Israel ‘seeking Trump’s support for plan to expel Palestinians from Gaza’

Israel’s defence minister has said his country is seeking Donald Trump’s support to approve plans to expel Palestinians from the Gaza Strip in what has widely been condemned as a potential war crime.

Israel Katz said there was “no real solution for Gaza in the end without this migration” during a conference hosted by the Israeli news site Ynet and the newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth. He said the Israeli government was “organised and prepared to get them out by sea, by air, by every way possible”.

Trump discussed a US takeover of the Gaza Strip in early 2025 that would have involved removing Palestinians from the territory, but has since pulled back from the idea. A 20-point peace plan the White House drew up last year did not call for Palestinians’ deportation, an act that would be widely seen as ethnic cleansing.

Read the rest here.

Historic Orthodox Monastery Burns After Russian Attack

Kyiv —  A prominent Ukrainian monastery complex in the heart of Kyiv was set on fire following a massive Russian attack overnight into Monday that killed at least five people and wounded more than two dozen in the capital, according to local authorities.

Images showed flames billowing from the UNESCO-listed Kyiv Pechersk Lavra, which traces its roots back almost 1,000 years, and firefighters beneath the towers and domes of its Dormition Cathedral battling to control the blaze.

A CNN journalist reported hearing several explosions during the overnight attack, during which Russia launched 611 long-range strike UAVs and 70 missiles, according to Ukraine’s Air Force.

By daybreak, firefighters were still working to douse the flames at the complex. Ukraine’s emergency services said a fire had affected 800 square meters of the roof of the Dormition Cathedral, and released images that showed damage to the building.

The Metropolitan Epiphanius of Kyiv and All Ukraine asked for “prayers for the salvation of the shrine from destruction,” in a statement. “Another Russian crime against humanity, against history, against Christianity.”

A fire also broke out in the building of the National Cultural, Art and Museum Complex, covering an area of 1,000 square meters, according to Ukraine’s emergency services.

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A quiet mutiny is brewing in the Israeli Army

...Immense pressure has been building on Israel over the dire humanitarian conditions inside the strip, with aid agencies warning of mass malnutrition and widespread hunger. France on Thursday said it would move to recognise Palestine as a state. On Sunday, the IDF said it was introducing a ‘tactical pause’ in fighting in some areas of Gaza.

Mr Feiner’s opinion on the futility of the conflict appears to be shared by a rising number of serving and retired senior officers who are turning against Benjamin Netanyahu’s war.

Gen Assaf Orion, the former head of strategic planning at the IDF, said while there were clear strategic goals in the Israel campaigns against Iran and Hezbollah in Lebanon, there was no longer any clear military imperative for the continuation of military operations in Gaza.

He told The Telegraph: “In Gaza, I suspect that the strategic train of ends, ways and means was kidnapped by ulterior motives.

“I think the main reason for a prolonged war in Gaza is political expediency.”

Eran Etzion, a former deputy head of Israel’s national security council, was even blunter.

He said: “By now it has long been clear to most Israelis that the main reason the Gaza campaign lingers on is because of Netanyahu’s political, personal and judicial interests, and he needs the war to go on in order to sustain and even enhance his grip on power.”

Many believe Mr Netanyahu fears his government will collapse if the war ended as ultra-nationalist parties in his coalition would abandon him.

“That’s the main reason. It has nothing to do with Hamas and everything to do with Netanyahu.”

If even some of the spate of leaks from Israel’s security cabinet are to be believed, the scepticism is not confined to retired generals.

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Russia is murdering Ukrainian POWs

Russia may have executed more than 30 recently captured Ukrainian prisoners of war over the winter months, according to reports received by the U.N. human rights watchdog.

The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights “verified three of these incidents in which Russian servicemen executed seven Ukrainian servicemen hors de combat,” reads the latest U.N. report on the human rights situation in Ukraine published Tuesday.

From December to February, as President Vladimir Putin’s invading Russian forces were rapidly advancing in Avdiivka, in the Donetsk region, and attempting to recapture Robotyne in the Zaporizhzhia region, dozens of execution videos were posted on social media.

In eight of the reported cases, videos showed Russian servicemen killing Ukrainian POWs who had laid down their weapons or using other captured Ukrainian POWs as human shields.

