The OIling of America

Worth the time to listen to.

Great article on Aerosol Spraying and Weather Modification

I know this should be up on the cloudwatching blog, and I'll whack it up there too, but since this blog does get a little more foot traffic I simply must share this here as well.

As some of you know, I've not been able to keep as close an eye on the sky recently due to a rather sad family situation, but just because I'm not updating the Cloudwatching blog daily, as I was, doesn't mean they have stopped spraying daily around here. They are.

Please take the time yourself to look up, way up and call your MP (I know it won't do much, but if everyone harrassed their government lackey more often it might have some small effect).

So, here is the link to the article:

Heavy Metal Poisoning, Brain Injury, and Clandestine Weather Modification Programs - Connecting the Dots - Part 1

Dr. Kiburn's research clearly shows that chemicals do affect and seriously harm the brain [and, thereby, cognitive function]. Chemicals ­especially a daily onslaught of toxic chemicals over many years­ can damage our ability to think clearly. Even if we find this hard to believe, the evidence is there. Dr. Kilburn has expanded this essay into the first book to research this: "Chemical Brain Injury" (published in 1998). Dr. Kilburn notes:
The brain's preservation represents the only possibility of survival for mankind. To find in many parts of the country and in many individual patients that its function is eroded seriously by chemicals, chemicals that have been introduced into the environment basically in the last 50 years, is bad news indeed.(18)

It seems almost unbelievable that millions/billions of people could look up at the sky and not notice the dramatic changes that have occurred from what it was, for instance, in the mid-1990s. Then our sky was a gorgeous, deep blue. Clouds were a beautiful assortment of shapes. The sun was glorious. But people under 30, may not have a real sense of recollection about looking up every day and seeing this panoramic magnificence. Most of them are too busy texting or chatting on their cell phones. There are other issues to consider, as well: People are in their own comfort zones; and denial is a very powerful human emotion. In the hustle and bustle (now quite out of hand, for reflective time), how many people look up at the sky? It also takes huge courage, a very deep, internal willingness to examine politically motivated corporate controlled media spin, and search for the real answers. Humans like their regular routines. To re-examine what we think we know, based on new evidence, takes a willingness to think outside the proverbial box; to want to find out the truth ­not the pervasive Orwellian doublespeak that pervades our society. If everything in our daily routine belies what is truly going on, it requires fortitude to explore the unknown. We must question the litany.

Good video on Bill C6

Shaun Buckley clears up some of the more nefarious points related to Bill C6

Toronto 18... Countdown

Toronto 18 Informant asked RCMP for $ 15 Million

The fixed costs were listed as:

* Up to $750,000 for the loss of Elsohemy's business.
* $100,000 for Elsohemy's two cars.
* $100,000 for "start-up" including furniture.
* $200,000 in a category that had been blacked out on the document.
* $75,000 for his parents' cars.
* $40,000 for his parents' debts.

They also included $30,000 for his youngest brother's car, $100,000 for startup for his youngest brother, $100,000 for his older brother's debts, $30,000 for his older brother's car and a further $150,000 under another blacked out category.

The documents showed the RCMP compensation package also included offers of:

* Up to $900,000 for Elsohemy's home.
* Up to $40,000 for dental work for his wife.
* Up to $50,000 to cover his debts.
* Up to $300,000 for his parents' home.
* Up to $25,000 for his youngest brother's debts.


Well, that was worth it!!!!!!

pfffft!!

Jason Kenney's Speech in Israel

Well, our illustrious and outspoken minister of Israel and All Things Jewish has made a speech at the Global Forum for Combatting Anti-semitism a couple of weeks ago, December 16.

Read some excerpts below and weep, keeping in mind that Kenney chums around with the likes of the Jewish Defence League of Canada, which links itself and assists in the complilation of the S'H'I'T' list (Self-Hating or Israel Threatening Jews).

This guy is a disgrace and a danger to Jews:

"There are still people who would perpetrate another Holocaust if they could. That's why we must resist the error of viewing the Holocaust as a strictly historical event. It's not good enough for politicians to stand before you and say they remember and mourn what happened over six decades ago. They must stand up to those who advocate the destruction of Israel and its people today. They must be unequivocal in their condemnation of anti-Semitic despots, terrorists and fanatics, because those who attack Israel and those who sponsor such attacks do not seek merely to gain some leverage or to alter some boundary or to right some wrong."

He said, "they seek what they and those like them, have always sought, the destruction of Israel and the destruction of the Jewish people." Why? "A thousand complicated rationalizations, but only one simple reason: because the Jews are different, because the Jews are not like them. And because Israel is different and alone in a complicated part of the world, it is too easy to embrace the rationalizations and to ignore the truth. But our government believes that those who threaten Israel also threaten Canada because, as the last World War showed us, hate fuelled bigotry against some is ultimately a threat to us all and must be resisted."

