CHAPTER THIRTY SIX — Part 3 of 3

President Eisenhower commented on the immorality of Israel's demands for conditions for withdrawal of its armed forces. He stated:

Israel seeks something more. It insists on firm guarantees as a condition to withdrawing its forces of invasion. This raises a basic question of principle. Should a nation which attacks and occupies foreign territory in the face of United Nations disapproval be allowed to impose conditions on its own withdrawal? If we agree that armed attack can properly achieve the purposes of the assailant, then I fear we will have turned back the clock of international order. We will, in effect, have countenanced the use of force as a means of settling international differences and through this gaining national advantages.

I do not, myself, see how this could be reconciled with the Charter of the United Nations. The basic pledge of all the members of the United Nations is that they will settle their international disputes by peaceful means and will not use force against the territorial integrity of another state.

If the United Nations once admits that international disputes can be settled by using force, then we will have destroyed the very foundation of the organization and our best hope of establishing a world order. That would be a disaster for us all.

I would, I feel, be untrue to the standards of the high office to which you have chosen me if I were to lend the influence of the United States to the proposition that a nation which invades another should be permitted to exact conditions for withdrawal .... We cannot consider that the armed invasion and occupation of another country are "peaceful means" or proper means to achieve justice and conformity with intemational law .... But the United Nations faces immediately the problem of what to do next. If it does nothing, if it accepts the ignoring of its repeated resolutions calling for the withdrawal of invading forces, then it will have admitted failure. That failure would be a blow to the authority and influence of the United Nations in the world and to the hopes which humanity placed in the United Nations as the means of achieving peace with justice. (42)

The aforementioned international pressures forced Israel to withdraw from the Gaza Strip, calling a halt to its wanton murder and pillaging of the defenseless Arabs there.

The Israelis were set back by the failure of this war of aggression. They had failed to secure the occupation of the remainder of the Palestinian coast line in the Gaza Strip. They had failed in their objective to either occupy substantial Egyptian territory in the Sinai to give depth to that frontier or to neutralize Egypt as a factor against their aggressive designs.

However, the Israelis learned two important lessons which they integrated into their planning and preparations for their future wars of aggression:

1. That the democracies could not be resolute partners in conspiracies with Israel because of domestic political constraints, and

2. That all future United States Administrations must be manipulated so that they would not force Israel to back down as the Eisenhower Administration had done.

During Israel's occupation of the Gaza Strip in 1956, Israeli forces committed war crimes against the civilian population. They perpetrated many massacres against the defenseless Palestinian inhabitants, most of whom were refugees who had already suffered greatly from Zionist terrorism in 1948. Israeli forces performed a systematic and planned extermination of young men in villages and towns of the Gaza Strip.

The following Israeli crimes were related by eye witnesses:

El-Mahrakka is a bit of land west of Rafah to which Jews led Arabs from the age of 15 to the age of 50. They were all tied to wooden poles with leather, wire and other kinds of bands and placed on a large stone platform. Their bodies were then covered with tar and a fire was started in their midst. Nothing remained of these unfortunate victims except a thick layer of human fat blackened with soot and smoke. It is still there covering this bit of ground, another living testimonial of Zionist war crimes.

Rafah was the scene of a horrible bloodbath. 480 young men were exterminated in less then three hours. All young men of the town were ordered to assemble at the secondary school. 480 victims complied while the others fled. Once inside, Zionist murderers locked all the outlets and opened fire on them. When the massacre was over, the Zionist commander ordered the removal of the 480 bodies for mass burial.

A local religious head stated that the women of the town gathered in the Mosque seeking protection from the advancing Zionist aggressors, but the Zionists followed them into the Mosque, murdering and raping them, while others amused themselves by watching the beastly scenes and shouting: "Let Mohammed help you!"

In Khan Yunis, Zionist murderers rounded up more than 1800 men between 15 to 50. They ordered them to dig mass graves, machine-gunned them and buried them in those graves.

At Negaila, Zionist gangsters hanged 76 war prisoners and left them in the square to be seen by the public.