“As of 29 February 2024, OHCHR had obtained corroborating information for one of the videos,” the report reads. “In that video, what appears to be a group of armed Russian soldiers stands 15-20 meters behind three Ukrainian servicemen who are kneeling with their hands behind their heads. After a few seconds, smoke appears from the Russian soldiers’ weapons and the Ukrainian servicemen fall to the ground.”

“One of the armed soldiers then approaches the bodies and shoots at one of the soldiers lying on the ground,” according to the report.

Over the winter Russia also released 60 Ukrainian POWs. One of them confirmed to OHCHR that the incident featured in the video took place near Robotyne in December 2023 and that the killed servicemen were from his unit.

In another incident, three Ukrainian POWs, captured by Russian troops, were executed at the beginning of January 2024 in Zaporizhzhia.

“According to a witness, two Ukrainian soldiers were executed on the spot after their surrender. Russian servicemen killed a third Ukrainian POW who had been injured by a mine while being forced by the Russian servicemen to conduct demining work,” the report states.

The released POWs also told the U.N. that Russian forces had tortured them in captivity.

Read the rest here.

Meanwhile, House Republicans continue to block any aid for Ukraine.

Arrest Warrant Issued for Vladimir Putin for War Crimes

THE HAGUE (AP) — The International Criminal Court said Friday it has issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin for war crimes because of his alleged involvement in abductions of children from Ukraine.

The court said in a statement that Putin “is allegedly responsible for the war crime of unlawful deportation of population (children) and that of unlawful transfer of population (children) from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation.”

It also issued a warrant Friday for the arrest of Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova, the Commissioner for Children’s Rights in the Office of the President of the Russian Federation, on similar allegations.

The ICC said that its pre-trial chamber found there were “reasonable grounds to believe that each suspect bears responsibility for the war crime of unlawful deportation of population and that of unlawful transfer of population from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation, in prejudice of Ukrainian children.”

On Thursday, a U.N.-backed inquiry cited Russian attacks against civilians in Ukraine, including systematic torture and killing in occupied regions, among potential issues that amount to war crimes and possibly crimes against humanity.

Read the rest here.

Russia says it does not recognise Hague court amid reports of arrest warrants

Moscow has said it does not recognise the jurisdiction of the international criminal court in The Hague, after reports that the court is expected to seek its first arrest warrants against Russian individuals over the war in Ukraine.

“We do not recognise this court; we do not recognise its jurisdiction,” Vladimir Putin’s spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, told journalists in Moscow on Tuesday morning.

The New York Times and Reuters news agency reported on Monday that the prosecutor at the international criminal court (ICC) would formally open two war crimes cases and issue arrest warrants for several Russians deemed responsible for the mass abduction of Ukrainian children and the targeting of Ukrainian civilian infrastructure.

Read the rest here.

As Russians Steal Ukraine’s Art, They Attack Its Identity, Too

Russian forces have looted tens of thousands of pieces, including avant-garde oil paintings and Scythian gold. Experts say it is the biggest art heist since the Nazis in World War II, intended to strip Ukraine of its cultural heritage. 

Read the rest here.

Industrial-scale destruction of Ukrainian culture

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — The exquisite golden tiara, inlaid with precious stones by master craftsmen some 1,500 years ago, was one of the world’s most valuable artifacts from the blood-letting rule of Attila the Hun, who rampaged with horseback warriors deep into Europe in the 5th century.

The Hun diadem is now vanished from the museum in Ukraine that housed it — perhaps, historians fear, forever. Russian troops carted away the priceless crown and a hoard of other treasures after capturing the Ukrainian city of Melitopol in February, museum authorities say.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine, now in its eighth month, is being accompanied by the destruction and pillaging of historical sites and treasures on an industrial scale, Ukrainian authorities say.

In an interview with The Associated Press, Ukraine’s culture minister alleged that Russian soldiers helped themselves to artifacts in almost 40 Ukrainian museums. The looting and destruction of cultural sites has caused losses estimated in the hundreds of millions of euros (dollars), the minister, Oleksandr Tkachenko, added.

“The attitude of Russians toward Ukrainian culture heritage is a war crime,” he said.

For the moment, Ukraine’s government and its Western backers supplying weapons are mostly focused on defeating Russia on the battlefield. But if and when peace returns, the preservation of Ukrainian collections of art, history and culture also will be vital, so survivors of the war can begin the next fight: rebuilding their lives.

