ISRAEL ACCUSED OF WAR CRIMES IN GAZA

War Crimes in Gaza—UN Report.

Israel has been accused of War Crimes in Gaza and now finds it hard to maintain its “victim” status.

First a bit of history for those of you who do not even know where Gaza is and are weak on facts about Israel.

Israel ranks as one of the top battle-hardened military forces in the world. Considering its stockpile of hundreds of nuclear weapons, the nation is military is ranked probably third or fourth in the world. If one ignores its nuclear capacity, and evaluates its airpower, and ground forces alone, it ranks 11th in the world just under Turkey (10th) and above South Korea, Italy, Pakistan, Taiwan, Iran, Sweden, Australia, Spain and many other nations (See: http://www.globalfirepower.com/).

Gaza, on the other hand, is an approximately 25 by five long by 5 mile wide desert coastal strip (smaller than Long Island’s South Fork from Southampton to Montauk) and one of the most densely populated places on earth with 1.4 million Palestinians, many of whom are long-term refugees from Israel proper. Israel controls the bordering sea as well as the airspace over Gaza. Its security fences seal off all Gaza borders (save in the southwest where Egypt controls the short Rafah boundary though it is also monitored by Israel military). Gaza is essentially a 139 square mile outdoor prison- ghetto controlled by Israel. The occupants have no way out--or back in-- were they so fortunate as to be whisked away from this outdoor prison.

In 2005, Israel, which has occupied the strip since 1967, unilaterally pulled its forces out of Gaza. However, since it still controls all crossing, air space, sea access all crossings as well as the amount of fuel, water, fuel, building materials, medicines and supplies that enter as well as all human access…international law still considers the territory to be occupied by Israel.

On December 27, 2007 When Israel unleashed the full power of its IDF with bombing and strafing raids by American-built F16 jets against tiny Gaza it was like the proverbial turkey shoot. It was no contest.

According to Wikipedia account of that war: "On 27 December 2008,[80] Israeli F-16 strike fighters launched a series of air strikes against targets in Gaza. Struck were police stations, schools, hospitals, UN warehouses, a mosque, various Hamas government buildings, a science building in the Islamic University, and a U.N.-operated elementary school in a Palestinian refugee camp.[81] Israel claimed that the attack was a response to Hamas rocket attacks on southern Israel, which totaled over 3,000 in 2008, and which intensified during the few weeks preceding the operation. UN medical staff were killed by Israeli combatants during the attacks[citation needed]. Palestinian medical staff said at least 434 Palestinians were killed, and at least 2,800 wounded, made up mostly civilians and some Hamas members, in the first five days of Israeli strikes on Gaza. Israel began a ground invasion of the Gaza Strip on 3 January, 2009.[82] Israel rebuffed many cease-fire calls and both sides declared unilateral cease-fires.[83][84]
In total 13 Israelis and more than 1300 Palestinians were killed in the 22-day war.[85]
After 22 days of fighting, Israel decided to stop fighting, while insisting on holding its positions, while Hamas has vowed to fight on if Israeli forces do not leave the Strip.[86]
5,000 homes, 16 government buildings, and 20 mosques were destroyed. 25,000 homes were damaged.

Today the Gaza blockade continues

Main article: 2007–2009 blockade of the Gaza Strip

The 2-year old blockade of the Gaza strip continued after the end of the war, although Israel allowed to move in humanitarian aid.

The Red Cross has released a report that argues that Israel's continued blockade is making it impossible for Gaza to recover from the war. The Red Cross claims that the blockade is "strangling" the Gazan economy and also notes that the blockade has caused a shortage of basic medicines and equipment such as painkillers and x-ray film.[88]" See Wikipedia (Gaza Strip) downloaded September 16, 2009.

Now back to the NY Times article:

The title of the NY Times piece tells it all. The long expected UN report on the possibility of war crimes in Gaza appeared in the NY Times and should have been entitled something like “UN FINDS SIGNS OF WAR CRIMES IN GAZA” But typical of the Times which is unable to call a spade a spade when it comes to the Middle East. The Times—perhaps fearful of the response of its Jewish readership—entitled this piece by Sharon Otterman , Sept 15, 2009, "UN FINDS SIGNS OF WAR CRIMES ON BOTH SIDES IN GAZA". But read down to find that more than 1300 unarmed Palestinians were killed in Israeli Gaza incursion as they fled during the shameful three week “war: (that is as far as they could go within the confines of the 25 mile long outdoor prison called Gaza) from Israeli tanks, air-force, ground troops and artillery—firing phosphorus shells. Thirteen Israelis also died in the attack. But the Times disgraces itself with the shameful header. See: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/16/world/middleeast/16gaza.html?hp. The fact is that only through understanding of both sides of this issue can we as a nation and a people come to support government policies that will finally bring peace to both communities. The Times (though in truth it rasied the issue to first column status the following day) as the paper of record and with the most influential readership must bring the issues clearly and forthrightly to the public. Perhaps on day two they did.