THE 1967 WAR AGAINST EGYPT, SYRIA AND JORDAN

In the 1950s and 1960s Israel diligently continued its planning and preparation for waging wars of aggression against the Arab States. The decision to launch the longplanned war of expansion in 1967 was taken by well calculated votes of members of the Zionist government inTel Aviv. Levi Eshkol was forced to take his political arch enemy Moshe Dayan as Minister of Defense. The facts surrounding Dayan's appointment were divulged by Dayan to Curtis G. Pepper in the New York Times Magazine of July 9, 1967. Mr. Pepper states:

The appointment of Moshe Dayan as Minister of Defense on June 1 was a signal the Nation wanted action. In three earlier sittings the Cabinet had voted on whether to rely upon diplomatic action or military force. The first vote of 18 members split 9 to 9. At the second vote, only two members were willing to act; at the third, only one. Finally, Sunday morning before the Monday of war, the Cabinet reversed The Crimes Against Peace Committed by Israeli Leaders in the 1956 War, the 1967 War and the Wars Aguinst Lebanon in 1978 and 1982 itself, agreeing upon a motion which stated that the Prime Minister and Minister of Defense were entitled to take any steps they deemed necessary to meet the situation facing Israel.

Thus, in effect, power was conferred upon Dayan to strike at the massed Arab armies whenever he deemed it necessary. And Israel did just that on the following morning, June 5, when it opened the war with its Mirage fighters and Mystere bombers striking Egypt's airfields, destroying nearly twothirds of its 400 combat craft on the ground. (43)

The flimsy pretext for this strike was the Israeli claim that the shifting of some Egyptian troops by President Nasser was "evidence" of Egyptian plans to attack, a total lie known to be a fabrication by all of the top Israelis.

In an interview published in Le Monde of Paris on February 28, 1968, General Yitzhak Rabin (Minister of Defense today) said of the 1967 War: "I do not believe that Nasser wanted war. The two divisions which he sent into Sinai on May 14 would not have been enough to unleash an offensive against Israel. He knew it, and we knew it.'' (44)

Military Intelligence Chief General Aharon Yariv had planned every detail for a premeditated sneak attack on the Arab States. In his book, The Spy-Masters of Israel, author Stewart Steven, who was supplied information by Aluf Hareven, one of Yariv's closest aides, writes:

At 7:30 a.m. on June 5, 1967, the first wave of Mystere and Mirage supersonic fighter-bombers took off from their secret airbases inside Israel, swept out over the Mediterranean and back in again from the west, completely putting out of commission sixteen Egyptian airfields and the planes on them. Within three hours-by 9:30 a.m.-the Israelis destroyed nearly 400 Arab aircraft and wrecked by similar attacks in Jordan and Syria the entire Arab air force. The war was virtually settled there and then. Brigadier General Mordechai Hod. the Israeli Air Force commander, described this as a victory "beyond my wildest dreams," to which one of Yariv's intelligence officers remarked that the general must have been sleeping during all of their briefings. The firststrike strategy - to hit the Arab MiGs before they got off the ground - had long been part of Israeli doctrine, but it was Yariv who refined it to the point where chance was ruled out of this most spectacular of military operations. (45)

This was immediately followed by a ground blitzkrieg against the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Peninsula. In order to occupy the West Bank it was necessary for Israel to embroil Jordan in the war. Stewart Steven reveals the actions and motives of the Israelis:

One incident above all others in the Six-Day War showed with what ruthlessness Israel wasprepared to both fight a war using the modem tools of intelligence and deception and to protect itself against even friendly intruders. When the war began, King Hussein of Jordan was uncertain whether to intervene. As far as the Israelis were concerned, once engaged with the Egyptians, they very much wanted to do battle with him. The conflict was seen by Israeli military men as the chance once and for all to "clean up" the borders, to establish new buffer zones, and to defeat not merely the Egyptians but the armies of all the confrontation states so decisively that Israel would be secure for another generation.

So, throughout the first day of the war, radio messages fromCairo to Amman were first blocked andnew information inserted, then quickly rerouted on their way. While the original signals made it clear that the Egyptian Army was in retreat along the whole length of the front, the message Amman received via Tel Aviv was the opposite -that large formations of Egyptian tanks were breaking through in the Sinai and inflicting devastating losses on Israeli formations. Hussein was invited by apparently jubilant Egyptians to join in and enjoy the fruitsof victory. As this was also the message being pumped out, for internal propaganda reasons, by Cairo radio, the Jordanian King ordered his army and air force into action. (46)

So the premeditated plan to "clean up" Israel's borders was effected by occupying the West Bank, thereby controlling all of the historic boundaries of Palestine.

Syria was the next victim in the war. Following acceptance of a cease fire by Egypt and Jordan, Israel launched a fullscale attack on Syria. The Israelis ignored Syrian acceptance of a cease fire and occupied the Golan Heights and ruthlessly destroyed the town of Quneitra on the road to Damascus.

