No political authority in Israel or Gaza has held to account any agent of the war crimes detailed in the Goldstone report. Now three international human rights NGOs have joined with three Palestinian rights NGOs to call on the UN Security Council to refer the crimes committed by both sides to the International Criminal Court

B’Tselem, the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, responds to last week’s violence with a charge against ‘Palestinians’ (1st) of actual war crimes and a warning to the IDF (2nd) of potential crimes. Its data of Palestinian attacks covers a seven year period.

Former Chairman of Canadian commission for combatting anti-semitism says criticising Israel for war crimes may be distasteful but it’s not anti-semitic. Irwin Cotler is not the only defender of Israel who is impatient with this glib charge

An article in Ha’aretz discusss the contradictory position of the Israeli state towards its soldiers accused of crimes, followed by an excerpt from the Lords and Commons Human Rights Joint Committee dealing with international crimes and private prosecutions

David Shulman, a prominent Ta’ayush activist often working in the South Hebron area, reviews the recent Breaking the Silence publication. He says of the testimonies collected here: “To read them is to see the profound moral corruption of the occupation in all its starkness.”

Gideon Levy writes: “The voice of joy, the voice of rejoicing is heard in Israel: The Americans and British have also committed for war crimes, not only us. WikiLeaks’ revelations have inflamed all our noisy propagandists: Where is Goldstone, they rejoiced, and what would he have said? They were relieved. If the Americans are allowed to do it, so are we… Our rejoicing propagandists have changed their tactics now: no longer “the most moral army in the world,” a contention any reasonable person can see is ridiculous. Now they say: “We are terrible, like all the rest.” “

Veteran South African journalist Allister Sparks writes: “AFTER carrying out its own investigation into last year’s Gaza War, the Israeli military has finally confirmed several of the most serious incidents committed by its troops in that 22-day assault, which a United Nations commission of inquiry, headed by our own Judge Richard Goldstone, reported on last September…”

In a major investigation in the Independent Ben Lynfield discusses new evidence that suggests that General Almog, Israel’s Gaza commander at the time, was implicated in a cover-up of the circumstances of her murder…

Israel’s latest response to the UN on its investigations into alleged violations of international law by its forces in Gaza a year ago is totally inadequate, Amnesty International has said. The organisation believes that crucial questions about the conduct of attacks in which hundreds of civilians were killed and thousands were made homeless are not credibly addressed in Israel’s update to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon [...]

The report that the Israeli government gave to the United Nations last Friday explicitly states that the two senior officers were disciplined after one of the investigating committees noted among its findings that they approved the firing of phosphorus shells at Tel al-Hawa “exceeding their authority in a manner that jeopardized the lives of others.” Trouble is, the IDF now denies any such disciplining took place! [...]

Despite an optimistic prognosis by the military advocate-general on the future of Israel’s international position following the Goldstone Report, speakers at an Israel Bar forum on Thursday warned of severe measures that might be taken against Israel and its military and political leaders [...]

If we accept the notion that law is meaningless without enforcement, we also have to buy into the principle that universal jurisdiction is an essential arm of international law [...]

One reasonable version of this call to Livni is as follows: “I am calling to explain why it would be wrong for me to apologise publicly or privately for the apparent decision by one of this country’s independent judiciary to issue an arrest warrant against you… Unfortunately, it seems that Miliband is unlikely [...]

Yitzhak Laor writes:
“…In short, Pnina Sharvit-Baruch, who provided legal advice to the Israel Defense Forces in the Gaza offensive, was invited to teach law at Tel Aviv University while the real work of “a light unto the nations” was done by the Jewish judge Richard Goldstone…”

Vice Prime Minister Moshe Ya’alon recently canceled a planned trip to Britain for fear of being arrested there… As chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces in 2002-5, Ya’alon is one of several current and former senior officers whom pro-Palestinian groups have sought to put on trial over the assassination of senior Hamas terrorist Salah Shehadeh in July 2002. [..]

A senior prosecutor at the International Criminal Court in The Hague said Monday that he is considering opening an investigation into whether Lt. Col. David Benjamin, an Israel Defense Forces reserve officer, allowed war crimes to be committed during the IDF’s three-week offensive in the Gaza Strip this winter. This is possible because Benjamin is citizen of South Africa as well as Israel and South Africa is a signatory of the Treaty that founded the Court…

This new report from the Israeli organisation Gisha, the legal centre for freedom of movement, describes how Israel deliberately brought Gaza’s humanitarian infrastructure to the brink of collapse in advance of Operation Cast Lead via its policy of closure and limitations on the entrance of inputs for the water, sewage and electricity systems. [...]

Right of Reply: Let’s talk about Operation Cast Lead Mikhael Manekin The Jerusalem Post (Opinion) July 29, 2009 When Breaking the Silence released a collection of soldiers’ testimonies about their experiences in Gaza last week, we expected to receive criticism. Operation Cast Lead was considered a success by most Israelis, so there were some who [...]

Jeremiah Haber responds on the Magnes Zionist blog to those who have criticised the Breaking the Silence report.

On a day when the Loonies of the Right (David Bernstein, Mark Regev, AIPAC) went after Human Rights Watch (see full article for links to good rebuttals, some of the same Loonies and others (like the NGOMonitor) went after Breaking the Silence for releasing the Soldier Testimonies from Gaza. [...]

In a new Breaking the Silence publication, Israeli soldiers described the use of “permissive” rules of engagement in the war on Gaza.
Among the 54 testimonies are stories revealing the use of “accepted practices,” the destruction of hundreds of houses and mosques for no military purpose, the firing of phosphorous gas in the direction of populated areas, the killing of innocent victims with small arms, the destruction of private property, and most of all, a permissive atmosphere in the command structure that enabled soldiers to act without moral restrictions. [...]

The entry on this website contains the Breaking the Silence press release and links to the full testimonies, to Donald McIntyre in the Independent and to comments by the Magnes Zionist.