Have I Got a Yom Kippur Atonement for You!
by Mary W Maxwell, LLB

Today is Yom Kippur, a day of atonement. I want to atone for my part in the wars currently being run by Israel. Per an article in Consortium News yesterday, by Vijay Prashad:

"Israel used over 80 U.S.-made 2,000-pound bombs and other munitions on Sept. 27, to strike a residential neighborhood in Beirut and kill – amongst hundreds of civilians – Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah. In this one bombing raid, Israel dropped more of these 'bunker buster' bombs than the United States military used in its 2003 invasion of Iraq."

As noted, the offending weapons came from my backyard. I am a citizen of a country (United States) that is committing outrages, by providing the bunker-busting bombs that are a major part of those outrages, turning ordinary people out onto the rubble-filled street. (Imagine it!) This article is about me, about the part I, as an ordinary (Catholic) American find myself playing in Gaza.

Since 1996, there is domestic law in the US against US citizens who commit war crimes. You can find it easily by googling for the relevant part of the US criminal code: 18 USC 2441. I will quote it below. (There is also domestic law against US citizens who take part in genocide, at 18 USC 1091. But I will use only the war-crimes law here, as that will suffice.)

I want to track down the guilt of Mary Maxwell, today, October 12, 2024, regarding the devastation of people's homes in Gaza. I believe that if it weren't for my nation, the US, those homes would not have been bombed. The Prime Minister of Israel, Bibi Netanyahu, has proclaimed that he wants to get rid of Palestinians. I am not here to criticize Bibi or Israel. I am criticizing America. Particularly its citizens. This is a Republic, isn't it?

It has long been established in "customary international law" that civilians should not be attacked in a war, other than incidentally when the real target is a military installation.

Here is a quote from The Commander’s Handbook on the Law of Naval Operations, NWP 1-14M/MCWP 5-12.1/COMDTPUB P5800.7, issued by the Department of the Navy, Office of the Chief of Naval Operations and Headquarters, US Marine Corps, and Department of Homeland Security, US Coast Guard, July 2007, Section 8.1:

"A military objective within a city, town, or village may, however, be bombarded if required for the submission of the enemy with the minimum expenditure of time, life, and physical resources. The anticipated incidental injury to civilians, or collateral damage to civilian objects, must not be excessive in light of the military advantage anticipated by the attack."

Similarly, this principle, and the principle of proportionality, are acknowledged in US Air Force Pamphlet 110-34, Commander’s Handbook on the Law of Armed Conflict, Judge Advocate General, US Department of the Air Force, 25 July 1980, Section 6-2(b). It says:

“a weapon is not unlawful simply because its use may cause incidental or collateral casualties to civilians, as long as those casualties are not foreseeably excessive in light of the expected military advantage”.

In Gaza, the attacks on residential areas don't even make a pretense that the target is military. Attacking civilians is a war crime -- thus I am committing that basic war crime. The United States is a signatory to the 1949 Geneva Conventions. Note: In 1977, additional protocols were added, but our Senate has never ratified them, so I will not refer to them here.

So What Am I Up For?

Let me now quote the 1996 domestic law against war crimes, omitting phrases that don't apply to me. Please, I am not trying to be cute by referring to "me." Federal law applies to all 335 million American "me's" or at least the 258 million who over age 18. I realize I'm only 1/258,000,000th of that whole. The point here is to emphasize that when a nation does something, as a nation, it is the members of that nation who are doing it, right?

Here is 18 USC 2441:

"Whoever, whether inside or outside the United States, commits a war crime, in any of the circumstances described in subsection (b), shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for life or any term of years, or both, and if death results to the victim, shall also be subject to the penalty of death."

Wow. There have been tens of thousands of Palestinian deaths since October 7, 2023, when over a thousand Israeli's attending a concert were killed by Hamas. (Hamas is the government in Gaza that was arranged for by Israel as the replacement of the PLO. Hamas' leaders actually live in Doha, Qatar!)

In the year 2023, Israel, as a modern state, was 75 years old. So, there had been plenty of time for that state to work on its relations with neighboring states, but Bibi was not engaged in any such activity.

As I said, Bibi openly prefers genocide. It is my best guess that the attack on the concert was a false-flag. Investigating false flags has been my research focus for the last 19 years. (In 2006, I ran for Congress using the slogan "9/11 was an inside job" and got 11 percent of the vote for the Republican nomination in New Hampshire.)

