Gaza 2014, a scene of unsurpassed brutality indicting Israel as a
war-criminal nation nonpareil, though here, in the Report, pursuant to
HRC resolution S-21/S, this is only hinted at despite the overwhelming
evidence presented of systematic destruction, wanton murder of
civilians, indiscriminate policies aimed at terrorizing a whole people
into submission. Yes, Palestinians, too, come in for criticism—the
tunnels, mortar firings, border raids—in a tactful show of impartiality,
but the actuality of a disproportion in the conduct of operations in
which the Israeli Defense Forces were merciless in acting out a
scorched-earth militaristic paradigm (far beyond anything Hamas could
even have tried, if in fact it were so inclined) is enough of an
indelible moral stain as to warrant Israel’s increasingly pariah status
in world opinion. The accommodative—indeed, celebratory–response of
global Jewry to Israel’s behavior transmogrifies the very identity and
historical significance of a religion whose tradition aligned it with
radicalism, humane learning and practice, labor rights, respect for all
humankind (including in America, as a fading memory now, fighting in the
trenches in civil rights and antiwar activity).
The Report is unusually comprehensive, one reason Israel (which did
not allow the Commission into its country or the Occupied Territories,
illustrating its contempt for the UN virtually since day one) jumped the
gun and published a response before the Report was issued. Cocksure,
Israel answers to no-one and acts accordingly. Hence, pummeling with
impunity a largely helpless populace, rendered still weaker by an
encompassing blockade. Given Israel’s refusal to let the Commission
into Gaza, we will never know the full cost of the destruction,
especially from interviews and the taking of personal testimony. Yet a
surprising amount of information has nevertheless come out, including
that from the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights
((OHCHR), various UN agencies (as when their schools, crowded with
Palestinians seeking refuge, were deliberately targeted), and NGOs on
the ground.
In stating the legal framework, i.e., accountability of the parties,
according to international humanitarian law and international human
rights law, the Report outlines three principles, violation of which
should be presumptive evidence of war crimes (the Report reticent to a
fault, does not make the judgment), in each case of which we see why
Israel is so uncooperative—to the point of having precious few internal
proceedings leading to conviction, and even then, not above the
foot-soldiers’ level, for such crimes. The principles are plainly put:
“Firstly, the principle of distinction requires that parties to a
conflict distinguish between civilians and civilian objects on one hand
and combatants and military objectives on the other. Attacks may only
be directed against the latter. Secondly, the principle of
proportionality prohibits attacks that are expected to cause incidental
loss of life or injury to civilians or damage to civilian objects, which
would be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military
advantage anticipated. Thirdly, the principle of precautions in attack
requires all parties to take all feasible measures to avoid and in any
event to minimize incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians
and damage to civilian objects.”
Distinction, proportionality, precautions: let’s get right down to
it. Figures don’t lie; exact numbers since derived from different
sources may be a bit off, but the disproportion is self-evident. Thus
the Report states: In Gaza “the scale of devastation was unprecedented.
The death toll alone speaks volumes: 2,251 Palestinians were killed,
including 1,462 Palestinian civilians, of whom 299 women and 551
children, and 11,231 Palestinians, including 3,540 women and 3,436
children, were injured, of whom 10 per cent suffered permanent
disability as a result.” In contrast, “the death of six civilians in
Israel and 67 soldiers and the injury of up to 1,600 others were also
the tragic result of the hostilities.” Israel pointed to rockets and
mortars “amounting to almost $25 million” in damages and psychological
damage to its citizens because of the existence of the tunnels. The
context is rather harsher in Gaza: “In Gaza, as Palestinians struggled
to find ways to save their own lives and those of their families, they
were confronted with intense attacks, with no way of knowing which
locations would be hit and which might be considered safe. People began
to move from one place to another, only to encounter attacks in the new
neighborhood, and they would have to move on. Closed into the [Gaza]
Strip, with no possibility to exit, at times, 44 per cent of Gaza was
either a no-go area or the object of evacuation warnings. These
terrifying circumstances created a sense of entrapment, of having ‘no
safe place’ to go.” Disproportion?
Israelis could whine, as they meanwhile pulverized the Gazans,
because to them a Palestinian life was of little value; the death of an
IDF soldier would result in massive killings, often sadistic in the pain
inflicted. The Report goes on: “Alongside the toll on civilian lives,
there was enormous destruction of civilian infrastructure in Gaza:
18,000 housing units were destroyed in whole or in part, much of the
electricity network and of the water and sanitation infrastructure were
incapacitated, and 73 medical facilities and many ambulances were
damaged.” Not in the Report (a serious omission) is the deliberateness
of these attacks, requiring pinpoint accuracy, and we learned at the
time that hospitals were overcrowded, the injured filling hallways,
those on operating tables—when the electricity went out—made to suffer
and die. The water-treatment plants were a favorite target as well.