Unlike 1956, in 1967 the United States had become so much under Zionist influence that Arthur Goldberg, the Zionist Representative of the United States at the United Nations, shamelessly maneuvered at the United Nations Security Council to prevent the ordering of a cease fire until the Israelis had achieved their criminal military objectives.

The Israelis showed their utter contempt for the United States by sinking the U.S.S. Liberty, an American electronic surveillance vessel, killing many of its crew, in order to prevent U.S. monitoring of its communications related to its war of aggression against Syria. The Johnson Administration, unlike that of Eisenhower in 1956, supinely covered up for the Israelis, setting apattern of de facto Zionist control of U.S. Middle East policies, a pattern which persists until today.

As in 1948 and 1956, Israel's crimes against peace in 1967 were accompanied by war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity.

The Israelis wantonly massacred civilians during their war of aggression. They forcibly expelled more than 300,000 civilians from their homes in the West Bank and Gaza and more than 80,000 from their homes in the Golan Heights of Syria.They bombed hospitals and ambulances with napalm bombs. They indiscriminately bombed towns and villages in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and in Syria, inflicting heavy damage on public and private buildings which were not military objectives. After the armed struggle ceased, they ruthlessly razed some towns and villages to the ground. They used fragmentation bombs and napalm in all sectors of the war, maiming civilians as well as troops and burning crops. The Israeli forces committed heinous crimes against the civilian population in all sectors of the war. Many rapes, murders, robberies and other maltreatment of civilians were recorded. They committed massive looting, plundering and pillaging of homes and shops wherever they went. Money, jewelry and other valuables were forcibly taken from refugees who were expelled from their towns and villages. The Israelis defiled, mutilated and desecrated Christian and Muslim religious shrines, houses of worship and cemeteries. They maltreated prisoners of war, causing many deaths and permanent injuries. Prisoners were subjected to torture and in some cases were murdered in cold blood.

All codes of military conduct were violated by the Israeli forces, sanctioned by Israel's high command.

THE 1978 WAR OF AGGRESSION AGAINST LEBANON

After 1967 the Israelis turned their attention to the piecemeal absorption of the rest of the Palestinian lands now under their occupation, towards neutralizing Egypt as a factor among the Arab States, and towards the long-cherished goal of partitioning Lebanon.

From the earliest days of the Zionist regime in Occupied Palestine, the Israelis had planned the establishment of a puppet regime in Lebanon and the partition of that country, as is evidenced in Moshe Sharett's diaries.

On March 14-15, 1978, Israeli forces invaded Lebanon, launching an unprovoked war against that country. Some 30,000 Israeli troops, backed by massive armor, air power and naval and self-propelled artillery, crossed the Lebanese border. The Israeli troops did not halt until they had reached the Litani River, causing some 285,000 persons to flee northward, of whom 220,000 were Lebanese and 65,000 were Palestinians who had been living in refugee camps in southern Lebanon. Casualties were officially estimated at 1,168 dead, 20,000 wounded with more than 6,000 homes damaged or destroyed, and more than 285,000 displaced from their homes.47

The Washington Post reported on March 25, 1978: "The scope and sweep of the damage here makes a mockery of Israeli claims to have staged surgical strikes against Palestinian bases and camps." (48)

On March 15 Ezer Weizmann stated that Israel had "no intention of occupying South Lebanon," but these assurances were belied by the actual fact of the occupation. That the invasion had the intent of establishing a puppet-ruled zone was admitted by Chief of Staff General Mordechai Gur when he said that "Israel wanted to establish a security belt along the 100-km long Lebanese border by connecting the three Christian enclaves," i.e. Marjeyoun and Qoleyaa to the east, Rmeish, Ain Ebel and Debel in the center and Alma Shaab in the west.

The Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon, which supposedly began on March 16, 1978, in fact was not completed until June 13th of that year, when the lands occupied by the Israeli forces were handed over to a quisling Israeli-paid and Israeliequipped militiaunder the command of Lebanese Major Saad Haddad.

