War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity

CCHRIST Fellows and All Men and Women of Goodwill:

In the architecture of international law, two main categories of international jurisprudence are
war crimes and crimes against humanity. Listen to a story from Sunday's Weekend Edition, NPR's Sunday morning news broadcast. What you will hear is described are war crimes and crimes against humanity.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=99220486

If more than 700 Israelis had been killed in 12 or 13 days times, what do you think would be the so-called international community's cry? Yes, all life is sacred. And Israel is due its right to live in peace and safety. However, what is happening in Gaza, only twice the size of Washington, DC, is a wholly disproportionate response to what Hamas has done and continues to do in regards to shooting rockets in southern Israel.

Let us pray for peace which is not merely the absence of war. Let us pray that the Obama administration may exercise good courage and move towards a more just, indeed prophetic, stance towards this vexing problem that is the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Listening to Jimmy Carter is a start.

Last Wednesday, Cornel West gave a biting critque during an interview on the BBC Newshour (GMT 2000). The link is http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/programmes/000000_newshour_listen_again.shtml
The interview is towards the end of this broadcast. Listening just to this item does not appear (GMT 2000) possible.