On November 15 2012 Israel initiated their largest campaign of bombing on the besieged Palestinian city of Gaza since Operation Cast Lead between 27 December 2008 and 18 January 2009.
On November 15 2012 Israel initiated their largest campaign of bombing on the besieged Palestinian city of Gaza since Operation Cast Lead between 27 December 2008 and 18 January 2009.
The Goldstone Report, a United Nations Human Rights Council fact-finding mission led by the South African Constitutional Court judge Richard Goldstone, accused Israel of numerous war crimes and contraventions of the Geneva Convention during Operation Cast Lead. The Goldstone Report found that Operation Cast Lead was aimed against the “people of Gaza as a whole”, and was designed to “humiliate and terrorize a civilian population”. The Report found Israel carried out direct attacks against civilians, in which civilians were shot while trying to leave their homes to walk to a safer place, often waving white flags. In addition, the Israeli Defence Force used white phosphorous munitions in civilian areas including in attacks on the United Nations Relief and Works agency and the Al Quds and Al Wafa hospitals. The United Nations Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons outlaws the use of incendiary weapons, such as white phosphorous, against civilian areas. Coming into contact with human skin white phosphorous burns through the person’s body causing horrific injuries and often a subsequent agonisingly painful death. The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights reported that 5 303 Palestinians were wounded and 1 417 killed, of which 926 were civilians.
Operation Pillars of Defence launched last week is forebodingly similar in its continuation of this kind of violence. The first salvo in this attack was the assassination of the Hamas military leader Ahmed Jabari, who had just received a draft permanent truce agreement. The four subsequent days have seen the murder of about 100 Palestinians, at least 50 of them civilians including 23 children. The IDF has called up 75 000 reservists and have massed their tanks at the border of Gaza while continuing their bombardment of the city. These belligerent actions by Israel have been supported by Obama’s government which provides three billion dollars of military aid to Israel annually. There have also been statements from Israeli politicians and public figures that dehumanise the entire Palestinian population and horrifically call for the destruction of Gaza and the entire West Bank in the manner of the United States of America’s obliteration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
On 19 November the Jerusalem Post quoted the son of former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon as saying:
“[…w]e need to flatten entire neighbourhoods in Gaza. Flatten all of Gaza. The Americans didn’t stop with Hiroshima – the Japanese weren’t surrendering fast enough, so they hit Nagasaki, too.
“There should be no electricity in Gaza, no gasoline or moving vehicles, nothing. Then they’d really call for a ceasefire”.
In the time it“s taken to write this article, the quoted death toll has had to be changed a number of times as more than 20 new Palestinian fatalities have been recorded. We cannot stand by silently as an already brutalised occupied people are bombarded by one of the most powerful military forces in the world. As Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu has said, “If you are neutral in situations of oppression, you have chosen the side of the oppressor”.
