The United Nations special rapporteur on human rights, Richard Falk, stated that the Israeli offensive on Gaza this year constitutes crimes against humanity. In a report released on Thursday, Mr. Falk stated “Israel’s military assault on densely populated Gaza appeared to constitute a grave war crime. ” This report was disclosed on the same day that the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that Israeli forces killed Palestinian civilians under permissive rules of engagement and intentionally destroyed their property, according to soldiers who fought in the offensive. In one account from an Israeli soldier, a Haaretz reporter noted that a Palestinian family was detained it its home for several days while soldiers used the house as an observation post. The family was released then tragedy struck.
The platoon commander let the family go and told them to go to the right. One mother and her two children didn’t understand and went to the left, but they forgot to tell the sharpshooter on the roof they had let them go and it was okay, and he should hold his fire and he … he did what he was supposed to, like he was following his orders. The sharpshooter saw a woman and children approaching him, closer than the lines he was told no one should pass. He shot them straight away. In any case, what happened is that in the end he killed them.
The Israeli military does not disclose its rules of engagement so it will be difficult to contrast soldiers’ accounts with the authorized practices of troops in the conduct of war. In a recent conference at the office of Amnesty International in Washington DC, Chris Cobb-Smith, a security consultant with AI reported on his return from Gaza on February that there did not appear to be disciplined military practices in place that would have prevented the kinds of problems coming to light in the recent days.
The combined indiscriminate killing of women and children and the use of high explosive artillery, mortars, landmines and helicopter-launched Hellfire missiles into civilian areas suggest to the casual observer that the Israeli Defense Forces purposefully targeted civilians in their war, dubbed Cast Lead. As noted in an editorial in Haaretz on March 19th,
The IDF’s internal investigations, which are moving ahead very slowly, are not enough. The army is absorbing more and more religious extremism from the teachings of the IDF’s rabbinate. It would be appropriate to investigate the problems from outside the IDF and root them out before the rot destroys the IDF and Israeli society.
The U.N.’s Falk stated further that “[a]s all borders were sealed, civilians could not escape from the orbit of harm. This denial of people’s right to flee the war zone as refugees may also constitute a crime against humanity.
Stumble It!
{ 0 comments… add one now }