SHAME ON ISRAEL

When protesters were beaten on the streets of Teheran following the recent election there, both parties on Capitol Hill condemned the Iranian regime as fascist and called for sanctions against it. It is only fair to ask why we did not hear from those same Congressional voices when the Israeli military killed 300 children in Gaza. In fact, the overall civilian death toll in Gaza was 1,400 with thousands injured, many of them maimed for life. And, where was the outrage in the White House, or in the mainstream U.S. media, when Israel, which claims to be a modern democracy and America’s premier ally, was committing war crimes against Palestinians?
The answers to those questions have become easier to answer over time. For a start, Israel has enough clout in the corridors of power in Washington to silence criticism. It is also adept at making its critics think twice about speaking out because they risk a withering condemnation from sections of the media and are likely to be branded with an Anti-Semite label. As a consequence, critics of Israel, even within universities, are increasingly reluctant to voice their opinions when Israel’s foreign policies threaten peace in the Middle East or promote military strategies that display a total disregard for civilian life. Israel will continue to deny that it committed war crimes in Gaza but the evidence is now available for all to see and the Israeli military can no longer attribute the death of so many civilians to Hamas by claiming it used civilians as human shields. For anyone with a sense of justice, Amnesty International’s recent report on Israel’s Gaza operation confirms that the Israeli government and its military chain of command lacked a moral compass by showing a total disregard for international law and human life.
Amnesty, like other groups that have looked at the Gaza death toll, reached the conclusion that you cannot, as Israel tried to do, explain away the deaths of so many children by claiming they died in crossfire or were used as human shields. Amnesty goes as far as to say if civilians were used as human shields it was by the Israeli army, who put them in harm’s way and, in some cases, made them go into buildings they suspected were booby trapped.
During the Gaza invasion - codenamed “Cast Lead” - Israel deployed weapons that Amnesty says should never have been used in civilian areas, including Hellfire missiles, phosphorus bombs, 120 mm mortar rounds and tank shells filled with thousands of metal darts that acted like shrapnel. Hospitals were attacked and ambulance staff were killed and prevented from tending civilian wounded for days. Families were directed to homes that were then shelled and over 200 policemen were killed in a sustained bombardment of their facilities. Some civilian victims, including women and children, were clearly shot at close range. Others were terribly maimed when phosphorus bombs were used indiscriminately.
To get a sense of the cruelty of the Israel military the Amnesty report drew attention to two families. The first was the Sammouni extended family that lost 31 of its members in south east Gaza City on January 5, 2009. The day before, Israeli soldiers moved dozens of the family’s members from one of their homes to another and then shelled the second home. Not everyone died immediately. Some took days to die from their injuries because ambulance personnel were not allowed to get to them. A few children who survived were found clinging to their dead mothers. In other instances, Amnesty confirmed that bodies were left decomposing for days in parts of Gaza.
The second example of a family tragedy occurred on January 12, 2009 when a grandmother, mother and three children were sitting outside their home at nine in the morning. They were killed by a Hellfire missile fired from a drone. The missile and drone were supplied to the Israeli military by the U.S.
The Amnesty report concluded that the largest numbers of civilian fatalities and injuries resulted from long range, high precision weapons fired from helicopters, drones, tanks and mortars. The victims were not caught in crossfire, as Israel alleged, and were not used as human shields by Hamas militants.
“Many were killed when their homes were bombed or they slept. Others were going about their daily activities, sitting in their yard, handing the laundry on the roof when they were targeted in air strikes or tank shelling. Children were studying or playing in their bedrooms, or on the roof, or outside their homes when they were struck by missiles or tank shells. Paramedics and ambulances were repeatedly attacked while rescuing the wounded or recovering the dead,” said the report, adding it believed Israel failed to take steps required under international law to protect civilians. Amnesty also unequivocally dismissed Israel’s argument that the deaths of 300 children reflected “collateral damage” and the “panicked reactions of lone soldiers.”
The Amnesty report quoted an Israeli commander, who gave his men the following advice during a security briefing: “I want aggressiveness. If there is someone suspicious on the upper floor of a house, we’ll shell it. If we have suspicions about a house, we’ll take it down. There will be no hesitation. Nobody will deliberate. Let mistakes be over their lives, not ours.”
That particular strategy led to tanks firing shells from a distance of 7 kilometers, with the result that they often collapsed more than one house. In the targeting of a mosque, the house next to it was hit and five girls ranging in age from 4 to 17 years were killed. When shells filled with 5,000 tiny metal darts were fired into Gaza, people in a 300 x 100 meters radius of an exploding shell were at risk of death or serious injury. Amnesty Investigators were disturbed by the fact that since the end of the Gaza operation Israel has refused to explain how high precision weapons, whose operators could see the smallest details of a target, could kill so many women and children.
The indiscriminate use of phosphorus came in for special condemnation by Amnesty yet Gaza was not the first time Israel used the weapon against civilian targets. It fired phosphorus shells into Lebanon and, just as it had done during the Lebanon conflict, it reacted with public outrage when reporters accused it of using the weapon in Gaza. We now know the public outrage was fake because the evidence from Gaza is clear. The Israeli military repeatedly fired phosphorus shells over densely populated parts of Gaza, including a hospital.
“Phosphorus was often launched from artillery shells in air-burst mode, which aggravated the already devastating consequences of the attacks. Each shell ejected over 100 felt wedges with highly incendiary white phosphorus, which rained down over houses and streets, igniting on exposure to oxygen and setting fire to people and property,” said Amnesty, which further accused the Israel military of preventing people from being properly treated for horrific phosphorus burns. The very fact the Israeli Defense Forces did not come clean about using phosphorus meant many lives were not saved because surgeons did not knows what had caused, and how to treat certain types of wounds. The Amnesty report added that white phosphorus and artillery shells were used in attacks that were indiscriminate and violated international law.
“The Israeli military could not have been unaware of the presence of civilians in locations, which were repeatedly attacked……..Israeli forces continued to employ the same tactics for the entire duration of the 22-day offensive……. Much of the destruction was wanton and deliberate. It was often the result of reckless and indiscriminate attacks which were seemingly tolerated or even directly sanctioned up the chain of command, and which at times appeared intended to collectively punish local residents for the actions of armed groups…..Children, women and elderly people were among those trapped and denied access to medical care,” were just some of the report’s conclusions.
Throughout operation “Cast Lead” the Israeli military denied the international media and independent observers access to Gaza and, since then, it has refused to speak to investigators. It has made no effort launch an internal inquiry and that testifies to a mindset that places scant value on the lives of Palestinians. At the very least, Congress should ask Israel to explain why it killed, injured and maimed so many civilians and particularly why it slaughtered 300 children. On the other hand, if Congress and the America mainstream media are not prepared to address the issue, why should Israel? It is made to feel confident that its closest ally will stand by it no matter what crimes it commits.
For those who wonder whether Amnesty dealt with the role of Hamas and its cruelty in targeting innocents Israelis with rockets, Amnesty condemned Hamas outright. But the actions of Hamas, which is not a State funded to the tune of billions by U.S. taxpayers, paled in significance to Israel’s sustained bombardment of Gaza. Had any other nation launched an operation like “Cast Lead” against a densely populated civilian enclave Congress and the White House would have called it an international outrage. The Obama White House, Congress and the mainstream media prefer to condemn the Iranian regime while turning a blind eye to the slaughter of innocents in Gaza. Condemning Israel would raise questions about the heavy subsidies and weapons its military receives from the U.S. In particular, one might want to ask why America continues to fund a military with a seemingly total disregard for international laws.