Netanyahu nixes call for Israeli inquiry into Gaza war

did so out of concern for the safety of the men and women who risk their lives to protect of israel. such prayers are universal whenever any army goes to war. but it was the leadership in the government and idf, whose primary concern was preventing the political fallout of excessive casualties, who chose to sacrifice ethics to grant that collective wish. THEIR'S was the conscious choice that brought it all about... and considering the all out effort by the idf to prevent any media reporting, video, pictures, and even calls back home, by its soldiers...i've no doubt that they anticipated where it all led. you ARE right to a degree; but it's still the government who bears ultimate responsibility. have a good day, esther

Yes Eric, it was an army out of control with no proper adherence to the rule of law in the use of arms and while this certainly brings the Israeli leadership into accountability for such horrendous war crimes against a civilian population it also brings into account their complicit partners in the US /Israeli establishment who promoted the Israeli cause by disre-garding Federal laws prohibiting military aid to human rights violators I know many organizations such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International and US tax payer groups have called upon the US State Dept & the Pentagon to hault their shipments of arms to Israel so they are doubly in violation of the law Thus the cat is out of the bag in more ways than one and like the new 9/11 Truth Commision being formed no one is looking the other way anymore. Those crimes can't be shrugged off, dismissed or excused People have both alegal & moral responsibility and they better deliver before people are in the streets again. Dutch

Pierre - you are 100% right - the Geneva convention has to be respected - ask any of us, ask Gilad Shalit and then ask your Hammas friends to do so. Then please give us any details of any other country that has done more to avoid civilian casualties than we did.

cg: "The Israelis left Gaza and now look." Yeah, and I see them trashing the place on a regular basis. Not exactly a good look in my book, but it does seem to please the zionists no end.... cg: "They are handing over autonomy to west bank." You know, it's a funny ol' thing but every time I look at the Int'l Humanitarian Laws that pertain to occupations I always see them talking about "authority". Not a one of them ever talks about "autonomy". Strange, that.....

A life and death struggle?? EIGHTEEN Israeli citizens have died as a result of rockets from Gaza in the past 8 years. Probably more people have died as a result of using power tools. Hey why not annhialate Black and Decker. Get a grip Israel, you are either the most fearful paranoid bunch in the world, or you just get a kick out of rounding up people into ghettos and killing them. We all saw it. It was on TV. Punishment attack. they tried to keep the press from reporting. Any decent people left in Israel should vote with their feet while there's still a chance other countries will take you.

stop defending themselves from rockets and mortars sent from Gaza. The Pals have becometireless PR spinners. They are repeating the same suicidal rocket launchings and cry like babies when Israel fires back. Israel should stop all services, electricity, water, gas, hospitals, etc. Until the Pals stop terror they deserve nothing, and I mean nothing. The world is weary of insanity from the pals who refused their own state repeatedly while at the same time trying everything they can to destroy Israel. Wont happen. Next time, finish Cast Lead" and win the whole enchilada.

What the two big bullies, Netanyahu and Lieberman, are proposing, apart from their usual racist bullying, is now blackmail. Israeli democracy is so wonderful!

... there is hardly an Israeli who is not culpable... during the initial heat of battle, not knowing what-was-what and who-would-prevail... every Israeli prayed loud and clear that at all costs a repeat of the casualties in the 2nd Leb War must be avoided... that collective wish is now costing us dear... solutions are not simple... honesty remains the best policy... that is what Goldstone tries to promote...

is that the excesses that took place were the direct result, intentional or not, of directives from the highest levels of government, which emphasized avoiding the causalties of the lebanon fiasco, that were open enough to allow for unfettered interpretation by the upper echelon of the idf. the idf leadership, in turn, acted on those directives with changes to its rules of engagement that gave individual officers, squad leaders, and even the soldiers themselves, what was essentially the freedom to act on their own judgement without any threat of consequences, implied or otherwise. (the idf made NO secret of this prior to its invasion of gaza; it even boasted how it was going to prevent idf casualties) for an army to remove the constraints of discipline that normally keep personal hatred and moral flaws in check is a recipe for disaster... and as a result, the idf basically unleashed a horde into gaza; wherein the actions carried out by each of its elements largely resulted from the sentiments and morality of the leadership in each. the result of something like this SHOULD have been envisioned...and the question remains that maybe it WAS. but israel's leadership knows that an inquiry into ANY one of the alleged incidents will lead to fingers at every level pointing up toward the level above it; from the individual soldiers/officers who carried it out all the way to gabi ashkenazi...who in turn will point higher.