Notice that he continually uses the trick of equating all Jewry with the STATE of Israel (and thereby the state's actions). This is done throughout the speech. It standard operating procedure and muddies the waters between a religious group and a single country's actions. It also lumps all diaspora Jews in with the State and thus 'guilty' by association.

I don't know about you, but I don't know of a single 'state' government which represents in anyway all of the individuals in its citizenry. Do you?

Here's some more gesm:

What Prime Minister Harper witnessed in Mumbai, what happened at the same time in Calgary, were practical expressions of the new anti-Semitism. Even though Canada is celebrated around the world as being a successful model of mutual coexistence and tolerance, we too have seen a troubling increase in incidents of anti-Semitism. B'Nai Brith Canada publishes the authoritative registry of anti-Semitic incidents in Canada. In 2008, they received reports of 1,135 incidents of anti-Semitic instances, the highest number recorded in 28 years of the study, an increase of 8.9% over 2007.

Statistics Canada reports that 15% of all hate motivated crimes target Jews who only constitute 1% of our country's population- and that two thirds of hate crimes that are targeting religious communities were targeting members of Canada's Jewish community.

~ We've launched a $2.5 million commemorative fund to work with organizations to understand better research and educate future generations about the hatred which underscored those policies.

~ We've launched a fund to provide assistance to upgrade security at vulnerable institutions in the Jewish and other communities and have faced vandalism or threats. And now we've been able to work with the community to upgrade security at dozens of Hebrew schools, synagogues and community centres.

~ we eliminated the government funding relationship with organizations like for example, the Canadian Arab Federation, whose leadership apologized for terrorism or extremism, or who promote hatred, in particular anti-Semitism

~ We have ended government contact with like-minded organizations like the Canadian Islamic Congress, whose President notoriously said that all Israelis over the age of 18 are legitimate targets for assassination. This is outright BS

~We have defunded organizations, most recently like KAIROS, who are taking a leadership role in the boycott.


There is of course more, but it just goes on the detail the continuing boot licking of this administration towards a foreign power. Go ahead and read the rest yourself, but don't bother complaining to your MP, since Jason basically tells all us Canadians to Piss off.

CRU hack

I have put up a bunch of links on my Cloudwatching blog for anyone interested.

Canadoi

Good Grief!! I say, shaking my head and rolling my eyes...



Can this get any more absurd? Are we all really living in Canad-oi??

You can read more about it here and here, and here. Be prepared with your vomit baggie nearby - you'll need it.

What the heck is this really? So, now both parties are going to be right out there with vying for the love of Israel? Well, at least it is finally - clearly out in the open.

Far from being 'anti-semites' as the Tories exclaim of the Liberals, let me remind everyone of this tasty little gem:

Israel supporters in cabinet
Jewish state has friends in the new Martin government, says Owen.

This piece from 2004 introduces us to the 'Liberal Parliamentarians for Israel'. Don't worry if you've never heard of them, they were after all just beginning the outing process which had been in the works for a few years at least. Perhaps this crew and their minions still living in the closet are to blame for these sorts of sentiments:

PM Paul Martin is NO friend of Israel

I guess they had to finally give in and adopt the now Israelcentric talking points vis a vis Lurch:



"Canada has to support the right of a democratic country to defend itself," he told reporters in Halifax yesterday after speaking to a forum of business leaders on the economy.

"Israel has been attacked from Gaza, not just last year, but for almost 10 years," Ignatieff said.

"They evacuated from Gaza so there is no occupation in Gaza."

Nice Iggy, so it justifies it all eh? Well I think we all know that he is a very pro-Israel warhappy academic and was placed into the leadership of the Liberal party to ensure they never get voted into power. He's a mule.

So, let us all just face it - the leaders of our political parties are more concerned with the pro-Israel Jewish vote than they are about the rest of 98% of Canada. Here in this utter fiasco, which really is funny when you think about it - but in a sad way - we have absolute solid proof.

Chemtrails over Ottawa - October

Just thought I'd stick up some shots I took on October 9. This aerosol spraying has been going on daily. On this particular day, I was working outside in the garden, getting ready for winter and such, so I was outside pretty much all afternoon. That evening, I was sneezing my head off - so were ALL my cats. The next day, my throat was scratchy and sore, nose running like a tap. I DO not have any allergies.

Anyway, here some pics for your viewing pleasure:









I have lots more... I might throw a few more up later, as I still have to upload them to my photobucket account.

Still, though as you can see these things are weird, to say the least.

OH, and they are back at it today.