“These are museums, historical buildings, churches. Everything that was built and created by generations of Ukrainians,” Ukraine’s first lady, Olena Zelenska, said in September when she visited a Ukrainian museum in New York. “This is a war against our identity.”

Workers at the Museum of Local History in Melitopol first tried hiding the Hun diadem and hundreds of other treasures when Russian troops stormed the southern city. But after weeks of repeated searches, Russian soldiers finally discovered the building’s secret basement where staff had squirrelled away the museum’s most precious objects — including the Hun diadem, according to a museum worker.

The worker, who spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity, fearing Russian punishment for even discussing the events, said the Ukrainians don’t know where Russian troops took the haul, which included the tiara and some 1,700 other artifacts.

Read the rest here.

EU calls for war crimes tribunal for Ukrainian War

The EU presidency has called for the establishment of an international tribunal for war crimes after new mass graves were found in Ukraine.

“In the 21st century, such attacks against the civilian population are unthinkable and abhorrent,” said Jan Lipavský, foreign minister of the Czech Republic, which holds the EU’s rotating presidency.

Ukraine depends on morale and Russia on mercenaries. It could decide the war

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“We must not overlook it. We stand for the punishment of all war criminals,” he added in a message on Twitter. “I call for the speedy establishment of a special international tribunal that will prosecute the crime of aggression.”

The appeal follows the discovery by Ukrainian authorities of about 450 graves outside the formerly Russian-occupied city of Izium, with most of the exhumed bodies showing signs of torture.

“Among the bodies that were exhumed today, 99% showed signs of violent death,” Oleg Synegubov, head of Kharkiv’s regional administration, said on social media.

“There are several bodies with their hands tied behind their backs, and one person is buried with a rope around his neck,” he added.

“Russia leaves only death and suffering. Murderers. Torturers,” said Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy. Some of the remains exhumed included children and people who were likely tortured before dying, he added.

Read the rest here.

Ukrainians are being kidnapped

Multiple sources are reporting that the Russian Army is forcibly deporting thousands of Ukrainian civilians to Russia. 

The Rhine Meadows "Death Camps" Hoax

Claims that the Allies ran a network of de facto death camps where up to a million German POWs died from deliberate maltreatment, including starvation, have been rampant on the internet for years. While it is true that the administration of the camps were not without serious problems, mostly beyond the control of Allies; the claims made by various revisionists and conspiracy theorists have been repeatedly investigated by both governements and reputable historians, and found to be false.

The Price of a Life in Europe

21 years after being charged, eleven years as a fugitive then a five year trial followed by eighteen months for the judges to deliberate on the verdict, today the International Criminal Court in the Hague convicted Radovon Karadžić of Genocide and directly ordering the murder of 8,000 men and boys at Srebrenica.

The court promptly sentenced him to 1.8 days in jail... for each victim.

He now has 30 days to file an appeal which lawyers expect to take between three and five years to hear and between another year and two years for the judges to adjudicate.

I personally think the definition of Genocide has has been so watered down that it is almost meaningless these days. But there is no question that the premeditated murder of 8,000 people ranks as a great war crime and atrocity.

Long time readers of this blog will know that I am no fan of capital punishment. But I have always recognized certain rare exceptions. This is one of them. In any civilized society, following such a conviction, Mr. Karadžić would have been given enough time to dictate his will and confess to a priest before being marched to the gallows.

This is a perversion of justice.

Islamic State Obliterates 10th Century Monastery

The Islamic State (Isis) has blown up a 10th century Chaldean Catholic church north of Mosul and bulldozed a nearby graveyard, according to sources.

Nineveh Yakou , Assyrian Archaeologist and Director of Cultural Heritage and Indigenous Affairs at A Demand for Action, exclusively told IBTimes UK that the Mar Gorgis or George (St George or Markourkas) monastery has been "wiped out" by IS militants.

The building, located on the Ba'werah neighbourhood on a hill north of Mosul on the other side of the Tigris river, was founded by the Assyrian Church of the East on the 10th century but rebuilt as a seminary by the Chaldean Catholic Church in 1846.

Read the rest here.

Captured Pilot Burned Alive by ISIS

Savages.

Jordan threatens to execute all Islamic State prisoners if pilot killed

Jordan has threatened to execute all of its Islamic State prisoners if militants kill Jordanian pilot Muath al-Kaseasbeh.