The 1978 War against Lebanon was accompanied by massive atrocities. The Israeli military utilized white phosphorous incendiary and cluster bombs. destroying both crops and inflicting horrible anti-personnel wounds on civilians. Their quisling puppets also inflicted massacres on innocent civilians. According to Washington Post correspondent Jonathan Randal:

In three towns - overrun thanks to the Israelis during the Litani invasion - Haddad's forces massacred more than a hundred Shia Muslim men, women and children. The worst outrage took place in Khiam, near the Israeli border, once the most prosperous and populated town of southern Lebanon. The Shia victims were herded into a mosque. "We sank to Haddad's level," an Israeli military specialist said, ashamed. '1 watched his men shoot seventy people in cold blood in Khiam." (49)

Until the second war against Lebanon was initiated in 1982, Israel continued'to launch numerous air strikes against Lebanese territory. For example, on May 6, 1979, Israeli warplanes bombed targets near Tripoli. On May 7, 1979, Israeli warplanes struck targets in Reihan, a village in southern Lebanon. OnMay 23,1979, Israeli warplanes struck Nabatiyeh while other targets in southern Lebanon were shelled by Israeli artillery. Thousands of Lebanese and Palestinian refugees were killed in wanton Israeli air strikes and artillery bombardments.

Despite the quisling set-up under Major Haddad in southern Lebanon, the Zionist plan to partition Lebanon was not yet complete. Israel planned and prepared to initiate another war of aggression against Lebanon.

THE 1982 WAR OF AGGRESSION AGAINST LEBANON

In 1982 the Zionists heightened tension on the Lebanese- Israeli frontier, andon June 5,1982, Israeli aircraft, withnaval and artillery support, bombarded 38 towns and localities in South Lebanon, leaving 150 dead and 250 wounded.

On the following day, June 6, 1982, the Zionists invaded Lebanon. Two armored brigades and a motorized infantry battalion comprising more than 20,000 troops entered South Lebanon from three directions: West towards Tyre; Central from Nabatiyeh; and East from Hasbaya. The Arnoun region, with Beaufort Castle, was also besieged. The Israeli army largely ignored the contingents of the United Nations Interim Forces in Lebanon (UNIFIL) by by-passing them.

Simultaneously, Israeli aircraft bombed the entire south coast of Lebanon and naval units disembarked in Zahrani, north of Tyre. Using a pincer movement, they cut off a zone from behind before penetrating the area, a tactic they employed during their entire advance along the coast.

On June 7, Beaufort Castle fell to the Israelis who then proceeded to occupy Nabatiyeh, Hasbaya and Tyre. Sidon was surrounded and then occupied.

On June 8, the Israeli forces reached the heights of the Shouf and Ain Zhalta. The coast was bombarded from land, sea and air and the Israeli army set up positions in Saadiyat, surrounding Damour. The Israelis reinforced their troops, increasing their manpower in Lebanon to more than 60,000, triple the original invasion force. The total number of Israeli troops in Lebanon ultimately reached 90,000.

On June 9th, the invasion forces reached Damour, only 16 kilometers from Beirut. On June 12, West Beirut and its southern suburbs were heavily bombed from air and sea. Israeli forces advanced towards Aramoun in the mountains after shelling the area, as well as Shweifat and Baabda, where the presidential palace was hit.

On June 13, Ariel Sharon personally led his forces into Baabda, seat of the Lebanese presidency and then into Hadath. West Beirut was continually bombarded. By June 15, they had nearly completed the encirclement of the capital and entered Shweifat in the southeast suburbs. By June 25, the invasion forces had advanced to a line extending from the southeast suburbs of Beirut to Roueissat-Sofar, 25 kilometers east of Beirut. On the 25th, Israeli bombardment of West Beirut also left more than 300 dead and wounded. On June 26, the Israelis moved from Aley towards Souk al-Gharb, completing the link-up of their troops.

On July 3, the Israeli forces blocked the passages between the two sectors of the capital, except the Beirut port crossing, and stopped food supplies from entering West Beirut. The following day they shut off West Beirut's water and electricity. On July 6, Israeli forces occupied the Beirut port, sealing off the besieged West Beirut completely. The continued wanton bombardment of West Beirut culminated in eleven consecutive hours of air raids on August 12, leaving more than 500 civilians dead and wounded, and more than 800 dwellings destroyed.

During the night of September 14-15, Israeli forces penetrated West Beirut, occupying the western sector of the capital in 48 hours.

On Thursday, September 16, 1982, General Amos Yaron, commander of the Israeli forces in Beirut met with Elias Hobeika and Fadi Frem of the Phalangists, about entering the Palestinian refugee camps. General Drori telephoned Sharon and told him, "Our friends are advancing into the camps and I have coordinated their entry with their top men."' Sharon answered, "Felicitations, the operation of our friends is approved." (50)

The Phalangist puppet forces, accompanied by Israeli experts, entered the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps and commenced one of the most brutal massacres of innocent men, women and children in recorded history. Two thousand defenseless Palestinians were massacred in this atrocity.

