Conventions

Why, unlike the majority of the World, do Obama, Biden, Hillary & the U.S. Media ignore International Law?

Key Legal Points Regarding the Flotilla Assault

The U.N. Security Council has already weighed in on the blockade (of which the flotilla attack is one part), attacking it in Resolution 1860 for collectively punishing the people of Gaza. The resolution calls for “the unimpeded provision and distribution throughout Gaza of humanitarian assistance, including food, fuel, and medical treatment.” The criticism of the embargo as illegal is heavily rooted in the logic of the Fourth Geneva Convention, Article 3 of which mandates that states take all possible steps (even when formal wars have not been declared between two states) to protect noncombatants. Behavior that is expressly prohibited includes any actions that are a threat to individual life (9 civilian activists were killed in the flotilla attack). The taking of hostages (including the more than 660 seized by Israel) for political or military purposes is also prohibited. The blockade is illegal in that it violates the legal principles behind the Geneva Conventions, which were created for the general purpose of prohibiting states from engaging in collective punishment against civilians during times of conflict. Israel’s collective attack on the civilians of Gaza (and its refusal to even acknowledge that they are under assault) represents a clear violation of the spirit and letter of the Geneva Conventions.

The U.N. Charter is quite explicit that use of force is only allowed under two conditions: in the case of immediate self defense against an ongoing attack (not a theoretical one) or in the case of Security Council authorization. Israel could claim neither of these. Any attacks against the flotilla have not been convincingly linked in any way to previous military conflicts between Hamas and Israel. Apologists for Israeli aggression like to argue that international law outlaws the use of force (outside of the two conditions listed in the U.N. Charter and discussed above), while also arguing that the U.N. Charter allows states like Israel to annex land in the West Bank and to control of Gaza’s territorial space, in light of the fact that the Occupied Territories are not formally states. Under this line of thinking, since the West Bank and Gaza Strip do not formally constitute a state, they are not parties to the U.N. Charter – hence Israel is not bound by to respect their sovereignty. There’s little reason to take these objections seriously. The U.N. Security Council has long deemed Israel’s occupation and control of Palestinian lands and territorial space as illegal under international law, despite the fact that Palestine is formally a nation, rather than a state (see Security Council resolutions 242, from 1967, and 338, from 1973, which declared the inadmissibility of occupying or annexing land by force).

http://www.counterpunch.org/dimaggio06042010.html

The United States was one of four countries Voting NO for an International Investigation!

GENEVA, June 2 (Reuters) – The United Nations Human Rights Council on Wednesday voted to set up an independent fact-finding mission to look into what it called violations of international law in Israel’s raid on a Gaza aid flotilla.
In a resolution proposed by Pakistan for the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) and Sudan for the Arab group, the Council by a vote of 32 of its 47 members also condemned the Israeli action as outrageous.
The United States, Israel’s longtime ally, together with Italy and the Netherlands voted against, while nine European, African and Asian nations abstained and three more African countries did not vote.
The resolution called "for full accountability and credible independent inquiries into these (Israeli) attacks" in which Israel says nine people on one boat in the flotilla died.

It’s standard operating procedure for ALL American politicians, Democrat or Republican. It’s the American Exceptionalism thing.