Talking points and background on Israel's murderous assault on Gaza
By the Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid (Canada) and the Palestine Solidarity Committee (South Africa)
December 31, 2008
- Gaza is the world's largest open-air prison. 1.5 million residents are packed into an area 45 kilometres long x 10 kilometres wide, while Israel controls Gaza's air space and borders. Over 80% of the population are refugees denied their legal Right to Return to the homes and lands from which they were expelled in 1948. Israel also illegally restricts Palestinian freedom of movement into and out of Gaza. For example, in August 2008, Israel denied three Gazan Fulbright Scholars their basic right to education by having their US entry visas revoked.
- Gaza has been under complete siege since June 2007, during which time the 1.5 million people of Gaza have been cut off from sufficient fuel, food and medicine. Two weeks ago, the UN reported that Gazans were living without power for up to 16 hours each day; half of Gaza's population was receiving water only once a week for a few hours; 80% of the water in Gaza did not meet World Health Organization standards for drinking; the unemployment rate had risen to almost 50%; only 23 of 3900 industrial enterprises were operational; more than 79% were living below the poverty line; more than 56% were food insecure; and patients with chronic illnesses such as cancer or diabetes could not be adequately treated or cared for. (See http://www.ochaopt.org/documents/ocha_opt_gaza_situation_report_2008_12_17_english.pdf )
- Since 2001, fewer than 20 Israelis have been killed by Qassam rockets [fired from outside by guerillas]. In three days, nearly 400 Gazans have been killed by Israeli state violence. This is a ratio of 20 Gazan lives for each Israeli life, with the death toll in Gaza certain to increase. In January 2008, UN Special Rapporteur John Dugard stated, "a distinction must be drawn between acts of mindless terror, such as acts committed by Al Qaeda, and acts committed in the course of a war of national liberation against colonialism, apartheid or military occupation. While such acts cannot be justified, they must be understood as being a painful but inevitable consequence of colonialism, apartheid or occupation." Israeli government and Palestinian violence can in no way be viewed as symmetrical -- individual Palestinians have chosen to resist their occupiers with largely inneffective home-made rockets, while the Israeli state, which boasts the fourth most powerful military in the world, has responded by collectively punishing the captive population that it illegally occupies. Under the Fourth Geneva Convention, collective punishment is a war crime. As the occupier, the burden is on Israel to end its state violence.
- Israel is an apartheid state. South Africa [and other states] must sever diplomatic ties with Israel and implement sanctions against it until Israel complies with international law. UN General Assembly President Father Miguel D'Escoto Brockmann recently called for a campaign of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel, similar to the one that ended apartheid in South Africa.
Israel and the Palestinians
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Richard Falk (UN): Israel's War Crimes
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STATEMENT OF SPECIAL RAPORTEUR FOR THE PALESTINIAN TERRITORIES
STATEMENT OF SPECIAL RAPORTEUR FOR THE PALESTINIAN TERRITORIES OCCUPIED SINCE 1967 FOR PRESENTATION TO THE SPECIAL SESSION OF THE HUMAN RIGHTS COUNCIL ON GAZA, 9 JANUARY 2009
1. This statement focuses on the impact of Israel’s continuing Gaza military campaign, initiated on 27 December 2008, on the humanitarian situation confronting the 1.5 million Palestinians confined to the Gaza Strip. In accordance with the undertaking of the mandate, it confines its comments to issues associated with Israel’s obligations as occupying power to respect international humanitarian law (IHL), which refers mainly to the legal obligations contained in the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, which sets forth in some detail the legal duties of Israel as the occupying power. The essential obligations of IHL are also considered to be binding legal duties embedded in customary international law. This statement touches on issues of international human rights law (IHR), as well as the implications of severe and sustained violations of either IHL or IHR as raising issues of international criminal law (ICL). It is also necessary to assess the underlying Israeli security claims that the military incursion into Gaza was a ‘defensive’ operation consistent with international law and the United Nations Charter, and that no ‘humanitarian crisis’ existed making the scale and nature of the military force used allegedly ‘excessive’ and ‘disproportionate.’
2. Although Israel has contended that it is no longer an occupying power, due to its withdrawal of its forces from within Gaza, it is widely agreed by international law experts that the continued Israeli control of borders, air space, and territorial waters is of a character as to retain Israel status legally as occupying power.
3. The quality of this report is undoubtedly diminished by the absence of first-hand observations of the pre-existing humanitarian situation existing in Gaza, which was to be the objective of a mission undertaken by the Special Rapporteur to gather information for use in making a report to the regular session of the Human Rights Council (HRC_ scheduled for March, 2009. This mission was aborted when the Special Rapporteur was denied entry to Israel on 14 December 2008, detained for some 15 hours in a holding cell at Ben Gurion Airport, and expelled on the next day. Such treatment of a UN representative would seem to raise serious issues for the Organization as a whole, bearing on the duties of a member state to cooperate, and to deal with those carrying out UN work with appropriate dignity. It is to be hoped that the government of Israel can be persuaded to reconsider its policy of exclusion that has hampered the work of this mandate. This concern about exclusion has been compounded during the period preceding the Israeli attack upon Gaza, as well during the military operations, by denying access to foreign journalists, a policy that has been successfully challenged in Israeli courts, but as yet with no tangible results. As noted in the New York Times, Israel denies media representatives access to the humanitarian impacts of its military operations in Gaza while encouraging journalists to view any harmful effects of the rocket attacks on civilians in Israel. Even requests by the International Committee of the Red Cross to investigate scenes of supposed humanitarian abuse have so far been refused, e.g. to visit the site of military action in the Gazan town of Zeitan that reportedly killed by deliberate action 60 members of the Samouni family, including several children. According to the ICRC, “the ICRC/PRCS team found four small children next to their dead mothers in one of the houses. They were too weak to stand up on their own… The ICRC believes that in this instance the Israeli military failed to meet its obligation under international humanitarian law to care for and evacuate the wounded. It considers the delay in allowing rescue services access unacceptable.” This issue of access is crucial for the work of Special Rapporteurs, and with respect to other country mandates, including Myanmar and Peoples Republic of Korea, and deserves the attention of the HRC, and of the United Nations generally.