The devastation caused by the Zionists in their 1982 war of aggression was of World War II proportions. Tens of thousands were killed and wounded. Eight hundred thousand were left homeless in Beirut and its suburbs alone.

The damages caused by the invasion were officially estimated in 1982 at 7,852 million Lebanese pounds, or 1.9 billion U.S. dollars. Of this damage, 330,000,000 Lebanese pounds was to schools, 228,000,000 was to hospitals, 203,000,000 was to agriculture, 1,940,000,000 was to factories and shops and 3,434,000,000 was to housing. (At the time, a U.S. Dollar was equivalent to 4.13 Lebanese Pounds.)

As a consequence of the invasion, the Israelis pursued a policy of political and economic dismemberment of Lebanon. The agricultural production of South Lebanon, representing a quarter of the nation's total, decreased by 40%. South Lebanon became a dumping ground for Israeli products and a conduit for subsidized Israeli trade. On April 19, 1983, Colonel Meir Peil, former director of the Israeli Military Academy, asserted that "the only solution lies in the partitioning of Lebanon into two states, one Christian and the other Muslim." (51)

In September, 1983, the Israeli troops in Lebanon withdrew to the Awali river, south of Beirut. Israeli forces remain in South Lebanon today.

PLANS AND PREPARATIONS FOR THE EXPULSION OF THE PALESTINIANS FROM THE WEST BANK AND GAZA

The crimes against peace committed by Israel are constantly evolving, depending upon both opportunities and limitations imposed by the international situation. The Israelis implement those aspects which are feasible now, such as establishing Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza, and make plans and preparations for the mass expulsion of those Palestinian Arabs who remain in historic Palestine when an opportunity to successfully initiate and wage another war of aggression arises in the future. General Aharon Yariv, former Head of Military Intelligence, admitted these criminal plans and preparations at a public seminar in the Leonard Davis Institute for International Relations at Hebrew University, as reported in Ha'aretz on May 23, 1980: "There are opinions which advocate that a war situation be utilized in order to exile 700-800 thousand Arabs. These opinions are widespread. Statements have been voiced on the matter and apparatuses have been prepared." (52)

General Yariv's statement is consistent with the Zionist common plan or conspiracy to expel the remaining Palestinian Arabs from their native land and to usurp all of their land and properties for the benefit of Jewish immigrants. In 1943 President Franklin Delano Roosevelt appointed Brigadier General Patrick J. Hurley as his personal representative to act as an observer and to report to him upon conditions in Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Iran, Iraq, Palestine and Saudi Arabia. On May 3, 1943 General Hurley submitted a report to the President in which he stated, inter alia, the following:

The Zionist organization in Palestine has indicated its commitment to an enlarged program for

(1) a sovereign Jewish State which would embrace Palestine and probably eventually Transjordan;

(2) an eventual transfer of the Arab population from Palestine to Iraq; (3) Jewish leadership for the whole Middle East in the fields of economic development and contro1. (53)

On February 21, 1988 Israeli journalists Yossi Melman and Dan Raviv, both of whom have written on Israeli intelligence affairs, published an article in English entitled ''A Final Solution of the Palestinian Problem?," similar to an article they had published in Duvur on February 19, 1988 underthe title, "This is the History of Transfer." Israel Shahak commented on these articles as follows:

The story Raviv and Melman tell begins two weeks after the Israeli victory in the 1967 war, At the time, Abba Eban, the Israeli foreign minister, called for resettling the refugees in neighboring Arab countries, mainly Syria and Iraq. Yigal Allon, the deputy prime minister, proposed that the Palestinian refugees be transported to the Sinai Desert or that they be persuaded to move abroad. According to notes taken at a cabinet meeting by Ya'akov Herzog (brother of the current president and then the director-general of the prime minister's office}, Allon complained that not enough was being done among the Arabs to encourage emigration. Menahem Begin, minister-without-portfolio ... recommend& that the refugee camps be demolished and that their residents be transferred to Sinai, which had been captured from the Egyptians.