Government officials warned that Sajida al-Rishawi, a would-be suicide bomber, and other jailed Islamic State commanders would be “quickly judged and sentenced” in retaliation for the pilot’s death, The Daily Mail reported Friday.

The warning comes after a deadline for a possible prisoner swap allegedly set by Islamic State militants passed Thursday with no word on the fate of Mr. al-Kaseasbeh or Japanese hostage Kenji Goto.

Read the rest here.

I have no idea if this will influence ISIS or not. But I suspect it is more likely to get their attention than a threat to lodge a formal complaint with the International Court in the Hague. Before the Great War the laws of war were respected, or not, with the fairly clear understanding that gross breaches by one side were  likely to lead to retaliation by the other. In other words, it was understood that the laws of war were not a one way street and that very real consequences would almost certainly attend any deliberate abuse.

For some odd reason this seems to have been a more effective system than what we have in place today. Namely a court that could not adjudicate a parking ticket in less than decade and one that exercises very little real jurisdiction because most war criminals aren't in custody and don't ever expect that to change.

Senate Panel Votes to Reveal CIA Torture and Abuse

WASHINGTON — The public will soon get its first look at a voluminous report on the C.I.A.’s detention and interrogation practices during the George W. Bush administration, after the Senate Intelligence Committee voted on Thursday to declassify key sections of it.

“The report exposes brutality that stands in stark contrast to our values as a nation,” Senator Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat of California and the chairwoman of the committee, said in a written statement after the vote.

It continued, “This is not what Americans do.”

The committee voted to declassify the report’s executive summary and conclusions — more than 480 of its 6,200 pages. The next step is President Obama’s approval. Mr. Obama, who opposed the C.I.A. program as a presidential candidate and discontinued it once he took office in 2009, has said he wants the findings of the report made public.

Read the rest here.

Did Nixon try to cover up My Lai?

...The documents, mostly hand-written notes from Nixon's meetings with his chief of staff H.R. "Bob" Haldeman, lead some historians to conclude that President Richard Nixon was behind the attempt to sabotage the My Lai court-martial trials and cover up what was becoming a public-relations disaster for his administration.

One document, scribbled by Haldeman during his Dec. 1, 1969, meeting with Nixon, reads like a threatening to-do list under the headline "Task force - My Lai." Haldeman wrote "dirty tricks" (with the clarification that those tricks be "not too high a level") and "discredit one witness," in order to "keep working on the problem."

Read the rest here.

Alarming Reports from Syria (Updated)

Via the Levant Report...
Including unconfirmed reports that Islamists may have sacked St. Thekla's monastery and abducted the nuns. News reports are fragmentary and in the fog of war, sometimes erroneous. But this could be serious.

Update: Samn! has multiple reports that seem to confirm the abduction of the nuns. Please pray for the holy sisters and the persecuted Church in Syria. We still live in the age of martyrs.

Update: SSPX offers to celebrate funeral for Nazi war criminal (updated correction)

The latest from the AP is here.

The Diocese of Rome, presumably with the full approval of the Pope, had forbidden any of its priests from offering the Requiem Mass in public for the unrepentant Nazi. See here for the previous posting on the subject.

Update: Multiple sources are reporting that the priest who intended to offer the Requiem Mass is no longer affiliated with the SSPX. The text of the linked story has also changed drastically overnight.

Church and State Refuse Rome Funeral for Nazi

What to do with the body of a Nazi war criminal no one wants?

Rome's mayor, police chief and the pope's right-hand man have all refused to grant former SS captain Erich Priebke a church funeral in the city where he participated in one of the worst massacres in German-occupied Italy. Now there's the added question of where to bury him, since Rome, his adopted homeland of Argentina, and his hometown in Germany won't take him.

Priebke spent nearly 50 years as a fugitive before being extradited to Italy from Argentina in 1995 to stand trial for the 1944 massacre at the Ardeatine Caves outside Rome, in which 335 civilians were killed. He died Friday at age 100 in the Rome home of his lawyer, Paolo Giachini, where he had been serving his life term under house arrest.

His death has raised a torrent of emotions over how best to lay to rest someone who perpetrated war crimes and denied the Holocaust that killed 6 million Jews. It has tested the church's capacity for mercy and forgiveness and its need to prevent public scandal. There is a seemingly intractable conflict between respect for the dead and that owed to the millions of victims of the Holocaust.

Read the rest here.