Truth and Consequences
"As a British officer who had more than his share of fighting in Afghanistan, Iraq and the Balkans, it pains me greatly to see words and actions from the United Nations that can only provoke further violence and loss of life. The United Nations Human Rights Council report on last summer’s conflict in Gaza, prepared by Judge Mary McGowan Davis, and published on Monday, will do just that."
"The report starts by attributing responsibility for the conflict to Israel’s “protracted occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip,” as well as the blockade of Gaza. Israel withdrew from Gaza 10 years ago. In 2007 it imposed a selective blockade only in response to attacks by Hamas and the import of munitions and military matériel from Iran. The conflict last summer, which began with a dramatic escalation in rocket attacks targeting Israeli civilians, was a continuation of Hamas’s war of aggression."
"In an unusual concession, the report suggests that Hamas may have been guilty of war crimes, but it still legitimizes Hamas’s rocket and tunnel attacks and even sympathizes with the geographical challenges in launching rockets at Israeli civilians: “Gaza’s small size and its population density make it particularly difficult for armed groups always to comply” with the requirement not to launch attacks from civilian areas."
Col. Richard Kemp, former commander of British forces in Afghanistan
"Hamas training and doctrinal materials ... attest to Hamas's intentional efforts to draw the IDF into combat in densely populated areas and to actively use the civilian population in order to obstruct the IDF's military operations."
"Hamas also actively encouraged and even coerced civilians to remain in areas of hostilities in order to impede IDF attack and shield military activities."
Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs report
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| Source: United Nations |
A morally bankrupt United Nations is once again condemning a member-state for its effrontery in attempting to defend itself from violent criminal attacks by terrorist groups bordering its state and targeting innocent civilians. The UN's Human Rights Council has issued its report on the 2014 conflict in Gaza, when Israel's forbearance in the face of constant rocket attacks from Gaza into Israel finally ebbed to the point of rallying a much-needed defence.
Hamas, a terrorist group noted as such by countries in the West and declared a terrorist group by countries in the Middle East, an offshoot of the notoriously Islamist Muslim Brotherhood, whose charter calls for the destruction of the State of Israel, takes its funding orders from enemy-states of Israel, Iran and Qatar. The funding and the incitement help, but Hamas's dedication to jihad and the view that Israel must be driven into the sea and its citizens slaughtered, needs no incentive from other sources.
The kind of resourcefulness that Hamas operatives display in building underground tunnels to enable it to enter Israel undetected and to perform the function of a protective underground haven for Hamas leaders is concrete-costly and time-absorbing. Resources that should go toward building civic infrastructure in Gaza are redirected to well-designed and -equipped tunnels under Gaza City where Hamas leaders can find tranquil protection from IDF attacks in response to those that Hamas launches from civilian enclaves.
Israel was forced yet again to militarily engage with an enemy which prides itself on elusiveness. While the terrorist fighters launch attacks from the vicinity of schools, apartments, hospitals in full knowledge of and anticipation that responding attacks will be expected, to destroy those launch sites, Israel in defending itself is accused of war crimes. No advance warning is extended by Hamas and other terrorist groups before rockets are sent careening into Israel, but Israel continually warns Gazans to clear out before an area attack takes place.
This kind of unequal war footing is unique to Israel, always mindful to the best of its ability to attempt to reduce civilian casualties and deaths to a minimum, but pressed to the limit by the schemes of Hamas to extract public relations points from the international community, portraying Israel as the aggressor and the slaughterer of Arab women and children. Those same Arab women and children are given treatment when feasible, for their wounds in Israeli hospitals.
What other country would take care to provide medicines and food to civilians of belligerent terrorist enclaves while fighting off the attacks by the terrorists who purport to represent the interests of the civilians suffering privation, fear and live-and-present mortal danger? Some four thousand rockets were launched by Hamas into Israel and roughly 250 of those rockets fell short of their targets, landing within Gaza, causing in some instances additional casualties there.
The UN Human Rights Council equating the self-protective actions of a legitimate and peaceful state with those of an attacking, war-mongering quasi-state of terrorists is the last word in hateful hypocrisy. As though comparing a country whose laws protect civilians from harm to a territory whose rulers casually use their populace as shields to enable the terrorists to escape the consequences of their actions in provoking war, is a legitimate tool of justice.
What other country of the world would restrain itself in responding to deadly attacks because the eyes of the world swivel in swift condemnation any time those responses take their inevitable toll on civilians, and then because of international censure ceases its fire leaving itself as a result vulnerable to ongoing repeated attacks leading to new confrontations?
Labels: Conflict, Gaza, Hamas, Human Rights Council, Injustice, Israel, Sanctimony, United Nations
posted by Pieface @ Friday, June 26, 2015
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