The Israeli bomb
ardment of Gaza may have left the headlines, but only now is the full story of destruction and abuse coming to light. The Russell Tribunal on Palestine has been meeting in emergency session in Brussels, taking evidence on Israel’s Operation Protective Edge.
It has found evidence of war crimes and crimes against humanity. The tribunal’s Jury reported:
The cumulative effect of the long-standing regime of collective punishment in Gaza appears to inflict conditions of life calculated to bring about the incremental destruction of the Palestinians as a group in Gaza.”
The terrible thing about Jimmy Savile’s serious crimes involving young girls is how many people in senior and influential positions knew about his behaviour and chose to do nothing about it, to turn a blind eye. People who knew him at 
That the former Serb General Ratko Mladic was able to escape detection for sixteen years, beggars belief. The relative’s house he used as a ‘safe house’ was reportedly searched some four times – presumably with Mladic being told to take a stroll while they took place. That the butcher of Srebrenica was finally arrested this week is largely down to the fact that Serbia’s accession to the European Union hung on him being apprehended and that the government in Belgrade now leans more towards pragmatic engagement than the nihilist nationalism that once had the Balkans in flames. 
The arrest of former Serbian military chief, Ratko Mladic, finally begins to draw a line underneath the unspeakable savagery that characterised the break-up of the former Yugoslavia. Mladic was the remaining ‘big fish’ still unaccounted for, and his capture poses almost as many embarrassing questions for the Serb authorities as for the Pakistani authorities with the discovery that Osma bin Landen was living next door to one of the most significant military bases in the country. 