{"id":23995,"date":"2012-12-17T12:00:43","date_gmt":"2012-12-17T12:00:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=23995"},"modified":"2012-12-17T12:02:16","modified_gmt":"2012-12-17T12:02:16","slug":"how-the-idf-targeted-civilians-shattered-lives-in-gaza","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2012\/12\/how-the-idf-targeted-civilians-shattered-lives-in-gaza\/","title":{"rendered":"How the IDF Targeted Civilians: Shattered Lives in Gaza"},"content":{"rendered":"

The father of the family, Jamal Mahmoud Yassin al-Dalu, was praying when the missile struck.\u00a0 It was the afternoon of November 18th<\/sup>, the fifth day of the Israeli attack against Gaza misnamed \u201cOperation Pillar of Defense\u201d.<\/p>\n

Jamal\u2019s wife, Tahani Hassan al-Dalu, 52 was at home preparing lunch. His grandchildren, ages 1, 4, 6, and 7 were playing with their toys, waiting to eat.\u00a0 Also in the house were Jamal\u2019s 73 year old sister, his two daughters, 16 and 25, his son, 29 and his son\u2019s wife, 25. All 10 were killed at once. Three generations of a family wiped out in a single event: five children, 4 women and the father of four of the children.<\/p>\n

Two neighbors in an adjoining building, 75 year old Ameena Matar al-Mauzannar and 19 year old Abdullah Mohammed al-Muzannar, were also killed, crushed by collapsing walls.<\/p>\n

Two weeks later, there was a vigil with neighbors, friends and family of the 12 victims of the attack.\u00a0 Children stood with candles on the ruins of the home remembering their loved ones who were killed.<\/p>\n

Jamal did not speak much at the vigil.\u00a0 Silently he gestured to show how the missile had dropped. Then he waved his hands to indicate erasure. Nothing. Gone.\u00a0 He turned his back on the ruins of the house where so much of his family had been lost and crossed his arms, staring up at the sky.<\/p>\n

His son Ahmed was there with him.\u00a0 Ahmed had flown in from Turkey, where he lives, as soon as the attack was over.\u00a0 With indescribable anger and pain he lamented,<\/p>\n

\u201cMy mother, gone.\u00a0 My sisters, gone.\u00a0 My brother, gone. My aunt, gone. My sister-in-law, gone. My nieces, nephews, all gone.\u00a0 Why did they do this? For what?\u201d<\/p>\n

His face red, tears welling in his eyes he recounted with eloquent rage how he had learned of the death of his whole family.\u00a0 How he had woken up in the hospital after hearing the news, hysterical with grief.\u00a0 How he had tried to deny it, explain to himself and others how it could not be true.<\/p>\n

Even through all that has happened to him, all that he has lost, Ahmad Dalu has not resorted to religious hatred.\u00a0 He does not blame the Jews he said; he knows that they are not the same as Israel. He blames the governments of Israel and the US. \u201cObama has blood on his hands,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

It was in fact a US made F-16 that the Israeli government used to target the Dalu family.\u00a0 The highly accurate F-16 fighter jet was used throughout \u201cOperation Pillar of Defense\u201d by the Israeli Defense Force to hit civilian targets.\u00a0 Between 2000 and 2009, the United States government provided and paid for more than 93 F-16D fighter jets<\/a> at a cost of 2.48 billion dollars.<\/p>\n

As for the targeting of the Dalu family home, the Israeli Defense Forces said they were \u201clooking into\u201d the Sunday afternoon air strike. According to an article in the NY Times<\/a>, the Israeli Army spokesperson said \u201cthe target had been a man \u2018in charge of rocket launching\u2019 from the neighborhood, and that 200 to 300 rockets had been fired at Israel under his command in recent days, but it was unclear whether that man even lived nearby.\u201d The IDF has produced no evidence that such a fighter was ever at the Dalu home.<\/p>\n