The report continues: “Many Palestinians were uprooted from their
homes or temporary shelters multiple times; at the height of the
hostilities, the number of internally displaced persons reached 500,000,
or 28 per cent of the population. The effects of this devastation had a
severe impact on the human rights of Palestinians in Gaza and will do
so for generations to come.” “The West Bank,” it adds, “including East
Jerusalem, witnessed a period of heightened tensions and widespread
human rights violations, including the fundamental right to life,” but
largely unnoticed given the events in Gaza. Too, the hostilities in
Gaza “cannot be assessed separately from the blockade imposed by
Israel.” The further one probes the more one-sided the contest,
although the Report refrains from such comments, at least in so many
words: “The blockade and the military operation have led to a protection
crisis and chronic, widespread and systematic violations of human
rights, first and foremost the rights to life and security, but also to
health, housing, education and many others.” The “protection crisis,” I
surmise, refers to the failure of Israel to protect these rights “in
accordance with international human rights law,” i.e., Israel’s
obligation, as in the case of any occupying power, to “take concrete
steps towards their full realization.”
Children on both sides “were savagely affected by the events”;
however, the Gazan case seems worse off. The UN Children’s Fund reveals
that in Gaza “more than 1,500 children were orphaned.” Next, the
Report “focuses on areas that reflect new patterns, notably attacks by
Israel on residential buildings resulting in the death of entire
families; Israel’s ground operations, which leveled urban neighborhoods;
and violations by Palestinian armed groups and authorities in Gaza,
including their reliance on attack tunnels.” “New patterns,” the old
being sufficiently disheartening as not to be worthy of comment: “Other
incidents—namely attacks by Israel on United Nations shelters, medical
facilities, ambulances, and other critical infrastructure—are considered
less thoroughly, because these patterns have been a recurring reality
in this and prior conflicts.” Wow, what a record: same old, same old
stunning violations of human rights. Meanwhile, as for Palestinians,
there were several mortar hits on kibbutzim. IDF also discovered “32
tunnels, 14 of which extended beyond the Green Line into Israel.” I do
not apologize for Palestinian actions; children were killed, rockets
promiscuously fired (unlike the Israelis, no guidance systems), but
again the disproportion, as when the Report notes: “During the 51-day
operation, the Israel Defense Forces carried out more than 6,000
airstrikes in Gaza, many of which hit residential buildings.” The
details are grisly (no compassion, apologies, only more unrelenting
attacks expressed by Israel), as here: ”…at least 142 Palestinian
families had three or more members killed in the same incident,
amounting to a total of 742 fatalities.” Tawfik Abu Jama, a Gazan
father of eight, recalled: “’I was sitting with my family at the table,
ready to break the fast. Suddenly we were sucked into the ground.
Later that evening, I woke up in the hospital and was told my wife and
children had died.’”
Israel denounces the Report before its release and brazenly prides
itself on the commission of mass civilian deaths (one recalls the
citizens of Siderot sitting on the hillside cheering the explosions as
they struck Gaza, munchies in hand, couches dragged out for comfort—a
searing image of moral depravity). Airstrikes, just the thing to
measure national virility: “The commission investigated 15 cases of
strikes on residential buildings across Gaza, in which a total of 216
people were killed, including 115 children and 50 women.” The
Commission found that in all cases “precision-guided weapons were used,”
a finding “corroborated by satellite imagery analysis,” and “many of
the incidents took place in the evening or at dawn, when families
gathered for iftar and suhhur, the Ramadan meals, or at night, when
people were asleep.” The Report states the obvious: “The timing of the
attacks increased the likelihood that many people, often entire
families, would be at home.
Attacking residential buildings rendered
women particularly vulnerable to death and injury.” Even the Report has
to recur to one of its principles: “With regard to proportionality,
given the circumstances, a reasonable commander would have been aware
that these attacks would be likely to result in a large number of
civilian casualties and the complete or partial destruction of the
building.” Why else the attack?
One point emphasized is that knowing the damage inflicted and loss of
life by the airstrikes, why did not these attacks come under closer
scrutiny, questioned, halted? The Report continues: “Furthermore, the
large number of targeted attacks against residential buildings and the
fact that such attacks continued throughout the operation, even after
the dire impact of these attacks on civilians and civilian objects
became apparent, raise concern that the strikes 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.” It’s about time the Report stepped outside its comfort zone of
caution: residential airstrikes as military policy sanctioned at the
highest levels.
Ground operations were equally murderous, especially in Shuja’iya; in
the three neighborhoods studied a pattern was seen, “large areas of
which were leveled to the ground.” I’m sorry, I haven’t the heart for
the coverage of more atrocities, this section speaking, as the boldface
heading makes clear, of “Use of artillery and other explosive weapons in
densely populated areas.” There is in fact much more (the Report
should be required reading, I devoutly wish, for all Israelis, not that I
think it will change minds), but let me close with the testimony of
Talel Al Helo from Shuja’iya: “’I am not a fighter, I am a civilian and I
care about the well-being of my family. The attacks were everywhere.
Everything was coming under attack, the roads and the buildings; there
was no safe haven in Shuja’iya. We walked as the missiles kept
arriving. We saw bodies of people in the streets. We came across the
body of an acquaintance and several other bodies, of young and old
people, women and children.’”
Today (June 22) Jodi Rudoren’s article in the New York Times, “U.N.
Report on Gaza Finds Evidence of War Crimes by Israel and by Palestinian
Militants,” appeared, its title—and contents—suggesting equal
culpability and destruction. This blatant distortion of the Report and
the underlying reality of the Gaza attack prompted my critical detailed
Comment in The Times, which was published as number five and then
subsequently removed. I protested in an email to the public editor,
likely to no avail. So much for NYT’s devotion to honest journalism.
Norman Pollack has written on Populism. His
interests are social theory and the structural analysis of capitalism
and fascism. He can be reached at pollackn@msu.edu.
