Fisk on Sharon

Reading Fisk on Sharon is shocking, not for the fact that he was legally held responsible for terrible masacres of Palestinians. We should all know that. What is shocking was the ruthless brutality with which the Israeli military and the US responded to the attempts to hold him accountable.
Did you know the Americans passed a law that allows them to attack the hague if it tries to arraign an American war criminal?

The "man of peace" is fading. His peace makers go on killing as willfully as any German fascist.


"The subsequent Israeli Kahan commission of enquiry into this atrocity

provided absolute proof that Israeli soldiers saw the massacre taking place.

The evidence of a Lieutenant Avi Grabovsky was crucial. He was an Israeli

deputy tank commander and reported what he saw to his higher command. "Don't

interfere," the senior officer said. Ever afterwards, Israeli embassies

around the world would claim that the commission held Sharon only indirectly

responsible for the massacre. It was untrue. The last page of the official

Israeli report held Sharon "personally responsible". It was years later that

the Israeli-trained Phalangist commander, Elie Hobeika, now working for the

Syrians, agreed to turn state's evidence against Sharon - now the Israeli

Prime Minister - at a Brussels court. The day after the Israeli attorney

general declared Sharon's defence a "state" matter, Hobeika was killed by a

massive car bomb in east Beirut. Israel denied responsibility. US Defence

Secretary Donald Rumsfeld traveled to Brussels and quietly threatened to

withdraw Nato headquarters from Belgium if the country maintained its laws

to punish war criminals from foreign nations. Within months, George W Bush

had declared Sharon "a man of peace". It was all over."