United Church of Canada - Anti-Semites all of them!!

Well, Bernie Farber of the Canadian Jewish Congress (Israeli is US) seems to certainly thinks so, though I'm sure Bernie finds anti-semites in his bedclothes at night.

This time though, he's after the UCC for the wording of their divestment report - which can be read here. I guess Bernie baby doesn't like the term 'apartheid' or that the UCC has named the ministers (you know the ones supposedly working for the CANADIAN constituents) whom have taken free trips to Israel as well as those who hold dual citizenship.

Gee, Bernie I guess the truth hurts eh?

While reading CBC this morning I noticed this article, as I sent off a comment, and took a gander at some of the other lame items they had listed, it had disappeared from the front page and been buried under a bunch of other meaningless dribble.

So, for the sake of the memory hole, here's the link below:
United Church drops Israel 'apartheid' wording

Delegates at the United Church of Canada's national meeting have voted almost unanimously to reject controversial language used in material for a proposed divestment and sanctions campaign against Israel.

Well, nice cave in boys! What do you want to bet that they will drop the entire divestment idea sooner rather than later? Afterall, the UCC has itself some skeletons in the closet which would be best not too see the light of day (native reserves). I wouldn't put it past the CJC having used this as a tool to get the 'language' changed - we can count on more smears coming out in the next while.

Bernie - you really need to join the human race - or move to Israel already.

Neo-Nazis, the CJC and Agent Provacatuers

I know that quite a few of us already are aware of this, but hey, I gotta say: Way to go Ezra!!

Canadian Jewish Congress Organised Nazis

A Jewish-Canadian author is in a battle of words with the Canadian Jewish Congress after alleging the organization props up neo-nazi groups to get “hate crime” legislation passed and expand the role of the country’s Human Rights Commission.

Neo-conservative author Ezra Levant claims in his latest book, Shakedown, that the Canadian Jewish Congress hired ex-cop John Garrity to work for the Canadian Nazi Party in the 1960’s. In 1965 and 1966, Garrity was put in charge of membership for the group and organized the dozen or so “rag-tag band of losers” into an outfit that garned a lot of press coverage.

That media attention was used by the CJC to build up a precieved public threat that persuaded Parliament to abridge Canada’s freedom of speech, Levant contends. The CJC, which had been advocating restrictions on free speech in Canada since the 1930’s, used the Nazi Party’s publicity to successfully lobby for the 1971 “hate law” (Section 319 of the Criminal Code). The end result was the enactment of Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act, which “empowers the Canadian Human Rights Commission to deal with complaints regarding the communication of hate messages by telephone or on the Internet.”

Click the link above for the rest of this very revealing article.

It certainly makes one wonder as to who and what are behind these so-called domestic terror groups as well.

It is my opinion that the CJC and B'nai B'rith should declare themselves as agents of a foreign government.

Seems these organisations have a long history of making the trouble they imagine themselves. Problem, reaction, solution.

Edited to add the link to Ezra's own article:
Why Did the Jewish Congress Build Up the Nazi Party?

The above, please read it all - it's Ezra at his finest - contains his response to Bulka's own rant in the Ottawa Citizen:

In 1965 and 1966, the Canadian Jewish Congress helped organize the fledgling Canadian Nazi Party. That sounds crazy, but it's true, and I wrote about it in Shakedown, my new book about Canada's human rights commissions.

In a letter to the editor in the Citizen last week, the CJC's current co-president, Rabbi Reuven Bulka, called my book's description of the CJC's role "fiction." He said all the CJC did for the Nazis was buy them a bottle of rum.

It's true that the CJC did buy drinks for Nazis in the 1960s. That's pretty strange in itself, and I'd like to hear more of Rabbi Bulka's thoughts on spending Jewish charitable donations that way. But the CJC did a lot more than that: they hired an ex-cop named John Garrity to go to work for the Canadian Nazi Party.

Garrity helped organize that rag-tag band of losers, though they never amounted to anything except for fodder for the press.

There were only a dozen active Nazis when Garrity joined them and they weren't really a political party. He called them "harmless misfits," and they were -- their leader, John Beattie, was a nervous, gaunt, unemployed 24-year-old clerk who spent much of his time dodging angry Jews who tried to beat him up. (One of Garrity's jobs was to help Beattie escape street fights.)

Garrity brought more than just rum to the Nazis. He brought with him pretty much the only organizational talent the group had. They put him in charge of membership. Garrity called himself the "Heinrich Himmler" of the party, and a "Nazi leader for the Jewish Congress."

I'd like Rabbi Bulka's thoughts on that, too.

Of course, Garrity helped his paymasters at the CJC, too, giving them information about the names of party members and donors. And when Garrity finally quit the Nazis, he wrote a tell-all about his adventure in Maclean's magazine.