4. The rationale for this Special Session is the existence of a humanitarian emergency in Gaza, a set of conditions that has been questioned in many public settings by the Israeli foreign minister, Tzipi Livni. Ms. Livni contends there is no need for a ‘humanitarian truce’ because there is no humanitarian crisis. She asserts that Israeli has allowed shipments of food and medicine to cross the border, but as UNRWA and other UN officials have observed, these shipments will not alleviate hunger and nutritional difficulties unless distribution becomes possible, which is not the case given the war conditions prevailing in most of the Gaza Strip. To what slight extent this dire circumstance can be addressed by the three hour pause in combat operations announced by Israel on 7 January remains to be seen. Beyond the immediate crisis some underlying features should be noted: about 75% of the population lacks access to sanitary water and has no electric power. Such conditions are superimposed on the circumstances of Gazans resulting from the prolonged blockade that had deteriorated the physical and mental health of the population of Gaza as a whole, leaving some 45% of children suffering from acute anemia. It was also confirmed that sonic booms from overflying Israeli military aircraft prior to December had produced what was described as a ‘contagion’ of deafness among children in Gaza. It was also reliably concluded that up to 80% of Gaza was living under the poverty line, that unemployment totals approached 75%, and that the health system was near collapse from the effects of the blockade. This set of conditions certainly led impartial international observers and civil servants to an uncontested conclusion that the population of Gaza was already experiencing a humanitarian crisis of grave magnitude prior to 27 December.
5. The use of force by an occupying power against the security threats emanating from a population under occupation is permissible within the constraints set by international law. Israel claims that its current military campaign is reasonable and necessary given the scale and severity of the rocket attacks directed at Israeli civilian populations living in the South Israel towns of Sderot and Ashdod, and attributed to Hamas. There are several issues that would need to be resolved in evaluating this claim that have not been adequately discussed to date in either diplomatic settings or by the media. It should be pointed out unambiguously that there is no legal (or moral) justification for firing rockets at civilian targets, and that such behavior is a violation of IHR, associated with the right to life, as well as constitutes a war crime. At the same time, the nature of the offense must be evaluated with the context of its occurrence. For the ceasefire period prior to 27 December, not a single Israeli death resulted from rockets fired from Gaza. Further, since June of 2008 a ceasefire had been observed by both sides, with some infractions taking place, but without altering the willingness of both sides to uphold the ceasefire. During this period Israel had been expected to lift, or at least ease the blockade that had imposed severe hardships on the entire population of Gaza, especially through restraints on the supply of food, medicine and medical equipment, and fuel, but failed to do so. The acute harm done to civilian Gaza has been repeatedly pointed out by leading UN officials on the ground, including Karen AbuZayed, commissioner of UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) that is most directly engaged with the daunting task of meeting the humanitarian needs of Gazans.
6. This blockade in effect for a period of 18 months was unlawful, a massive form of collective punishment, and as such in violation of Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, and also a violation of Article 55, which requires that the occupying power ensure that the civilian population has sufficient food and that its health needs are addressed. Such blockade does not alter the character of the rocket attacks, but it does suggest two important conclusions from a legal perspective: first, that the scale of civilian harm resulting from Israeli unlawful conduct was far greater than that of Palestinian unlawful conduct; secondly, that any effort to produce a sustainable ceasefire should ensure that Israel as well as Hamas respect IHL, which most concretely means that Israeli interferences with the access of goods for the maintenance of normal civilian life must end, and cannot be reestablished as a retaliatory measure if some sort of rocket attack occurs in the future. Similarly, if Israel should impose such constraints in the future, it would not provide any legal cover for resumed rocket attacks or other forms of Palestinian violence directed at Israeli civilians. There are some difficulties in attributing responsibility for all rocket attacks to Hamas. There are independent militias operating in Gaza, and even prior to Hamas, governing authorities, including Israeli occupation forces, were unable to prevent all rocket firings despite their best efforts to do so.
7. The Israeli military campaign was also justified by Israeli leaders as an ‘inevitable’ and ‘unavoidable’ response to the persistence of the rocket attacks. Here again it is important to examine the factual setting of Israel’s justifications, which go to the reasonableness of such action and its defensive character. Most accounts of the temporary ceasefire indicate that it was a major Israeli use of lethal force on November 4, 2008 that brought the ceasefire to a de facto end, leading directly to increased frequency of rocket fire from Gaza. It is also relevant that Hamas repeatedly offered to extend the ceasefire, even up to ten years, provided that Israel would lift the blockade. These diplomatic possibilities were, as far as can be assessed, were not explored by Israel, although admittedly complicated by the contested legal status of Hamas as the de facto representative of the Gazan population. This has legal relevance, as a cardinal principle of the UN Charter is to make recourse to force a matter of last resort, making it obligatory for Israel to rely in good faith on nonviolent means to end rocket attacks. Israel’s good faith must be examined in light of the statement of Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, who wrote on her Ministry of Foreign Affairs website on 4 January that “the intensive diplomatic activity of the last few days aims to alleviate the pressure for a ceasefire, and to allow time for continuing the military operation.”
8. It is also important under international law to determine the extent to which the reliance on force is proportionate to the provocation and necessary for safeguarding security. Here, too, the Israeli arguments seem unpersuasive. As mentioned above, the rocket attacks, although unlawful and potentially dangerous, had caused little damage, and no loss of life during the 2008 ceasefire. To mount a major military campaign against an essentially defenseless society already gravely weakened by the blockade accentuates the disproportion of reliance on modern weaponry in combat situations where military dominance was largely uncontested. It seems significant that Palestinian casualty totals at this time are estimated to be 800+ killed, some 3000 wounded, included many critically, with civilian victims set at about 25% by qualified observers, at least 1/3 of whom are children. In contrast, according to the latest reports, seven Israeli soldiers have died, apparently at least four as a result of ‘friendly fire,’ that is by Israeli firepower wrongly directed. The onesidedness of casualty figures is one measure of disproportion. Another is the scale of devastation and the magnitude of the attacks. It is obvious that the destruction of police facilities, schools, and homes, as well as many public buildings, in crowded urban settings represents an excessive use of force even if Israeli allegations are accepted at face value. As discrediting as is the reliance on disproportionate force, is the lack of connection between the alleged threat associated with Gaza rockets and the targets of the Israeli attacks, giving added weight to the claims that the Israeli use of force is a form of ‘aggression’ prohibited by international law, and certainly excessive in relation to criteria of ‘proportionality’ and ‘necessity.’
9. There have also been a variety of allegations made by qualified observers of Israeli reliance on legally unacceptable targets and on legally dubious weaponry that violate the customary international law prohibition on weapons and tactics that are ‘cruel’ or cause ‘unnecessary suffering.’ Among the targets viewed as unlawful under IHL: Islamic University, schools, mosques, medical facilities and personnel (including ambulances). Among weapons that are legally dubious under IHL: phosphorous gas in shells and missiles that burn flesh to the bone; dense insert metal explosives (so-called DIME) that cut victims to pieces, and raise risk of cancer for survivors; depleted uranium associated with deep-penetrating, so–called ‘bunker buster’ bombs used against Gaza tunnels, possibly causing radiation sickness for anyone exposed over a period of centuries.
