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United Nations, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch: Israel Is Targeting CIVILIANS In Gaza
Preface - related news from this week:
Update: Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu has asked the U.S. for help in avoiding war crime charges.
Amnesty International just released a report stating:
An immediate investigation is needed into mounting evidence that the Israel Defense Forces launched apparently deliberate attacks against hospitals and health professionals in Gaza, which have left six medics dead, said Amnesty International as it released disturbing testimonies from doctors, nurses, and ambulance personnel working in the area.
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“Even more alarming is the mounting evidence that the Israeli army has targeted health facilities or professionals. Such attacks are absolutely prohibited by international law and would amount to war crimes. They only add to the already compelling argument that the situation should be referred to the International Criminal Court.”
Human Rights Watch released a report this week headlined, “Gaza: Israeli Soldiers Shoot and Kill Fleeing Civilians“, stating:
Israeli forces in the southern Gaza town of Khuza’a fired on and killed civilians in apparent violation of the laws of war in several incidents between July 23 and 25, 2014. Deliberate attacks on civilians who are not participating in the fighting are war crimes.
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The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) reported that on July 25, a Red Crescent volunteer [the equivalent of the Red Cross] was mortally wounded in an Israeli attack in Khuza’a, and other volunteers who tried to rescue him were fired on. Under the laws of war, medical workers are civilians who may not be targeted for attack.
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Human Rights Watch investigated several incidents between July 23 and 25 when, local residents said, Israeli forces opened fire on civilians trying to flee Khuza’a, but no Palestinian fighters were present at the time and no firefights were taking place.
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“The horrors of war are bad enough for civilians even when all sides abide by the law,” [Human Rights Watch's Middle East and North Africa director] said. “But it’s abhorrent that Israeli forces are making matters even worse by so blatantly violating the laws of war designed to spare civilians.”
Last month, Human Rights Watch documented that the types of weapons used by the Israeli military prove that the killing of civilians was intentional.
Human Rights Watch executive director (and former federal prosecutor for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York) Kenneth Roth – said:
It was the subject of fairly relentless bombardment. Finally, after a couple of days, on July 23rd through July 25th, families slowly tried to leave Khuza’a for their larger city of Khan Younis nearby, hoping to find refuge there. And as you would do in a situation like this, they raised white flags. They did everything they could to make clear that they were not militants. But on several different occasions, Israeli forces shot at them and actually killed some among the people who were fleeing.
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No matter how many times the Israeli military spokesmen scream, “Human shields! Human shields!” most of the people being killed in Gaza are being killed because Israel is paying insufficient care to saving civilian lives. There’s been case after case in which Israel has used the wrong weaponry or has shot at people with many civilians around. And these, in our view, are war crimes.
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The only real recourse that we see is to the International Criminal Court.
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[The Israeli soldiers] use, for example—The New York Times did an interesting study yesterday—heavy artillery, 155-millimeter artillery, which is utterly inappropriate in a densely populated area, because this kind of artillery is considered accurate if it lands anyplace within a 50-meter radius. You know, you can imagine there are a lot of civilians in that area. It has a fragmentation and blast effect of 300 meters. And nonetheless, Israel lets off barrages of these heavy artilleries. The New York Times documented that yesterday. Or they’ll bring in their air force and simply bomb, even though there are many, many civilians in these areas.
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We’ve gone through this in the prior Gaza efforts. We went through it with the Hezbollah war. I actually, you know, after the Hezbollah war, went and briefed the senior Israeli lawyer for the military, describing many of these same problems, the fact that you can’t just issue a warning and assume that everybody left, in that case, is Hezbollah. So, you know, they are completely on notice. We’ve accused them of this in the past. They just keep repeating it. And it seems to be almost by design to try to make the people of Gaza pay a price because Hamas is ruling over them…. I mean, that’s a war crime logic, and Israel is oftentimes acting according to the same logic in Gaza.
The UN stated last month that Israeli attacks on UN shelters housing civilians are intentional.
