[News] “Balance” in UN Gaza report can’t hide massive Israeli war crimes

[Anti-Imperialist News]

  “Balance” in UN Gaza report can’t hide massive Israeli war crimes

Ali Abunimah <https://electronicintifada.net/people/ali-abunimah> 
Activism and BDS Beat 
<https://electronicintifada.net/blog/activism-and-bds-beat> 22 June 2015
*https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/balance-un-gaza-report-cant-hide-massive-israeli-war-crimes*

There can be no surprise that the UN Human Rights Council’s 
<https://electronicintifada.net/tags/un-human-rights-council> 
independent investigation of Israel’s assault on Gaza last summer found 
evidence of massive and systematic war crimes.

Its report 
<http://www.ohchr.org/EN/HRBodies/HRC/CoIGazaConflict/Pages/ReportCoIGaza.aspx#report>, 
published Monday in Geneva, says investigators were “able to gather 
substantial information pointing to serious violations of international 
humanitarian law and international human rights law by Israel and by 
Palestinian armed groups.”

“The extent of the devastation and human suffering in Gaza was 
unprecedented and will impact generations to come,” the chair of the 
investigation commission, Justice Mary McGowan Davis told media 
<http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=16119&LangID=E>, 
adding that “there is also ongoing fear in Israel among communities who 
come under regular threat.”

Despite the “balanced” language that is now the habitual refuge of 
international officials hoping to avoid false accusations of anti-Israel 
bias, the evidence shows that the scale and impact of Israeli violence 
dwarfs anything allegedly done by Palestinians.

Israel systematically targeted Palestinian residential buildings and 
infrastructure without any apparent military justification. The horror 
of what Israel did, detailed in the 183-page report, cannot be 
adequately summarized here.

In total, 2,251 Palestinians were killed, including 1,462 Palestinian 
civilians, among them 551 children, the report states. More than 11,000 
Palestinians, including 3,540 women and 3,436 children, were injured 
with almost 10 percent suffering permanent disabilities.

Six civilians died in Israel and more than 60 Israeli soldiers died in 
fighting with the Palestinian resistance.

But a key finding is that the mass destruction and killing inflicted by 
Israel, often amounting to war crimes, “may have constituted military 
tactics reflective of a broader policy, approved at least tacitly by 
decision-makers at the highest levels of the Government of Israel.”

This finding provides an important basis for Palestinians to pursue 
Israeli leaders, not just their uniformed subordinates, and bring them 
to justice in international courts.

The report also confirms that Israel remains the occupying power in Gaza 
as far as international law is concerned, because it continues to 
exercise “effective control” over the territory. Israel is therefore 
subject to all the legal obligations of an occupying power to protect 
civilians there.

It also found a massive escalation of Israeli violations of Palestinian 
human rights in the occupied West Bank including East Jerusalem in the 
weeks preceding and during the Gaza assault that was “overshadowed by 
the tragic events in Gaza.”


    Israeli obstruction

The commission was made up of two independent experts: former New York 
Supreme Court Justice Mary McGowan Davis, who chaired it, and Senegal’s 
Doudou Diène, a former UN special rapporteur on racism.

The previous chair, Canadian international law expert William Schabas, 
resigned from the commission in February under relentless Israeli 
criticism and pressure.

Israel’s concern about the make up of the committee was not matched by a 
willingness to cooperate with its work. Israel refused to respond to any 
requests for information and barred the investigators from traveling to 
the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip or to present-day Israel.

The Egyptian military regime also colluded with Israel by blocking 
investigators entering Gaza through the Rafah crossing 
<https://electronicintifada.net/tags/rafah>.

Nonetheless, the investigators and their staff conducted hundreds of 
interviews with victims and witnesses, received hundreds of written 
submissions and obtained large amounts of data from other UN bodies. 
They also consulted satellite imagery, independent military experts, 
government documents and statements and evidence gathered by independent 
organizations.


    Deliberate attacks on civilians

Israel carried out more than 6,000 airstrikes on Gaza last summer, the 
report states, including “targeted attacks on residential and other 
buildings.”

As a result of these attacks, 142 Palestinians families “had three or 
more members killed in the same incident owing to the destruction of 
residential buildings,” for a total of at least 742 deaths, according to 
UN figures.

