهد به الإخوة المسيحيين – تصور - . . . ما هذا العبث بأمن البلد ووحدته . . ولماذا يستغل أمر كهذا لا علاقة له بالدين ولا بالكنيسة لإبتزاز الحكومة والسعى للحصول على مكاسب رخيصة تحت دعوى الإضطهاد

ولماذا بعد دعم قيادات النصارى السياسية والدينية يباح لهؤلاء أن يتكلموا باسم النصارى لإثارة الرأى العام والتحريض على الفتنة .. ولماذا يتبنى هؤلاء المتأسلمون من أدعياء الثقافة وحقوق الإنسان كل دعوى شاذة لمناصرتها .لماذا يقفون دائما ضد إجماع المجتمع وثوابته بحجة الدفاع عن حقوق الأقليات وشذاذ الأفاق من أصحاب دعوات تمزيق المجتمع مثل البهائيين والنوبيين وغيرهم

نقيب الاطباء المصريين : خنازير امريكا واوروبا تعيش في مزارع خمس نجوم ... وخنازيرنا تعيش على القمامة والمزابل وبين الناس لذا يجب اعدامها حتى لا ينتشر ا

دافع نقيب أطباء مصر النائب في مجلس الشعب المصري حمدي السيد أمس عن قرار الحكومة المصرية بالتخلص من كل قطعان الخنازير معتبراً انه كان “ضرورياً وملحاً في الحالة المصرية”.وكان السيد يجيب عن أسئلة وكالة وكالة فرانس برس حول الانتقادات التي وجهتها المنظمة الدولية للصحة الحيوانية إلى قرار مصر بالتخلص من كل قطعان الخنازير التي يبلغ اجمالي عددها ما بين 250 ألفاً و350 ألف رأس.وقال نقيب أطباء مصر الذي يترأس لجنة الصحة في مجلس الشعب قال ان الوضع في مصر مختلف عنه في بقية دول العالم “فعندنا مرض شرس اسمه انفلونزا الطيور وهو أكثر شراسة من انفلونزا الخنازير وإذا تحور سيتحور داخل الخنازير ويصبح قادراً على الانتقال من إنسان إلى إنسان”. وأوضح ان الخنازير عائل لإنفلونزا الطيور والانفلونزا البشرية

واعتبر حمدي السيد “أن الحالة المصرية بالغة الخصوصية والوضع مختلف عنه في اي دولة أخرى، فمزارع الخنازير في أوروبا على سبيل المثال مزارع “خمس نجوم” وليس هناك خنازير في العالم تنشأ على القمامة والقاذورات التي تعتبر هي نفسها مرتعاً لكل أنواع الأمراض”.وأضاف “في مصر يعيش الخنازير وسط الطيور والدواجن والبشر والاحتكاك دائم بينها وهذا أمر بالغ الخطورة”.وأشار إلى أن أحد عوامل الخطر الأخرى تتمثل في ان مربي الخنازير هم أساساً من جامعي القمامة الذين ينتشرون في كل مكان وبالتالي يمكنهم نقل أي عدوى بسهولة

وأضاف السيد ان لجنة الصحة في مجلس الشعب “طالبت منذ ثلاث سنوات بنقل الخنازير خارج الكتلة السكنية كإجراء وقائي لتجنب تحور فيروس انفلونزا الطيور، ولكن كان هناك حرج من ان يعتبر هذا القرار موقفاً ضد الاقباط”.وأشار إلى أن “النائبة القبطية أستاذة القانون ابتسام حبيب هي اول من طالب بالتخلص من الخنازير” الأسبوع الماضي عند مناقشة إجراءات الوقاية من انفلونزا الخنازير. وتابع ليس صحيحاً انه إجراء موجه ضد الاقباط ولم يكن لهذا القرار صفة طائفية والدليل اننا أعدمنا 800 مليون طير يصل ثمنها إلى مليارات الجنيهات في اطار إجراءات مكافحة انفلونزا الطيور
source www.arabtimes.com