This week, the European Union’s Parliament passed a resolution endorsing the implementation of the recommendations of the Goldstone Report, which investigated war crimes in the attack on Gaza last year. While the motion was received with support from many NGOs, such as the Women’s Peace Coalition, it did not indicate specific actions the EU will actually take. The same has been true for the UN’s process as members of the Security Council said they would veto the report. Many are therefore taking it in their own hands to hold Israeli leaders accountable for alleged war crimes. The legal tool they’re using is called universal jurisdiction and refers to the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 that said countries must be able to prosecute anyone who commits grave crimes. The Real News’ Lia Tarachansky investigates what universal jurisdiction is, how it is used, and how Israel is fighting against it.
This program was produced by The Real News for March 12, 2010.
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On January 25, 2002 a remarkable group of 52 soldiers and officers of the Israeli army reserves published a quarter-page letter which appeared in the Israeli daily newspaper Ha’aretz. In this letter, they called on their comrades-in-arms to join their act of refusal to serve in the occupied Palestinian territories of the West Bank and Gaza. In a manifesto published in a book in 2003 entitled “Breaking Ranks: Refusing to Serve in the West Bank and Gaza Strip,” they further declared: “we shall not continue to fight beyond the 1967 borders in order to dominate, expel, starve, and humiliate an entire people.”
Sherif Fam speaks to Oded Na’aman, a 26 year-old former crew commander in the artillery corps of the Israeli Defense Forces, who spent a year as a soldier and commander in checkpoints all over the West Bank, then became a member of “Breaking the Silence.”
This program was produced by This Week In Palestine for WZBC radio on March 3, 2008.
For more information, visit:
http://truthandjusticeradio.org
Former IDF soldier and founder of Breaking the Silence, Yahuda Shaul, speaks to Joe Broadhurst of CKUT about the occupation of Palestine and the mindset of Israeli soldiers in their control of Palestinians.
This program was produced by CKUT Radio for November 3, 2006.
For more information, visit:
http://ckut.ca
http://shovrimshtika.org (Breaking the Silence website)