Nothing is more damaging to US interests

As the uprising unfolded, targeted assassinations became a regularly used weapon in the armoury of the Israel military, especially in Gaza, where arrests would later become less easy than in the West Bank. The highest-profile were those of Hamas leaders Ahmed Yassin and Abdel Aziz Rantisi in 2005, and of Said Siyam in the most recent offensive. But the targeting of lower-level militants, like the one killed in the operation described by the former soldier, became sufficiently common to attract little comment.

What is genocide?
Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide [1] drafted in 1948.

Article 2 of the Convention defines it as:
Any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such:
Killing members of the group;
Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its
physical destruction in whole or in part;
Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
...Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

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Presentations on Genocide
a.. Formation of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide - A presentation on Raphael Lemkin, the coining of the word "genocide"
b.. The Sword in the Stone: the Genocide Convention - a presentation on the shortfalls and implications of the Genocide Convention. Also download the notes for this presentation.

The international community is directly guilty for this latest massacre.

Once again, the Israelis bomb the starving and imprisoned population of Gaza. The world watches the plight of 1.5 million Gazans live on TV and online; the western media largely justify the Israeli action. Even some Arab outlets try to equate the Palestinian resistance with the might of the Israeli military machine. And none of this is a surprise. The Israelis just concluded a round-the-world public relations campaign to gather support for their assault, even gaining the collaboration of Arab states like Egypt.

The international community is directly guilty for this latest massacre. Will it remain immune from the wrath of a desperate people? So far, there have been large demonstrations in Lebanon, Yemen, Jordan, Egypt, Syria and Iraq. The people of the Arab world will not forget. The Palestinians will not forget. "All that you have done to our people is registered in our notebooks," as the poet Mahmoud Darwish said.

The tide is turning on this matter: 59% of Europeans think that Israel is the biggest threat to Middle East, and world, peace.

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James Petras, Professor of Sociology at Binghamton University, New York, has written a fine study of the pro-Israel lobby in the USA, joining John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt¿s excellent book, The Israel lobby and U.S. foreign policy. The tide is turning on this matter: 59% of Europeans think that Israel is the biggest threat to Middle East, and world, peace. Part 1 looks at the power of the pro-Israel lobby, and how it promoted the war against Iraq. Petras notes that the US-British policy of breaking Iraq into statelets follows the British precedent in setting up the Gulf States at the end of the 19th century and the EU-US scheme of destroying Yugoslavia at the end of the 20th century. Part 2 looks at the Israeli record of torture and assassination against the Palestinians, the invasions of Gaza and Lebanon, the threat to Iran, and Israel¿s efforts to polarise Christians against Muslims. Part 3 examines the role of so-called `terror experts¿ like Harvard¿s Professor Jessica Stern, who claims to `explain how violent Islamic nihilism continues to spread¿. Part 4 shows the importance of the lobby, rather then Big Oil or finance capital, in shaping the USA¿s imperial policy. The US undercuts the interests of the oil companies, which want peace so that they can maximise their profits, in favour of Israel¿s interests, which wants war to increase its power in the Middle East. Petras also shows how Noam Chomsky underplays the lobby¿s role. Petras concludes, ¿One will hear from Zionists the `relativist¿ argument: `Israel¿s crimes are no worse than many countries in the world¿. However, few countries (except the US) are engaged in colonizing a neighbor, bombing adversaries with impunity (and killing massive numbers of innocent bystanders), storing nuclear warheads with an offensive doctrine, securing the largest proportion of US foreign aid including its most advanced technology, controlling US congressional voting on Mideast issues, shaping the Mideast political agenda for both Presidential candidates, routinely torturing thousands of political prisoners (and sending advisers throughout the world to teach how to do likewise), and practising the totalitarian law of collective punishment for popular resistance.¿ We could do with a similar study of the pro-Israel lobby in Britain, of Blair and Brown¿s fanatical Zionism, and of the lobby¿s fascistic attacks on the University and College Union in Britain.