Garrity larded that report with personal insults toward Beattie and the Nazis. But he did acknowledge that they had never done, or even contemplated doing, anything illegal. All of the violence he witnessed was directed at Beattie, usually by Jewish vigilantes. "Sadly, it is the ... anti-Nazi extremists who, in their attempts to destroy Beattie, provide him with most of the publicity he craves. If it weren't for the riots and the assaults and the public protest meetings they hold, there'd be no real news in Beattie," Garrity wrote.

And that is the importance of this story and why I put it in my book about human rights commissions. Beattie hadn't done anything illegal. He was just a loser who believed in a discredited ideology. But the CJC wanted to bring in political censorship laws and I believe they needed to build up the threat to persuade Parliament to abridge Canada's freedom of speech.

Garrity puffed up a group of Nazi nobodies into a national menace, first through organizational support and then through spectacular media publicity. And, sure enough, Parliament enacted section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act, which censors offensive speech.

That's become a pattern. Twenty years after the Canadian Nazi Party vanished, CSIS, Canada's spy agency, inserted an operative named Grant Bristow into another rag-tag racist group called the Heritage Front.

Unlike Garrity, Bristow didn't play second-fiddle.

He became the boss, turning the Heritage Front into Canada's leading white supremacist group. This time it wasn't just Jewish money that was spent propping up neo-Nazis -- all taxpayers paid for it.

Which brings us to the present day -- and back to Rabbi Bulka and the section 13 censorship law. Canada's largest customer of section 13 is Richard Warman, who has been the complainant in all but two cases heard by the tribunal this decade. The CJC was so impressed that they gave Warman an award.

But, in a stunning human rights tribunal ruling last month, Warman himself was rebuked for posting anti-Semitic comments on Stormfront, a neo-Nazi website, including a message calling Jews "scum." Warman has stated that he was attempting to gather information on real Nazis, but the tribunal called his actions "disappointing and disturbing," and ruled that he risked encouraging more hateful messages himself.

Warman's actions appalled the tribunal, but apparently not the CJC. Just as the CJC did with Garrity, Nazi opponents continue to stir up neo-Nazi incidents -- as if there aren't enough real threats to Jews as it is.

Perhaps Rabbi Bulka can explain that one, too.


Another edit:
I was reading the comments at Ezra's blog, where a poster linked to this:
Dissapporbation: Censorship's Most Powerful Tool and a good little argument put forth by Doug Christie of the perils of 'peer pressure' and the fear of disapproval. Worth a listen.

I think part of true freedom is the freedom within oneself not to concern themselves with what others may think of them, trueness and loyalty to one's own ideals is in its own way a form of spiritual and individual freedom.

Norman Dodd Interview

Hidden Agenda of the Tax Exempt Foundations




In an interview with Norman Dodd, the 1954 staff director of the Reese congressional special committe to investigate tax-exempt foundations, he exposes the tax-exempt foundations hidden agenda for government.

Another failed attempt at Booga Booga

Well, it seems that those nasty terrorists arrested shortly after the death of Ian Tomlinson at the hands of the G20 security personel will all be set free - due to lack of evidence!!

Can anyone truly think that this whole maneuver was no more than an attempt at deflection from the behaviour of the police?

Britain won't charge 12 arrested in Anti-Terror Sweep

Twelve men arrested in a series of anti-terrorist raids involving hundreds of officers across northwest England earlier this month will not face charges due to insufficient evidence, British prosecutors said Wednesday.

***

While British officials haven't provided any details about what the men were suspected of doing, Prime Minister Gordon Brown has previously said authorities were on to "a very big terrorist plot."


Seems to me that this 'raid' was clearly executed for the sole reason of diverting attention from the misconduct of security officers during the G20. Like many of the round-ups before this, no charges will be laid, so in other words it was a grand farce designed to whip up more booga booga and keep the populace in fear of the ever present Muslim Terrorist.

What a joke.

Codex Ailmentarius

This is a presentation by Ian Crane, who I will admit to not hearing of before. It's really quite good and useful to introduce the methods used and danger of the implementation of Codex Alimentarius.

Galloway - Comment

Comment

This a link to Galloway's PressTV's show where he takes questions from all over the world in various media and kvetches for a while.

I was stuck filing today and doing end of month stuff... yawn... so I gave it a listen. He always manages to bring a smile to my face, and hope to my heart.

If only we had an MP so outspoken and brutally honest as he.

Enjoy!

Toronto 18, Er... 11?? Penny - this is for YOU!