An Israeli soldier explicitly confirmed:
Palestinian civilians killed during the Shuja’iyya massacre of July 20 were deliberately targeted ….
The unofficial reason was to enable the soldiers to take out their frustrations and pain at losing their fellow soldiers on the Palestinian refugees in the neighborhood. Under the pretext of the so-called ‘security threat,’ soldiers were directed to carry out a pre-planned attack of revenge on Palestinian civilians.”
The United Nations reported in 2009 that Israel was intentionally targeting civilians in Gaza.
Wikipedia summarizes the findings of the 2009 UN report:
The report disputes Israel’s claim that the Gaza war would have been conducted as a response to rockets fired from the Gaza Strip, saying that at least in part the war was targeted against the “people of Gaza as a whole”. Intimidation against the population was seen as an aim of the war.[70] The report also says that Israel’s military assault on Gaza was designed to “humiliate and terrorize a civilian population, radically diminish its local economic capacity both to work and to provide for itself, and to force upon it an ever increasing sense of dependency and vulnerability”.[49]
The report focused on 36 cases that it said constituted a representative sample. In 11 of these episodes, it said the Israeli military carried out direct attacks against civilians, including some in which civilians were shot “while they were trying to leave their homes to walk to a safer place, waving white flags”.[49] Talking to Bill Moyers Journal, Goldstone said that the committee chose 36 incidents that represented the highest death toll, where there seemed to be little or no military justification for what happened.[71] According to the report, another alleged war crime committed by IDF include “wanton” destruction of food production, water and sewerage facilities; the report also asserts that some attacks, which were supposedly aimed to kill small number of combatants amidst significant numbers of civilians, were disproportionate.[49]
The report concluded that Israel violated the Fourth Geneva Convention by targeting civilians, which it labeled “a grave breach”.[72] It also claimed that the violations were “systematic and deliberate“, which placed the blame in the first place on those who designed, planned, ordered and oversaw the operations.[73]
And a prominent Jewish leader says that Israel intentionally massacred Palestinian civilians in 1948 in order to terrorize the population … and is still doing the same thing today.
Postscript: There is plenty of circumstantial evidence for targeting of civilians as well, in the form of calls for genocide and mass murder against Palestinians.
For example, the Times of Israel recently published a piece calling for genocide on the Palestinians.
And Andrew Sullivan notes:
What is one to make of the fact that the deputy speaker of the Knesset has called for ethnic cleansing in Gaza?
He’s not an obscure blogger for the Times of Israel. He is a luminary of the Likud – a man who got 23 percent of the vote in a contest for the Likud Party leadership. He was appointed to his current high position by Benjamin Netanyahu.
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His strategic goal is to “turn Gaza into Jaffa, a flourishing Israeli city with a minimum number of hostile civilians.” (Modern Jaffa, of course, was built on the ethnic cleansing of most of its Palestinian inhabitants in 1948.)
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In Israel, this theme is intensifying:
The statements of Ovadia Yosef, whose recent passing was met with flattering memorials both in Israel and the US, are legendary. The former Chief Rabbi of Israel and spiritual leader of many Middle Eastern Jews, said, among other things, that Palestinians “should perish from the world” and that “it is forbidden to be merciful to them”; of non-Jews in general, he declared that “Goyim were born only to serve us.” Despite comments like these, his funeral last October was the largest in the country’s history, with 800,000 Israelis attending. In the past month, Rabbi Noam Perel, head of Bnei Akiva, the largest Jewish religious youth group in the world, called for the mass-murder of Palestinians and for their foreskins to be scalped and brought back as trophies, alluding to an episode in the Book of Samuel; and a Jerusalem city councillor, in charge of security, encouraged a crowd to mimic the Biblical character of Phineas (Pinchas in Hebrew), who murdered a fellow Israelite and his Midianite lover for the “crime” of miscegenation…
One local chief rabbi ruled that bombing Palestinian civilians is permissible, while another, considered a “liberal” by Israeli standards, declared the assault on Gaza to be a holy war mandated by the Torah–one which must be merciless.
