Hamas are committing terrorist acts. Israel is committing war crimes.
Yesterday, it was bombing two separate UN schools. Now, we hear that Israel is targeting the Red Cross as well. And I mean target. As I write this, I have heard a John Gain, Director of Operations for the UN in Gaza, on radio state categorically that all UN and Red Cross targets hit by Israel were all identified to and cleared by Israel for safety.
The Red Cross, which is ordinarily diplomatic to a fault in such matters, has practically accused the Israelis of deliberately causing humanitarian tragedies.
In a rare and sharply critical statement, it said it believed that “the Israeli military failed to meet its obligation under international humanitarian law to care for and evacuate the wounded.”
It’s not hard to understand the Red Cross’ logic when you consider that Israel claims to have killed about 130 Hamas fighters. The last independent tally I saw claimed at least 400 plus fatalities among the Palestinians. That’s a ratio of about one Hamas fighter for every 3 civilians killed. Either the IDF just doesn’t care about civilian casualties, or they are bizarrely incompetent. I say bizarre, because with that kind of incompetence, you would expect the IDF to have killed hundreds of Israelis by mistake too. Strange how the mistakes almost always seems to kill just the Palestinians…
To be fair, Hamas must stop firing rockets into Israel. While I don’t buy the Israeli line that Hamas is deliberately targeting civilians, that’s only because I don’t believe their rockets have that kind of accuracy. Of course, firing rockets indiscriminately is no better than deliberately targeting civilians.
Unfortunately, I can understand Hamas’ reasons for their rockets.
…claiming that rockets were the only way to respond to their imprisonment and to dramatize their humanitarian plight.
The quote from an op-ed by President Carter is not hard to understand. I don’t think it justifies terrorist acts, but I am not sure that I wouldn’t support it if I was a Palestinian. I’m pretty damned sure that under the same treatment that Israel would do much worse. I’ve just seen Israel kill over 400 people for a few terrorists firing rockets.
What are the circumstances? Well, a Vatican Cardinal recently had this to say.
The worsening humanitarian situation in Gaza led Cardinal Renato Martino, the head of the Vatican’s Pontifical Council on Peace and Justice, to comment in an online interview published Wednesday, “Look at the conditions in Gaza: more and more, it resembles a big concentration camp.”
The cardinal defended his comments on Thursday in the center-left daily newspaper La Repubblica, and said the situation in Gaza was “horrific” and “against human dignity.”
The Israelis are running a concentration camp. And if Israel find the term emotional and offensive; good. They should. The horrific tragedy the European Jews suffered in WWII does not give the state of Israel a free pass in how it acts towards other people.
More to the point, acting this way is not helping anyone, least of all the Israelis. And America is not helping Israel any by enabling such counterproductive behaviour.
Oh, and if you believe that Israel cares about the civilian casualties or about the humanitarian efforts to help Palestinians, other than on the PR front, they apparently have a bridge they want to sell you. Just ignore the reports that it’s in Gaza and they just bombed it.
