Foreign Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has recalled Israel's Ambassador to Belgium for "consultations." This move is merely the sharpest expression of widespread Israeli fury at Belgium's decision yesterday that Ariel Sharon and other Israelis can be tried under the special Belgian law for international war crimes. The Belgian Supreme Court ruled that as a sitting Prime Minister, Sharon cannot be tried, but that Israelis such as Gen. (res.) Amos Yaron and former Chief of Staff Rafael Eitan, can be tried even when they are not in Belgian territory.
The issue at hand in the Belgian courts is the massacre of hundreds of Arabs in September 1982 by Maronite Christians in Lebanon. This was the culmination of a long Lebanese civil war that developed between the Christians and the newly-arrived PLO - which moved to Lebanon in the early 1970's from Jordan after causing a civil war *there*.
Rafael Eitan, the former IDF Chief of Staff known as Raful, says that the Belgian decision does not worry him, as the ruling is "political," and that in any event, he has no plans to leave Israel in the near future. Gen. Yaron said that Belgium suffers from "delusions of grandeur" in thinking that it must enforce its view of justice on the world.
MK Tzvi Hendel recommends that Israel try Belgian leaders for their participation in war crimes committed by Belgium during its conquest of the Congo up til 1960. "This will enable the world to see the Belgians' chutzpah and hypocrisy," Hendel said. It is estimated that between 1880 and 1920, ten million Africans in the Belgian Congo were the victims of murder, starvation, exhaustion induced by over-work, and disease. Well-documented claims allege that women were systematically raped and that the local populace endured kidnapping, looting and village burnings. An article in the London-based Guardian last year stated, "The instrument of Belgian repression was the chicotte - a whip made from sun-dried hippo hide. [King] Leopold's fortune - which he ploughed back into monumental buildings in Brussels - was made on the proceeds of Congolese rubber and ivory. Locals were forced to collect the sap required to produce rubber or, it is alleged, have their hands or feet, or those of their children, cut off." Israel already has on its books a law enabling foreigners to be tried for war crimes, though it has never been implemented.
The issue at hand in the Belgian courts is the massacre of hundreds of Arabs in September 1982 by Maronite Christians in Lebanon. This was the culmination of a long Lebanese civil war that developed between the Christians and the newly-arrived PLO - which moved to Lebanon in the early 1970's from Jordan after causing a civil war *there*.
Rafael Eitan, the former IDF Chief of Staff known as Raful, says that the Belgian decision does not worry him, as the ruling is "political," and that in any event, he has no plans to leave Israel in the near future. Gen. Yaron said that Belgium suffers from "delusions of grandeur" in thinking that it must enforce its view of justice on the world.
MK Tzvi Hendel recommends that Israel try Belgian leaders for their participation in war crimes committed by Belgium during its conquest of the Congo up til 1960. "This will enable the world to see the Belgians' chutzpah and hypocrisy," Hendel said. It is estimated that between 1880 and 1920, ten million Africans in the Belgian Congo were the victims of murder, starvation, exhaustion induced by over-work, and disease. Well-documented claims allege that women were systematically raped and that the local populace endured kidnapping, looting and village burnings. An article in the London-based Guardian last year stated, "The instrument of Belgian repression was the chicotte - a whip made from sun-dried hippo hide. [King] Leopold's fortune - which he ploughed back into monumental buildings in Brussels - was made on the proceeds of Congolese rubber and ivory. Locals were forced to collect the sap required to produce rubber or, it is alleged, have their hands or feet, or those of their children, cut off." Israel already has on its books a law enabling foreigners to be tried for war crimes, though it has never been implemented.