The report examines in detail 15 attacks on residential buildings in 
which a total of 216 people were killed, including 115 children and 50 
women. Israel refused to provide any information on what made these 
buildings alleged military targets.


    Killed while they slept

In one of the incidents, at 2 am on 10 July, Israel attacked the house 
of Mahmoud al-Haj in Khan Younis. All eight members of the family were 
killed, including two children and three women. The bomb completely 
destroyed the house and damaged surrounding homes injuring 20 more 
people, mostly women and children.

In another attack, on the afternoon of 21 July, Israeli forces fired two 
missiles at the five-story building of the al-Qassas family, killing 
nine people, including six children and three women, one of them 
pregnant. Another 10, mostly children and one a baby, were injured.

The investigators could find no information to suggest “that there was a 
military target in the al-Qassas building.”

This was frequently the case. “In many of the cases examined by the 
commission, as well as in incidents reported by local and international 
organizations,” the report states, “there is little or no information as 
to how residential buildings, which are prima facie civilian objects 
immune from attack, came to be regarded as legitimate military objectives.”


    Israeli justification debunked

The report does find that “indications of possible military objectives 
emerged in nine of the 15 cases” of attacks on residential buildings 
that it examines.

But it says that “the potential targets of the attack seem to have been 
mostly individuals who were or who could have been present in the 
building that was struck, indicating that one or several individuals 
were the likely target and not the building itself.”

Here, the report refutes one of the major Israeli justifications for 
attacking homes: that someone associated with an armed group lives in 
one. However, the report “underlines that the mere fact of being a 
member of the political wing of Hamas or any other organization in Gaza, 
or working for the authorities … is not sufficient in and of itself to 
render a person a legitimate military target.”

It adds that “under international humanitarian law, a member of an armed 
group has to have a continuous combat function to constitute a 
legitimate military target.”

Even if the person were a “legitimate military target,” Israel’s method 
of attacking homes is disrproportionate, indiscriminate and illegal.

The investigators also consulted military experts who found that the 
types of US-supplied bombs Israel dropped – such as the GBU-32/MK-82 
1,000 lb bomb or the GBU-31/MK-84 2,000 lb bomb – have such a wide 
impact that their use amounted to indiscriminate attacks.

During the attack, Israel often boasted about its use of a smaller 
“warning missile” or “knock on the roof” to tell residents to get out of 
a building minutes before a much bigger explosion. But the report 
concludes “that the ‘roof-knocking’ technique is not effective” and 
there were many instances in which civilians were killed despite such 
warnings.


    Destruction of Shujaiya

On 19 and 20 July, Israel carried out a massive artillery bombardment of 
the Shujaiya <https://electronicintifada.net/tags/shujaiya> neighborhood 
of eastern Gaza City, killing at least 55 people, including 19 children 
and 14 women.

As The Electronic Intifada reported last year 
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/how-many-bombs-has-israel-dropped-gaza>, 
the type of weapons used – predominantly heavy artillery and mortars – 
means the attack could not but have been indiscriminate.

Israel also used over 100 one-ton bombs in the attack which destroyed 
670 buildings and damaged another 1,200.

The UN report now confirms that “these methods and means employed by the 
[Israeli army] could not, in such a small and densely populated area, be 
directed at a specific military target and could not adequately 
distinguish between civilians and civilian objects and military 
objectives as required by [international humanitarian law].”

“Therefore,” the report concludes, “there are strong indications that 
the IDF’s [Israeli army] Shujaiya operation on 19 and 20 July was 
conducted in violation of the prohibition of indiscriminate attacks and 
may amount to a war crime.”


    Human shields

Similarly, the report examines and finds evidence of war crimes during 
Israel’s siege and shelling of the village of Khuzaa 
<http://electronicintifada/net/tags/khuzaa> between 20 July and 1 August 
and its massive bombardment 
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/adri-nieuwhof/israel-used-disappearance-soldier-pretext-killing-spree-rights-group> 
of the southern city of Rafah 
<https://electronicintifada.net/tags/rafah> after one of its soldiers 
was reported captured on 1 August.

Israel also used human shields in Khuzaa, a farming village in east 
central Gaza. On 23 July, for instance, 17-year-old Ahmed Abu Reda was 
abducted by Israeli soldiers from his family as they tried to flee the area.

