The Goldstone Report and the Bible

Going through the Bible the other day, I came across a passage that reminded me of the unbridled attacks launched by the Israeli government and its supporters against the Goldstone Report. The report, authored by a commission headed by the eminent South African Jewish jurist Richard Goldstone, accuses both Israel and Hamas of committing war crimes during the Gaza War of 2008-2009.

President Shimon Peres has stooped to calling Goldstone a "small man". I would counter that such language makes my countryman Peres (we were both born in modern-day Belarus) sound like a small man.

The Bible passage I was referring to is Amos 5: 7-15. In citing it here, I am trying to remind the political leadership of Israel of the Biblical values of justice and truth which they have, in this instance, allowed to fall by the wayside. My favourite part of this passage is "Hate what is evil. Love what is good. Do what is fair in the courts. Perhaps the Lord God who rules over all will show you his favour." These are values that all of us should seek to live by.

As Nicholas Kristof points out, there are "two Israels", or even "many Israels". Let us hope that the one that triumphs in the long run is not Netanyahu's Israel or Lieberman's Israel, but rather the Israel that wants to live side by side with its neighbours in a just peace.

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Now playing: "Peace Train" by Cat Stevens

Nine people killed in Myanmar clashes

Nine people, all of them civilians, were killed today during clashes between the army and anti-military protesters in Yangon. They included eight Burmese protesters and a Japanese video journalist working for AFP. This was the tenth-day of Buddhist-monk-led anti-government protests in Myanmar.

Last night, the army raided several monasteries in Yangon, beat up sleeping monks and arrested hundreds of them. Therefore, there were fewer monks on the streets today than was the case before during the protests, but tens of thousands of people still participated. Clashes between the army and the civilian protesters lasted six hours, having started after some protesters apparently tried to disarm the soldiers.

ASEAN has expressed its "revulsion" at the deaths in Yangon, while the UN is planning to send a special envoy, Ibrahim Gambari, to deal with the crisis (BBC).

Hopefully this is the beginning of the end of the Burmese military regime. However, it has shown a lot of resilience in the past, and so the civilians clashing with it are either very brave, or desperate. In either case, this would be a good time for the generals to try to cut a deal and leave power, but, unfortunately, I don't think they'd be interested in that option.

A thousand killed in Mogadishu fighting

According to the Hawiye clan, one of the major clans of Mogadishu, 1,000 people were killed in recent fighting between Somalian government troops and the Ethiopian army on the one hand, and Islamists, as well as Hawiye fighters, on the other.

Ethiopia backs the recently installed Somalian government, while its regional rival Eritrea has started backing the Islamist Somalian opposition (and former rulers of Mogadishu), the Union of Islamic Courts.

This is the worst fighting in Somalia in the last 15 years. The high number of casualties was partly the result of Ethiopia's use of artillery against Islamists who had taken cover in residential areas.

The African Union plans to eventually take over the role of supporting the Somalian government from Ethiopia, but the process has been slow so far (BBC).

Surely, countries as poor as Ethiopia (ranked 170th in the world in the UNDP's Human Development Index) and Eritrea (ranked 157th) have better things to do than to fight a proxy war in Somalia. I think the AU should send in not 8,000 soldiers, as it's planning to do, but rather something like 30,000-40,000, and completely secuere the country. And most of the soldiers outght to be Muslims, to avoid giving the Union of Islamic Courts an excuse for further resistance.

Excavation near Haram al-Sharif

The UN is asking Israel to stop digging near the Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount complex in Jerusalem (BBC).