posted July 15, 2004 03:31 AM              

What is the International Court of Justice thinking in ruling against the wall of separation?? That is just so wrong. Yes it does cause some problems for the Palestinians in the area along the wall, but think of all the lives it would save, both Israeli and Palestinian. I really hope Israel decides to completely disregard their decision.

And those cowardly Filipinos!! Arrr they rile me too. Maybe we shouldn't be in Iraq in the first place, but now that we are there we can't back off like wimps. So many unlucky people have been abducted over the months but everyone's sticking it out. One Pilipino gets captured, and they back out. What kind of allies are they!! Maybe they shouldn't have deployed their huge division of 51 troops to Iraq in the first place! It’s not going to make much of a difference militarily, but mentally the terrorists have won a battle.

posted July 17, 2004 12:25 PM            

But just in case you're talking about Iraq, let me relay some facts to you Ozone. A state of war existed between UN member states and Saddam Hussein's Iraq, that state of war temporarily interrupted by a cease-fire, a temporary cessation of active hostilities, giving Saddam time to carry out the provisions of the cease-fire agreement he signed. Provisions he failed to perform.

From UN Resolution 678---November 29, 1990, Authorized military force to remove Iraqi forces from Kuwait.

1. Demands that Iraq comply fully with resolution 660 (1990) and all subsequent relevant resolutions, and decides, while maintaining all its decisions, to allow Iraq one final opportunity, as a pause of goodwil, to do so;

2. Authorizes Member States co-operating with the Government of Kuwait, unless Iraq on or before 15 January 1991 fully implements, as set forth in paragraph 1 above, the above-mentioned resolutions, to use all necessary means to uphold and implement resolution 660 (1990) and all subsequent relevant resolutions and to restore international peace and security in the area;

3. Requests all States to provide appropriate support for the actions undertaken in pursuance of paragraph 2 of the present resolution; http://www.fas.org/news/un/iraq/sres/sres0678.htm

From UN Resolution 687----April 3, 1991, Authorized a cease-fire, giving Iraq an opportunity to comply with all UN Security Council Resolutions.

1. Affirms all thirteen resolutions noted above, except as expressly changed below to achieve the goals of this resolution, including a formal cease-fire. http://www.fas.org/news/un/iraq/sres/sres0687.htm

posted July 17, 2004 01:43 PM            

The International Court of Justice is a farce, has no power to decide anything, no enforcement powers whatsoever and is nothing but a political circus attempting to interfere in the internal affairs of nations. The President will not give this court any jurisdiction over America or Americans nor will the US give up any sovereignty to the International Criminal Court and rightly so.

World Kangaroo Court
By P. David Hornik
FrontPageMagazine.com | March 30, 2004

Take a large helping of farce, add a strong dose of outrage, sprinkle with blatant illegality, and you’ve got the latest case to be heard by the International Court of Justice at The Hague. It’s known as Legal Consequences of the Construction of a Wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territories—a name that in itself speaks volumes.

If it was the UN that was adjudicating a case involving Israel, very few people would expect Israel to get a fair hearing. The UN’s bias against Israel is legendary, from the Zionism Is Racism resolution to obsessive “human rights” condemnations that never get around to checking the human rights situation among Israel’s neighbors. Just last November in the General Assembly, Israel proposed a resolution calling for protecting Israeli children from terrorism. Sounds legitimate enough—yet Israel had to withdraw it because of overwhelming opposition by the “Non-Aligned Bloc” led by Egypt. Earlier that same month, though, the same General Assembly adopted a resolution calling for protecting Palestinian children from “Israeli aggression” by a vote of 88-4 with 58 abstentions.

What not everyone realizes, however, is that the International Court at The Hague is the UN. The fact that the UN “requested” the Court to give an advisory opinion on the “Wall” case makes it sound as if the UN was turning to an external, objective body. But as the Court’s own website states, the Court is “the principal judicial organ of the United Nations.” Founded in 1946, it operates under a statute that “is an integral part of the Charter of the United Nations.”

So it never sounded auspicious, and that was why thirty-three of the countries that sent written testimony on the case, including the United States and the European Union, demanded that the case be dropped. Generally these countries weren’t acting out of love for Israel, but because they knew that if the Court can be politicized this easily, the weapon could be turned against them, too.

Indeed, the Court’s very composition is “political” because eight of the fifteen judges who serve on it come from nondemocratic countries and, especially in a case as politically charged as this one, can be expected to obey their dictators rather than the dictates of justice. The president of the court, Shi Jiuyong, hails from a severe human rights abuser, bully, and nuclear proliferater known as the People’s Republic of China. The vice-president, Raymond Ranjeva, is from Madagascar, a country that Amnesty International cites in its 2003 reports for unlawful killings, torture, and arbitrary arrests and detentions.