Guilty verdict stands in Toronto bomb-plot trial, judge rules

A youth found guilty of terrorism-related offences was not entrapped by a paid RCMP mole, and the verdict will stand, a judge in Brampton, Ont., ruled Tuesday.

The decision in the case of the first person to stand trial among the so-called Toronto 18 means a finding of guilt now becomes a conviction.

"My conclusion is that there has not been entrapment," Ontario Superior Court Justice John Sproat said in his 51-page decision. "There has not been an abuse of process."

The youth, who was 17 at the time of his offences and cannot be named, was found guilty in September of helping, and taking part in, a terror-related organization.

Sproat said at the time that evidence the terrorist group existed was "overwhelming."


I put this up for Penny, who is wrapped up in American Pie right now, but hopefully she can do something with it on her blog, a she has already compiled alot of info about this fake terror cell.

This is such a joke, it would be laughable if peoples lives were not concerned.

Crazy - carpets you say?

ugh.

Horray for the Law!!

Well, it's been a while.

And things are, of course, no different. The wagon is still careening off the cliff and no one seems to have packed parachutes.

I finally decided to meander through the many posts that didn't make it.

I found this one and thought of the soldiers now coming forward and telling of the atrocities they did commit while invading and occupying Gaza for a month. They, themselves are coming forth - and now it's in the news, now it's being listened to - it sure didn't when it was happening.

Is this thier out? Is this the 'legal' way to conclude, given the outright testimonies of both solider and civilian, that war crimes were never committed?

It could well be.

Hence, I'm throwing this up out of the memory hole:
(Yes it's the full piece - because this is exactly the kind of stuff that gets flushed).


Consent and Advice

On the first day of Operation Cast Lead, the air force bombed the graduation ceremony of a police course, killing dozens of policemen. Months earlier, an operational and legal controversy was already swirling around the planned attack. According to a military source who was involved in the planning, bombing the site of the ceremony was authorized with no difficulty,but questions were raised about the intent to strike at the graduates of the course. Military Intelligence, convinced the attack was justified, pressed for its implementation. Representatives of the international law division (ILD) in the Military Advocate General's Office at first objected, fearing a possible violation of international law.

"This was a very large group of people who at that moment were ostensibly civilians and the next day would become legitimate military targets," says an operational source. "You take these dozens of policemen and put them in your gunsights. That certainly came up in all the discussions and soul-searching."

Over the course of several months, the operational echelons, particularly Military Intelligence, kept up the pressure on the army's legal staff. In the end, ILD authorized the air strike as it was carried out. The "incrimination" of the policemen (that is, justifying an attack on them) was based on their categorization as a resistance force in the event of an Israeli incursion into the Gaza Strip; not on information about any of them as individuals.


"Underlying our rationale was the way Hamas used the security forces," says a senior ILD figure. "Actually, one can look at the totality as the equivalent of the enemy's armed force, so they were not perceived as police. In our eyes, all the armed forces of Hamas are the equivalent of the army, just as in the face of the enemy's army every soldier is a legitimate target."

Experts in international law term the justification for the bombing raid problematic. "In a properly run state, attacking policemen as though they are soldiers is prohibited," says Prof. Yuval Shany, who teaches public international law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. "When we are dealing with a government like Hamas, in which the boundaries between the different forces are not clear, the police force may have a combat role. But if you follow that line, there is not much that differentiates them from [Israeli] reservists or even from 16-year-olds who will be drafted in two years. You have to draw the line and restrict attacks to those in active service. This is not the only case in which the IDF offered a flexible interpretation of the law. The army attacked the infrastructure of the Hamas government and hit ministries. But unless you can show that there was military equipment in those offices, an attack on structures that do not serve a military purpose is a violation of the rules of war. The buildings are civilian sites and must not be attacked."

However, after entertaining initial doubts, ILD authorized the bombing of Hamas governmental targets. "As we understand it," says a senior figure in ILD, "the way Hamas operates is to use the entire governmental infrastructure for the organization's terrorist purposes, so that the distinctions are a bit different. We adjust the targets to the case of a terrorist regime."

Civilian on the roof

The ILD is based in a neglected building in the Kirya, the defense establishment compound in Tel Aviv. The unit consists of about 20 officers who hold a legal education. The department has existed in its present form and name since the start of the 1990s. Until then the unit was known as the International Law Branch, or 'Debil' in the Hebrew acronym, a word that means imbecile, until a senior officer in the unit demanded a change of name.

