Kindgo
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Israel Furious At Belgium
Foreign Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has recalled Israel's Ambassador to Belgium for "consultations." This move is merely the sharpest expression of widespread Israeli fury at Belgium's decision yesterday that Ariel Sharon and other Israelis can be tried under the special Belgian law for international war crimes. The Belgian Supreme Court ruled that Sharon, as a sitting Prime Minister, cannot be tried, but that Israelis such as Gen. (res.) Amos Yaron and former IDF Chief of Staff Rafael Eitan can be tried, even though they are not in Belgian territory.
The issue at hand in the Belgian courts is the massacre of hundreds of Arabs in September 1982 by Maronite Christians in Lebanon. This was the culmination of a long Lebanese civil war that developed between the Christians and the PLO; the PLO, after causing a civil war in Jordan, relocated to Lebanon in the early 1970's, leading to a civil war there as well.
Rafael Eitan, known as Raful, says that the Belgian decision does not worry him, as the ruling is "political," and that in any event, he has no plans to leave Israel in the near future. Gen. Yaron said that Belgium suffers from "delusions of grandeur" in thinking that it must enforce its view of justice on the world.
Netanyahu also summoned Belgium's Ambassador to Israel, Wilfried Green, and expressed his sharp protest of the Belgian decision. "The decision is yet another blood libel against the Jewish people from European lands, " Netanyahu said. "It is a sharp blow at truth, justice, ethics, Israel, and the forces fighting terrorism around the world... Turning an entire country into a kangaroo court is a strike against world justice and a libel appropriate to 'old Europe.'"
Attorney-General Elyakim Rubenstein said that the Belgian ruling has "nothing to do with justice; it's just politics. A normal country can't allow a legal system to operate on its own in a bubble, like a UFO, without paying attention to simple facts... Israel's judicial system is certainly of no less quality than that of Belgium, and we investigated the Sabra and Shatila massacres with the Kahan Commission, and found no criminal culpability..."
The government appointed the Kahan Commission in 1983 to investigate the massacres, and found Sharon guilty only of "indirect responsibility" for not having anticipated the gruesome events. "We have no doubt," concluded the committee, "that no conspiracy or plot was entered into between anyone from the Israeli political echelon or from the military echelon in the IDF and the Phalangists with the aim of perpetrating atrocities in the camps ... No intention existed on the part of anyone who acted on behalf of Israel to harm the non-combatant population… The direct responsibility for the perpetration of the acts of slaughter rests on the Phalangist forces."
Yoel Rubenfeld, the director of the Belgium-based Belgium-Israel friendship association, said this morning, "This unfortunately shows that there's no justice when it comes to Israel. There's Arafat, and Saddam, and Pinochet, and many others who could be tried under the special Belgian law - yet they're only going after Sharon. The others have been the subjects of claims, but nothing has moved; only with Sharon!" He said that there is tremendous ignorance in Belgium about what happened at Sabra and Shatila: "They think that it was Israel that massacred the Arabs there!" It was reported today that the small Belgian Jewish population of 40,000 has relatively little political clout; the number of those calling themselves Palestinians in Belgium is 600,000.
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/news.php3?id=38910
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God bless,
Kindgo
Inside the will of God there is no failure. Outside the will of God there is no success.
Posts: 4320 | From: Sunny Florida | Registered: Jun 2002
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