Middle East Policy Council April 16, 2010; also Institute for Palestine Studies, ResearchGate, Typeset.io & Wiley
The large-scale killing of civilians during Israel’s three-week assault on the Gaza Strip in 2008-09 received widespread condemnation from human-rights advocates and international legal scholars the world over. In both Europe and North America, public reaction to the grossly disproportionate Israeli response to Hamas rocket attacks was the most negative ever expressed against an Israeli military action. In Israel itself, soldiers who had witnesses some of the atrocities joined Israeli peace activists in exposing war crimes committed by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). However, the U.S. Congress, under the leadership of the Democratic Party, overwhelmingly defended the Israeli offensive, even to the point of attacking leading defenders of international humanitarian law. [source]
Month: April 2010
U.S. Lawmakers Support Illegal Annexation
Foreign Policy In Focus/Institute for Policy Studies, April 5, 2010; also CommonDreams, Global Policy Forum, Huffington Post, Toward Freedom, Transcend International, ZNetwork & Baltimore Nonviolence Center blogIn yet another assault on fundamental principles of international law, a bipartisan majority of the Senate has gone on record calling on the United States to endorse Morocco’s illegal annexation of Western Sahara, the former Spanish colony invaded by Moroccan forces in 1975 on the verge of its independence. In doing so, the Senate is pressuring the Obama administration to go against a series of UN Security Council resolutions, a landmark decision of the International Court of Justice, and the position of the African Union and most of the United States’ closest European allies.
More disturbingly, this effort appears to have the support of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. [source]