ILD takes pride in the influence its officers exerted on the character of the war in Gaza. For example, the unit induced the IDF to warn people before their homes were bombed by means of a procedure known as 'knock on the roof'; echoing the 'knock on the door campaign' in Israel in which funds are raised to fight cancer; in which munitions are fired harmlessly at roof corners. Sources in the unit say they tried to draw lessons from the warnings that were given in the Second Lebanon War. According to human rights organizations, the civilians in Lebanon were not told which places were safe and the roads on which they fled were bombed and became death traps. Once a warning is issued, say senior ILD officers, a strike against civilians who are bodily defending a structure can be validated as though they were combatants. Other legal experts dispute this. Among them is Colonel (res.) Daniel Reisner, who headed ILD until about five years ago. In his view, as he told Haaretz after Operation Cast Lead, such civilians retain their civilian status. I don't think you can incriminate someone who is standing on a roof just because he is there," Reisner said. "Possibly the attack on him will be considered legitimate -collateral damage," but he will not be a target."

A senior ILD figure explains: "The people who go into a house despite a warning do not have to be taken into account in terms of injury to civilians, because they are voluntary human shields. From the legal point of view, I do not have to show consideration for them. In the case of people who return to their home in order to protect it, they are taking part in the fighting."

What about a civilian who positions himself in front of a tank?
"If someone stands in front of a tank in order to block its progress, he is participating in warfare." But he says that in practice, the IDF does not attack civilians in such cases.

ILD's permissive posture comes as no surprise to jurists who monitor the unit's legal opinions. According to one of them, the unit is considered -more militant than any other legal body in Israel, and is ready to adopt the most flexible interpretations of the law in order to justify IDF operations." Pressure from operational elements and an understanding of their considerations on the part of ILD appear to affect the unit's legal opinions. "The army knows what it wants. For the operational echelon things are very clear," says an IDF operational source. "When the legal advisers thought something was objectionable or problematic, they definitely came under pressure to produce a positive bottom line."

"Our goal is not to fetter the army, but to give it the tools to win in a lawful manner," says an ILD officer. Reisner, the unit's former commander, says he understands why it has acquired a reputation for permissiveness: "We defended policy that is on the edge: the "neighbor procedure" [making a neighbor knock on the door of a potentially dangerous house], house demolitions, deportation, targeted assassination; we defended all the magic formulas for dealing with terrorism. In that sense, ILD is a body that restrains action, but does not stop it. The army says, "Here is a magic formula, is it within the bounds of what is possible? To which I will reply, I am ready to try to defend it, but I am not sure I will succeed. If it's white I will allow it, if it's black I will prohibit it, but in cases of gray I will be part of the dilemma: I do not stop at gray."

The dilemma of the gray areas and ILD's attempts to discover untapped potential in international law may perhaps explain the unit's great enthusiasm for providing legal advice to the army and the glint in advisers' eyes when certain terms roll off their tongue: 'proportional equilibrium,' 'legitimate military target,' 'illegal combatants.' 'What we are seeing now is a revision of international law,' Reisner says. 'If you do something for long enough, the world will accept it. The whole of international law is now based on the notion that an act that is forbidden today becomes permissible if executed by enough countries. If the same process occurred in private law, the legal speed limit would be 115 kilometers an hour and we would pay income tax of 4 percent. So there is no connection between the question 'Will it be sanctioned?' and the act's legality. After we bombed the reactor in Iraq, the Security Council condemned Israel and claimed the attack was a violation of international law. The atmosphere was that Israel had committed a crime. Today everyone says it was preventive self-defense. International law progresses through violations. We invented the targeted assassination thesis and we had to push it. At first there were protrusions that made it hard to insert easily into the legal moulds. Eight years later it is in the center of the bounds of legitimacy."

Did the attacks of September 11 influence your legal situation?

"Absolutely. When we started to define the confrontation with the Palestinians as an armed confrontation, it was a dramatic switch, and we started to defend that position before the Supreme Court. In April 2001 I met the American envoy George Mitchell and explained that above a certain level, fighting terrorism is armed combat and not law enforcement. His committee [which examined the circumstances of the confrontation in the territories] rejected that approach. Its report called on the Israeli government to abandon the armed confrontation definition and revert to the concept of law enforcement. It took four months and four planes to change the opinion of the United States, and had it not been for those four planes I am not sure we would have been able to develop the thesis of the war against terrorism on the present scale."

Individual approach

One of the core reasons for ILD's permissive approach may be its desire to preserve a modicum of relevance and influence in periods when the atmosphere in the General Staff and the territorial commands is particularly militant. A former senior commander notes that in the period when Daniel Reisner; an articulate, charismatic officer; headed the unit, its staff, and above all Reisner himself, acquired a respected status within the IDF officer corps. By the same token, the influence of the current staff, under the command of Colonel Pnina Sharvit-Baruch, is not self-evident. Sources involved in the work of Southern Command note that the commanding general, Yoav Gallant, is quite suspicious of the advisers and is known as a 'wild man,' a 'cowboy' or a 'sheriff' in terms of the importance; meaning lack of importance; he attaches to legal advice. The legal adviser to Southern Command was not invited to the situation appraisal ahead of the Gaza offensive and was excluded from smaller planning forums. Yet it was actually Operation Cast Lead that led to something of an improvement in relations between ILD and Gallant.