He was kept hostage for five days during which he was interrogated and, 
according to his father, forced to undertake “risky tasks such as 
opening doors, inspecting rooms, switching the lights on and off to test 
whether secret explosives were being connected to the light switches, 
open fridges and other devices that may have detonated explosions.”

It concludes that “there are strong indications that elements of the IDF 
operation in Khuzaa may qualify as direct attacks against civilians or 
civilian objects and may thus amount to a war crime.”

In Rafah, Israel implemented the “Hannibal Directive 
<https://electronicintifada.net/tags/hannibal-directive>,” a procedure 
which calls for massive fire to prevent a soldier being captured even if 
it kills the soldier.

The report cites Israel’s “military culture” resulting from this and 
other policies as “a contributing factor for the unleashing of massive 
firepower on Rafah, in total disregard for its impact on the civilian 
population.”

It also finds that Israeli commanders continued the attack for hours 
even when they must have known about the catastrophic death and injury 
they were causing to civilians – in itself a potential war crime.


    Accusations against Palestinians

Any Israeli claim that the investigation is biased is refuted by the 
accusations the report levels against Palestinian resistance groups.

It says the investigators have “serious concerns with regard to the 
inherently indiscriminate nature of most of the projectiles directed 
towards Israel by these groups and to the targeting of Israeli 
civilians, which violate international humanitarian law and may amount 
to a war crime.”

It also condemns the extrajudicial executions by Hamas of two dozen 
Palestinians accused of collaborating with the enemy as a war crime. 
These executions had already been condemned by Palestinian and 
international human rights organizations.

Yet in many of the specific instances examined by the committee, 
especially those involving mortar fire at Israeli targets near the Gaza 
boundary, the investigators found that Palestinians were aiming at 
Israeli military targets that were often deliberately placed close to 
civilian communities.


    Military bases near civilians

The report notes “a number of military objectives are located in various 
parts of Israel, in some cases in the immediate vicinity of built up 
areas such as the Hatzor airbase, or in the case of the IDF 
Headquarters, in the midst of a densely populated area.”

It adds that during the attack on Gaza, “the number of IDF positions in 
the south of Israel around Gaza, sometimes close to civilian 
communities, was higher than usual.”

“Mortar fire by the Palestinian armed groups appears to have often been 
aimed at specific targets and is more precise than the rockets in the 
armed groups’ arsenal,” the report states.

On 22 August 2014, 4-year-old Daniel Tregerman, the only Israeli child 
fatality in the conflict, was killed by a mortar shell in his home at 
Kibbutz Nahal Oz, 2 kilometers from the Gaza boundary.

The report notes that this too was an area of intense military activity.

“Based on the information available,” the report states, “the commission 
cannot exclude that the intended target of the tragic attack of 22 
August on Kibbutz Nahal Oz was the IDF Chief of Staff.”


    Israeli claims hard to verify

The report acknowledges that in many cases, Palestinian armed groups 
warned Israeli civilians, especially in the areas near Gaza, and when 
they fired rockets towards Ben Gurion Airport, of impending attacks.

The investigators say they asked Israel for “detailed information” on 
“where the rockets and mortars fired by Palestinian armed groups in Gaza 
actually landed so as to make a more detailed assessment of the 
proportion of cases in which they were directed at densely populated 
areas in Israel.”

But Israel – which is always eager to tell global media about how its 
civilians are the main targets of Palestinian groups – refused, making 
it “difficult for the commission to determine the extent to which 
attacks [were] directed at the civilian population in Israel.”


    Legitimate military targets

As for tunnels dug from Gaza into present-day Israel, the report is 
blunt: “during the period under examination, the tunnels were only used 
to conduct attacks directed at IDF positions in Israel in the vicinity 
of the Green Line, which are legitimate military targets.”

The report concedes, however, that “in the vast majority of individual 
rocket and mortar attacks, the commission does not have information on 
the intended targets, but notes that Palestinian armed groups announced 
that they intended to attack population centers in Israel and declared 
responsibility for launches directed at different places in Israel.”

It also notes that the “majority of projectiles fired by Palestinian 
armed groups consisted of rockets that at best were equipped with only 
rudimentary guidance systems and in the vast majority of cases had none 
at all.”