Today, the former head of Israel’s National Security Council, Giora Eiland, called for treating all Gazans, including women, as enemy combatants:
We are seeing now that despite the IDF’s impressive fighting, despite the absolute military supremacy, we are in a sort of “strategic tie.” What would have been the right thing to do? We should have declared war against the state of Gaza (rather than against the Hamas organization), and in a war as in a war.
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And we are not merely talking about a hypothetical situation. The grotesque death toll from Gaza is a distillation of this mindset – revealing at best a chilling contempt for Arab life and at worst, with the shelling of schools and shelters, a policy of indiscriminate hatred and revenge. Yes, killing women and children in shelters is about as low as you can get in wartime. As the State Department, in a rare moment of public candor, noted, it is appalling and disgraceful.
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George, Love your work.
That said: When was the LAST (First) War Crimes trial for a Victorious Army or Command?
Ever?
Team hasbara to the rescue I see!
Klink, I'm convinced you are Pro-Israeli. Your comments are like your character in the TV show. You make your opponents look better.
It's good to have you on our side!
Hardly, but I'm not exactly pro Palestinian either. Frankly I'm tired of hearing about this my entire life.
One more link to further prove a prior point I made which you disputed:
http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/civil-rights/214344-anti-semitism...
They buzz from site to site to post for Israhell!
Hamas just announced that the cease fire should end because they have new, modern missiles ready for Ben Gurion airport. There is little logic in Hamas - why print the above ungrounded rhetoric that only gains sympathy because Israel executed a low casualty (both Gazan and Israeli) military thrust that devastated the Gazan community that tolerates the misguided policies of their autocratic leaders, Hamas?
War is a humanitarian crime that is legal. The world's use of "war crime" to salve the utter catastrophe of war is a nonsense that legitimizes war.
Hamas has to look like the strong man in the eyes of the people. It's simply cave man, Muzzie machismo. They know their heads are on the block if they capitulate to the Jews.
So....they are willing to martyr the entire population in order to embarrass the Jews before the world press.
That is the logic. They either fight big and to the death.....or lose their heads and another macho mouth breather is put in his place.
Ho Li Fuk - now they are flying in four and six jet configurations. Like V’s.
'bout the last hour.
Were are you? They were here in San Francisco with planes nobody has seen before 2 weeks ago and big choppers painted in German winter. Over the city, like practice. Diving behind buildings.
They are just looking for their gold .... Nothing to worry about ...
I'm in 48187.
Livonia MI?
World War Four
The Four Horsemen
The Nobel Peace Prize for Satanyahoo...for his discretion
Apparently like every other country on the planet, Israel is firmly in the hands of its best psychopaths, who are running the show.
I firmly support Israel's right to exist there, but just like the Palestinians, the only way both peoples come out ahead is to get rid of their current leaderships...
But then, we here in America know THAT feeling, don't we?
sadly the Palestinians will never agree to co-exist with Israel - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NY8FW_JW73Q
check out Likud's platform. Or that of the even more insane Shas party.
I think something big is about to happen.
I’m west of 313 and was out killing bees. I noticed all commercial air traffic has vanished from the sky and fighter jets are practicing dog-fighting maneuvers.
Like 500 feet above the subdivision.
JORDAN IS PALESTINE
Except that, nope, it isn't. What is *now* Palestine was never, ever to be part of a Jewish state. This is simply one of those myths/lies peddled out of old hasbara handbooks.
In fact, what is now Israel was 90%+ Muslim and Christian a mere 120 years ago.
What you can not evade is the fact Jews who never set foot in Palestine, whose ancestors had been in Europe for over 1,000 years, claimed some aburd "right" to not only live in Palestine, but to displace the non-Jews who had lived there for centuries, if not longer (the Arab conquest was relatively small numbers of almost exclusively males - Palestinians are certainly largely related to the ancient Canaanites).
Zionism was a scheme of ethnic cleansing, and like Jews, claimed to be religious or ethnic depending on what seemed more favorable or convenient in a given context. Quotes and writings from early Zionist leaders makes clear they had every intention of ethnically cleansing a broder area than they either held or had been granted before 1948.