The French paper Le Monde, entitiled their report: Selon l'ONU, Israël a commis des "crimes de guerre" à Gaza (According to the UN, Israel has commite war crimes in Gaza) http://www.lemonde.fr/technologies/article/2009/09/15/l-assemblee-adopte-hadopi-2-contre-le-telechargement-illegal_1240973_651865.html#ens_id=1232569

Le Figaro takes the point of view of Hamas entitling the report: ONU/Gaza:un rapport "politique"(Hamas) ( UN /Gaza : a politcal report (Hamas). Hamas states this is a political report, unequal and dishonest, in its evaluation it put the same blame on those who committed the crimes (of war) to those who were (simply) resisting (the attack) has declered the AFP director of Hamas in Gaza, Ismael Radwin

The scathing UN report (released Tuesday) concluded that both the Israeli military and the Palestinians “committed actions amounting to war crimes and crimes against humanity.” What is the difference between “war crimes” and “actions amounting to war crimes” I don’t know.

The investigation carried out by Justice Richard Goldstone, a widely respected South African judge, found that neither Israel or the Palestinians carried out any “credible investigations” into alleged violations. I wonder how one could conceivably attempt to equate the Hamas revolutionaries in Gaza with the State of Israel…but I guess it served the interests of the US and UN to do so. Otherwise all that could be said was that Israel committed war crimes and then didn’t bother to investigate. What war cries could be ascribe to the victims…they didn’t die fast enough or get out of the way soon enough?

The charge against the Isreali side was that the report was “too one-sided ignoring the thousands of (ineffective and non fatal) rocket attacks.” In response (though I have not read the report) the summary indicates that it addresses that issue. The problem is that no one expects Israel not to defend itself or its citizens...it must do so. It was justified in responding to the rocket attacks (although logically one can justify the rocket attacks as a response to Israeli actions as well). However, this Gaza action was not a simple attack on rocketeers. It was a punitive incursion ment to punish as whole population and bomb them back into the stone age. That is the weakness in the Israeli argumument. It is addressed fully in the report and Judge Goldstone, addresses the same issue in a rebuttal as published in the NY Times the following day.

No one has brought up the question of “proportionality” in this disgraceful attack on an essentially confined, unarmed civilian population by a mighty modern military ranked as the fourth or fifth most powerful in the world (but see above).

The bulk of the report, for good reasons focuses on the Israeli violations. It concludes that Israeli forces engaged in a deliberate policy of “collective punishment in furtherance of “an overall and continuing policy aimed at punishing the Gaza population” through blockades and the destruction of food, water and sanitation systems of its people.”

In one case, armored bulldozers of the Israeli forces systematically flattened the chicken coops of a farm that reportedly supplied 10 percent of the Gazan egg market, killing all 31,000 chickens inside. In another, the forces carried out a strike on a sewage plant wall, sending 200,000 cubic meters of raw sewage into neighboring farmland, the report said. The panel did not find a justifiable reason for the Israelis’ actions in either case.

It also found that the Israeli forces used disproportionate force against the Palestinian civilian population. In a number of cases, it said, Israeli forces launched “direct attacks against civilians with lethal outcome,” even when the facts indicated no justifiable military objective. Based on the available evidence, some of those incidents, the report concluded, amounted to war crimes.
One such event took place in the Samouni neighborhood in Gaza City, when Israel soldiers shelled a house where soldiers had forced Palestinian civilians to gather. In seven cases, the report found, “civilians were shot while they were trying to leave their homes to walk to a safer place, waving white flags and in some cases, following an injunction from the Israeli forces to do so.”

Israeli forces also intentionally attacked civilians in aiming a missile strike at a mosque during the early evening prayer, killing 15 people, and in firing antipersonnel flechette munitions, which release thousands of metal darts, on a crowd of family members and neighbors at a condolence tent, killing 5.

Israeli forces twice shelled civilian hospitals in Gaza, but in neither case was the attack justified, the report found. In the attack on Al Quds Hospital, the shelling of the building and an adjacent ambulance facility with white phosphorus shells caused fires that took a day to extinguish, and at no point was any warning given of an imminent strike, the report said. The panel found no evidence of the enemy fire that the Israeli military cited as rationale for its attack.

“These incidents indicate that the instructions given to the Israeli forces moving into Gaza provided for a low threshold for the use of lethal fire against the civilian population,” the report said. The conduct of the Israeli armed forces in these instances, it said, “constitute grave breaches of the Fourth Geneva Convention” and as such, “give rise to individual criminal responsibility.”

On the side of the Palestinians their armed groups fired repeated rockets and mortars into southern Israel. By failing to distinguish between military targets and the civilian population, those actions also “constitute war crimes and may amount to crimes against humanity,” the report said.

The mission found no evidence that Palestinian combatants “mingled with the civilian population with the intention of shielding themselves from attack,” the report said, nor did it find evidence to suggest that Palestinian armed groups “either directed civilians to areas where attacks were being launched or forced civilians to remain within the vicinity of the attacks.”

The panel conducted 188 interviews, reviewed 10,000 pages of documents, and viewed more than 1,000 photographs and videos before drawing its conclusions. The panel said that Israel did not respond to a comprehensive list of questions, but that Palestinian authorities in both Gaza and the West Bank cooperated.

Now what can we do here in the US? Must we continue to support a nation accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity, continue to supply them with weapons, prop up their economy and support their foreign policy goals. When do we let them go on their own?

When will the world court take up this case?

Get the picture

rjk