10. This dimension of ‘unnecessary suffering’ associated with the Israeli campaign has an important feature that has not been given attention. In many contemporary situations of warfare large number of civilians seek to escape from harm by moving away from immediate danger, becoming ‘internally displaced persons’ or ‘refugees.’ But Israel through its rigid control of exit, directly and indirectly, has denied the civilian population of Gaza the option of becoming ‘refugees,’ never an option of choice, but reflective of desperation. Its denial tends to lend credibility that the population of Gaza is essentially imprisoned by Israeli occupation policy. From the perspective of IHL this foreclosure of a refugee option for Gazans is a serious aggravation of the dangers posed for a civilian population, and underscores the gravity of the humanitarian crisis that has existed in Gaza since 27 December. Since the military campaign this situation has dramatically worsened. The comment by Iyad Nasr, with the Red Cross in Gaza City, is expressive of the general understanding: “The size of the operations and the size of the misery on the ground is just overwhelming…”
11. >From the perspective of the Mandate for oPt the following recommendations seem worthy of the attention at this Special Session:
(1) Resolution requesting restored access for Special Rapporteur to the occupied Palestinian territories as an essential feature of UN monitoring role;
(2) Resolution seeking General Assembly initiatives with respect to investigating allegations of war crimes;
(3) Resolution proposing long-term truce based on cessation of rocket launchings from Gaza and unconditional lifting of blockade;
(4) Resolution requesting Advisory Opinion from the International Court of Justice to assess legal status of Israeli presence in Gaza subsequent to Israeli ‘disengagement’ in 2005.
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Electronic Intifada: Israel's fabricated rocket crisis
From http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10123.shtml
Jim Holstun and Joanna Tinker, The Electronic Intifada, 6 January 2009
In The Iron Wall
(2001), Israeli historian Avi Shlaim shows that in July 1981, US
diplomat Philip Habib brokered a ceasefire between the Palestine
Liberation Organization (PLO) and Israel. For the next year, the PLO
infuriated Israel by refusing to violate the ceasefire and thereby
provide an excuse for Israel's long-planned attack on PLO refugee camps
and bases in Lebanon. Then, on 3 June 1982, a member of the Abu Nidal
organization shot and wounded Shlomo Argov, the Israeli ambassador in
London. Abu Nidal, or Sabri Khalil al-Banna, was a Palestinian, but he
was anything but a PLO stalwart: "Abu Nidal was supported by Iraq in
his struggle against Arafat's 'capitulationist' leadership of the PLO.
Abu Nidal customarily referred to Arafat as 'the Jewess's son.' The PLO
had passed a death sentence on Abu Nidal for assassinating some of its
moderate members who advocated a dialogue with Israel."
The next day, Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin called an emergency
cabinet meeting. When his advisor Gideon Machanaimi and Avraham Shalom
(the head of the General Security Service) began to discuss the nature
of the Abu Nidal organization, Begin cut them off: "'They are all PLO.'
[Army Chief of Staff] Rafael Eitan was equally dismissive. Shortly
before entering the conference room, an intelligence aide told him that
Abu Nidal's men were evidently responsible for the assassination
attempt. 'Abu Nidal, Abu Shmidal,' he sneered; 'we have to strike at
the PLO!'"
Two days later, Israel invaded Lebanon, which would kill over 18,000
people, including the massacres of Palestinian refugees at Sabra and
Shatila, and push Lebanon further into a morass of imperial and
sectarian violence. Of course, the lying excuse endlessly proffered for
the invasion, enshrined in its nickname "Operation Peace for the
Galilee," and obligingly circulated by the American media, was that
Israel could no longer be expected to tolerate a constant barrage of
PLO rockets across its northern border.
In Israel's recent rush to invade Gaza, we witness the same
predisposition to violence, the same aching aggravation with
Palestinian peace offensives, and the same willingness to conflate all
resistance, all frustrations, into a single enemy: "They are all
Hamas!" And we see that Hamas, like the PLO, refused to oblige Israel
with a single provocative act. For more than four months after 19 June
2008, Hamas refrained from any military actions that might endanger the
negotiated truce or "calm" with Israel.
The evidence for this is ready to hand. For example, the Wikipedia entry on the events of the summer, "List of rocket and mortar attacks in Israel in 2008"
(revised 4 January 2008), based almost exclusively on Israeli
newspapers and government sources, confirms that there were no rocket
or mortar attacks claimed by or plausibly attributed to Hamas during
the calm. This can also be verified by surveying archives of news
reports from the period.
The few that were launched, none of them causing any casualties, were
claimed by the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, by Islamic Jihad, by "the Badr
Forces," or by nobody. Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh called
repeatedly for a cessation of rocket fire, and denounced those factions
who broke the truce. A Hamas spokesman criticized Fatah for allowing
the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, which is affiliated with Fatah, to fire
rockets. Meanwhile, Israeli occupation forces' murders and settler
pogroms continued unabated on the West Bank. They included an attempt
by a settler to fire a homemade rocket toward the Palestinian village
of Burin, which nearly killed another settler. During the lull, then,
Israeli settlers fired more rockets (i.e., one) than did Hamas.
In a document entitled "The Hamas terror war against Israel,"
The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs provides striking visual
evidence of Hamas's good faith during the lull. It reproduces two
graphs drawn up by the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center at
the Israel Intelligence Heritage & Commemoration Center:
Monthly distribution of rockets hit
Monthly distribution of mortar shells
The graphs show that the total number of rocket and mortar attacks
shrank from 245 in June to 26 total for July through October, a
reduction of 97 percent. Even this was not enough for Israel, which
violated the truce by imposing a terror-famine in Gaza for most of
these months. But despite these violations, Hamas refrained from
launching rockets until Israel definitively cancelled the truce on the
night of 4-5 November by sending an Israeli commando squad into Gaza,
where it killed six Hamas members. Hamas responded with 30 rockets.
These charts proved too revealing for the Israeli Ministry of Foreign
Affairs. On the night eve of 4 January 2008, as Israeli occupation
forces launched a ground assault on Gaza, the Israeli Ministry of
Foreign Affairs removed them from its website, substituting an almost
illegible graph in which the labels obscure the data, while the caption
does all it can to hide the de facto end of rocket and mortar fire during the calm, until 4 November.
This document was also titled "The Hamas terror war against Israel." But a Korean webpage has cached the original document, preserving the evidence of Israel's sticky-fingered hasbara, or propaganda.
Clearly, the Israelis violated the truce in order to increase the
number of Qassam attacks, not to end them. Qassams provide Israel with
its best shot at its favorite media role of plucky little David
fighting the Palestinian Goliath. And by nimble revision of its
webpage, the Israeli MFA is able to turn cause into effect -- turning
the retaliatory Hamas Qassams of 6 November into the cause of Israel
canceling the truce on 4 November, and smashing it flat on 19 December.