You can lie and bitch and cry anti-semite all you want. It doesn't change the facts.
Duffy, none of this will make any sense to those who do not know of God's promise to Abraham. And it makes perfect sense to those who do.
OMG, don't confuse them, they're in a full throated Saul Alinsky epileptic fit right now.
In their minds, its perfectly normal for Hamas to rain rockets down on civilians who are not "Palestinians".
I'm on team Gaza.
Then you must be against the folks who are intentionally placing their weapons systems amongst the folks they were elected to take care of.
EVIDENCE?
weapons, do you mean sticks and stones and bottle rockets?
Car bombs, bus bombs, suicide bombs, kidnappings, stonings, air plane hijackings....oh...yeah...killing a disabled Jew in a wheelchair on a cruise ship.
Other than that....yeah....sticks, stones and bottle rockets.
are sure they are from gaza?
eveyone around you hates you.
Yes but do read Art 51 Geneva Convention 1949 and follow the wording closely
Georg Washedup,
You've been here for years and you still are a liberal asshole.
Not wanting people to be killed makes you a liberal.....
Not wanting people to be killed makes you an enemy of the Hamas Charter.
If you haven't read through the multitude of links to the Charter posted here recently, including one posted upthread here, I suggest you Google "Hamas Charter" and read through it. The Charter vigorously advocates the killing of people. Which would cause those who don't want people to be killed to be vigorous in their condemnation of the Hamas Charter, right??
Ron Paul, Paul Craig Roberts, David Stockman and MANY OTHER true conservatives hate genocide by Israel or anyone else.
Nice try at number 1, though ...
Genocide? Do you even know the legal definition, I suspect you do but lie and pervert nonetheless, because that is the nature of your value system. I've read the conventions regarding war crimes and crimes against humanity, and a reasonable person conclusion would find that by definition, the Arabs have openly violated the criteria and are supported openly by the 56 Muslin nations of the UN.
Ron Paul? Paul Craig Roberts? David Stockman? Can any of them get elected to some body that makes decisions?
And if they can't - is that because they lack good/humane ideas, or because the bodies that make decisions do?
Meh, again..."when the tank treads hit the street where are they then?"
Is Israel more secure? Better fed? Better led?
Hitler never espoused his views of a "Greater Germany" very well either. Still...no one ever doubted his Dramatis Personae.
I mean "it's all good and well until Goofy takes one in the head." And of course EVERYONE loved Goofy. (Not as much as Mickey of course.)
The first words out of any General worth his stars is always the same: "this war thingy is not and never will be about the battle of the mind."
In short...if. Hamas starts lighting up the joint again the War Crimes thingy gets postponed.
Subterfuge does not sustain a war effort...actual objectives real and achievable do.
Just ask President Putin. How is cutting off your own food supply a "war aim"?
Seriously...can you fault President Obama for handing out food stamps?
Indeed if "Plan War Rampapalooza" (which of course is NOT happening mind you!) gets going here (as it so obviously is) "we're gonna need more than just food stamps to hand out"...yes, yes?
Around 2000 dead or more is simply what happens when one side loses a simple war. This is not gernocide and you fucking know better. You are just another example of liberals who don't care one damn bit about what Hamas, Hezbola, Boko Haram, ISIS or any of these other fucking idiot groups will do until they point the gun at your sick twisted self. Your lies are beyond what this site should stand for. George Washington my ass. You are a propagandist.
Huh? these are the incoherent ravings of a man who thinks its a war when one sie has unguided rockets and the other has US-taxpayer funded satellites, naval ships, fighter jets, attack helicopters, advanced artillery, etc.
Fuck you.
But he is correct, and you are not.
The question you will not address is what will the Jihadist do if given the chance?
That question speaks to the actual war being fought. Israel is determined to do whatever it takes to not find out the answer to the question. Israel's response, wherever, is in reaction to the reality of the Jihadist.
