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There is no doubt that a desperate financially and politically bankrupt Hamas precipitated this recent war with Israel for propaganda purposes and propaganda purposes solely. Furthermore, Jay H. Ell has maintained that they, colluding with Abbas, had one objective in mind with their unleashing of this purposeless slaughter and destruction, namely charging Israel with war crimes. (Blogs: “Israel Should Charge Palestine With War Crimes”, “Hamas Narrative: Women and Children First - To Die That Is” and “Abbas and Arafat - The Same DNA - So Let’s Get Real").
Hamas unashamedly started the contretemps with only one central strategy, to fire at Israeli citizens and simultaneously put their own citizens at risk of death. In addition they have spent years building tunnels to invade Israel with the express purpose of killing children and non combatants. In pursuit of their objective, in this recent conflict, they placed munitions amongst civilians in several hospitals, schools and mosques and initiated their rocket firing from there. However, everyone but Hamas is said to be to blame for the carnage, mutilation and senseless deaths of civilians that followed. They are already, as Jay H. Ell predicted, laying charges of war crimes against Israel.
The media, with the choir of key UN Office bearers and do gooders in tandem together with the declared anti-Semites and fascists buy the simplistic narrative that if there were so many fatalities and rubble on the Gaza side and so little in Israel, then Israel is ipso facto guilty of war crimes. (Blog: “Soft Balling Media Need Some Hard Balls For Hamas”). Hamas, as matters stand at the moment, have achieved their cynical intent and have won the public relations battle.
One gets a feeling of deja vu of holocaust denial when listening to the debate on this subject.
WAR CRIMES ISSUES
Before proceeding to war crimes per se it is essential to point out to UN Secretary General Bang Ki-Moon and Ms Pillay of the Human Rights Committee that they have a responsibility to recommend actions under Chapter Seven of the UN Charter against Hamas for their flagrant aggression of a sovereign state.
There are two separate issues to face when trying to get to who is culpable and who is not. In the first, what is the overall culture, ethics, behavior and attention to Codes of Conduct of War and the UN Charter of each of the protagonists. Secondly, an examination of all incidents where malfiscience is alleged should be investigated to apportion blame. While these two parameters may overlap they are distinct because one could have rogue combatants on one side effecting single instances of wrongdoing. Often the latter are then utilized to characterize the total behavior of the country.
The Palestinian Authority, (PA), Foreign Minister has stated that this time Israel will not escape punishment and he has already had discussions with the Prosecutor at the Hague World Court. The Foreign Minister added he had clear evidence of Israeli war crimes. The PA said that they were going to send Medical Teams into Gaza to document war crimes. It is interesting to note that it is the PA and not Hamas that is making all these moves as Jay H. Ell maintained they would in his Blog, “Israel Should Charge Palestine With War Crimes”. The whole purpose of a series of moves prior to the Hamas attack was to ensure that the PA had governmental authority to represent Hamas, as the latter as a terrorist organization has no locus standi in world bodies. On cue, Ms Pillay, Head of the UN Human Rights Committee, who Israel has accused of bias for some time, decided that Israel should be probed by the major powers. She had already initiated a Human Rights Investigation into Israel’s war crimes only after a week of Hamas’s unanswered rocket firing and Israel had just begun its return fire.
INSTANCES OF ALLEGED WAR CRIMES
Then there are actual allegations surfacing. The Human Rights Watch Group allege that they have evidence of an instance where Israel fired on fleeing citizens and executed six Palestinians in cold blood. For the rest no specific allegations from the Palestinians other than 3 instances that are dealt with below as Israeli allegations.
From the Israeli side there are numerous instances, backed up by videos, of shooting from densely populated areas, munition piles in hospitals, staging deaths at hospital and a funeral where a killed suicide bomber still had his vest on and blew up the funeral attendees. Reports include one by an Italian journalist that it was a misfired Hamas rocket that hit the UN school killing 17 children, not an Israeli missile as was alleged and was subject of a major outpouring of UN and media invective against the Israeli Defense Force, (IDF). Another account details that a Jihadi missile hit the Shifa Hospital killing 16 and yet another that it was a Hamas rocket that crashed into a Shati refugee camp killing 10 children. A prominent Greek Orthodox Church Archbishop, Alexios, has declared that Hamas fired rockets from his compound that was sheltering numerous Palestinians seeking refuge. There are credible reports of the death of a 160 Palestinian youths in the construction of the tunnels. Also there is the publication of detailed official Hamas documents of where the tunnels would ultimately surface and that their main objective were kindergartens were children would be killed.
So there is enough going around to feed into anyone’s belief system as to who the criminals are. But every one of these allegations needs to be tested so that the simplistic narrative, “That you killed more of our citizens so therefore you are guilty of war crimes”, can be dissected.
WHY ISRAEL NEEDS TO CHARGE THE PALESTINIAN AUTHORITY AT THE HAGUE
There is a reluctance by Israel to take this step. One can only assume that there have to be instances of IDF wrongdoing. It would be amazing if there were none. Israel has comprehensive data of both sides offenses, places where rockets were fired from, time lines and on and on that would prove their argument. There could also be an Israeli fear that such an action would be de facto acknowledgement that Palestine is a State, which they could be under the 1947 UN Resolution that gave Israel statehood. However, Israel is loosing the propaganda war as epitomized when the Methodist Church think they have grounds to side with Hamas because it is politically correct to do so. (Blog: ISIS, Sharia Law, Hamas Terrorism and the Methodist Church). Netanyahu has nothing to lose by taking this plunge.
The media, as a group, are not seeing it Israel’s way at all. In fact they are a crucial last bastion of Hamas support as the latter stand more and more alone in a sea of Jihadi terror. The Arab and Western nations have supported Israel. When this is viewed historically commentators will wonder why, the media almost as one, were so biased and irresponsible in their reportage. (Blog: “Soft Balling Media Need Some Hard Balls For Hamas”).