It acknowledges that the “limitations of the military arsenals of 
Palestinian armed groups was advanced as a reason for their failure to 
attack precisely military targets.”

“Security experts have noted that while the al-Qassam Brigades [the 
military wing of Hamas] may have targeted civilians in the past as part 
of its military strategy, in 2014 its declared official policy was ‘to 
focus on military or semi-military targets and to avoid other targets, 
especially civilians,’” the report observes.

But it notes that under the relevant international law, the “military 
capacity of the parties to a conflict is irrelevant to their obligation 
to respect the prohibition against indiscriminate attacks.”

While this may be the case, what it indicates is that if Palestinians 
exercising a legitimate right to resistance and self-defense were 
allowed access to more precise weapons, most of the activities 
designated as possible war crimes in the report would probably not have 
occurred.

This is not true, however, in the case of Israel, which boasts about its 
very precise weapons and yet inflicted massive amounts of death, injury 
and destruction on civilians as a result of its policy of targeting them.

Instead, Palestinian resistance groups are designated as “terrorists” 
and barred from obtaining more accurate weapons, while the United 
States, European Union and other governments continue to supply Israel’s 
massive arsenal.

The report, if anything, displays a distinct anti-Palestinian bias, 
using the word “resistance” only between quotation marks as if the right 
to resist belligerent military occupation is not a well-recognized right 
in international law.


    Analysis

The report looks at the events in Palestine through the strict lens of 
international humanitarian and human rights law. In doing so it finds 
evidence that both Palestinians and Israelis committed war crimes and 
other violations.

But the crimes allegedly committed by Israel are massive compared to 
anything allegedly done by Palestinians.

There can also be no moral equivalence between the legitimate 
self-defense and resistance of a people under occupation and the 
aggression of an occupier whose aim is to subject millions of people to 
its unopposed military tyranny.

It is also apparent that most, though not all, of the transgressions 
alleged against Palestinians are an artifact of the inferior and 
unguided weapons, often locally made in Gaza, that are available to 
resistance groups.

But the approach of the so-called “international community” has been to 
deny Palestinians the means to resist against Israeli occupation forces 
and then to condemn them for using what they have.

Despite this, the fact remains that while Israel mostly killed 
civilians, Palestinians mostly killed Israeli soldiers. Indeed, 65 
percent of those killed by Israel were civilians, while 90 percent of 
those killed by Palestinians were /armed combatant soldiers/.

Nothing is more legitimate than Palestinian resistance and nothing is 
more illegitimate than Israeli occupation. And yet it is to Israel that 
weapons of massive destruction continue to flow, often from the 
countries that preach loudest about human rights and international law.


    Means of resistance

It is clear that many governments and international organizations 
tacitly reject the Palestinian right to resist militarily even if they 
do not say so openly. Many supporters of Palestinian rights and many 
Palestinians prefer nonviolence, believing that in the long run it will 
make a just peace more feasible.

If that is the case, then everyone must be proactive in offering support 
for nonviolent alternatives that can help redress the balance of power 
between a tenacious belligerent occupier and its victims.

Boycott, divestment and sanctions, for instance, must be recognized and 
promoted by the so-called international community as a legitimate means 
of resistance supplementing other forms of legitimate resistance to 
colonial occupation.

As for Israel, its strategy with this investigation as in others, was to 
try to obstruct it and then to whine that it is unfair and biased. If 
Israel is so certain that its actions were legal and correct, it should 
have nothing to hide.

Given the consequences if the report’s call for accountability were to 
be implemented, it is no surprise that the government of Prime Minister 
Benjamin Netanyahu and its staunch ally, the US administration of 
President Barack Obama, have attacked and delegitimized the UN 
investigation from the very start.

It remains to be seen if others will have the courage to demand 
accountability and ensure this report is not buried like the Goldstone 
report <https://electronicintifada.net/tags/goldstone-report> into 
Israel’s 2008-2009 massacre in Gaza.

Without such accountability, another Israeli massacre in Gaza is only a 
matter of time.

-- 
Freedom Archives 522 Valencia Street San Francisco, CA 94110 415 
863.9977 www.freedomarchives.org
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