generalspeaking

Comparable Events, Two Solutions

Sri Lanka was utterly determined in its onslaught to completely eradicate the presence of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, and it's difficult to blame them. The Tamil Tigers were viciously bloody minded and shed no tears over the blood they spilled over the years in prosecuting their terrorist campaign for a Tamil homeland. The Tigers murdered those Tamils who opposed them in a leadership role, they launched suicide attacks against the Sinhalese people, against government troops and civil institutions and bred terror across the land.

They pioneered suicide bombing to a precise art, one they selflessly shared with other terrorist groups, inspiring within others the same feckless disregard for human life that they embraced. The Tigers claimed to be interested in the well-being of the Tamil population, while seeing nothing amiss in using that population to shield them from the response-attacks of the Sri Lankan military. Or of themselves dispatching fearful civilians attempting to flee the 'safe zones' of the Tigers' last stand against the government military.

As for the government of Sri Lanka, it refused to permit reporters or aid workers access to the hundreds of thousands of Tamils behind 'enemy lines' where the trapped Tigers held those people to ransom. Nor did government troops hesitate to launch missiles into the ever-shrinking Tamil stronghold, knowing full well they would also target civilians. A large proportion of Tamil refugees who successfully fled the direct battle zone, suffered grievous wounds caused by government troops firing upon them.

The United Nations estimated that upwards of 20,000 civilian Tamils were killed, and tens of thousands more injured. The government of Sri Lanka is keeping the Tamil refugees behind barbed wire, in sprawling, ill-equipped camps where medical treatment is hardly adequate to their wounded needs, and food is scarcely available in an impoverished area which may yet prove a breeding ground for disease, malnutrition and starvation.

But Sri Lanka got a passing grade and a huge hug from the United Nations Human Rights Council who voted to affirm Sri Lanka's right to self-defence. The council's statement, "condemning all attacks that the LTTE launched on the civilian population and its practise of using civilians as human shields" was held to be responsible for the reaction of the government of Sri Lanka, serving as full justification for the outcome.

And then there's the disconnect.

Hamas, which follows a carefully scripted agenda closely based on the Tigers', launches its rockets from civilian enclaves. It caches ammunition in schools, apartments and hospitals with the assurance that a civilized Israel would hesitate before responding in kind, knowing who and what will be hit. Israel retaliates out of a sense of frustrated disgust, with the knowledge that their response to Hamas provocations will harm civilians and impair their international image.

And that image has been damaged, but unavoidably. With the Human Rights Council accusing Israel of "genocidal warfare" on innocent civilians. The UNHRC has formed an investigative panel whose purpose it is to closely examine Israel's conduct in the war zone that Hamas has effectively made of Gaza. Cuba, Egypt, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, China and other human-rights-protective states are out to make yet another stab at ensuring that the world views Israel as a human-rights violator of the first order.

Israel has informed Ban Ki Moon that the investigation of alleged Israel war crimes during Operation Cast Lead, was a misguided attempt to yet again smear Israel's reputation. Why, Defense Minister Ehud Barak questioned, wasn't Hamas's provocations in its continual lobbing of Qassam missiles into Israel an issue in the equation?

But the investigation is afoot, and the four-member team is out to prove Israel's dreadful misdemeanors. "We have come here to see, to learn, to talk to people in all walks of life; ordinary people, government people, administrative people", said the head of the investigative team, South African jurist Richard Goldstone.

It is a foregone conclusion that in speaking with "ordinary people, government people, administrative people", the investigation's commitment to finding Israel guilty will succeed.

Speak to Gazans, supportive of Hamas, conduct interviews with Hamas administrators and 'government' figures? For objectively balanced views? Fawzi Barhoum, a spokesman for Hamas made it quite clear what the outcome would be: "We hope to see the leaders of the Zionist enemy brought to justice as soon as possible as war criminals in the international courts."

During war situations, particularly those where a regular army battles an insurgent force answerable to itself, not to a nation and to the international community, there will always be misfortune visited upon innocents.

In the case of Gaza, civilians were exposed to an armed invasion while the Hamas militant terrorists who initiated the invasion by a nation's army irate that its own population has been continuously targeted, hid behind the vulnerable population. And the Hamas leaders, took cautionary steps to ensure they remained themselves well hidden and protected.

Israel launched her own internal investigation. The Israeli news media published stories that told of some IDF personnel behaving atrociously toward some Gazan civilians. And some of those stories inimical to the reputation of the IDF proved to be without justification. While others testify to the undeniable fact that every country and every military hosts individuals whose behaviour reflects pathological aberrations.

It has been estimated by a Palestinian rights group that 1,417 Gazans were killed during the battles, 926 of whom were said to have been civilians. Hamas does not hold itself responsible for the these deaths, although morally and practically it most certainly is responsible. Why is that simple fact not clear to any investigating group?

Labels: Conflict, Israel, Political Realities, United Nations

posted by Pieface @ Monday, June 01, 2009