The product of these discussions ... was the formation of a secret unit charged with "encouraging" the departure of Palestinians. This "secret unit" was composed of representatives of the prime minister's office, the Ministry of Defense, and the army. (54)

The "secret unit" continued to study and make plans for ultimate "transfer" of the Palestinian Arabs:

There is no reason to suppose that the "transfer" attempts instigated by the Israeli government, which were considered an integral part of its plan for "solving the Palestinian problem," ever ceased, They emerged again in the wake of the alleged Israeli victory during the 1982 invasion of Libanon, when then Minister-Without Portfolio Ya'akov Meridor, on being asked what to do with the Palestinians, made the following statement on a visit to inspect the Sidon area: "You must drive them east, toward Syria ... and let them not return," (55)

At the beginning of March, 1988 Zionist leaders held a symposium at the Zionist Organization of America House in Jerusalem on the possibility of transferring the Palestinian Arabs. General Rehav'am Zeevi, who had been Chief of Operations of the Israeli General Staff and Speeial Adviser on Intelligence to Prime Minister Yitshak Rabin, was a principal participant at the symposium. According to the Jerusalem Post International Edition,

Zeevi argued that "transfer" would be humane because the Palestinians would no longer be in the battle Zone between the IDF and the Arab armies. Seeking legitimation for his views in Israeli history, he said that more than 400 Arab localities which were still in existencein the late '40s had been replaced by Jewish settlements, including some affiliated with Mapam's Hashomer Hatzair. Moreover, Levi Eshkol, the prime minister during the Six Day War, had set up an intelligence unit to deal with the question of expulsion. (56)

WHAT CONSTITUTES THE CRIME AGAINST PEACE

The Nazi war criminals we indicted, inter alia, for crimes against peace. Counts One and Two of the Indictment charged the Nazis with this crime. Count One states:

An influential group of the Nazi conspirators met with Hitler on 5th November, 1937, to review the situation. It was reaffirmed that Nazi Germany must have "Lebensraum'' in central Europe. It was recognized that such conquest would probably meet resistance which would have to be crushed by force and that their decision might lead to a genera1 war, but this prospect was discounted as a risk worth taking. There emerged from this meeting three possible plans for the conquest of Austria and Czechoslovakia. Which of the three was to be used was to depend upon the developments in the political and military situation in Europe. It was contemplated that the conquest of Austria and Czechoslovakia would, through compuIsory emigration of 2,000,000 persons from Czechoslovaki and 1,000,000 persons from Austria, provide additional food to the Reich for 5,000,000 to 6,000,000 people, strengthen it militarily by providing shorter and better frontiers, and make possible the constituting of new armies up to about twelve divisions. Thus, the aim of the plan against Austria and Czechoslovakia was conceived of not as an end in itself but as a preparatory measure toward the next aggressive steps in the Nazi conspiracy. (57)

Count Two of the Indictment states:

All the defendants with divers other persons, during a period of years preceding 8th May, 1945, panicipated in the planning, preparation, initiation and waging of wars of aggression, which were also wars in violation of international treaties, agreements and assurances.

Particulars of the wars planned, prepared, initiated and waged:

(a) The wars referred to in the Statement of Offense in this Count Two of the Indictment and the dates of their initiation were the following: against Poland, 1st September, 1939; against the United Kingdom and France, 3rd September, 1939; against Denmark and Norway, 9th April, 1940; against Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg, 10th May, 1940; against Yugoslavia and Greece, 6th April, 1941; against the U.S.S.R., 22nd June, 1941; and against the United States of America, 1 I th December, 1941.

(b) Reference is hereby made to Count One of the Indictment for the allegations charging that these wars were wars of aggression on the part of the defendants.

(c) Reference is hereby made to Appendix C annexed to this Indictment for a statement of particulars of the charges of violations of international treaties, agreements and assurances caused by the defendants in the course of planning, preparing and initiating these wars. (58)

The Intemational Military Tribunal sitting at Berlin on the 18th of October, 1945, reviewed in its judgment the planning of aggression by the Nazis and the wars of aggression committed against Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg, Denmark, Norway, Yugoslavia, Greece, and the U.S.S.R. and stated: "The Charter makes the planning or waging of a war of aggression or a war in violation of international treaties a crime; and it is, therefore, not strictly necessary to consider whether and to what extent aggressive war was a crime before the execution of the London Agreement. But in view of the great importance of the questions of law involved, the Tribunal has heard full argument from the Prosecution and the Defense, and will express its view on the matter." (59)

The Tribunal referred to the General Treaty for the Renunciation of War of 27th August, 1928, more generally known as the Pact of Paris or the Kellogg-Briand Pact, to the Declaration of the Assembly of the League of Nations on the 24th of September, 1927. to the Treaty of Versailles and to the Law as to the common plan or conspiracy, and stated:

In the opinion of the Tribunal, the evidence establishes the common planning to prepare and wage war by certain of the defendants.

