Israel, Hamas, and war crimes.......

 

One Navi Pillai, who describes herself a ‘UN Human Rights Commissioner, tells us that in the latest round of the everlasting war between Israel war crimes have been committed.

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Well, she is certainly right about that. But when she says that it is Israel that is the criminal she departs into the realms of unreality.

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War crimes are a complex branch of law but are generally regarded as including the following:

1.   murdering, mistreating, or deporting civilian residents of an occupied territory to slave labor camps

2.   murdering or mistreating prisoners of war or civilian internees

3.   forcing protected persons to serve in the forces of a hostile power

4.   killing hostages

5.   killing or punishing spies or other persons convicted of war crimes without a fair trial

6.   wantonly destroying cities, towns, villages, or any object not warranted by military necessity.

 

One might add

 

'anything done by Israel to defend itself'

and

'Anything an over-paid nobody in the UN says is a war crime'.

 

Had she accused Hamas, she would have been on rock solid ground.

 

Hamas has unleashed rockets at Israel by the thousand, more than 6600 in the last few weeks alone, plus countless mortar attacks. Not only is there no ‘military necessity’, there is no intention to attack military targets. The rockets are fired at random, the sole objective being to spread terror, death and destruction against Israeli civilian settlements.

 

Human Rights Watch has accused Hamas of siting rocket bases in schools, hospitals and other ‘soft’ targets to deliberately encourage the Israelis to inflict headline-catching casualties invaluable for propaganda purposes. Its use of human shields is well- known and long-established. It promotes child-soldiers and suicide bombers. It commits human rights abuses against its own people, including arbitrary arrests, detention and torture. There have been beatings with metal clubs and rubber truncheons and summary executions of suspected ‘collaborators’, including the public hangings of six Gaza citizens after which their corpses were dragged through town tied behind motor-cycles.

 

It deliberately targets civilians with IEDs and car-bombs. One of the  worst was the ‘Passover Massacre’ which killed 30 civilians and wounded 140.

 

The latest round of violence was preceded by the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teenagers.

 

The crime-sheet seems endless and covers pretty well all of the above list.

 

So, Ms Pillai, what are you going to do about it?