It’s interesting to see how successful Israel can be in muddying the waters in the U.S. media about their culpability for blowing the shit out of a United Nations-run school in the Gaza Strip, killing 15 people and injuring more than a hundred people. There really shouldn’t be any debate about responsibility here since Israel has admitted to shelling the school and used as an excuse that they had given advanced warning. They also used as an excuse that there was rocket fire emanating from the area. So, you have to ignore these things to even begin to suggest that the school might have been shelled multiple times by Hamas by accident.
The actual debate should be about whether or not Hamas is using U.N.-run schools, hospitals and mosques to store and fire rockets, which Israel has constantly claimed to be the case. If this claim is true, then Hamas shares responsibility for the loss of innocent life. But that doesn’t mean that the New York Times should lose its reasoning faculties and become incapable of reporting on who blasted the crap out of a school that was serving as a refuge for misplaced persons.
Reminder:
While human rights organizations haven’t yet addressed “human shields” allegations in the ongoing round of Israel-Gaza violence, they did after the 2009 round when Israel killed at least 773 Palestinian civilians, compared to three Israeli civilian casualties (a ratio of 257:1), and used the same “human shields” argument to deflect responsibility for those deaths. When the dust settled, Amnesty International investigated the matter and concluded that there was “no evidence that [Palestinian] rockets were launched from residential houses or buildings while civilians were in these buildings.” More attention-worthy was the report’s note that,
in the cases of [Israeli] precision missiles or tank shells which killed [Palestinian] civilians in their homes, no fighters were present in the houses that were struck and Amnesty International delegates found no indication that there had been any armed confrontations or other military activity in the immediate vicinity at the time of the attack.
Meanwhile:
By contrast, the same report found that “in several cases Israeli soldiers also used [Palestinian] civilians, including children, as `human shields’.” Going back in time just a little further to put this into context is important: when the Israeli Supreme Court ruled in 2005 that the Israeli military had to stop using Palestinian civilians as human shields, the Israeli “defense” establishment objected to the ruling. The appeal against the ruling failed, and the practice remains technically illegal, but Israel implicitly encourages it to continue by offering an “inadequate … slap on the wrist,” as Human Rights Watch put it, to Israeli soldiers caught using this reprehensible tactic.
This reveals two important things: the first is the moral hypocrisy and chutzpah on display when Israel ignores its own use of human shields as it accuses its enemies of using them. The second is Israel’s self-contradicting logic: If Palestinian militants had such disregard for Palestinian civilian lives, why was the Israeli military so invested in maintaining the ability to use Palestinians as shields? The fact that the Israeli army wants to use Palestinian human shields actually proves that they believe Palestinian militants prefer not to endanger their own civilians.
Link
Chris Gunness, UNRWA Spokesman
The link in the first line of the post doesn’t work. I assume you meant to link to this.
All the propaganda in the world is not going to matter if the West Bank rises in a controlled, mostly non-violent Third Intifada after prayers today. And the Day of Power comes through the weekend. An important symbolic day that will likely turn out large numbers if there is a third uprising.
There have already been East-Berlin-like attacks at trying to tear down the wall that Israel used to appropriate more Palestinian territory and protect the “settlements”.
Purity in non-violence is impossible with the IDF around and emotions running strong, but last night in Ramallah was remarkably disciplined. The major violence consisted of torching a checkpoint building at the wall. Last report from the Ramallah hospital was four dead and 150 injured. Estimate of crowd ran to 48,000. If that sort of crowd discipline continues, Israel has lost the propaganda war.
The IDF policy, like most security forces, will be to whack the hornets nest to provide the pictures and reports that would justify a brutally hard military response. For US audiences, the US military got away with that when there were protests in Fallujah. What was a massacre became the “First Battle of Fallujah” and was followed by the first massive bombing of the city. Sunnis in Fallujah were among the first to ally with ISIS, which shows how counterproductive a policy of brute force can be in attaining political aims.
Fuck Israel. I’m disgusted by how our country holds up a privacy curtain for Israel to commit war crimes. (Is America any more moral? Of course not.) I might have somewhat more sympathy for Israel if they had made a single good faith step in the last twenty years to resolve the situation. I’m supposed to sympathize with Israel because of the rockets? People say, no country on earth would tolerate that? What if Mexico were sending rockets into America? Ok, what if Mexico was entirely blockaded by America, and America were a client of the Venusian Imperial Hegemon and made sure that Mexico was perpetually denied international recognition, and that the people of Mexico essentially had no human rights as far as America was concerned, and oh America reserved the right to periodically bomb the shit out of portions of Mexican cities for the express purpose of “eradicating terrorists” but really just to teach the Mexicans who was boss, which lessons inevitably involved the violent murder of hundreds of children? And the death toll for the last 15 years was something like 10K on the Mexican side and several dozen on the American side, not to mention the incalculable misery caused by living in the world’s largest open air prison camp? And I’m supposed to be outraged about the Mexican rocket fire? And I’m supposed to take seriously for a nano-second the idea that America regrets the civilian toll but gosh those heartless and cunning Mexican terrorists have hidden rockets under children’s beds and in schools and absolutely everywhere a bomb falls, and it’s really America that’s the victim here by being forced to blow up children sleeping on rockets everywhere. And I’m supposed to believe that America, possessing vastly more wealth, social organization, and military power, has absolutely no choice but to explode children, which doesn’t even eliminate the rocket fire, and has absolutely no other options till the end of time because those Mexicans just insist on shooting some rockets over which, a few times a year get lucky and kill someone, and that the eternal nature of this horrific situation is entirely the fault of some religious extremists in Mexico. Well I don’t fucking buy it.
exactly. The proper question is what country on earth would tolerate what the Palestinians (and Gazans) have had to endure for 4+ decades?
Excellent point. And, what if we started things off by stealing at gunpoint say, half of Mexico then kicked the inhabitants off of their land so that we could form a 51st state?
I think that’s how we formed Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California isn’t it?
And in parallel isn’t that what manifest destiny was all about as we ethnically cleansed from sea to shining sea?
Especially if this turns out to be true:
Hamas Didn’t Kidnap the Israeli Teens After All — NYMag
So now the UN and its staffs are complicit in the Hamas rocketry? Who’s next, Amnesty International? Basically it looks like any community center in Gaza is to be rubbled by Israeli missles, whoever may run it.
The IDF will say anything. And the NYT will duly print it. Your lib’rul media!
And Jodi Rudoren, the main NYT Middle East correspondent, basically lives in a settler home. Or the equivalent.
The captain of the US Liberty would like a word with you.
“displaced” persons… not “misplaced”
Former Ambassador from Israel Michael Oren has a chilling op-ed in the Washington Post. Not really worth reading as its the same Israeli line as usual. But the comments are instructive with emotions flaring on both sides.
But this one is absolutely insane:
Talk about absolute ignorance of history and buying of the “explanation”.
○ Rice: Israel is where the US learned about homeland security On her 25th visit to Israel in 2012 ...
○ Timeline of Curious Events US-Israel and Tactical Stand-off
○ In Gaza, UN teams destroy unexploded ordnance with white phosphorus – 2011
That will breng the parties to the peace table … NOT!
And the legislation is attached as an amendment to an immigration reform bill. So far there has been no movement on it because the GOP is insisting that it be separated from the immigration reform legislation.
Democrats proposed it; the pressure is on the GOP.
○ Ambassador Ron Dermer Owns CNN
Lanny Davis? Holy Colonel Mortimer!!