We have heard, and we will continue to hear, a droning litany of
"Qassams! Qassams! Qassams!" The repetition will be difficult to
resist, but for all of us who remember the reiterated US lies about
Iraq of 2002-2003, whether with pride for our skepticism or shame for
our credulity, a good first step might be for us to think "WMDs!" every
time they say "Qassams!" Like the US Coalition of the Willing, Israel's
Operation Cast Lead has not let the absence of actual provocation get
in the way of a good bloodbath. Indeed, chronology itself proves no
obstacle, as Israeli commandos, Apaches and F-16s retaliate for rocket
attacks that haven't occurred yet. In the immortal, influential and
profoundly depraved words of neoliberal crusader Michael Ignatieff,
"Against this kind of enemy ... it makes sense to get our retaliation
in first."
When the history of the war on Gaza is written, Hamas's remarkable
restraint during the lull, as Israel attempted to starve Gaza into
submission, will form an important prelude to what Joseph Massad has
called the heroic Gaza Ghetto Uprising.
But for the moment, it's vital to remember that what we are witnessing
in Gaza is not Israeli retaliation, but an act of unprovoked Zionist
genocide using American-made weapons, based on a bloody lie about
Qassam barrages obligingly circulated by American media. The question
for Americans to ask now is this: what must we do, with our
American-made mouths, brains, and bodies, to stop it?
Jim Holstun teaches world literature at SUNY Buffalo. He has previously written "Nonie Darwish and the al-Bureij massacre" for The Electronic Intifada. He and Joanna Tinker live in Buffalo, New York.
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FAIR: Erasing Israeli actions to fault only Hamas
http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=3667
Media advisory
The Blame Game in Gaza
Erasing Israeli actions to fault only Hamas
January 6, 2009
The Israeli attacks in the Gaza Strip that began in late December have
reportedly killed over 500 Palestinians, many of them civilians and
children. As is often the case, U.S. corporate media's presentation of
the events leading up to this dramatic escalation in violence have laid
the blame for the violence mostly with Hamas, whose rocket attacks on
Israel are often cited as the cause for the current Israeli attacks.
In many media discussions about the events that led to the fighting,
emphasis is placed on Hamas' decision in late December to allow a
cease-fire agreement with Israel to expire, or the group's failure to
adequately suppress rocket attacks into Israel during the cease-fire.
A USA Today timeline (1/5/09)
explained, "In November, the truce frays as Hamas rockets continue to
land in Israel, which closes several border crossings and kills
militants building tunnels Hamas was using to smuggle weapons and other
goods into Gaza." On NBC Nightly News (12/27/08), Martin
Fletcher explained that "a six-month truce ended this week and
Palestinians fired rockets into Israel, as many as 60 a day. Israeli
leaders said enough is enough."
A Washington Post editorial (12/28/08) announced that Hamas "invited the conflict by ending a six-month-old ceasefire," while Post columnist Richard Cohen (1/6/09) was much blunter: "It took no genius to see the imminence of war. It takes real stupidity to blame it on Israel."
The Dallas Morning News (12/30/08)
agreed emphatically in an editorial titled, "Blood on Hamas' Hands":
"The pictures of the civilian victims of Israeli airstrikes--
especially children-- are heart-rending. But let's keep straight whose
fault this tragedy is: Hamas, the fanatical Islamists who rule Gaza and
who have used the land as a launching pad for firing rockets into
Israel."
The New York Times' December 28 lead declared, "The
Israeli Air Force on Saturday launched a massive attack on Hamas
targets throughout Gaza in retaliation for the recent heavy rocket fire
from the area." The next day, Times reporter Stephen Farrell asked (12/29/08),
"Why did Hamas end its six-month cease-fire on December 19?" He argued
that the "rejectionist credo" of Hamas made this step all but
inevitable.
These accounts fail on several grounds. For starters, the cease-fire
agreement from June through mid-December was credited by many for
ratcheting down the violence-- rocket fire into Israel dropped
significantly and claimed no Israeli lives during the truce. (Prior to
that, rocket and mortar attacks since the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza
in late 2005 had killed 10 Israelis-- theisraelproject.org.)
After the cease-fire expired, rocket attacks increased, though no
Israelis were killed until after the Israeli attacks were launched;
four have been killed since then (Agence France-Presse, 1/6/09).
Interestingly, as the truce expired, the New York Times published an article (12/19/08)
that began with a typical corporate media formulation-- Palestinians
are attacking, Israel is retaliating-- before noting that Hamas was
"largely successful" in curtailing rocket fire into Israel: "Hamas
imposed its will and even imprisoned some of those who were firing
rockets. Israeli and United Nations figures show that while more than
300 rockets were fired into Israel in May, 10 to 20 were fired in July,
depending on who was counting and whether mortar rounds were included.
In August, 10 to 30 were fired, and in September, 5 to 10."
The Times article, by Ethan Bronner, noted that what Hamas expected in return from the Israelis never arrived:
But the goods shipments, while up some 25 to 30 percent and including a mix of more items, never began to approach what Hamas thought it was going to get: a return to the 500 to 600 truckloads delivered daily before the closing, including appliances, construction materials and other goods essential for life beyond mere survival. Instead, the number of trucks increased to around 90 from around 70.
Bronner also added that "Israeli forces continued to attack Hamas and other militants in the West Bank, prompting Palestinian militants in Gaza to fire rockets," which produced Hamas response attacks. The Times continued:
While this back-and-forth did not topple the agreement, Israel's decision in early November to destroy a tunnel Hamas had been digging near the border drove the cycle of violence to a much higher level. Israel says the tunnel could have been dug only for the purpose of trying to seize a soldier, like Cpl. Gilad Shalit, the Israeli held by Hamas for the past two and a half years. Israel's attack on the tunnel killed six Hamas militants, and each side has stepped up attacks since.
This straightforward recitation of events is rarely heard in much of the rest of the media coverage of the violence in Gaza-- including in the Times, since Israel began its full-scale assault. But for many consumers of U.S. media, history is made irrelevant; a Time magazine piece (1/12/09) began:
Two
sounds dominate the lives of Israelis living near Gaza: the wail of a
siren and, 25 seconds later, the whistling screech of an incoming
rocket fired by the Palestinian militant group Hamas. That gives
Israeli families just enough time to dive for cover-even as they pray
the rocket will miss.
At 11:30 a.m. on December 27, a new sound filled the azure
Mediterranean sky: the rolling boom of Israeli bombs and missiles
slamming into Gaza.
Israeli airstrikes in Gaza are anything but "new," but presenting them as such--and pairing that presentation with an Israeli family sheltered against an incoming Hamas rocket--gives a wildly misleading impression of a conflict where the deaths and suffering are overwhelmingly on the Palestinian side.