To put it another way, if Bibi wanted an opportunity to wipe out the Palestinians, he could hardly have paved the way better than by allowing a surprise shootout by Hamas, complete with the taking of Jewish hostages. Note: False flags are almost de rigueur -- see James Perloff's 200-year sketch on this.

So where do I show up with my toothbrush to get booked into federal prison? I know you are laughing because my crime was only to assist Bibi by contributing my taxpayer dollars to the bombing of civilians. Don't laugh -- an accomplice to a crime may be as liable as the hands-on fellow. Even an accessory (you know, the driver of the getaway car) can be imprisoned. That's the law.

There are three choices of venue: 1. I can go to the local police station in Concord NH, and file a complaint against Mary Maxwell. The police would pass this on to the District Attorney. (Or to the mental ward, as the case may be), 2. I can submit the matter directly to my federal district court, or 3. I could -- but this is inconvenient -- present myself to the court of another country and ask them to do what the Geneva Conventions tell every Party to do: invoke universal jurisdiction against the perpetrator of a war crime.

Once it becomes a prosecution, the Dept of Justice would have to investigate my case and lay the appropriate charges. Of course it's quite likely that they would throw the case out. I have yet to see the US government try US citizens who participate in war crimes just by breathing. (My case against myself is that I am harming Gazan civilians just by breathing, as an American. And contributing a few pennies toward the manufacture of an actual bunker-buster bomb.)

Perhaps you are thinking "Mary could be the subject of an indictment at the International Criminal Court," which came into force in 2002. No, the United States is not a signatory to the ICC. Indeed I think that the War Crimes Act, quoted above, stitched together some domestic legislation against war crimes in order to avoid the "unspeakable" event of our nation getting judged externally.

Congress wouldn't have passed that 1996 statute to do justice or to achieve world peace, would it? Our Congress is too corrupt, and too unimaginative to think in those terms. And the fact that Congress gave 53 standing ovations to a recent speech by Bibi suggests that they feel controlled by Israel.

Note: That's not a typo for 5.3 standing ovations. The whole legislative assembly, from both chambers, moved their bodies from the sitting position to the standing position fifty-three times. For a man whose moral character couldn't inspire a flea, right?

Cynicism about IHL

In 1990, Adelaide University, Australia, awarded me a PhD for the thesis "The Moral Relationship among States." Basically, I claimed that states have no moral relationship. The book is published under the title Morality among Nations: An Evolutionary View. By "evolutionary," I mean we evolved as small groups of humans and have the appropriate psychological apparatus to love our tribe. For all other tribes we have general suspicion, or if needed, fear or disdain. There ain't no morality among nations.

Thus, I tend to view the whole of International Humanitarian Law -- IHL -- as a joke. It came about when a Swiss businessman, Henry Dunant, reported the horrors of the Battle of Solferino in 1859. By 1863, the Red Cross had been formed. As we all know, war is sometimes an expression of competition or dominance among nations. But It's often a creature of a few individuals who carry out the planning secretly, perhaps for economic gain. (Think Federal Reserve.)

No doubt some humanistic value can be derived from the fact that people did make treaties such as the Hague Convention of 1907 or the Geneva's of 1949. Or that Red Cross personnel do in fact make some inspections of the conditions under which Prisoners of War are held, and condemn torture. But looking at the facts, we see that military leaders are not constrained by any of that. How could they be? They are paid to whack the enemy.

The fact is that no one gets punished (except, hopefully, Yours Truly in the fantasy at hand). This tells us of legal laziness, and willingness to let everything get bad and maybe unbearable. In our country, the ABA is the culprit behind much of the loss of legal idealism. That "guild" wrongly controls the curriculum of all law schools in the US. I feel sure the leaders of the American Bar Association serve other masters.

But it does not have to continue this way. Law is a remarkable human invention. There is "DNA" for it. I call the law our "exoskeleton." It holds everything in place. We will be having recourse to it again, as it is the place we go (along with religion) to get help when hurt, and/or to discuss the possibilities in an intellectual way.

The law does nothing by itself -- it has to be enforced. People have to take it seriously. The foregoing article is a bit on the humorous side, but it's better than throwing one's hands in the air and saying "There is no way to deal." Oh yes there is. Yes, there is.

Arrest me!

-- Mary Maxwell's website is www.ConsitutionAndTruth.com Her recent book, which is about court-assisted child-trafficking in Australia, is entitled "Society Is the Authority."