Of the other thirteen countries represented on the court, seven—the US, UK, France, Germany, Netherlands, Japan, and Slovakia—have strong democratic credentials, but with the exception of the US are not known for a fair approach to the Israeli-Arab dispute. The remaining six range from countries with considerable human rights problems like Brazil, Venezuela, Jordan, and Sierra Leone, to a country, Russia, that is sliding rapidly toward authoritarianism, to an out-and-out human rights basket case like Egypt.

Note than in the General Assembly or the Security Council, delegates of dictatorships are supposed to represent their governments in any case and in that sense are no more “political” than the delegates of democracies. The Court, though, is supposed to be an impartial body that is above politics. The composition of its judges makes that a farcical pretension, especially in this case.

Nowhere is the farce more evident than in the presence on this case of the Egyptian judge, Nabil Elaraby. Back in January, Israel requested that Elaraby be removed from the case because of previous anti-Israel activity in the UN as well as media statements suggesting he would be something other than impartial on the fence issue. Two months before he was elected to the International Court in 2001, Al-Ahram interviewed Elaraby and stated his views on Israel as follows: “New facts and new problems are created on the ground.… Grave violations of humanitarian law ensue . . . the atrocities perpetrated on Palestinian civilian populations, for instance. . . . Israel is occupying Palestinian territory, and the occupation itself is against international law.” Yet the Court rejected Israel’s request and ruled that Elaraby was perfectly well qualified to judge this case.

On the morning of February 23 when the case opened, a suicide bomber killed eight and wounded over fifty on a Jerusalem bus. In an Israeli press conference held at The Hague, Daniel Taub of the Israeli Foreign Ministry noted that “the suicide bomber . . . was a member of Yasser Arafat’s own Al-Aksa Martyrs Brigade. Could anything be more shameful than recruiting, inciting, and paying the murderer . . . yes, there is something more shameful: to do all this and them come to the city of The Hague . . . to censure the victims of terror for trying to defend themselves. To come to the ‘Palace of Peace,’ to the ‘Court of Justice,’ on the very morning that the victims are being buried . . . to attack Israel for building a fence which might have saved their lives.”

But the case, of course, proceeded, despite Israel’s earlier efforts to point out its glaring illegality under the Court’s own stipulations. In a 130-page document explaining its own decision not to participate, summarized at the Israeli Foreign Ministry’s website, Israel emphasized that:

· The case was being imposed on Israel without its consent. The ICJ’s own jurisprudence states that the Court is entitled to give an advisory opinion only when both sides to a dispute accept its jurisdiction in the case. In this instance, Israel had never accepted the Court’s jurisdiction (a point also emphasized in the United States’ written statement to the Court).

· “Palestine” was being allowed to participate even though it is neither a state nor an international organization as defined by the UN Charter and the Statutes of the Court. The fact that “Palestine” meets neither of those criteria and is run by a regime engaging in terror did nothing to disqualify it from the proceedings.

· The language was loaded to begin with. As the Israeli statement pointed out: “In titling the case ‘Legal Consequences of the Construction of a Wall,’ the Court has adopted the political and prejudicial terminology of the request itself. The use of the term ‘wall,’ when in fact less than 5 percent of the fence is a concrete barrier and over 95% consists of wire fences with access and crossing points, is clearly propagandist, while the reference to ‘Occupied Palestinian Territory’ is similarly prejudicial, and ignores Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338, the Israel-PLO agreements and the Roadmap which all call for the border between the two sides to be agreed through negotiation.”

It was not only the language included, but also the language excluded that was—to put it delicately—prejudicial. Neither in the question referred to the Court by the UN, nor in the twenty-paragraph General Assembly resolution referring it, was there a single reference to the Palestinian terror that led Israel to build the fence in the first place. It was like arraigning the fire department for driving loud trucks around the city without mentioning the matter of fires. “Similarly,” the Israeli statement observed, “the extensive dossier of 88 documents on the question provided to the Court by the United Nations is, staggeringly, totally silent on the subject of the Palestinian terror attacks.”