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How Israel Manufactured the Gaza Escalation
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
War of Choice: How Israel Manufactured the Gaza Escalation, Steve Niva, FPIF, January 7, 2009
Israel
has repeatedly claimed that it had "no choice" but to wage war on Gaza
on December 27 because Hamas had broken a ceasefire, was firing rockets
at Israeli civilians, and had "tried everything in order to avoid this
military operation," as Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni put it. This
claim, however, is widely at odds with the fact that Israel's military
and political leadership took many aggressive steps during the
ceasefire that escalated a crisis with Hamas, and possibly even
provoked Hamas to create a pretext for the assault. This wasn't a war
of "no choice," but rather a very avoidable war in which Israeli
actions played the major role in instigating. Israel has a long
history of deliberately using violence and other provocative measures
to trigger reactions in order to create a pretext for military action,
and to portray its opponents as the aggressors and Israel as the
victim. According to the respected Israeli military historian Zeev Maoz
in his recent book, Defending the Holy Land,
Israel most notably used this policy of "strategic escalation" in
1955-1956, when it launched deadly raids on Egyptian army positions to
provoke Egypt's President Nasser into violent reprisals preceding its
ill-fated invasion of Egypt; in 1981-1982, when it launched violent
raids on Lebanon in order to provoke Palestinian escalation preceding
the Israeli invasion of Lebanon; and between 2001-2004, when Prime
Minister Ariel Sharon repeatedly ordered assassinations of high-level
Palestinian militants during declared ceasefires, provoking violent
attacks that enabled Israel's virtual reoccupation of the West Bank. Israel's
current assault on Gaza bears many trademark elements of Israel's long
history of employing "strategic escalation" to manufacture a major
crisis, if not a war. The countdown to a war began, according to a detailed report by Barak Raviv in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz,
when Israel's Defense Minister Ehud Barak started planning the current
attack on Gaza with his chiefs of staff at least six months ago — even
as Israel was negotiating the Egyptian brokered ceasefire with Hamas
that went into effect on June 19. During the subsequent ceasefire, the
report contends, the Israeli security establishment carefully gathered
intelligence to map out Hamas' security infrastructure, engaged in
operational deception, and spread disinformation to mislead the public
about its intentions. This revelation doesn't confirm that
Israel intended to start a war with Hamas in December, but it does shed
some light on why Israel continuously took steps that undermined the
terms of the fragile ceasefire with Hamas, even though Hamas respected
their side of the agreement. Indeed, there was a genuine lull in
rocket and mortar fire between June 19 and November 4, due to Hamas
compliance and only sporadically violated by a small number of
launchings carried out by rival Fatah and Islamic Jihad militants,
largely in defiance of Hamas. According to the conservative
Israeli-based Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center's analysis of rocket and missile attacks in 2008,
there were only three rockets fired at Israel in July, September, and
October combined. Israeli civilians living near Gaza experienced an
almost unprecedented degree of security during this period, with no
Israeli casualties. Yet despite the major lull, Israel continually raided the West Bank,
arresting and frequently killing "wanted" Palestinians from June to
October, which had the inevitable effect of ratcheting up pressure on
Hamas to respond. Moreover, while the central expectation of Hamas
going into the ceasefire was that Israel would lift the siege on Gaza,
Israel only took the barest steps to ease the siege, which kept the
people at a bare survival level. This policy was a clear affront to
Hamas, and had the inescapable effect of undermining both Hamas and
popular Palestinian support for the ceasefire. But Israel's most
provocative action, acknowledged by many now as the critical turning
point that undermined the ceasefire, took place on November 4, when
Israeli forces auspiciously violated the truce by crossing into the
Gaza Strip to destroy what the army said was a tunnel dug by Hamas,
killing six Hamas militants. Sara Roy, writing in the London Review of Books, contends this attack was "no doubt designed finally to undermine the truce between Israel and Hamas established last June." The
Israeli breach into Gaza was immediately followed by a further
provocation by Israel on November 5, when the Israeli government
hermetically sealed off all ways into and out of Gaza. As a result, the UN reports
that the amount of imports entering Gaza has been "severely reduced to
an average of 16 truckloads per day — down from 123 truckloads per day
in October and 475 trucks per day in May 2007 — before the Hamas
takeover." These limited shipments provide only a fraction of the
supplies needed to sustain 1.5 million starving Palestinians. In
response, Hamas predictably claimed that Israel had violated the truce
and allowed Islamic Jihad to launch a round of rocket attacks on
Israel. Only after lethal Israeli reprisals killed over 10 Hamas gunmen
in the following days did Hamas militants finally respond with volleys
of mortars and rockets of their own. In two short weeks, Israel killed
over 15 Palestinian militants, while about 120 rockets and mortars were
fired at Israel, and although there were no Israeli casualties the calm
had been shattered. It was at this time that Israeli officials
launched what appears to have been a coordinated media blitz to
cultivate public reception for an impending conflict, stressing the
theme of the "inevitability" of a coming war with Hamas in Gaza. On
November 12, senior IDF officials announced that war with Hamas was likely in the two months
after the six-month ceasefire, baldly stating it would occur even if
Hamas wasn't interested in confrontation. A few days later, Israeli
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert publicly ordered his military commanders
to draw up plans for a war in Gaza, which were already well developed
at the time. On November 19, according to Raviv's report in Haaretz, the Gaza war plan was brought before Barak for final approval. While
the rhetoric of an "inevitable" war with Hamas may have only been
Israeli bluster to compel Hamas into line, its actions on the ground in
the critical month leading up to the official expiration of the
ceasefire on December 19 only heightened the cycle of violence, leaving
a distinct impression Israel had cast the die for war. Finally,
Hamas then walked right into the "inevitable war" that Israel had been
preparing since the ceasefire had gone into effect in June. With many
Palestinians believing the ceasefire to be meaningless, Hamas announced
it wouldn't renew the ceasefire after it expired on December 19. Hamas
then stood back for two days while Islamic Jihad and Al-Aqsa Martyrs
Brigades militants fired volleys of mortars and rockets into Israel, in
the context of mutually escalating attacks. Yet even then, with Israeli
threats of war mounting, Hamas imposed a 24-hour ceasefire on all
missile attacks on December 21, announcing it would consider renewing
the lapsed truce with Israel in the Gaza Strip if Israel would halt its
raids in both Gaza and the West Bank, and keep Gaza border crossings
open for supplies of aid and fuel. Israel immediately rejected its
offer. But when the Israel Defence Forces killed three Hamas
militants laying explosives near the security fence between Israel and
Gaza on the evening of December 23, the Hamas military wing lashed out
by launching a barrage of over 80 missiles into Israel the following
day, claiming it was Israel, and not Hamas, that was responsible for
the escalation. Little did they know that, according to Raviv,
Prime Minister Olmert, and Defense Minister Barak had already met on
December 18 to approve the impending war plan, but put the mission off
waiting for a better pretext. By launching more than 170 rockets and
mortars at Israeli civilians in the days following December 23, killing
one Israeli civilian, Hamas had provided reason enough for Israel to
unleash its long-planned attack on Gaza on December 27.Making War 'Inevitable'
The rationale for war
If
Israel's goal were simply to end rocket attacks on its civilians, it
would have solidified and extended the ceasefire, which was working
well, until November. Even after November, it could have addressed
Hamas' longstanding ceasefire proposals for a complete end to
