{"id":62202,"date":"2015-08-10T12:00:57","date_gmt":"2015-08-10T11:00:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=62202"},"modified":"2015-08-07T14:01:39","modified_gmt":"2015-08-07T13:01:39","slug":"what-the-mainstream-media-got-wrong-about-gaza","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2015\/08\/what-the-mainstream-media-got-wrong-about-gaza\/","title":{"rendered":"What the Mainstream Media Got Wrong about Gaza"},"content":{"rendered":"

You may have heard that \u201cboth sides\u201d committed abuses in last Gaza war. But there’s no comparison when it comes to the scale of the violations \u2014 or the body count. <\/em><\/p>\n

\"(Source:<\/a>

(Source: Physicians for Human Rights \/ Flickr)<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t want to die. Don\u2019t leave me.\u201d<\/p>\n

These were the last words of Anas \u201cBader\u201d Qdeih, a 7-year-old Palestinian from Gaza who was killed by an Israeli mortar shell as he played in front of his house. His story is one of many that were documented in a recent report<\/a> issued by the United Nations Human Rights Council on the 2014 Gaza war, which Israel called \u201cOperation: Protective Edge.\u201d<\/p>\n

The report holds fighters from both camps accountable for violations of international law during the conflict, leading some media outlets to suggest that the investigators had somehow equated the actions of Palestinian and Israeli forces. Headlines in the New York Times<\/em><\/a>, Washington Post<\/em><\/a>, Los Angeles Times<\/em><\/a>, and Boston Globe<\/em><\/a>, for example, all focused on the findings that \u201cboth sides\u201d had been held liable. But the real substance of the report concerns the imbalance<\/em> of the violations between the two sides.<\/p>\n

In short, while the Israeli military and Palestinian armed groups each committed abuses, there\u2019s simply no comparison when it comes to the scale of the violations \u2014 or the body count.<\/p>\n

All Out of Proportion<\/strong><\/p>\n

Most striking was the disproportionality of the casualties. According to the investigators, the war killed 2,251 Palestinians, including 1,462 civilians \u2014 over half of them women and children. By contrast, six Israeli civilians and 67 soldiers were killed.<\/p>\n

Part of what made the civilian toll so heavy was what the report characterized as \u201cpatterns of strikes by Israeli forces on residential buildings\u201d in Gaza. That is, instead of targeting military installations, Israeli bombers purposefully and systematically attacked private homes.<\/p>\n

Most of the strikes came when families were breaking their Ramadan fasts or sleeping. \u201cThe timing of the attacks,\u201d the investigators observed, \u201cincreased the likelihood that many people, often entire families, would be at home.\u201d They added that the residential strikes \u201crendered women particularly vulnerable to death and injury,\u201d accounting in part for the hundreds of civilian women who perished in the war.<\/p>\n

Often these bombings were preceded only by a \u201croof-knock\u201d \u2014 a small shot fired before a full-scale bombing, putatively intended to give the residents of a targeted building a moment to evacuate. The report suggested, though, that roof knocks \u201ccannot be considered an effective warning given the confusion they often cause to building residents and the short time allowed to evacuate before the actual strike.\u201d<\/p>\n

Israeli authorities repeatedly claimed that rockets had been fired from residential buildings, but they failed to provide sufficient evidence that the 18,000 dwellings they damaged or destroyed were legitimate military targets. Nor did the Israelis account for their complete incapacitation of Gaza\u2019s water and sanitation infrastructure, or the 73 medical facilities they destroyed.<\/p>\n

More generally, the report concluded, \u201cIsraeli Defense forces may not have done everything feasible to avoid or limit casualties.\u201d This willful failure to distinguish between military and civilian targets marks a clear violation of the Geneva Conventions.<\/p>\n

Crucially, this failure wasn\u2019t a result of negligence on the ground. \u201cThe fact that such attacks continued throughout the operation,\u201d the report suggested, \u201ceven after the dire impact of these attacks on civilians and civilian objects became apparent, raise concern that the strikes may have constituted military tactics reflective of a broader policy.\u201d<\/p>\n

The civilian casualties, in other words, may have been no accident. If that\u2019s true, the report noted that such a policy must have been \u201capproved at least tacitly by decision-makers at the highest levels of the Government of Israel.\u201d<\/p>\n

