NORMAN SIMMS: ISRAEL FALSELY ACCUSED OF WAR CRIMES
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/killing-innocent-civilians-in-gaza-israel-falsely-accused-of-war-crimes
If we were to believe what the New York Times writes, or what we are supposed to see on CNN or the BBC, there are indeed terrible crimes committed in Gaza by the IDF. In this light, Israel’s response is disproportionate, and the only solution to the carnage is a diplomatic one, a negotiated cease fire and then a truce that somehow returns the situation to what it was prior to the commencement of Protective Edge.
Unfortunately, as a Jew who feels deeply the charges, no matter how outrageous they are and however much they echo classical anti-Semitic tropes, I learned to distrust just about everything said or shown about Israel’s defensive actions by the main news media. Unfortunately because in m y heart of hearts I don’t want to think that the whole of liberal, intellectual elite are liars, self-deluded and maliciously motivated. But that is precisely what the evidence in the printed, electronic and digital media shows.
Let us take the key terms in the title given to this little essay.
That there is a lot of killing going on cannot stand as given, since in many instances all we have to go on are biased statements by so-called Palestinian sources, medical, political and militant, and by emotive terms expressed by well-known leftwing Hamas supporters in the international media, as well as the ever-hostile and prejudiced UN agencies in the region. Some of what is shown as evidence turns out to be: (a) images of death and destruction taken from other conflicts, such as Syria and Iraq, and already used one, two or three years ago; so that we have miracle victims and families who are known to have died several months or years ago, then were resurrected and shown dead on the streets of Gaza, in exactly the same poses and with precisely the same injuries; (b) completely concocted or staged events, so that the same persons keep jumping out of ambulances with the same dead or wounded bodies again and again, in the order of Mohammad Dura, the poor innocent child shot at a check point a few years back, but was never given a funeral, looked distinctly like a different person as a corpse in the morgue and as a cowering child on the street; and (c) some still photos purportedly of recent atrocities but subsequently shown to be grabs from Hollywood horror films. But most callous and grotesque is the way Hamas has used photos of families they massacred in Israel to represent their own dead.
Innocent victims, how is that expression defined? Are the families of Hamas operatives and commanders who do not leave their homes when warned to leave because of an imminent attack completely innocent, or are they victims of their own ideological delusion, or the enforced role as human shields imposed by other family members or political officials? Granted the occasional incidence of collateral damage, should we not also take into account the deliberate booby-trapping of expected targets-as revealed in captured Hamas war policy and plans: so that Israeli precision rocket fire leads to secondary explosions set up to destroy nearby residences and shops?
Related to the question of innocence is that of what constitutes a civilian in Gaza. Normally it would be assumed be persons who are not engaged in combat or in organizing or directing combat, whether in uniform or not. But in a situation where there is no formally constituted army, who have uniforms to wear or hold recognizable ranks and titles, the distinction between combatants and civilians fades to almost nothing. Moreover, there is an ancillary ambiguity in the identification of women, children and old people as innocent victims in this kind of a struggle. Women and the elderly persons can be seen as more as voluntary or coerced parts of a human shield to remain at home or brought to sites of imminent Israeli attack. They may sometimes be innocent, caught up at the wrong place and the wrong time, but that cannot be assumed on the basis of gender or age. In regard to children, when is a child a child: are sixteen and seventeen year old operatives who fire rockets or who act as runners with messages and ammunition exempt from being treated as combatants and thus legitimate targets? Are eight and nine year old boys wearing suicide belts and found running through tunnels on their way to targets inside Israel, such as schools, synagogues or private dwellings innocent of participation in armed combat? Nevertheless analysis of so-called statistics of those Palestinians killed in Operation Defensive Edge shows that the vast majority of casualties fall within the 16 to 35 age group, with extremely few deaths among those younger or older than that range.
If weapons are stored in mosques, if hospitals are areas of coordination and intelligence gathering, and if schools, private houses and apartments are used as points from which rockets are fired into Israel, they become legitimate targets, and any “civilians” killed or wounded are the responsibility of the of Hamas-acts of perfidy and war crimes. Only if you take war itself-a defensive and therefore a just and legitimate military action-as a war crime is it possible to find Israel guilty; and this is what has become politically correct amongst certain left-leaning anti-Zionist movements.
And as for proportionality, does one expect the police to arrive at the scene of a murder, a home invasion or an armed robbery with only the number of officers that match the criminals known to be at the site; and do the law officers first calculate the type and number of weapons possessed by the perpetrators and then only act with a similar arsenal. Swat teams arrive in large numbers to secure the area, protect innocent bystanders and engage with the threatening individual or group. Nor can it be expected that in a war zone each suspected enemy will be subjected to an ideological quiz or psychological profiling prior to the engagement. Yet Israel goes out of its way to announce its targets, warn inhabitants to leave within a specified time, and calls off operations when it seems probable there are actually civilians on site, whether innocent or not. In addition, the injured amongst the enemy are taken to Israeli hospitals for treatment.
Of course, in the heat of battle, there are mistakes and accidents. But war is hell. Still, Hamas is a terrorist organization, as identified by many countries and international agencies. It bears sole responsibility for the deaths and destruction caused by the warfare it has provoked. As Golda Meier said many years ago, in effect, we will perhaps someday forgive them for killing our children, but we can never ever forgive them for forcing us to kill their children.
CODA
Because news breaks all the time, it is difficult to digest everything all at once, and then to tease apart facts from lies, lies which are more innuendo and distortion than outright blatant fibs-though there are some of those whoppers as well. So here are some additional thoughts on the current battle to subdue Hamas in Gaza: the battle fought with guns, rockets and bull-dozers, and the other, perhaps more crucial battle fought with wit, imagination and reason. What do you see when you look hard and long at the televisions news?
1. There is no fighting in evidence: all Hamas militants are airbrushed out of the scene, so you only see passive women and children victims.
2. Mention of snipers and images of people stuck in alleyways goes unexplained, yet other sources speak of Hamas fighters and thugs preventing people from leaving designated target sites–and even shooting (at?) them as they attempt to flee.
3. While it is stated by the reporters that UN schools are targets, there is no explanation of how even the UNRWH admitted (at least twice) that they were stuffed with missiles and other weapons–and which were then handed back to Hamas once the exposure was made. No evidence of the schools being used for teaching purposes recently.
4. No context of what percentage of civilian casualties are “normal” in other conflicts in the region or further afield these days. Those figures show that in Gaza the incidence of civilian dead and injured (putting aside the genuineness of the definitions of civilian, child and injury) is way below normal.
All of which does not deny that many Palestinians have died and are suffering physical and psychological trauma, but it does put in doubt the reflex (ideological) interpretations by leftwing and mainstream media as to responsibility and extent of the crisis.
Norman Simms is the author of Alfred Dreyfus: Man, Milieu, Mentality and Midrash (Academic Studies Press, 2011). The second volume in the series, Alfred Dreyfus: In the Context of His Times: Alfred Dreyfus as Lover, Intellectual, Poet and Jew (also by Academic Studies Press) was published in July 2013; and the third Alfred and Lucie Dreyfus in the Phantasmagoria (Cambridge Scholars Publisher, UK) in September 2013.
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