Bay Area residents attempted a citizen's arrest of former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, while he gave a speech to the World Affairs Council in San Francisco on 22 October 2009. Twenty-two people were arrested for challenging Olmert directly and demanding he be tried for war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon. Olmert has faced protests at Tulane University, University of Kentucky and the University of Chicago. The recent International Independent Fact-Finding Mission, headed by Judge Richard Goldstone, found evidence that Israel had committed war crimes and crimes against humanity during a three-week long attack on the Gaza Strip last winter, killing more than 1,400 Palestinians, mostly civilians, and destroying much of the area's infrastructure. In 2006, similar Israeli attacks on Lebanon killed 1,200 people. Olmert has refused to be held accountable.
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I have been to Tulkarm in the West Bank to talk with former Palestinian militants, and to Tel Aviv to meet former Israeli soldiers but today Itamar, a refusenik, can't face telling his story.
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We certainly do not want Israel to take its moral cues from Hamas, nor use that organization's abuses as excuses for inaction.
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I am pretty sure that response would be a crime even though it was "self defense" of a sort. I think that what happened in Gaza was a crime.
Further I don't think it was selfdefense at all. For 8 years rockets had been falling near Sderot. At the time of the invasion, they had slowed to a rate not seen in years. Why self defense at that time? Levi and Barak's election poll numbers were down. This was a ploy to gain in the polls.
http://www
IDF's Gaza incursions is Barak election ploy “GAZA - The escalation in violence between Israel and the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip over the last week is an Israeli provocation aimed at increasing Defense Minister Ehud Barak's standings in the polls” http://www
Why destroy water treatment and distrubution plants? Flour making plants? Why bomb a school with white phosphorous?
but how can SELF-defense
result in 1 to 100?
What law did they break?
Its illegal to challenge a former Israeli Prime minister?
Once more we see that Jews are being singled out and held to a standard to which the rest of the world is not judged.
But we all see what Israel has become.
Next time may the entire audience be protesters.
Rich, old white men delight only in the misery of others; may they have no comfort.
Confront them in their meetings, disrupt their sleep, gain employment at their businesses and work from the inside.
Street protests accomplish little or nothing. Guerilla actions are the way to go.
BRAVO!
Apparently free speach is only important when you agree with the speaker.
Isn't that the truth? For decades upon decades Palestinians have been given very short shrift to make their case in the USA; whereas, the Israeli position has been well purveyed throughout the entire range of media, including Hollywood, published fiction & non-fiction; the academic community & certainly multiple levels of govt. in the USA, most particularly the US Congress with its attendant big pro-occupation, pro-settlement lobbies. Suddenly, the tables are turning & the Israelis are being criticized by an increasingly greater number of Americans. It vindicates the position of those who have advocated for the Palestinians for yrs., but had difficulties finding a platform.
After watching the reactions to Olmert's speech before the San Francisco Chapter I only wish I had done the same to the Council General.
I seem to remember the IRANIAN President being shouted down; not Israeli leaders.
Wonder why it didn't make the MSM?
I really would like to see some resolutions to these crininal acts like the way they handled it in Peru and convicted Fujimori..
There needs to be accountability for these actions and whether its Israel, the US, or Bosnia, or Rawanda, or where ever else egregious abuses of power result in wanton death, destruction and persecution, there needs to be an accounting.
What is significant is that these "local protests" so unnoteworthy to our corporate media are growing larger; happening all over the USA & must be making the American leadership in Congress & the Obama adm very uncomfortable. They are already responding with somewhat less enthusiasm for their old friend. Olmert, himself, looks increasingly more ridiculous & uncomfortable talking about peace too.
In the mean time perhaps it is time for a phone blitz to Congress, similar to the one happening about health care. It can even be tied to health care with a script like:
Why does America give Israel billions to buy weapons with, freeing up their national economy to supply free health care and education to their citizens, when America could be using that money to supply health care and post-secondary education to it's own citizens? Why does Congress think Israeli citizens deserve better than American citizens?
If you are a Congress person who is worried about the military industrial complex losing jobs then please explain how these jobs have provided the perks to Americans that it provides to the Israelis? The military industrial complex does not provide free health care to its employees, nor does it offer free post secondary education to it's employees families.
Israelis always benefit more than Americans. Why is that more important to Congress?"
Einstein and other prominent Jews warned Truman in 1948 not to get involved with israel . . . wise words totally ignore . . . Kennedy tried . . . got no where . . .
we just have to keep trying . . . this parasitic relationship has to end