On the Palestinian side, the report found that armed groups had fired rockets indiscriminately toward civilian-populated parts of Israel \u2014 a violation of international law in its own right, albeit lesser in impact than Israel\u2019s targeting of Palestinian homes. In addition, the report acknowledged that the tunnels Hamas had dug into Israeli territory to funnel arms and fighters had \u201cincreased [the] level of fear among Israeli civilians.\u201d<\/p>\n

A Tired Old Playbook<\/strong><\/p>\n

So while it\u2019s true that the report recognizes \u201cboth sides\u201d committed violations, the vast discrepancies in body counts and physical destruction give lie to the false equivalence presented in mainstream media reports. That\u2019s why the Israeli government and its supporters have fiercely protested the UN\u2019s investigation into its conduct, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu dismissing the UN report as \u201cflawed and biased.\u201d<\/p>\n

Such reactions are part of a long pattern for Israel and its supporters of denying UN reports that hold the country accountable for its violations of international law. A similar episode played out following the UN\u2019s \u201cGoldstone report<\/a>\u201d on Israel\u2019s previous 2008-2009 war on Gaza. That report similarly found that both Israeli armed forces and Palestinian fighters had committed abuses, but again blamed the most serious violations on Israel. Its chair, the respected Jewish South African jurist Richard Goldstone, then found himself the subject of an unrelenting smear campaign by the Israeli government and its allies.<\/p>\n

The same is true of Israel\u2019s patrons in Washington. While the U.S. State Department routinely criticizes Israeli actions in its\u00a0own annual human rights report \u2014 and even cited the latest UN report\u2019s findings on Gaza in the 2014 edition \u2014 State spokespersons still dismissed the report. \u201cWe challenge the very mechanism which created it<\/a>,\u201d State Department spokesman John Kirby said, arguing that the UN panel showed a \u201cvery clear bias against Israel.\u201d<\/p>\n

No More Enabling<\/strong><\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the process of rebuilding Gaza is going very slowly thanks to the Israeli blockade of the territory \u2014 especially its restrictions on building materials. A few months ago, in fact, Oxfam<\/a> warned that rebuilding the strip would take 100 years if Israel continued its blockade.<\/p>\n

No wonder the report\u2019s recommendations call for the Israeli government to \u201caddress the structural issues that fuel the conflict.\u201d That means lifting the nearly complete siege that Israel has imposed on Gaza for the better part of the last decade.<\/p>\n

The U.S. government rarely imposes consequences for the violations documented in its own reports on Israel, let alone the UN\u2019s reports. Yet on nuclear talks with Iran, at least, President Barack Obama has shown a willingness to buck the Israeli government and its supporters in the U.S. Congress. He should do the same for Gaza.<\/p>\n

Even without congressional approval, Obama could make significant changes. At the very least, he could act on his stated interest in\u00a0\u201cre-evaluating<\/a>\u201d U.S. support for Israel in the UN, by directing his ambassador to stop reflexively vetoing resolutions that call on Israel to live up to its international obligations. The next step could be conditioning all U.S. military aid to Israel on respect for their human rights obligations.<\/p>\n

For children like Anas to rest in peace, and for future generations of Palestinian children to live normal lives, the U.S. must start using some of those options to impose real pressure on its close ally to end these abuses. Otherwise, it\u2019s just enabling them.<\/p>\n

_____________________________<\/p>\n

Qossay Alsattari is a fellow of the Next Leaders program at the Institute for Policy Studies\u00a0in Washington, DC.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

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

 <\/p>\n

Join the<\/em><\/strong> BDS-BOYCOTT, DIVESTMENT, SANCTIONS <\/em><\/strong>campaign<\/em><\/strong><\/span> 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<\/strong> PRODUCTS WHOSE<\/strong> BARCODE<\/strong> STARTS WITH<\/strong> 729<\/strong>, which indicates that it is produced in Israel. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0DO YOUR PART! MAKE A DIFFERENCE!<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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

You may have heard that \u201cboth sides\u201d committed abuses in last Gaza war. But there’s no comparison when it comes to the scale of the violations \u2014 or the body count. According to the investigators, the war killed 2,251 Palestinians, including 1,462 civilians \u2014 over half of them women and children. By contrast, six Israeli civilians and 67 soldiers were killed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[62],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-62202","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62202","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=62202"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62202\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62202"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62202"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62202"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}