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The Royal Court’s production of Seven Jewish Children |
Testament on the bombardment of Palestinian Gaza
IF you’ve ever done jury service you’ll know that sitting in judgment is a difficult thing.
But for lawyers on the Camden War Crimes Inquiry into Israel’s recent bombardment of Gaza the evidence they heard was close to an open-and-shut case.
The mock tribunal at the School of Oriental and African Studies in Bloomsbury on Saturday heard more than five hours of testimonial from aid workers who had seen families shredded by shrapnel, children shot by snipers and ambulance drivers bombed during the three-week attack earlier this year on the Palestinian enclave of 1.5 million people.
On the panel were Henry Blaxland QC, Stephen Kamlish QC, Michael Massih QC and Father Joseph Ryan of the Westminster Justice and Peace Commission. They considered war crimes charges against Israel’s then prime minister, Ehud Olmert, defence secretary Ehud Barak and military chiefs.
In one incident, the tribunal heard, an Israeli tank attacked a family with a flachette shell, an “anti-personnel weapon” that sprays 8,000 darts over an area the size of several football fields.
Louisa Waugh, researcher for the Gaza-based Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, said five including two children were killed and twenty more injured by the darts.
Israel’s blockade has brought Gaza to its knees with supplies of food, medicines and power turned off, she explained.
Fuel was running so low, she added, that ambulances were off the road and a hospital warned power cuts would kill 20 babies in incubators. Volunteer Ewa Jasiewicz – a journalist and human rights activist – said she witnessed children taken to hospital on a donkey cart. It carried the charred body of a 12-year-old girl, a dying four-year-old girl and a severely wounded nine-year-old boy. She said that dozens of ambulance drivers were killed or wounded in the bombardment but in the past few weeks record numbers of people had volunteered for ambulance driving courses. The drivers had formed a union and were seeking partnership with unions here. She gave her email (freelance@ mailworks.org) as a contact.
The panel was out for just 45 minutes before returning a guilty verdict. But the wheels of justice grind slowly and there are many obstacles to a full-blooded international court on Gaza – mostly of political will, it warned.
Defence counsel Paul Troop outlined difficulties establishing cast iron chains of responsibility from front-line soldiers to their political leaders and of deciding what was a legal use of force against civilians. But he admitted statements at the time by Israeli politicians – that they planned to punish the Gazans – opened the door to prosecutions on the grounds of illegally targeting civilians and disproportionate force.
The controversy may be stoked further by two plays at the Hackney Empire next week. For one night on Thursday is Caryl Churchill’s controversial play Seven Jewish Children, which whipped up a storm last year over the way it tackled the Holocaust and Israel.
Also on the bill is David Wilson’s The Trainer, about how he was bankrupted by a court case over newspaper claims one of his plays supported terrorism. A star cast includes Tim Pigott-Smith, Janie Dee, Roger Lloyd-Pack and Jana Zeineddinne. Profits will go to a music school in Gaza.
Michael Mann
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Your comments:
The Lenkiewicz exhibition is stunning from the remarkable St Eustace sculpture to the drawings featuring unicorns, tigers and Elvis! The skeletons and skulls were my particular favourite along with the octopus drowning the Titanic. The surroundings are fabulous; the Pite architecture lends itself so well to the mood. I admit I have a particular fondness for
the building having worked there for 26 years.
J. Trend-Hill
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