****

Ahh well, read it and weep. This is their out.

Twist and shout!

Thank goodness for the Law!

Well, it's been a while.

And things are, of course, no different. The wagon is still careening off the cliff and no one seems to have packed parachutes.

I finally decided to meander through the many posts that didn't make it.

I found this one and thought of the soldiers now coming forward and telling of the atrocities they did commit while invading and occupying Gaza for a month. They, themselves are coming forth - and now it's in the news, now it's being listened to - it sure didn't when it was happening.

Is this thier out? Is this the 'legal' way to conclude, given the outright testimonies of both solider and civilian, that war crimes were never committed?

It could well be.

Hence, I'm throwing this up out of the memory hole:
(Yes it's the full piece - because this is exactly the kind of stuff that gets flushed).


Consent and Advice

On the first day of Operation Cast Lead, the air force bombed the graduation ceremony of a police course, killing dozens of policemen. Months earlier, an operational and legal controversy was already swirling around the planned attack. According to a military source who was involved in the planning, bombing the site of the ceremony was authorized with no difficulty, but questions were raised about the intent to strike at the graduates of the course. Military Intelligence, convinced the attack was justified, pressed for its implementation. Representatives of the international law division (ILD) in the Military Advocate General's Office at first objected, fearing a possible violation of international law.

"This was a very large group of people who at that moment were ostensibly civilians and the next day would become legitimate military targets," says an operational source. "You take these dozens of policemen and put them in your gunsights. That certainly came up in all the discussions and soul-searching."

Over the course of several months, the operational echelons, particularly Military Intelligence, kept up the pressure on the army's legal staff. In the end, ILD authorized the air strike as it was carried out. The "incrimination" of the policemen (that is, justifying an attack on them) was based on their categorization as a resistance force in the event of an Israeli incursion into the Gaza Strip; not on information about any of them as individuals.


"Underlying our rationale was the way Hamas used the security forces," says a senior ILD figure. "Actually, one can look at the totality as the equivalent of the enemy's armed force, so they were not perceived as police. In our eyes, all the armed forces of Hamas are the equivalent of the army, just as in the face of the enemy's army every soldier is a legitimate target."

Experts in international law term the justification for the bombing raid problematic. "In a properly run state, attacking policemen as though they are soldiers is prohibited," says Prof. Yuval Shany, who teaches public international law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. "When we are dealing with a government like Hamas, in which the boundaries between the different forces are not clear, the police force may have a combat role. But if you follow that line, there is not much that differentiates them from [Israeli] reservists or even from 16-year-olds who will be drafted in two years. You have to draw the line and restrict attacks to those in active service. This is not the only case in which the IDF offered a flexible interpretation of the law. The army attacked the infrastructure of the Hamas government and hit ministries. But unless you can show that there was military equipment in those offices, an attack on structures that do not serve a military purpose is a violation of the rules of war. The buildings are civilian sites and must not be attacked."

However, after entertaining initial doubts, ILD authorized the bombing of Hamas governmental targets. "As we understand it," says a senior figure in ILD, "the way Hamas operates is to use the entire governmental infrastructure for the organization's terrorist purposes, so that the distinctions are a bit different. We adjust the targets to the case of a terrorist regime."

Civilian on the roof

The ILD is based in a neglected building in the Kirya, the defense establishment compound in Tel Aviv. The unit consists of about 20 officers who hold a legal education. The department has existed in its present form and name since the start of the 1990s. Until then the unit was known as the International Law Branch, or 'Debil' in the Hebrew acronym, a word that means imbecile, until a senior officer in the unit demanded a change of name.

ILD takes pride in the influence its officers exerted on the character of the war in Gaza. For example, the unit induced the IDF to warn people before their homes were bombed by means of a procedure known as 'knock on the roof'; echoing the 'knock on the door campaign' in Israel in which funds are raised to fight cancer; in which munitions are fired harmlessly at roof corners. Sources in the unit say they tried to draw lessons from the warnings that were given in the Second Lebanon War. According to human rights organizations, the civilians in Lebanon were not told which places were safe and the roads on which they fled were bombed and became death traps. Once a warning is issued, say senior ILD officers, a strike against civilians who are bodily defending a structure can be validated as though they were combatants. Other legal experts dispute this. Among them is Colonel (res.) Daniel Reisner, who headed ILD until about five years ago. In his view, as he told Haaretz after Operation Cast Lead, such civilians retain their civilian status. I don't think you can incriminate someone who is standing on a roof just because he is there," Reisner said. "Possibly the attack on him will be considered legitimate -collateral damage," but he will not be a target."