I havent heard this one,tell me more,if you can???

johnboy is a very white name,,,,,Muhammod

Alan, everybody talks about illegal occupation, The Israelis left Gaza and now look.They are handing over autonomy to west bank. Let them protect their border like any other country!!

War crimes,my bum. Show me honestly ONE cfountry that has NOT committed a war crime when they have fought a war. And to blame the PM is like blaming your MUM for what you do even when your 35. Leave Israel alone to protect ISRAEL.

Please a bit of background to try and help me understand your logic and a couple of questions to bring this about. First question. Do you support the illegal occupation? Second question, do you consider the IDF to be freedom fighters?

But it's politically incorrect to tell the truth.

because he knows the Goldstone report is true. I have today procured a news report from a Channel 4 Journalist which shows an IDF soldier using a Palestinian family as a human shield and threatening to shoot one of the males when he stood up asking for food and water for his baby. The IDF soldier then turned to the reporter and dsaid he did not care about the family. This is a clear violation of the Geneva Convention and is therefore a war crime. We did not have a copy of this video yesterday when we attempted to have Barak arrested. I am assured it is incontrivertable prove of a war crime and will when shown to a judge result in arrests been made. Israel doesn't want to investigate? Thats alright we'll do it for you and ensure a great many Israelis holiday next to the Kinneret for the rest of their lives. Bet this doesn't get published.

Sometimes it is better not to throw more wood on a fire. Goldstone's report is neither fair nor accurate except in small parts which will always be uncontrollable, uncomfortable, and tragic.

for us, despite all propaganda efforts to portray it otherwise, is a life & death struggle for survival from those who would eliminate us if given the chance - much as the US felt in its battle against the Nazis/Japanese. The dead of the Gaza operation owe their miserable fate directly to the onslaught of "the brave freedom fighters" of Hamas that continue to this day to actively seek our demise. Your cold blooded, gladiator spectator analysis, of 25 dead Israelis as hardly a "world war" says much about your distorted view of morality being sanctimoniously played to us again and again - ad nauseum. BTW, how many innocent Afghani civilians has your country killed today? How many did they kill in Iraq?

we all know this. Any Army that endeavours to convince us we did not see what we all saw---cannot be trusted. We all know that the IDF is the most "Immoral" army on this planet, except maybe?????.

Some of your history is factual, but you ignore the incredible difference between a world war and a relatively small, grossly asymmetric conflict. Less than 25 Israelis have died from Qassams. Hardly world war. But most importantly, you ignore the tremendous effort by most of the world to create new international law to reduce wars and limit their unnecessary destructiveness. The most important results of these efforts were the Geneva Conventions and the creation of the UN. A lot of people have worked very hard to create a more stable and less vicious world. Israel signed onto the Geneva Conventions and the UN Charter, but it ignores them and has violated them every day for the last 40 years (1948 preceded these developments). Sadly, it seems like Israel wants a return to the bad old days when might was right and empires completely overshadowed any concept of human rights. It says "never again" but ignores the lessons most learned from WWII.

Wow! - now that's a great talkback. Comparing Cast Lead to the fire bombing of Tokyo and Dresden, and the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaksi. Why not throw in Attila the Hun and Djengis Kahn, pretending the world doesn't progress? Robert MacNamara himself said the US would have been tried for war crimes had they lost WWII. Heard about the Genevea Convention and the protection of civilians? From 1949?

'referral to the ICC would sound the death knell of the peace process. ' There is no peace process now, so it can hardly die. Such a referral would mark the beginning of the peace process, as it would open the door to measures that would compel Israel to make peace -- and Israel will only make peace when she is forced to.

There is no secret that Bibi himself would end up being the one on trial if there was an exhaustive inquiry that traced the commands to their ultimate source. Bibi intentionally launched a war of punishment on civilians for supporting Hamas. The commands he issued were to intended to make civilians re-think their support for Hamas, so of course his orders were the direct cause of the war crimes reported in the UN report. So it isn't surprising that he will NEVER allow any inquiry.

so why investigate?

