Israelis vow to fight Belgium war crime ruling

ISRAEL yesterday vowed to fight "with everything we have" a ruling by Belgium’s supreme court that would allow the prime minister, Ariel Sharon, to be tried for war crimes after he leaves office.

The decision provoked outrage in Israel, with Mr Sharon’s office calling it a "scandalous provocation". The chief rabbi, Yisrael Meir Lau, said it was outrageous coming from a nation that "closed its ears" to the Holocaust.

Benjamin Netanyahu, the foreign minister, summoned the Belgian ambassador, Wilfried Greens, for a dressing down.

Mr Netanyahu said after the meeting: "What happened yesterday in Belgium is a calumny. A serious attack was launched against truth, justice and morality, as well as against the state .of Israel and the fight against terrorism.

"We in Israel, and the Jewish people as a whole, have had enough of blood libels on the soil of Europe and we are going to fight this one with everything we have, politically and diplomatically."

In Belgium 23 survivors of the 1982 Sabra and Shatila massacre, in which Israeli-allied Christian Phalangist militiamen killed hundreds of Palestinians in Beirut, are trying to put Mr Sharon, who was defence minister at the time, on trial for war crimes.

Mr Sharon was censured in 1983 by a government inquiry that ruled that he should have predicted that the Phalangists were likely to commit a massacre as they were incensed by the recent assassination of their leader, Bashir Gemayel. He was forced to resign as defence minister, but was never prosecuted.

Wednesday’s ruling overturned a decision by a lower court last year that Mr Sharon could not be tried as he had never been in Belgium.

While Mr Sharon is safe as long as he remains in power, the ruling would open the way for trials of army officers who were in Lebanon at the time of the massacre.

Many Israelis fear that officers now serving in the Palestinian territories, where human rights organisations have accused the army of violating the rules of war, could be similarly open to prosecution.

Meir Sheetrit, the Israeli justice minister, dismissed Belgium as a "small and insignificant nation" and said it had no right to put Mr Sharon on trial as due process had been served by the 1983 inquiry.

Yes, it is true. Jews are mandated by their "God" to wipe out non-Jewish nations, women, children and even innocent domestic animals. And If they refuse to implement these "divine" orders they commit, according to Yahwe, a deadly sin and therefore will be destroyed themselves by "God's" wrath, which he will bring upon them.

Even the Christian Popes find nothing wrong with these "divine mass murder mandates", for they call the Jews the only people who have sworn a covenant with God. Popes even beg for forgiveness, i.e. during the visit of late John-Paul II to Israel in March 2000 for "Jews have been persecuted" by Christians, only because they carried out "God's orders of extermination". For it is written in the Bible:

"Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy  everything that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys." (1 Samuel 15:3)

"Have you allowed all the women to live?" he asked them". (15)... "Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man, but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man." (17) (Numbers, 31)