And so, from February 23-25, the case proceeded. The judges sat gravely as oral statements were made by Palestine, South Africa, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Bangladesh, Belize, Cuba, Indonesia, Jordan, Madagascar, Malaysia, Senegal, Sudan, the League of Arab States, and the Organization of the Islamic Conference. Sixty years after the Holocaust, in the heart of Europe, in civilized, enlightened, tolerant Holland, representatives of states and organizations that practice slavery, Shari’a law, female circumcision and “honor killings,” torture, and mass murder pilloried the Jewish state for building a fence aimed at protecting its citizens against waves of terror that have killed nine hundred and maimed thousands. They did so amid the full decorum of a “Court of Justice” established by the UN and underwritten and legitimized by the countries of the world. The Court has now started its deliberation and will be announcing the date when it presents its opinion.

posted July 19, 2004 03:29 AM              

Also, if the Palestinians are repressed, it’s because they repress themselves. Do they ever focus on doing anything good? Have you ever heard a new report about Palestine that didn't have anything to do with terrorism or possibly Israel shooting some of them down? How come there are no reports about Palestine's economy, or basketball team, or any sex scandals? It's because they are too busy planning an attack on Israel.

Okay, maybe Iraq doesn't have nuclear weapons, (I just don't believe they would ever be capable of it, they were just too dumb.) But Saddam still sucked. He was like a modern day Hitler, and you can't deny that. Whatever the reasons for going in, Saddam is gone now, and that is good news for the whole world.

posted July 19, 2004 11:32 AM            

quote:

---

Just over a year ago, I held Nehad's six year old, curly haired charmer of a daughter on my lap and scooped eggs from a plate shared by her five other children as bullets thudded into the walls of her home in the border zone of Rafah. With shy pride, Nehad told me the eggs were from her own chickens, the oranges from the few trees that remained undamaged in her garden. The kids watched cartoons on TV, inured to the rat-a-tat-tat of constant fire until the bullets grew so loud that even they dived to the floor.

Each time I'd stay at Abu Akhmed's house, he would tease me about being Jewish, then try to determine which of his friends might make me a good husband, so that I could stay in Rafah. A farmer, 45 of his trees had already been bulldozed. In the evenings, old men would gather around a small fire in a tin can, brew tea and talk while tanks cruised past the gates and the occasional shot crashed into the walls. ....con't

---

posted July 20, 2004 01:58 PM            

Perhaps you missed the part of the article I posted that said a nation involved in a controversy with another nation MUST give the ICJ jurisdiction to hear the case or the court cannot convene to hear the issue. Israel did NOT give the Court jurisdiction. Even if they had, the courts opinion is just that, an opinion having no force of law and the court has no enforcement powers. Now why would any nation submit to the jurisdiction of a political court?

In my opinion, none of the nations which filed opinions or argued before the court should have done so. There is such a thing as implied jurisdiction and that attaches whenever a party acts as though the court has jurisdiction. They should have totally ignored the court which is consistent with denying jurisdiction.

There is nothing hypocritical in cooperating with the UN whenever that's possible and working in the nations best interests when cooperation is not possible. The President is President of the US and owes no allegiance to the UN or any other authority outside the US. The President has sworn no oath to uphold the UN or to protect the UN or even to listen to UN advice.

This is the Presidential Oath of Office.

Article II, Section I of the U.S. Constitution:

"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.

Very funny about invading Israel. You will note that's been tried several times in the past with disastrous results for the invaders.

posted July 20, 2004 09:51 PM              

So you're saying we follow and uphold and expect others to follow and uphold UN resolutions and such only when we feel like it? Your saying we get to pick and choose? Oh, ok, now I get it. I stand by what I said. Either tell the UN to screw or fall in line - but make up your damn mind. Personally, I say we tell em' to screw. But then we couldn't use your precious UN Resolution 1440 as a reason for attacking Iraq.
I'm starting to think you are a UN fan, jwhop. Hmmm. You're not a closet Marxist, are ya?

posted July 20, 2004 11:23 PM            

You're only forgetting one little thing TINK but it's not something that should be forgotten. The US is a permanent member of the UN Security Council. Nothing the US disapproves becomes a Resolution because we have an absolute veto power as do the other permanent UN Security Council members. So, when we don't want a Resolution upheld, we veto it before it ever gets to be a Resolution in the first place.

As I said before, we really didn't need Resolution 1441 to resume hostilities against Saddam's Iraq, a Resolution I would remind you that passed in the Security Council 15 to zip, including the nations of France, Germany and Russia.

We had the cease-fire Resolution, a temporary cessation of hostilities permitting Iraq to comply with all the previous Resolutions and Saddam chose to play games with the inspectors and failed utterly to comply with the rest of the provisions of the Resolutions as well.

The UN is responsible for a lot of mischief in the world, mischief they start and mischief they fail to act on.....as in failing to uphold their own Resolutions. I'm no fan of the UN.

Sure, I'm a merry Marxist.

Invade Israel? You're kidding of course or are you a graduate of the Michael Moore School of Foreign
Policy?

posted July 26, 2004 05:48 PM              

Are you for real, or are you just pretending? You're pretnding, right? Seriously!