Exposing Israel’s crimes

Gaza 2014, a scene of unsurpassed brutality indicting Israel as a war-criminal nation nonpareil, though here, in the report of Independent Commission, pursuant to UN Human Rights Council (HRC) resolution S-21/S, this is only hinted at despite the overwhelming evidence presented of systematic destruction, wanton murder of civilians, indiscriminate policies aimed at terrorizing a whole people into submission. Yes, Palestinians, too, come in for criticism — the tunnels, mortar firings, border raids — in a tactful show of impartiality, but the actuality of a disproportion in the conduct of operations in which the Israeli Defense Forces were merciless in acting out a scorched-earth militaristic paradigm is enough of an indelible moral stain as to warrant Israel’s increasingly pariah status in world opinion.
The report is unusually comprehensive, one reason Israel jumped the gun and published a response before the report was issued. Cocksure, Israel answers to no one and acts accordingly. Hence, pummeling with impunity a largely helpless populace, rendered still weaker by an encompassing blockade. Given Israel’s refusal to let the Commission into Gaza, we will never know the full cost of the destruction, especially from interviews and the taking of personal testimony. Yet a surprising amount of information has nevertheless come out, various UN agencies (as when their schools, crowded with Palestinians seeking refuge, were deliberately targeted), and NGOs on the ground.
According to the report: “Many Palestinians were uprooted from their homes or temporary shelters multiple times; at the height of the hostilities, the number of internally displaced persons reached 500,000, or 28 percent of the population. The effects of this devastation had a severe impact on the human rights of Palestinians in Gaza and will do so for generations to come.” “The West Bank,” it adds, “including East Jerusalem, witnessed a period of heightened tensions and widespread human rights violations, including the fundamental right to life,” but largely unnoticed given the events in Gaza. Too, the hostilities in Gaza “cannot be assessed separately from the blockade imposed by Israel.” The further one probes the more one-sided the contest, although the report refrains from such comments, at least in so many words: “The blockade and the military operation have led to a protection crisis and chronic, widespread and systematic violations of human rights, first and foremost the rights to life and security, but also to health, housing, education and many others.” The “protection crisis,” I surmise, refers to the failure of Israel to protect these rights “in accordance with international human rights law,” i.e., Israel’s obligation, as in the case of any occupying power, to “take concrete steps towards their full realization.”
The UN Children’s Fund reveals that in Gaza “more than 1,500 children were orphaned.” The report notes: “During the 51-day operation, the Israel Defense Forces carried out more than 6,000 airstrikes in Gaza, many of which hit residential buildings.” Israel denounces the report before its release and brazenly prides itself on the commission of mass civilian deaths.
The commission found that in all cases “precision-guided weapons were used,” a finding “corroborated by satellite imagery analysis,” and “many of the incidents took place in the evening or at dawn, when families gathered for Iftar and suhoor, the Ramadan meals, or at night, when people were asleep.” The report states the obvious: “The timing of the attacks increased the likelihood that many people, often entire families, would be at home. Attacking residential buildings rendered women particularly vulnerable to death and injury.” Even the report has to recur to one of its principles: “With regard to proportionality, given the circumstances, a reasonable commander would have been aware that these attacks would be likely to result in a large number of civilian casualties and the complete or partial destruction of the building.” Why else the attack?
One point emphasized is that knowing the damage inflicted and loss of life by the airstrikes, why did not these attacks come under closer scrutiny, questioned, halted? The report continues: “Furthermore, the large number of targeted attacks against residential buildings and the fact that such attacks continued throughout the operation, even after the dire impact of these attacks on civilians and civilian objects became apparent, raise concern that the strikes may have constituted military tactics reflective of a broader policy, approved at least tacitly by decision-makers at the highest levels of the Government of Israel.” It’s about time the report stepped outside its comfort zone of caution: Residential airstrikes as military policy sanctioned at the highest levels.
Ground operations were equally murderous, especially in Shujaiya; in the three neighborhoods studied a pattern was seen, “large areas of which were leveled to the ground.” I’m sorry, I haven’t the heart for the coverage of more atrocities, this section speaking, as the boldface heading makes clear, of “Use of artillery and other explosive weapons in densely populated areas.” There is in fact much more but let me close with the testimony of Talel Al Helo from Shujaiya: “I am not a fighter, I am a civilian and I care about the well-being of my family. The attacks were everywhere. Everything was coming under attack, the roads and the buildings; there was no safe haven in Shujaiya. We walked as the missiles kept arriving. We saw bodies of people in the streets. We came across the body of an acquaintance and several other bodies, of young and old people, women and children.”
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TRANSCEND Media Service