Censor bans identifying IDF officers involved in Gaza operation

[DogPoundPup]

The Military Censor is applying strict restrictions preventing the media from identifying officers who participated in the Gaza Strip fighting and information about them that may be used in legal proceedings against them abroad. There is growing concern at the Defense Ministry and the Ministry of Justice that Israeli officers will be singled out in a massive wave of suits for alleged human rights violations.

The new instructions from the military censor to the media were prepared in consultation with Attorney General Menachem Mazuz and his military counterpart, Brigadier General Avihai Mandelblit. Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi was also involved in the decisions on this matter.

In recent days the censor has forbidden publishing the full names and photographs of officers from the level of battalion commander down. It is assumed that the identity of brigade commanders has already been made known. The censor also forbids any reports tying a particular officer of such battlefield command rank (lieutenant to lieutenant colonel) to destruction inflicted in a particular area.

more ... http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1057964.html

[EFerrari]

1. We can't go around identifying the responsible parties, can we?

[Arrowhead2k1]

2. No way, they might actually be brought to justice or some horrible thing like that.

[Alamuti Lotus]

3. Indeed

They would either become targets for the Palestinian resistance, or (the seriously unlikely) potential war crimes trials. Not that they seem too interested as much in bragging about the assault at the moment.

[Idealism]

4. Are there any better signs of guilt that your own admission by actions?

If they try to censor the officers involved on the ground, let tribunals go after those generals who ordered these crimes against humanity. Keep going up the chain of command until there is no one left who can say "I was just following orders."

[The Magistrate]

5. That Statement Makes Sense, Sir, Only If One Accepts The Premise That The Legal Actions Are Proper

And not vexatious, politically motivated harassments.

Generals and ministers can take care of themselves; platoon leaders and helicopter pilots are something different.

[DogPoundPup]

6. Laws, and the language they're disguised in, are simply ways for people to try and justify

the unjustifiable.

The Nazis took great care to justify their measures by law and other legal means.

In April 1933 a law for "reorganization of the civil service” cleansed the civil services from socialists and communists as well as Jews. In late 1933 a law on “criminals by habit” introduced a legal framework for concentration camps. The "Blood Protection Law" of 1935 legalized race discrimination against Jews and gypsies. Later laws and legal decrees legalized the outright extermination of people based on race, belief, sexual preference and other categories (chronological index.... http://www.massviolence.org/+-Nazi-Europe-+?artpage=3-21 )

In all of these cases first the policy was thought up, then legal opinions were established to justify the policies and where needed because some people would not follow the policies without better justifications laws were created to have a legal basis for the policy implementation.

Defendants at the Nuremberg court said they acted within those laws or followed legal orders. The judges did not swallow those justifications as the laws and orders clearly contradicted basic humanitarian ethics.

The Israeli Defense Forces seem to follow the same pattern. Establish an intention and a policy, than have someone come up with a legal justification:

The idea to bombard the closing ceremony of the Gaza police course was internally criticized in the Israel Defense Forces months before the attack. A military source involved in the planning of the attack, in which dozens of Hamas policemen were killed, says that while military intelligence officers were sure the operation should be carried out and pressed for its approval, the IDF's international law division and the military advocate general were undecided.

After months of the operational elements pushing for the attack's approval, the international law division gave the go-ahead.

Commentary to the Geneva Convention generally considers policemen to be "protected persons" under the convention. To target them was illegal.

Haaretz: In spite of doubts, and also under pressure, the division also legitimized the attack on Hamas government buildings and the relaxing of the rules of engagement, resulting in numerous Palestinian casualties.

"Hamas government buildings" are first of all government buildings, for example hospital and schools. As far as they are needed for the public life and are not used as military positions they must also be protected.

In the division it is also believed that the killing of civilians in a house whose residents the IDF has warned might be considered legally justified, although the IDF does not actually target civilians in this way.

BUT the IDF even told civilians to go into a house only to then bomb the house.

Many legal experts, including former international law division head Daniel Reisner, do not accept this position. "I don't think a person on a rooftop can be incriminated just because he is standing there," he said.

But again the legal opinion was not formed as a neutral legal opinion based on some accepted normative ethics or basic law, but was drawn up to justify an intended policy, in this case obviously indiscriminate killing of civilians, despite its obvious illegality.

DO YOU believe the Nuremberg judges would have accepted such nonsense as legal?

[The Magistrate]

7. This Sort Of Thing Did Not Come Up At Nuremberg, Sir

And given the conduct of their own countries' air forces in the war, it would be over-bold to predict verdicts on items like whether bombing a government ministry building by the judges on that Tribunal. It sat principally on questions of 'Aggressive War' under the Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928, and on the murder of persons in government custody.

Nor have trials before the Yugoslav Tribunal gone into questions of this sort. There is nothing much at all by way of a body of case law on what constitutes proper concern for nearby non-combatants when engaging a military target.

Even the question of policemen's status is somewhat vexed in this particular situation, because the police are staffed by party militia members, and thus are also part of a combatant force. Nothing under government payroll in Gaza is openly identified as an army, but there is an army there, under government control, nonetheless.

[DogPoundPup]

8. Criminals belong in jail...

"Israel… cannot do as it pleases simply because the Judge Advocate General decided it wouldn’t be looking into the deaths of civilians."


Attorney Michael Sefarad, who specialized in international law, said that we must remember that the entire mechanism of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague was put in place after World War II and the Holocaust, at the Jewish people's demand.


"The notion that some acts cannot be committed even in a time of war and that war criminals cannot find refuge anywhere is of the utmost importance, and this mechanism can be used against Israel as well."

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3660451,00.html

[The Magistrate]

9. Crime Must Be Proved, Ma'am: Mere Allegation Does Not Suffice To Establish Crime Has Occured

Let alone subject anyone to penalty under law.

[DogPoundPup]

10. Stealing, killing, repression are all done openly because people

in governments have created phrases and words to hide their wrongs. There has been such a bastardization of the legal system, it serves nobody.

[The Magistrate]

12. Whatever You May Think Of It, Ma'am, the Law Remains The Law

When you insist something is a crime, you are appealing to legal standard. It is quite true that much we might agree is wrong is nonetheless legal, and even that some things we might agree are right are crimes under law.

[iconicgnom]

11. Aren't you the least bit ashamed of yourself?

The OP is all about official programs designed for the sole purpose of stonewalling any factchecking.
But you do go on, throwing out red herrings and sophistries to right and left, tarted up with the faux polite affectations of a net persona.

[The Magistrate]

13. What An Amusing Question, Sir

The article at the head of this is about a government taking steps, as it sees it, to protect its soldiery from harassments it feels are simply politically motivated vexatiousness.

[GoesTo11]

14. True.