rocket-fire on Israel, in exchange for Israel lifting its crippling
18-month siege on Gaza. Instead, the actual targets of its
assault on Gaza after December 27, which included police stations,
mosques, universities, and Hamas government institutions, clearly
reveal that Israel's primary goals go far beyond providing immediate
security for its citizens. Israeli spokespersons repeatedly claim that
Israel's assault isn't about seeking to effect regime change with
Hamas, but rather about creating a "new security reality"
in Gaza. But that "new reality" requires Israel to use massive violence
to degrade the political and military capacity of Hamas, to a point
where it agrees to a ceasefire with conditions more congenial to
Israel. Short of a complete reoccupation of Gaza, no amount of violence
will erase Hamas from the scene. Confirming the steps needed to
create the "new reality," the broader reasons why Israel chose a major
confrontation with Hamas at this time appear to be the cause of several
other factors unrelated to providing immediate security for its
citizens. First, many senior Israeli political and military leaders strongly opposed
the June 19 ceasefire with Hamas, and looked for opportunities to
reestablish Israel's fabled "deterrent capability" of instilling fear
into its enemies. These leaders felt Israel's deterrent capability was
badly damaged as a result of their withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, and
especially after the widely criticized failures in the 2006 Israeli war
with Hezbollah. For this powerful group a ceasefire was at best a
tactical pause before the inevitable renewal of conflict, when
conditions were more favorable. Immediately following Israel's aerial
assault, a New York Times article noted that Israel had been eager "to remind its foes that it has teeth" and to erase the ghost of Lebanon that has haunted it over the past two years. A
second factor was pressure surrounding the impending elections set to
take place in early February. The ruling coalition, led by Barak and
Livni, have been repeatedly criticized by the Likud leader Benjamin
Netanyahu, the former prime minister, who is leading in the polls, for
not being tough enough on Hamas and rocket-fire from Gaza. This gave
the ruling coalition a strong incentive to demonstrate to the Israeli
people their security credentials in order to bolster their chances
against the more hawkish Likud. Third, Hamas repeatedly said it
wouldn't recognize Mahmud Abbas as president of the Palestinian
Authority after his term runs out on January 9. The looming political
standoff on the Palestinian side threatens to boost Hamas and undermine
Abbas, who had underseen closer security coordination with Israel and
was congenial to Israeli demands for concessions on future peace
proposals. One possible outcome of this assault is that Abbas will
remain in power for a while longer, since Hamas will be unable to
mobilise its supporters in order to force him to resign. And
finally, Israel was pressed to take action now due to its sense of the
American political timeline. The Bush administration rarely exerted
constraint on Israel and would certainly stand by in its waning days,
while Barack Obama would not likely want to begin his presidency with a
major confrontation with Israel. The Washington Post quoted a Bush administration official
saying that Israel struck in Gaza "because they want it to be over
before the next administration comes in. They can't predict how the
next administration will handle it. And this is not the way they want
to start with the new administration." As
the conflict rages to an uncertain end, it's important to consider
Israeli military historian Zeev Maoz's contention that Israel's history
of manufacturing wars through "strategic escalation" and using
overwhelming force to achieve "deterrence" has never been successful.
In fact, it's the primary cause of Israel's insecurity because it
deepens hatred and a desire for revenge rather than fear. At the
same time, there's no question Hamas continues to callously sacrifice
its fellow Palestinian citizens, as well as Israeli civilians, on the
altar of maintaining its pyrrhic resistance credentials and its myopic
preoccupation with revenge, and fell into many self-made traps of its
own. There had been growing international pressure on Israel to ease
its siege and a major increase in creative and nonviolent strategies
drawing attention to the plight of Palestinians such as the arrival of
humanitarian relief convoys off of Gaza's coast in the past months, but
now Gaza lies in ruins. But as the vastly more powerful actor
holding nearly all the cards in this conflict, the war in Gaza was
ultimately Israel's choice. And for all this bloodshed and violence,
Israel must be held accountable. With the American political
establishment firmly behind Israel's attack, and Obama's foreign policy
team heavily weighted with pro-Israel insiders like Dennis Ross and
Hillary Clinton, any efforts to hold Israel accountable in the United
States will depend upon American citizens mobilizing a major grassroots
effort behind a new foreign policy that will not tolerate any
violations of international law, including those by Israel, and will
immediately work towards ending Israel's siege of Gaza and ending
Israel's occupation. Beyond that, the most promising prospect
for holding Israel accountable is through the increasing use of
universal jurisdiction for prosecuting war crimes, along with the
growing transnational movement calling for sanctions on Israel until it
ends its violations of international law. In what would be truly be a
new style of foreign policy, a transnational network that focuses on
Israeli violations of international law, rather than the state itself,
could become a counterweight that forces policymakers in the United
States, Europe, and Israel to reconsider their political and moral
complicity in the current war, in favor of taking real steps towards
peace and security in the region for all peoples. Steve Niva, a professor of International Politics and Middle East Studies at The Evergreen State College, is a contributor to Foreign Policy In Focus. He is currently writing a book on the relationship between Israel's military violence and Palestinian suicide bombings.An uncertain ending
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Requesting list of Israeli & Palestinian attacks.
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Media disinformation on Hamas
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US media didn't report Israeli ceasefire violation
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10140.shtml
Jim Lobe and Ali Gharib, The Electronic Intifada, 8 January 2009
WASHINGTON
(IPS) - Consumed by coverage of the 4 November presidential election,
US mainstream media ignored a key Israeli military attack on a Hamas
target that some Palestinians claim marked the effective end of the
ceasefire between the two sides and set the stage for the current round
of bloodletting.
While the major US news wire Associated Press (AP) reported that the
attack, in which six members of Hamas's military wing were killed by
Israeli ground forces, threatened the ceasefire, its report was carried
by only a handful of small newspapers around the country.
The 4 November raid -- and the escalation that followed -- also went
unreported by the major US network and cable television new programs,
according to a search of the Nexis database for all English-language
news coverage between 4 to 7 November.
But the military action, which was followed up by an aerial attack that
killed at least one other Palestinian, appears to have dealt a fatal
blow to the Egyptian-mediated ceasefire that had taken effect 19 June
and largely held for some four and a half months.
In retaliation for the attack, Hamas launched some 35 Qassam rockets
into Israeli territory 5 November which, in turn, provoked Israel to
severely tighten its then-17-month-old economic siege of the
Palestinian territory.
"While neither side ever completely respected the ceasefire terms, the
Israeli raid was far and away the biggest violation," said Stephen
Zunes, an expert on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict at the University
of San Francisco.
"It was a huge, huge provocation, and it now appears to me that it was
actually intended to get Hamas to break off the ceasefire," he added.
When Israel launched its current military offensive against
Hamas-controlled Gaza 27 December, most major US media outlets -- and
particularly television and newspaper commentators -- blamed Hamas for
breaking the ceasefire by continuing rocket and mortar attacks on
Israeli territory and refusing to extend the ceasefire on its current
terms beyond its formal 19 December expiration.