The Tribunal further refened to Article V1 of the Nuremberg Charter which states: ''hadem, organizers, instigators and accomplices participating in the formulation or execution of a common plan or conspiracy to commit any of the foregoing crimes are responsible for all acts performed by any persons in execution of such plan." (60)

The United Nations War Crimes Commission summarized the dicta of the International Military Tribunals at Nuremberg and Tokyo regarding Crimes Against Peace and stated:

(d) Crimes against peace:

Apart from the Judgments delivered in the two trials held before the International Military Tribunals at Nuremberg and Tokyo. the judicial authorities concerning crimes against peace are the Judgments in the I.G. Farben, Krupp, High Command, Greiser and Takashi Sakai Trials, together with the trial of Weizsaeker and others before a United States Military Tribunal, 1st November, 1947-15th April, 1949. in which the Judgment was delivered too late to enable a report on that trial to be included in this series.

The following paragraphs numbered (i)-(ix) attempt to analyse the law relating to crimes against peace (including in the meaning of that term "planning, preparation, initiation or waging a war of aggression" and "participating in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the foregoing," to use the language of Article II 1 (a) of Law No. 10 as that law has been developed in the trials by United States Military Tribunals in Nuremberg which were bound by Law No. 10. The Polish and Chinese decisions are next referred to. and finally some remarks regarding the legal effects of the fact that a crime against peace has been committed are set out.

(i) Deeming it necessary "to give a brief consideration to the nature and characteristics of war," the Tribunal which conducted the High Command Trial said:

"We need not attempt a definition that is all inclusive and all exclusive. It is sufficient to say that war is the exerting of violence by one state or politically organized body against another. In other words, it is the implementation of a political policy by means of violence. Wars are contests by force between political units but the policy that brings about their initiation is made and the actual waging of them is done by individuals. What we have said thus far is equally as applicable to a just as to an unjust war, to the initiation of an aggressive and, therefore, criminal war as to the waging of defensive and, therefore, legitimate war against criminal aggression. The point we stress is that war activity is the implementation of a predetermined national policy.

"Likewise, an invasion of one state by another is the implementation of the national policy of the invading state by force even though the invaded state, due to fear or a sense of the futility of resistance in the face of superior force, adopts a policy of non-resistance and thus prevents the occurrence of any actual combat ....

"The initiation of war or am invasion is a unilateral operation. When war is formally declared or the first shot is fired, the initiation of the war has ended and from then on therc is a waging of war between the two adversaries."(61)

The Judgment of the Tokyo International Military Tribunal recognizes five separate crimes as Crimes Against Peace:

Under the heading of "Crimes against Peace," the Charter names five separate crimes. These are planning, preparation, initiation and waging aggressive war or a war in violation of international law, treaties, agreements, or assurances; to these four is added the further crime of participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the foregoing. The indictment was based upon the Charter and all the above crimes were charged in addition to further charges founded upon other provisions of the Charter. The Tribunal added, however;

A conspiracy to wage aggressive or unlawful war arises when two or more persons enter into an agreement to commit that crime. Thereafter, in furtherance of the conspiracy, follows planning and preparing for such war. Those who pdrticipate at this stage may be either original conspirators or later adherents. If the latter adopt the purpose of the conspiracy and plan and prepare for its fulfilment, they become conspirators. (62)

THE CRIME AGAINST PEACE

Since their occupation of 80 percent of Palestine and the declaration of independence of Israel in 1948, successive Zionist governments have conspired to conquer the West Bank and Gaza and to wage wars of aggression against Egypt, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan. The diaries of Moshe Sharett summarized by Livia Rokach in this chapter reveal clearly how the Israelis planned and prepared and subsequently initiated and waged their wars of aggression.

The article published in the Hebrew magazine Kivunim (Directions) which was summarized extensively in this chapter shows clearly that the Israeli leadership planned to fragment every Arab country into puppet regimes they could easily control and manipulate. The above-mentioned facts and the fact that Israel initiated and waged four wars of aggression in 1956,1967,1978 and 1982 and committed war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide prove beyond any doubt that the political and military leaders of Israel are guilty of crimes against peace.

