The Winograd Commission published its findings on 30 January 2008.
The
Winograd Commission completed its work and presented its conclusions. It
imposed full responsibility for the failure in Lebanon on the military, and, in
contrast to the majority of writers in Israel, I find comfort in this approach:
in a state in which the military is a type of overarching authority and
autonomous body, often above the Knesset and government, and which presents the
latter with its choice of facts on the ground, it must carry responsibility,
not only for successes but also for failures. There is nothing here, of course,
that should exempt the political echelon from responsibility, as it was elected
to be responsible for running the state, including the areas in which the military
does as it wishes.
However,
what angers me when I read the 600 pages of the Winograd report is the complete
lack of reference to the primary topic that should have been investigated
concerning this second Lebanon war: war crimes and the systematic violations of
international law in everything connected to defense of civilians during
wartime. This omission transforms the members of the not so respectable Winograd
Commission into partners in responsibility for these same war crimes. From
here, two operative conclusions can be drawn.
The
first is the need for the International Court of Justice in The Hague.
International law obligates the state to try the accused for war crimes and if
it does not do so, the topic moves to international jurisdiction. While the
Winograd Commission acted in accordance with its limited mandate as given by
the government that appointed it, it failed as the body responsible for
examining the subject of human rights and the heavy suspicions concerning war
crimes committed by the Israeli military in Lebanon. The Lebanese state, or any
other state directly or indirectly harmed by the Lebanon War, is therefore obligated
to demand that the suspects of war crimes, who were not tried in their own
countries, will be tried in an international court.
The
second conclusion can be drawn from the spirit of the Nuremberg Trials, where
it was decided that judges who found no fault in the crimes committed by the
Nazi regime also hold responsibility, and several of them were even tried for
war crimes. Without, of course, comparing the Nazi crimes with the Israeli military
war crimes in Lebanon (which included, it should not be forgotten, bombings of
civilian population areas, the heavy destruction of entire villages in southern
Lebanon, the stoppage of electricity for the civilian population in Beirut and
more), it is possible to learn from the Nuremberg precedents about the
responsibility of legal or quasi-legal bodies.
It
seems that Judge Winograd, the eternal candidate for the High Court, Ruth Gavison,
and the rest of the Commission members can all be accused of at least closing
their eyes to the war crimes, and I (who was sentenced to 30 months
imprisonment for closing eyes), know that in accordance with the law practiced
in our area, closing eyes is considered a violation. I do not know if
international law, according to which the court in The Hague follows, considers
‘closing eyes’ as a reason for conviction, and I accordingly recommend leaving
this to the consideration of the honorable judges of the International Court of
Justice. I hope they will discuss the Israeli war crimes in Lebanon, including
the responsibility of those who did not find it appropriate to deal with them
in their investigative report.
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