"Israel's air offensive against the Gaza Strip yesterday should not
have been a surprise for anyone who has been following the mounting
hostilities in the region," said the lead editorial in the Washington Post
the day after Israel began its massive air assault, "least of all the
Hamas movement, which invited the conflict by ending a six-month-old
ceasefire and launching scores of rockets and mortar shells at Israel
during the last 10 days."
This explanation of events corresponded to a major Israeli
public-relations effort that placed top government officials on US
network and cable news programs. In an appearance on NBC's widely
viewed Sunday morning talk show Meet the Press,
as the military offensive got underway, for example, Israeli Foreign
Minister Tzipi Livni, also a candidate for prime minister in the 10
February elections, set forth her government's basic narrative.
"About a half a year ago, according to the Egyptian Initiative, we
decided to enter a kind of a truce and not to attack Gaza Strip," Livni
said. "Hamas violated, on a daily basis, this truce. They targeted
Israel, and we didn't answer."
But that narrative omitted any mention of the critical 4 November raid,
and no Palestinian guest, such as Mustafa Barghouti, an independent
Palestinian lawmaker and human rights activist from Ramallah, appeared
on the program to rebut her claim.
In an interview on CNN two days later, on 31 December, however,
Barghouti charged that Livni's version of events was "incorrect." He
accused Israel of breaking the truce and pointed directly to the 4
November operation in Gaza as the catalyzing incident.
"Two months before [19 December], Israel started attacking Rafah,
started attacking Hamas ..." he declared, adding that Israel's failure
to lift its commercial embargo against Gaza also violated the
Palestinian understanding of the original truce terms.
Indeed, Barghouti's focus on the 4 November attack as the main cause of
the ceasefire breakdown was implicitly supported by a lengthy report
released the following day by the Intelligence and Terrorism
Information Center, a private Israeli group. It divided the ceasefire
into a "period of relative quiet between 19 June and 4 November," when
"Hamas was careful to maintain the ceasefire," and "the escalation and
erosion of the ... arrangement" which it dated to "4 November [when]
the [Israeli army] carried out a military action close to the border
security fence on the Gazan side..."
It further noted that Hamas began firing rockets and missile shells "in
retaliation" to which Israel responded by closing its border crossings
and sharply tightening its siege against Gaza. From that point, the
ceasefire that had effectively held for the previous four and a half
months was never fully restored.
That version of events was not entirely missing from the US press. Indeed, a New York Times
"analysis" published 19 December acknowledged that "[w]hile this
[escalation] did not topple the agreement, Israel's decision in early
November to destroy a tunnel Hamas had been digging near the border
drove the cycle of violence to a much higher level."
But the Times itself, like virtually all of the US
media, had missed the likely impact of the 4 November attack on the
ceasefire's fate at or even shortly after it took place. In its late
edition 5 November, the newspaper ran a 422-word article datelined
Jerusalem that reported Israel's military operation and the fact that
Hamas had retaliated with mortar fire.
One day later, The Washington Post devoted a similar
amount of space to a Reuters report whose headline suggested that the
truce had been put at risk by the previous day's exchanges.
But while the US media, distracted by an historic election at home,
largely skipped over the significance of the 4 November Israeli raid,
several English-language foreign news organizations did publish
articles on the event, suggesting that the raid could very well have
doomed the ceasefire.
A story in the British newspaper The Guardian on 6 November said the truce was "in jeopardy" after the strike. Another British paper, The Independent,
said on the same day that the ceasefire "was foundering yesterday after
Israeli special forces entered the besieged territory and fought Hamas."
A piece for the Canadian news service Canwest on 6 November said that
"the fragile peace [of the ceasefire] was shattered overnight by an
Israeli raid in Gaza." The Age newspaper of Australia also headlined its story on the raid itself as "Ceasefire in danger of collapse."
AP's 5 and 6 November stories used similar wording in its stories, but
they went largely unpublished in the US where media attention was
focused virtually exclusively on the historic election results.
The Nexis search found no reference to the raid in the transcripts of
any television public-affairs broadcast during the period, a
particularly significant omission given the fact that about 70 percent
of US citizens say their main source of international news comes
through that medium.
"[T]hat 4 November raid, in very real sense, hardly exists in the
mainstream media's collective memory," said Fairness and Accuracy In
Reporting's activism director Peter Hart, noting that Israel may have
been aware that the election would drown out coverage of its raid.
"It does not take much effort to go back and find it, but reporting
contextual information that would undermine Israel's rationale for
these attacks is not exactly the kind of thing the US corporate media
do very often. The fact that there are only a handful of exceptions is
telling -- the dominant narrative in the press is unsurprisingly one
that supports the Israeli position."
All rights reserved, IPS - Inter Press Service (2009).
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From Wall Sreet Journal: No justification for Israel's actions
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FAIR: Israeli justifications cited uncritically by big media
http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=3672
Media Advisory
International Law Seldom Newsworthy in Gaza War
Israeli justifications often cited uncritically
1/13/08
The largest circulation daily newspaper, USA Today, has made only one reference to international law, according to a search of the terms "international law," "humanitarian law," "war crime" or "laws of war" in the Lexis Nexis database of U.S. newspaper stories mentioning Israel and Gaza since December 27: That single reference was an op-ed (1/7/08) by a spokesperson from the Israeli embassy in Washington who criticized Hamas violations.
Much of the media coverage has echoed Israel's terminology. Early reports on the fighting spoke of Israel destroying "Hamas targets," bolstering the Israeli position that anything connected to Gaza's government was a legitimate target. "Israel's attacks on Hamas, its leaders and its institutions in Gaza intensified today," ABC's David Muir reported (12/29/08). NBC Nightly News (12/28/08) explained: "Warplanes pounded strategic locations in Gaza for the second day: a prison, a mosque used to store weapons, a Hamas TV station and dozens of other targets. The Israelis attacked the Islamic University, which is a strategic, a moral and a cultural key point for Gaza."
While places of worship are singled out
as a kind of civilian object protected under the Geneva Protocols, a
mosque used to store weapons could be a military target--though it is
unclear what independent confirmation NBC
had that allowed the network to state this claim as fact. A prison not
directly used in the military effort would be a civilian object, and TV
stations are normally considered civilian objects as well (FAIR Media Advisory, 3/27/03). While it is unclear what NBC means in calling the university a "strategic" key point, targeting an object on the basis of its "cultural" value is specifically forbidden under the Geneva Protocols.
A lengthy Washington Post report (12/30/08) likewise recounted Israel's target lists largely without question:
While previous Israeli assaults on Gaza have pinpointed crews of Hamas rocket launchers and stores of weapons, the attacks that began Saturday have had broader aims than any before. Israeli military officials said Monday that their target lists have expanded to include the vast support network that the Islamist movement relies on to stay in power in the strip. The choice of targets suggests that Israel intends to weaken all the various facets of Hamas rather than just its armed wing.