A senior ILD figure explains: "The people who go into a house despite a warning do not have to be taken into account in terms of injury to civilians, because they are voluntary human shields. From the legal point of view, I do not have to show consideration for them. In the case of people who return to their home in order to protect it, they are taking part in the fighting."

What about a civilian who positions himself in front of a tank?

"If someone stands in front of a tank in order to block its progress, he is participating in warfare." But he says that in practice, the IDF does not attack civilians in such cases.

ILD's permissive posture comes as no surprise to jurists who monitor the unit's legal opinions. According to one of them, the unit is considered -more militant than any other legal body in Israel, and is ready to adopt the most flexible interpretations of the law in order to justify IDF operations." Pressure from operational elements and an understanding of their considerations on the part of ILD appear to affect the unit's legal opinions. "The army knows what it wants. For the operational echelon things are very clear," says an IDF operational source. "When the legal advisers thought something was objectionable or problematic, they definitely came under pressure to produce a positive bottom line."

"Our goal is not to fetter the army, but to give it the tools to win in a lawful manner," says an ILD officer. Reisner, the unit's former commander, says he understands why it has acquired a reputation for permissiveness: "We defended policy that is on the edge: the "neighbor procedure" [making a neighbor knock on the door of a potentially dangerous house], house demolitions, deportation, targeted assassination; we defended all the magic formulas for dealing with terrorism. In that sense, ILD is a body that restrains action, but does not stop it. The army says, "Here is a magic formula, is it within the bounds of what is possible? To which I will reply, I am ready to try to defend it, but I am not sure I will succeed. If it's white I will allow it, if it's black I will prohibit it, but in cases of gray I will be part of the dilemma: I do not stop at gray."

The dilemma of the gray areas and ILD's attempts to discover untapped potential in international law may perhaps explain the unit's great enthusiasm for providing legal advice to the army and the glint in advisers' eyes when certain terms roll off their tongue: 'proportional equilibrium,' 'legitimate military target,' 'illegal combatants.' 'What we are seeing now is a revision of international law,' Reisner says. 'If you do something for long enough, the world will accept it. The whole of international law is now based on the notion that an act that is forbidden today becomes permissible if executed by enough countries. If the same process occurred in private law, the legal speed limit would be 115 kilometers an hour and we would pay income tax of 4 percent. So there is no connection between the question 'Will it be sanctioned?' and the act's legality. After we bombed the reactor in Iraq, the Security Council condemned Israel and claimed the attack was a violation of international law. The atmosphere was that Israel had committed a crime. Today everyone says it was preventive self-defense. International law progresses through violations. We invented the targeted assassination thesis and we had to push it. At first there were protrusions that made it hard to insert easily into the legal moulds. Eight years later it is in the center of the bounds of legitimacy."

Did the attacks of September 11 influence your legal situation?

"Absolutely. When we started to define the confrontation with the Palestinians as an armed confrontation, it was a dramatic switch, and we started to defend that position before the Supreme Court. In April 2001 I met the American envoy George Mitchell and explained that above a certain level, fighting terrorism is armed combat and not law enforcement. His committee [which examined the circumstances of the confrontation in the territories] rejected that approach. Its report called on the Israeli government to abandon the armed confrontation definition and revert to the concept of law enforcement. It took four months and four planes to change the opinion of the United States, and had it not been for those four planes I am not sure we would have been able to develop the thesis of the war against terrorism on the present scale."

Individual approach

One of the core reasons for ILD's permissive approach may be its desire to preserve a modicum of relevance and influence in periods when the atmosphere in the General Staff and the territorial commands is particularly militant. A former senior commander notes that in the period when Daniel Reisner; an articulate, charismatic officer; headed the unit, its staff, and above all Reisner himself, acquired a respected status within the IDF officer corps. By the same token, the influence of the current staff, under the command of Colonel Pnina Sharvit-Baruch, is not self-evident. Sources involved in the work of Southern Command note that the commanding general, Yoav Gallant, is quite suspicious of the advisers and is known as a 'wild man,' a 'cowboy' or a 'sheriff' in terms of the importance; meaning lack of importance; he attaches to legal advice. The legal adviser to Southern Command was not invited to the situation appraisal ahead of the Gaza offensive and was excluded from smaller planning forums. Yet it was actually Operation Cast Lead that led to something of an improvement in relations between ILD and Gallant.

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Ahh well, read it and weep. This is their out.

Twist and shout!