Surely this was always one of the key rationales behind Palestine’s push for an upgrade to ‘non-member state’ status with the United Nations. Now Palestine is able to take Israel to court!
The quoted official Israeli response is dismissive to the point of contempt! ‘The lady protesteth too much, methinks!’ Evidently this has been what Israel has been fearing!
Father Dave
source: en.tengrinews.kz/politics_sub/Tribunal-calls-on-ICC-to-probe-Israeli-crimes-in-Palestine–17850/…
Tribunal calls on ICC to probe Israeli ‘crimes’ in Palestine
The Russell Tribunal on Palestine (RToP) called Sunday for the International Criminal Court to investigate “crimes” committed by Israel in the territories as it wrapped up four years of investigation, AFP reports.
Meeting in Brussels, the people’s tribunal, which has no legal status but aims to draw international attention to Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories, said it would “support all initiatives from civil society and international organisations aimed at bringing Israel in front of the International Criminal Court”.
Since Palestine was awarded observer status at the UN in November, it can now file complaints against Israel with the ICC.
The tribunal also called on the ICC to recognise Palestinian jurisdiction and for an extraordinary session of the United Nations Special Committee against Apartheid, set up for South Africa, to this time examine the Israeli case.
Previously presided by the French resistance hero and Holocaust survivor Stephane Hessel, who died on February 27, the RToP is modelled on the Russell Tribunal on Vietnam, a private investigative body which examined American foreign policy during the Vietnam War, named after the British philosopher Bertrand Russell.
RToP members include prominent rights activist Angela Davis and ex-Pink Floyd founder Roger Waters.
Since it was set up in 2009, the tribunal has gathered evidence from experts and witnesses to make 26 recommendations on Sunday, in its fifth and final session after previous meetings around the world.
These include “further criminal investigations of corporations aiding and abetting Israeli violations” and the “establishment of an international committee of former political prisoners to campaign on prisoner issues”.
Members of the tribunal also criticised Israel’s main ally, the US, but also the UN and the European Union for policy that was “complicit” in what it says are Israel’s violations of international law.
The tribunal also called for a boycott on imports of goods produced in West Bank settlements.
Israel dismissed the conclusions which it said had no real weight.
Israeli foreign ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor told AFP: “They can write what they like, they only represent themselves. It’s a private body with no legal or political weight and has moral weight only among its members.”
“It has no political or legal significance, it is an ideological and propaganda document that people write for their like-minded friends.”
Filed under Israel and Palestine by on Mar 20th, 2013. Comment. 
United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories, Professor Richard Falk, is again under the spotlight for apparent bias against Israel, which is seen as being incompatible with his role in the UN.
This time the issue is the comparison he made between Hamas militants and the French Resistance in World War II. His point seems to have been simply that one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter. This would seem innocuous enough, but comparing the enemies of Israel to those who fought the perpetrators of the Holocaust has evidently aroused some sensitivities!
Falk is also under attack for publishing a cartoon on his blog that has been widely condemned as anti-Semitic. You can see the cartoon here. It depicts a dog wearing a kippah and an American flag, urinating on a statue of Blind Justice and eating human bones and blood. Certainly the cartoon could be depicted as being in bad taste, but it seems to me that the dog is supposed to be the USA and not the state of Israel.
Falk, who is an American Jew, has been accused multiple times of being a self-hating Jew. I don’t know whether anyone has accused him yet of being a self-hating American?
Father Dave
Richard Falk
source: www.thejc.com…
UN Palestine expert Falk: Hamas like French resistance
The United Nation’s Palestine expert has compared Hamas terrorists to fighters with the French resistance during the Holocaust.
Richard Falk, UN special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories, made the comments in a piece posted on the Liberal Democrat Friends of Palestine website.
In an article that included repeated condemnations of Israel, Mr Falk asked his audience to “imagine the situation being reversed as it was during the Nazi occupation of France or the Netherlands during World War two”.
“Resistance fighters were uniformly perceived in the liberal West as unconditional heroes, and no critical attention was given as to whether the tactics used unduly imperiled innocent civilian lives,” he said.
“Those who lost their lives in such a resistance were honoured as martyrs. “[Khaled] Meshaal and other Hamas leaders have made similar arguments on several occasions, in effect asking what are Palestinians supposed to do in the exercise of resistance given their circumstances, which have persisted for so long, given the failures of traditional diplomacy and the UN to secure their rights under international law.”
read the rest of this article here: www.thejc.com…
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