The street where the house stood is a narrow one, in the center of highly populated Gaza City. The impact of the missile, in addition to the lives it took, caused all the windows across the street to blow out and many inside doors to break. In the home directly across from the Dalu\u2019s a 10 square foot section of wall was drawn forward out of the rest of the house.\u00a0 The family in this home survived only because they were in a back room, farther removed from the blast.\u00a0 A car parked in front of their building was flipped forward and across the street, coming to rest crumpled up atop a 10 foot mound of rubble that had been the Dalu home.<\/p>\n

Customary international humanitarian law, codified in the Hague Convention IV<\/a>, the Fourth Geneva Convention<\/a>, and in\u00a0 Protocol I of the Fourth Geneva Convention<\/a> requires that \u201cin the conduct of military operations, constant care shall be taken to spare the civilian population, civilians and civilian objects.\u201d Absolutely prohibited is an attack on a civilian residence unless evidence is available to the commander of the operation showing that the house is being used for a military purpose, that attacking the house is the only way to accomplish the military objective, and that the anticipated loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, and damage to civilian property would not be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated from the attack. Failing any one of these requirements the commander must not authorize the attack or must cancel the attack.<\/p>\n

In addition, the Fourth Geneva Convention prohibits collective punishment: \u201cNo protected person [a civilian] may be punished for an offence he or she has not personally committed. Collective penalties and likewise all measures of intimidation or of terrorism are prohibited.\u201d Thus, even if rockets were fired from the area, Israeli forces are prohibited from inflicting punishment on members of the civilian population. They are forbidden from using collective terror as a deterrent.<\/p>\n

Gaza City is a thriving metropolis, very closely packed together.\u00a0 Two weeks after the eight day Israeli attack, things seem to be somewhat back to normal, with cars, motorcycles, donkey draw carts, and people everywhere. Littered throughout the city, however, are the reminders of what those eight days cost: a house embedded with shrapnel, an apartment with a floor missing or an entire building reduced to ruins.\u00a0 These scenes of destruction are not everywhere.\u00a0 They are spread out.<\/p>\n

For eight days people here listened to the constant buzzing of drones in the sky and the periodic explosion of bombs, having no idea where the next bomb might fall. They could have no confidence that Israeli political and military leaders were targeting based on principles of international law. They had nowhere to go, nowhere to hide. Gaza had no safe place at all. An entire society lived in terror, fearing that they might be the next target that an Israeli spokesperson would say the IDF was \u201clooking into.\u201d<\/p>\n

The day after the Dalu family massacre, IDF attacks on civilians and civilian property continued as if no \u201cmistake\u201d had been made the day before. One such attack was perpetrated in the town of Al Nasassra, between Rafah and Khan Yunis, in the southern part of the Gaza Strip.<\/p>\n

This time the bomb fell on a Bedouin family, refugees from the Negev.\u00a0 Over a low burning fire, in a small low room with walls of corrugated metal, a screen roof and a sand floor, Wallid Al Nasassra recounted the tragedy that had befallen his family.<\/p>\n

Wallid\u2019s brother, Teewfiq Mamduh Id Abid, his wife, Amani Ibrm Qader and his 10 children were in their home on the 6th<\/sup> night of the Israeli siege.\u00a0 Some of the children were sleeping.\u00a0 Others were kept awake by the sound of drones which had been in the area every day since the start of the attack.\u00a0 Those who were up were watching TV when, around 10 PM, they heard the sound of a plane. Already accustomed to the sound, they did not imagine that it might be coming for them.\u00a0 But a minute or so later, an Israeli F16 fired a rocket at the tin roofed home, immediately killing two of the children, Ahmed and Mohamad, aged 17 and 19.<\/p>\n

Two weeks later, the two parents, Teewfiq and Amani are still in the hospital. Teewfiq has a broken leg, while Amani was blinded in the explosion and is still nursing severe burns.\u00a0 Teewfiq\u2019s son Sakher also remains hospitalized and in critical condition.\u00a0 The family is hoping Sakher can be transported to a hospital in Tunis that can better treat his serious wounds.\u00a0 The other seven children that survived the blast are staying in the house we visited with their uncle Wallid and his family of nine.<\/p>\n