Investigations and Commissions are useless at pursuing the truth, whoever may be conducting them, as they are replete with conclusions and very thin on process and are not subject to cross examination. The UN Human Rights Committee have already set up a Goldstone 2 after Goldstone 1 backtracked on the key conclusions of his first Commission but only after the damage was already done.
Only court proceedings will allow for a full exhaustive laying out of facts and allow for an investigation of isolated instances in addition to the conduct and objectives of each of the combatants. It is Jay H. Ell’s belief that Israel has a water tight case. While they will never convince everyone, holocaust deniers are on the whole considered part of the lunatic fanatic fringe. Even if the Court somehow rules against them the facts will be there for all to see.
What is at stake here is Israel’s whole raison d’être, its whole belief system which is one of valuing life over death that is central to this dispute. Their emphasis on the rule of law and the dignity of the individual, is in the dock. Its morality while conducting this war which is a cornerstone of the ethos Israel was founded on needs to be proved or disproved. This is a war between two paradigms equal rights for all versus a fascist murderous authoritarian paternalistic way of life or more appropriately death.
In case anyone has forgotten the 1948 UN Resolution was to set up a two State solution. Hamas has one objective and one objective only and that is to create a one State Palestinian theocracy and this war was nothing but a propaganda exercise, at the expense of Palestinian and Israeli life, limb and property. Hopefully, it will weaken Hamas and free up a host of those who wish the Palestinians well and have been far from happy at Netanyahu’s efforts at solving the Palestinian “problem”. However, Netanyahu’s behavior is not an excuse for this unashamed premeditated carnage and destruction, anymore than to say a victim deserved to be savagely raped because she was wearing a low cut dress and a miniskirt, while being overly flirtatious.
MORE OF THE SAME SINCE 1948
Hamas, the aggressor and the loser, is once again refusing a ceasefire unless certain political conditions are met. This has been the pattern of Israel’s enemies since 1948 when initially it was the Arab States and now it is the Jihadis. Abba Eban in 1948, first appealed to the Security Council to sanction the aggressors who refused a ceasefire unless Israel, a sovereign state, limited its immigration. Israel had already agreed to not immediately admit 11,000 holocaust survivors that were holed up in British internment camps in Cyprus. Talk about deja vu over and over again as this scenario has been repeated and repeated over the next 65 years,.
In addition there is the appalling callous behavior Hamas has displayed towards its own Palestinian citizens. Hamas besides smashing the infrastructure provided by the Israelis that could have provided an economy for so many of its citizens have used the billions in aid to build bunkers for themselves purchase munitions and construct tunnels to invade Israel. As Dennis Ross, Clinton’s Middle East negotiator has just written in an op-ed piece in the Washington Post, entitled, ”Hamas could have chosen peace but instead made Palestinians suffer”. He addressed Hamas just before Israel’s unilateral withdrawal of Gaza and told them of their unique opportunity to promote Palestinian aspirations. Hamas rejected Ross’s advice and as Israel withdrew they began bombing bus stations. Hamas then instituted attack after attack on the border crossings to Israel. This forced Israel to close them. They are now demanding, as a provision for a ceasefire, that Israel reopen them to support their narrative that the Israeli occupiers are the ones that initiated their closure in the first place ….
Yet the media lowdown is that Israel are the war criminals.
TO PREVENT HAMAS WAR CRIMINAL DENIAL ISRAEL NEED TO GO TO THE HAGUE
So Israel has to place on record, as obsessively as it was forced to document the holocaust, its right to defend itself against those, whose unashamed objective is to wipe them of the face of the earth, without they themselves being accused of genocide, being guilty of war crimes and being Nazis. In addition it needs to contrast the way it conducts warfare in defense of its survival as opposed to those who seek to obliterate its existence. In the process it needs to outline its Judea - Christian ethic. One way would be in an open court where they could place their case on record. The recording of the Holocaust has its roots in the Nuremberg trials. It all won’t be pretty but even in the Holocaust there were the collaborators and the Kapos in the death camps. The museums and the Spielbergs can follow.
With these issues settled those that want to see an equitable two state solution will be once again free to do so.
Just one point. Jay H. Ell is sick and tired from hearing from Hamas apologists that what the Israelis are experiencing is minimal. One extremely influential British TV anchor, Jon Snow, reported that Israel were subject to nothing but fireworks. Anyone who is in contact with an Israeli knows this constant bombardment, that is 30% more than the Nazi air attack on London, is totally disruptive of life, nerve racking and terrifying for life and limb. It is all very well from the comfort of a campus, news studio or a living room to pontificate, thereby feeding into the storyline that Israel’s situation is nothing compared to the Palestinian tragedy. These critics should redirect their anger at Hamas who are directly answerable for the plight of all these citizens.
ISIS DENIAL
It would be fascinating to learn of the Israeli vilifiers’s attitude towards ISIS who are merely a logical extension of the thought processes of Hamas. All ISIS is aiming to do is establish the value system of the Muslim fundamentalists. The ISIS argument would run like this to be in sync with Hamas.
“All we want is our land back that the British and the French divided up and gave to their infidel lackies. This is Muslim Sharia territory. If you want bodies we will give you bodies. Instead of stoning women for wanton glances we will put them in the way of your fire. Women children too are dispensable and those who are too ugly to marry off at three we will put in front of our rockets as we fire at the ungodly. Infidel soldiers that we capture, instead of summarily executing them they too can be put in our field hospitals that we fire from…..”
No need to worry the media and the Hamas sympathizers wouldn’t buy that garbage. Or would they?
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