NOTES TO CHAPTER THIRTY SIX

1. Livia Rokach, Israel's Sacred Terrorism (Belmont, Mass: Association of Arab-American University Graduates, 1980), pp. 4-5.

3. Moshe Sharett's Diary, October 19, 1953, p. 54, quoted in Rokach, Israel's Sacred Terrorism, p. 17.

4. Sharett's Diary, March 3 I, 1954, p. 426, quoted in Rokach, p. 29.

5. Sharett'sDiary, Miiy 26, 1955, p. 1021, quoted in Rokach, p. 41.

6. Sharett's Diary, January 14, 1955, p. 654, quoted in Rokach, p. 37.

7. Sharett's Diary, January 25,1955, p. 682, quoted in Rokach, p. 37.

8. Sharett's Diary, January 26, 1955, p. 685, quoted in Rokach, p. 37.

9. Rokach, pp. 53-54.

10. Ibid., p. 42.

11. Sharett's Diary, March 27, 1955, p. 865, quoted in Rokach, p. 44.

12. Rokach, p. 5.

13. Sharett's Diary> January 31, 1954, p. 332, quoted in Rokach, p. 18.

14. Sharett's Diary, February 27, 1954, p. 377, quoted in Rokach, p. 18.

15. Rokach, p. 27.

16. The Olshan-Dori Inquiry Commission of the "Affair," annexed to the Diary, p. 664.

17. Rokach, p. 38.

18. Ibid., p. 40.

19. Ibid., pp. 41-42.

2 I. Ibid., p. 43.

22. Ibid., pp. 43-44.

25. Ibid., pp. 50-51.

26. Ibid., pp. 52-53.

27. Ibid., p. 19.

28. Ibid., pp. 19-20.

29. Ibid., pp. 20-21.

30. Ibid., p. 22,

31. Ibid., pp. 22-23.

32. Ibid., p. 24,

33. Ibid., p. 25.

34. Ibid., pp 26-28.

35. Ibid., p. 28.

36. Ibid., pp. 28-29.

37. Ibid, pp. 29-30.

38. Ibid., pp. 3 1-32.

39. Sharett's Diary, April 23, 1954, p. 477, quoted in Rokach, p. 32.

40. lbid., p. 489, quoted in Rokach, p. 32.

41. Ibid., pp. 32-33.

42. President Eisenhower's television address to the American people on February 20, 1957, United States Department of State Bulletin, volume 36, No. 915-939, January-June 1957, pp. 389-390.

43. New York Times Magazine, July 9, 1967.

44. Le Monde, Paris, February 28, 1968,

45. Stewart Steven, The Spymasters of Israel (New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1980), pp. 189- 190. 46. Ibid., p. 193.

47. Lebanese Ministry of Infomation, South Lebanon 1948- 1986; Facts and Figures (Beirut: 1986), pp, 8-11.

48. The Washington Post, March 25, 1978.

49. Jonathan Randal, Going All the Way (New York: Viking, 1984), p. 218.

50. Franklin P. Lamb, ed., Israel's War in Lebanon (Boston: South End Press, 19841, pp. 102-103.

51. Lebanese Ministry of Information, South Lebanon 1948-1986; Facts and Figures, pp. 22-31.

52. Ha'aretz, May 23, 1980.

53. United States. Foreign Relations of the US.: Near East and Africa (Washington, D.C.: 1964), volume 4, pp. 776-777.

54. Israel Shahak, "A History of the Concept of 'Transfer' in Zionism," Journal of Palestine Studies, volume 18, No. 3, Spring 1989, Issue 71, pp. 31-32.

55. Ibid., p. 32.

56. Joshua Brilliant, "Call for Emigration of Arabs: Zeevi Encouraged by Response to 'Transfer,'" the Jerusalem Post International Edition, March 5, 1988, p. 7.

57. Indictment presented to the International Military Tribunal sitting at Berlin on 18th October. 1945, British Command Paper No. 6696 (London: H. M. Stationery Office, 1945}, p, 9.

58. Ibid., pp. 13-14.

59. Judgment of the International Military Tribunal for the Trial of German Major War Criminals, 30th september and 1st October, 1946, British Command Paper No. 6964 (London: H. M. SQtioneq Office. 1946). p. 38.

60. Ibid., pp. 43-44.

61. Law Reports of Trials of War Criminals, Seiected and Prepared by the United Nations War Crimes Commission, (London: H. M. Stationery Office, 19491, volume 15, pp. 138-139.

62. Ibid., p. 141.