WITH LITERALLY THOUSANDS OF BOOKS AVAILABLE*
**This SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 19, the Southern California Library is
holding a giant book sale with thousands of political and historical
books---available for prices as low as $1 to $3
The sale will be an amazing resource, with loads of books that are hard
to find at really great prices. We'll have books like:
Allende's Chile...An Inside View
Voices from the Harlem Renaissance
Educating for Peace: A Feminist Perspective
Pentagon Papers Case Collection/
Campesino: The Diary of a Guatemalan Indian
For the People: Black Socialists in the United States, Africa, and the
Caribbean
---and much more
----------------------------------------------------------
SCL Book Sale
Saturday, September 19
**10:30 a.m.-4 p.m.
@Southern California Library
6120 S. Vermont Avenue, LA, CA 90044
Go to our website at www.socallib.org to download a coupon for a free book!
and for more information. Directions
http://socallib.org/about/directions.html
Southern California Library
(323) 759-6063 . www.socallib.org*
6120 S. Vermont Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90044
*Making Our Own Histories*
***
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/17/opinion/17goldstone.html?th&emc=th
Justice in Gaza
By RICHARD GOLDSTONE
NY Times Op-Ed: September 17, 2009
I ACCEPTED with hesitation my United Nations mandate to investigate alleged
violations of the laws of war and international human rights during Israel's
three-week war in Gaza last winter. The issue is deeply charged and
politically loaded. I accepted because the mandate of the mission was to
look at all parties: Israel; Hamas, which controls Gaza; and other armed
Palestinian groups. I accepted because my fellow commissioners are
professionals committed to an objective, fact-based investigation.
But above all, I accepted because I believe deeply in the rule of law and
the laws of war, and the principle that in armed conflict civilians should
to the greatest extent possible be protected from harm.
In the fighting in Gaza, all sides flouted that fundamental principle. Many
civilians unnecessarily died and even more were seriously hurt. In Israel,
three civilians were killed and hundreds wounded by rockets from Gaza fired
by Hamas and other groups. Two Palestinian girls also lost their lives when
these rockets misfired.
In Gaza, hundreds of civilians died. They died from disproportionate attacks
on legitimate military targets and from attacks on hospitals and other
civilian structures. They died from precision weapons like missiles from
aerial drones as well as from heavy artillery. Repeatedly, the Israel
Defense Forces failed to adequately distinguish between combatants and
civilians, as the laws of war strictly require.
Israel is correct that identifying combatants in a heavily populated area is
difficult, and that Hamas fighters at times mixed and mingled with
civilians. But that reality did not lift Israel's obligation to take all
feasible measures to minimize harm to civilians.
Our fact-finding team found that in many cases Israel could have done much
more to spare civilians without sacrificing its stated and legitimate
military aims. It should have refrained from attacking clearly civilian
buildings, and from actions that might have resulted in a military advantage
but at the cost of too many civilian lives. In these cases, Israel must
investigate, and Hamas is obliged to do the same. They must examine what
happened and appropriately punish any soldier or commander found to have
violated the law.
Unfortunately, both Israel and Hamas have dismal records of investigating
their own forces. I am unaware of any case where a Hamas fighter was
punished for deliberately shooting a rocket into a civilian area in Israel -
on the contrary, Hamas leaders repeatedly praise such acts. While Israel has
begun investigations into alleged violations by its forces in the Gaza
conflict, they are unlikely to be serious and objective.
Absent credible local investigations, the international community has a role
to play. If justice for civilian victims cannot be obtained through local
authorities, then foreign governments must act. There are various mechanisms
through which to pursue international justice. The International Criminal
Court and the exercise of universal jurisdiction by other countries against
violators of the Geneva Conventions are among them. But they all share one
overarching aim: to hold accountable those who violate the laws of war. They
are built on the premise that abusive fighters and their commanders can face
justice, even if their government or ruling authority is not willing to take
that step.
Pursuing justice in this case is essential because no state or armed group
should be above the law. Western governments in particular face a challenge
because they have pushed for accountability in places like Darfur, but now
must do the same with Israel, an ally and a democratic state.
Failing to pursue justice for serious violations during the fighting will
have a deeply corrosive effect on international justice, and reveal an
unacceptable hypocrisy. As a service to the hundreds of civilians who
needlessly died and for the equal application of international justice, the
perpetrators of serious violations must be held to account.
Richard Goldstone, the former chief prosecutor for war-crime tribunals on
Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, is the head of the United Nations
Fact-Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict.
***
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/09/17-3
Goldstone Rejects Bias Charges Over UN Gaza Report
Agence France Presse
September 17, 2009
JERUSALEM - The head of the UN commission that issued a damning report on
the Gaza war this week on Thursday rejected Israeli criticism that it was
biased from the start.
"I deny that completely," Judge Richard Goldstone said in remarks broadcast
on Thursday on public radio, a replay of an earlier interview with Israeli
television.
"I was completely independent, nobody dictated any outcome, and the outcome
was a result of the independent inquiries that our mission made," he said.
The UN report, which Goldstone presented at the UN on Tuesday and which
accused both Israel and Palestinian militants of committing war crimes, has
faced stinging criticism in Israel for being one-sided and biased.
But Goldstone, former chief prosecutor on the International Criminal
Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, rejected the charges and
said the only thing he regretted was that Israel refused to cooperate with
his team.
"There is really nothing I can think of that I would do differently," he
said.
"If there is any difference that I would have preferred, (it) would have
been that we could have got cooperation from Israel and in particular, I
would have liked the Israeli government to assist us and decide what we
should investigate because that's what I asked them to do."
In the wake of the UN report, numerous Israeli commentators have launched
personal attacks on Goldstone, with one rightwing paper writing: "the
liberal anti-Semitism strides delicately, appoints a hostile commission and
finds an obsequious Jew, to dance to the tune of the gentile landowner."
Goldstone, 70, is a South African judge who has also headed the public
inquiry into violence and intimidation in the run-up to that country's first
post-apartheid elections in 1994.
The impartial inquiry, which became known as the Goldstone Commission, was
widely credited with preventing South Africa's slide into widespread
violence with the demise of the whites-only apartheid regime.
© 2009 AFP
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