Netanyahoo was very wise to have nixed Israeli inquiry into Gaza war. Goldstone was nothing if he was not a force for moderation in the process of putting the report together. Had he not been as determined as he was to see to it that the facts were adhered to(as disturbing as they were) the GoldstoneCommission report would have been far more damning of the Israeli leadership and military forces.

In other words, what Mr.Netanyahu is saying, it is okay to commit war crimes if you "try" make peace with the victims.

present Israeli leadership is totally out to lunch. With leadership like the Netanyahu regime, Israel does not need enemies. World leaders and intellectuals are laughing as Bibi thrashes about.

What Palestinians can't achieve by war and terror its sympathizers try to do by tying Israel's hands. The era of Jews submitting is over. Jews will defend themselves and Netanyahu is making that clear.

In the prosecution of war the aim is to defeat the enemy, not procure "Brownie points." In WWII a no-holes barred allied campaign of massive deadly saturation bombing of enemy "civilians" and infrastructure across Germany (and even "innocents" in Nazi occupied lands) as well as the non-stop firebombing of Japan's resulting in hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths and culminating in the dropping of 2 nuclear weapons on Japan in August 6/9 1945 that cremated nearly 200,000 civilians in a fraction of a second. No "idiots," spoke of winning the hearts & minds of the innocent enemy populations - only of bringing the war to an end. Did anyone ask the legal beagles about this legality? But ended that war with a resounding finality? PERIOD. And most of all - no more killing in Europe or Japan. Look at Germany & Japan today! Common sense recognizes that propaganda is a key weapon used by criminals, terrorists and murderers with a ghastly/ghoulish ideology who attempt to seize the moral high ground by posing as freedom fighters or humane nationalists. Unfortunately, many good meaning people lack such common sense. Incidentally, since WWII (when the US effectively quashed Nazi/Japanese propaganda), the U.S. has found itself in continuing interminable and costly struggles because although having the means it does not have the will to bring wars to a definitive conclusion (e.g. Viet Nam, Iraq, Afghanistan). Incompetent political leadership, fueled by propaganda organs of the ?sanctimonious? around the world have enabled such conflicts to continue. Similarly, Israel has followed in the footsteps of the U.S. in such indecisive battles of Lebanon I, II, Gaza 2009. Now Israel wages this absurd war of defending against the same propaganda of those duped or manipulated by those who understand its value.

The past shows that most Israeli inquiries are jokes, though perhaps a former Supreme Court justice, one of the few elements of the Israeli government that has shown any integrity or concern about human rights, would do better. But Netanyahu could never claim that the inquiry was anti-semitic or by self-hating jews. You would think that this is what he would want. However, Netanyahu knows any honest inquiry will find proof of war crimes on both sides. He greatly prefers lies and cover-ups. The ironic thing is that such an investigation would quiet many ardent critics around the world. If the Goldstone report is biased and its findings false or unreasonable, a credible inquiry would be Israel's best defense. At the very least, such a report would probably couch its findings more moderately with more emphasis on Hamas. But obviously, Netanyahu knows that any honest report will condemn Israel nad he prefers comfortable lies to the truth.

He who has nothing to fear, hasnothing to fear. So, let the ICC do her work. Why not afterall?

Netanyahu still believes that the "legitimate right of self-defence" includes killing large numbers of civilians for purely political reasons. In that case, the Palestinians are OK, aren't they, because that's all that they've been doing?

children that had never experienced freedom. I thought Israel said "never again" and then they go and do this. How can you live with the shame?

that is the law.

"Various prominent Israelis have therefore argued that the only way to quash the report is to set up an inquiry commission headed by an internationally respected jurist like former Supreme Court president Aharon Barak." That's a call for "transparency", and Bibi is having none of that. After all, what happens if Aharon Barak looks under a rock and then cries out "Ooops! Gosh! I wish I hadn't done that"? "But Netanyahu," .. "believes a more effective way of blocking the report would be to make it clear to the international community that referral to the ICC would sound the death knell of the peace process." Or, in short, Bibi intends to blackmail Obama: shut down the report or the peace process gets it between the eyes. Good one, Netanyahu, so very zionist of you.... Can I point out that your prefered option won't actually make the stench go away?