Discuss the implications of that, if you would like to appear knowledgeable.
International organization is revealed as mere cat's paw of sectarian factions. surprise
Israel, pissing off the world:
http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/civil-rights/214344-anti-semitism...
It only makes one wonder why they've been exiled 109 times throughout history.
http://www.biblebelievers.org.au/expelled.htm
EDIT: I love all the down votes from simply posting historical facts.
Because two the Abrahamic faiths have a very long history of brutality and imperialism/hegemony that is all but absent from Judaism.
LOL.
Jews recorded their massacres in their fucking "holy" books, you idiot clown. Jewshave happily engaged in all manner of brutality when they were able. As in Cyprus a couple thousand years ago.
We just saw it in Gaza.\
For you, though, I get it - Jews are always the victim, their suffering unique and sacred because they are "chosen" by Yahweh, who at some point went from being a father sky god, one of many, with a wife, to the only god.
The thing is, what you believe, dummy, is myth, and racist myth at that. It prevents you from being fully human so that when Israel does do horrific things, instead of immediately going into apologetics mode, you might feel some sorrow and regret and shame.
But the truth is, for you, and for many Zionazis, non-Jewish life simply doesn't matter as much.
You're a racist, little boy, who spends his time accusing others of racism.
Most of your self-concept is based on myths, legends and lies. I almost feel sorry for you. They have brainwashed you like a muthafucka, so much, you don't even begin to question it.
Duffy - it is about being the Victor versus the Vanquished, the Conqueror versus the Conquered. Anyone engaged in conflict will do whatever it takes to be the Victor rather than the Vanquished. That is all that matters. Anything you say that ignores this truth is irrelevant.
There is no other subject, even though you keep trying to pretend that there is.
Riiiiight, just keep lying to yourself. You're supposed to reserve that for the goy falconfelcher.
Ok - George you little anti semites- you've made your point....
mmm.let's see what i wish would happen to haters like you :
1- that your town- no sorry - specific your house will be targeted by hamas peace activits- let's compromise for about only 1% of the rockets that terrorists attacked Israel- that is 32 missiles....
2-i wish your neighborhood would have only 10% percent of the suicide bombers that blew themselves in Israel during 2002-2004 killing 1200 civilians- woman and children including american citizens. more than 100 suicieders that years...okay so that is 10 nice hamas guys with some explosives...around your town near the buses that drive your children
Now peopel like mr george are hypocrite hyeanas....
the unites states killed thousands of innocent civilians in Afganistan and Iraq-
Nato killed more than 500 children and woman in kosovo bombing
Mr Putin wiped out more than 300 thousand Chechens t when he had some terror at home
in Syrian and Iraq every day children and women are being massacred- numbers are 500 daily
now this is for all ignorants and clueless people in the world
Hamas = Isis=Alqaeda=Hizbullah
Please read hamas manifest
all they talk about is the extemination of the israeli and jew state and the brutal killing of jews...
Israel is the only western country in the world that faces such brutal terror...missiles suicide bombers and tunnels.
no country in the world woul tolerate this.
Isreal never targets deliberately civilians-
But all these facts dont matter to haters like mr george washington- because in his veins flows anti-semite genes....
if you think it's "anti-Semitic" to point our Israeli war crimes - then you're a fucking idiot.
Ebonics anyone?
Yes sir. As finally revealed in today's wsj is that the real reason Hamas decided to pick Fight with Israel has as much to do with the Egyptian blockade of GazA as it does Israel. The goal was to turn world/Arab opinion against israel and pressure al-sisi. Most Arab countries know this but idiots like jimmy carter are blinded by their liberal bias towards any people they consider to be "abused".
Truth is that if Israel wanted to target citizens there would be a lot more dead Palestinians and if Hamas had the ability there would be many more dead Israelis -- citizens. I guess those 3500 rockets were designed to hit military targets?
GazA is a tragedy. Lots of blame to go around but all the conspiricay theories about Israel creating Isis, Hamas etc is a total joke and only could be a result of bigotry/hatred for Israel.