There are few governments as ready to commit war crimes as the US under Texas Torquemada, but the current government of Israel almost makes the Bush/Republican regime seem legitimate. An Israeli court has rendered a decision worthy of DOJ under Gonzales.

Two Israeli soldiers received suspended sentences and demotions on Sunday for using a Palestinian child as a human shield by making him check for bombs during the 2008-2009 Gaza war, army radio said.

The radio’s correspondent, who attended the sentencing in a military court, said the two were each given suspended terms of three months imprisonment and were demoted from the rank of staff sergeant to sergeant .

The military spokesman’s office had no immediate comment on the sentencing of the two men, who were convicted on October 3 for forcing a nine-year-old boy to search bags believed to be booby-trapped during Israel’s 22-day war on Gaza which erupted in December 2008.

Gerard Horton, a spokesman in the West Bank for Geneva-based rights group Defence for Children International (DCI), described the sentence as "unbelievable."

"Do the Israeli authorities think that a three-month suspended sentence is an appropriate punishment for two heavily-armed soldiers treating a nine-year-old boy as a human shield?"

He told AFP that the trial appeared designed to deflect attention from accusations in the Goldstone report, a UN-mandated study by South African judge Richard Goldstone which accused both Israel and the Palestinians of war crimes during the three-week war.

"It’s purely for international consumption," Horton told AFP.

"It’s to look like you’re doing something busy after the Goldstone report, in order to get the UN off your back. It’s not a genuine attempt to enforce the law or to send a message that this is not appropriate conduct for the army to engage in."

Goldstone recommended that the report’s findings be transferred to the International Criminal Court if Israel and the Islamist Hamas movement fail to conduct "credible" investigations into the war.

Israel rejected the report as "biased."

Israel’s Supreme Court banned the army from using human shields in October 2005… [emphasis added]