That description was followed by quotes from two Israelis. The Post
went on to explain Israel's targeting, each time offering the Israeli
rationale with barely a hint of skepticism: "In the Israeli offensive,
one of the first targets was a police academy, where scores of recruits
were preparing to join a security service that Hamas uses to enforce
its writ within Gaza."
As two op-ed pieces in the London Guardian pointed out (12/27/08, 1/3/08), under international law, police officers are classified as civilians, and targeting them is thus illegal (see also Human Rights Watch, 12/31/08). Though the Post did
not mention this, it did see fit to point out that "the Israeli
military has said the police are fair game because they are armed
members of Hamas's security structure and some moonlight as rocket
launchers."
Similarly, the Israeli attack on the Islamic University was presented in a way that would justify the attack: "The university was once known as a bastion of support for the mainstream Palestinian Fatah movement, but it gradually fell under Hamas' sway, and many of the movement's top leaders are alumni. Hamas heavily influences the curriculum and uses the campus as a prime recruiting ground."
The idea that leaders of a military or government force being alumni of
a particular school makes that school a military target is not one U.S.
media would take seriously in most contexts. The CIA often recruits
officers from Yale; does that make Yale a legitimate military target?
A New York Times report (12/31/08) punted on the issue of legality:
In the debate over civilian casualties, there is no clear understanding of what constitutes a military target. Palestinians argue that because Hamas is also the government in Gaza, many of the police officers who have been killed were civil servants, not hard-core militants. Israel disagrees, asserting also that a university chemistry laboratory, which it claims was used for making rockets, was a fair target in an attack this week, even if it could not show conclusively that those inside the laboratory at the time where engaged in making weapons.
If Israel is attacking civilian institutions without showing evidence that they are in fact military targets, it's unclear why news reports would suggest that that meant that no one knows what a military target is. But the Times persisted:
The ambiguity was evident at the intensive care ward in Shifa Hospital.... There were 11 patients. One was a pharmacist, Rawya Awad, 32, who had a shrapnel wound to the head. Several were police officers. It was impossible to know the identities of many of the others. But there were several children in another intensive care unit on Tuesday. Among them was Ismael Hamdan, 8, who had severe brain damage as well as two broken legs, according to a doctor there. Earlier that day, two of his sisters, Lama, 5, and Hayya, 12, were killed.
That "ambiguity" was matched days later (1/4/09),
in a vivid account from a Gaza hospital that discovered mostly
civilians being treated--which the paper called "both harrowing and
puzzling." The paper added:
The
casualties at Shifa on Sunday--18 dead, hospital officials said, among
a reported 30 around Gaza--were women, children and men who had been
with children. One surgeon said that he had performed five
amputations.... In recent days, most of those arriving at Shifa
appeared to be civilians. On Sunday, there was no trace here of the
dozens of Hamas fighters that the Israeli military said its ground
forces had hit in the past few hours in exchanges of fire. The exact
reason was not clear.... But at Shifa, most of the men who were wounded
or killed seemed to have been hit along with relatives near their homes
or on the road. Two young cousins and a 5-year-old boy from another
family were killed by shrapnel as they played on the flat roofs of
their apartment buildings.
Given
the population density of Gaza and the completely predictable civilian
death toll usually associated with aerial bombing and urban warfare,
the civilian toll is anything but "puzzling."
But the New York Times continued to grant Israel a pass on the legality of its attacks, though often the arguments were difficult to parse. Times reporter Steven Erlanger (1/11/09)
noted that "Israeli officials say that they are obeying the rules of
war and trying hard not to hurt noncombatants but that Hamas is using
civilians as human shields in the expectation that Israel will try to
avoid killing them."
That would seem to be at odds with what Erlanger also reported about an alleged Hamas "trap" in one Gaza apartment building:
That account--which Erlanger seems to find plausible--would suggest the opposite of what Israeli officials are saying about avoiding attacks on civilians; if a "mannequin in a hallway" would appear to Israeli forces to be a military target and hence "draw fire," then presumably virtually any Gazan--who typically live in buildings, many of which have hallways--would be taken as such as well.
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Israel's War Crimes
By Richard Falk
The Israeli airstrikes on the Gaza Strip represent severe and massive violations of international humanitarian law as defined in the Geneva Conventions, both in regard to the obligations of an Occupying Power and in the requirements of the laws of war
Even the most naive American voter cannot be expected to see the morally, legally and politically questionable death sentence given to Saddam Hussein a milestone in the Bush Administration's illegal war in Iraq. As the milestones pile up, so do the bodies.
Those violations include:
* Collective punishment: The entire 1.5 million people who live in the crowded Gaza Strip are being punished for the actions of a few militants.
* Targeting civilians: The airstrikes were aimed at civilian areas in one of the most crowded stretches of land in the world, certainly the most densely populated area of the Middle East.
* Disproportionate military response: The airstrikes have not only destroyed every police and security office of Gaza's elected government, but have killed and injured hundreds of civilians; at least one strike reportedly hit groups of students attempting to find transportation home from the university.
Earlier Israeli actions, specifically the complete sealing off of entry and exit to and from the Gaza Strip, have led to severe shortages of medicine and fuel (as well as food), resulting in the inability of ambulances to respond to the injured, the inability of hospitals to adequately provide medicine or necessary equipment for the injured, and the inability of Gaza's besieged doctors and other medical workers to sufficiently treat the victims.
Certainly the rocket attacks against civilian targets in Israel are unlawful. But that illegality does not give rise to any Israeli right, neither as the Occupying Power nor as a sovereign state, to violate international humanitarian law and commit war crimes or crimes against humanity in its response. I note that Israel's escalating military assaults have not made Israeli civilians safer; to the contrary, the one Israeli killed today after the upsurge of Israeli violence is the first in over a year.
Israel has also ignored recent Hamas diplomatic initiatives to re-establish the truce or ceasefire since its expiration on 26 December.
The Israeli airstrikes today, and the catastrophic human toll that they caused, challenge those countries that have been and remain complicit, either directly or indirectly, in Israel's violations of international law. That complicity includes those countries knowingly providing the military equipment including warplanes and missiles used in these illegal attacks, as well as those countries who have supported and participated in the siege of Gaza that itself has caused a humanitarian catastrophe.
I remind all Member States of the United Nations that the UN continues to be bound to an independent obligation to protect any civilian population facing massive violations of international humanitarian law--regardless of what country may be responsible for those violations. I call on all Member States, as well as officials and every relevant organ of the United Nations system, to move on an emergency basis not only to condemn Israel's serious violations, but to develop new approaches to providing real protection for the Palestinian people.
Richard Falk is professor of international law at Princeton University and the UN's special rapporteur on the Palestinian territories.