Four year old Lama has already had one surgery but will probably need another.\u00a0 Her leg is supported by a long brace with nine thick, eight-inch pins extending up, like pins in a pin cushion, out through a bandage. The pins are holding together her shattered leg bones.\u00a0 Wailing in the orange light of the fire, Lama does not seem like she should be out of the hospital.\u00a0 She and her six year old sister, Fatma, both have raised burns all around their heads.\u00a0 Their nineteen month old baby sister, Sama, is severely burned along her torso and legs.<\/p>\n

Wallid says that none of the children have been able to sleep since the rocket hit their home.\u00a0 He himself has been so traumatized that he has not been able to water the olive plants that are their livelihood. Instead he goes every day to visit his brother and sister-in-law in the hospital.\u00a0 His house is just 200 meters from the one that was hit by the Israeli missile and the explosion shattered his windows and cracked his walls.\u00a0 Where his brother\u2019s house had stood is now a 12 \u00a0foot deep crater. A piece of the rocket is still there, sticking out of the mound of rubble that was their home.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe resistance fighters did not come here. We would not permit them if they did,\u201d Wallid said.\u00a0 \u201cSo why did Israel send a rocket here?\u201d<\/p>\n

Why indeed? Israeli political and military leaders who authorized or carried out these and other attacks in Gaza failed to meet the elemental requirements of law. US political and military leaders who provided the weapons and who authorized their use in this assault also failed to meet these requirements. An independent and impartial investigation is needed.<\/p>\n

The recent vote in the UN General Assembly to upgrade Palestine\u2019s status at the UN to non-member state removes an obstacle to Palestine bringing its case to the International Criminal Court. In view of this vote, an investigation should promptly be carried out by the prosecutor of the ICC at the Hague. If that route is blocked, the UN General Assembly should vote to establish an International Criminal Tribunal for Israel as a \u2018subsidiary organ,\u2019 as provided under U.N. Charter Article 22<\/a> to conduct the investigation. If violations of international law are found Israeli and US political and military leaders responsible should be prosecuted.<\/p>\n

Massive public pressure is needed to end the system of immunity and impunity enjoyed by Israeli political and military leaders and by their US government sponsors. Without accountability for violations of international law, the law will become mere recommendation and the violations will be repeated.\u00a0 More families like those of Jamal and Ahmed Dalu and Wallid Al Nasassra will be torn apart. More lives will be ruined and more children traumatized and killed. \u00a0But if sufficient public pressure is mounted to succeed in bringing US and Israeli officials to justice before the ICC or another tribunal, military and political leaders may be inclined to think twice before initiating attacks like the ones that destroyed these and other families in Gaza.<\/p>\n

_______________________<\/p>\n

Eva Lewis<\/i> and James Marc Leas participated in the US and UK emergency delegation to Gaza November 27 to December 3 [2012]. Eva, from New York City, is a freelance journalist and activist. James, from S. Burlington Vermont, is a co-chair of the National Lawyers Guild Free Palestine Subcommittee.<\/i><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 counterpunch.org<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Join the BDS-BOYCOTT, DIVESTMENT, SANCTIONS<\/i> <\/b><\/span>campaign to protest the Israeli barbaric siege of Gaza, illegal occupation of the Palestine nation\u2019s territory, the apartheid wall, its inhuman and degrading treatment of the Palestinian people, and the more than 7,000 Palestinian men, women, elderly and children arbitrarily locked up in Israeli prisons.<\/p>\n

DON’T BUY<\/b> PRODUCTS WHOSE<\/b> BARCODE<\/b> STARTS WITH<\/b> 729<\/b>, which indicates that it is produced in Israel.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 DO YOUR PART! MAKE A DIFFERENCE!<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

7 2 9: BOYCOTT FOR JUSTICE!<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Eva Lewis and James Marc Leas return from the Occupied Territories having witnessed shattered lives, broken dreams and dead bodies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23995","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-palestine-israel-gaza-genocide"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23995","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23995"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23995\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23995"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23995"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23995"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}