Human Rights Watch on Gaza
This is a few days old and, frankly, a bit obvious but for the record I think I should link to and quote from Human Rights Watch’s most recent statement on Gaza:
Israel and Hamas both must respect the prohibition under the laws of war against deliberate and indiscriminate attacks on civilians, Human Rights Watch said today. Human Rights Watch expressed grave concern about Israeli bombings in Gaza that caused civilian deaths and Palestinian rocket attacks on Israeli civilian areas in violation of international law.
Rocket attacks on Israeli towns by Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups that do not discriminate between civilians and military targets violate the laws of war, while a rising number of the hundreds of Israeli bombings in Gaza since December 27, 2008, appear to be unlawful attacks causing civilian casualties. Additionally, Israel’s severe limitations on the movement of non-military goods and people into and out of Gaza, including fuel and medical supplies, constitutes collective punishment, also in violation of the laws of war.
Neither the Israeli government nor Hamas is the first outfit to flaunt the laws of war and they obviously won’t be the last. But I think it’s still important to call these things out, and I think it’s a real problem that the fraught nature of these issues seems to have persuaded a lot of bloggers to basically say nothing about the fighting. At a minimum, duly noting that there are human rights abuses being committed by both sides and that human rights abuses are bad isn’t so hard.
27 Responses to “Human Rights Watch on Gaza”
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January 2nd, 2009 at 12:10 pm
Neither the Israeli government nor Hamas is the first outfit to flaunt the laws of war and they obviously won’t be the last.
Yes, well, what can you do? Once you get the laws of war, right away you want to go lord it over your lawless neighbors, right? So both sides can be forgiven their ostentatious displays.
January 2nd, 2009 at 12:16 pm
Citizens of the United States of America are the last ones to be pointing fingers at the Palestinians and Israelis for violating the laws of war. The bombing of German and Japanese cities during the 2nd World War makes the Palestinian/Israeli violations look like a misdemeanor.
January 2nd, 2009 at 12:19 pm
That was, literally, a lifetime ago.
January 2nd, 2009 at 12:28 pm
American war crimes of years past make little things like rocket attacks look like a misdemeanor. Therefore we have no standing to criticize Palestinian atrocities. Thanks for the reminder, SLC.
January 2nd, 2009 at 12:33 pm
Hamas needs to stop the rocket fire so that Abbas can continue his fruitless “negotiations.” As soon as Hamas is crushed, Israel focus on building more settlements in the West Bank. That is what the “peace process” is all about.
January 2nd, 2009 at 12:34 pm
You mean “flout”.
January 2nd, 2009 at 12:45 pm
What Matt Austern said. If I drove a gold-plated Hummer, I’d be flaunting my wealth. And if I parked it next to a hydrant, I’d be flouting the law.
And in the post about Afghanistan, one hoards resources, perhaps by refusing to share them with the unwashed hordes.
January 2nd, 2009 at 12:58 pm
But, of course, the Commentary contingent long ago decided the Human Rights Watch is an anti-Semitic organization, and why? Because they criticize Israel. So they must be anti-Semitic, so they are not worth listening to when they criticize Israel. QED.
January 2nd, 2009 at 1:59 pm
I was going to do a flaunt/flout comment, but I see that foxtrotsky (cute!), Matt Austern and low-tech cyclist all beat me to it. I do want to let Matt know that I’d be happy to proofread for him, though — I’d promise a lightning-speed turnaround and no more embarrassing errors for us pedants to snark about.
January 2nd, 2009 at 2:55 pm
Thanks for making the effort. Good to see that someone cares about (and understands the value of) principle.
January 2nd, 2009 at 6:23 pm
Fallujah. Wedding parties. Funeral processions. Forty days and forty nights of carpet bombing cities…
vs. ten people killed in a decade by rockets. This is what “fair and balanced” boils down to.
January 3rd, 2009 at 11:30 pm
It is so hard yet so attractive to set up an analogy between the human rights abuses by the Israeli government and those by Hamas. Unfortunately though, such a dialectic must take into account that Hamas stations its rocket launching brigades and stockpiles its weapons in schools, hospitals, mosques, and apartment buildings. Hamas also enters Israel posing as normal Palestinian laborers. In other words, it’s damn hard to fight an enemy bent on the obliteration of your existence that uses the surrounding civilian population as a human shield.
Israel drops pamphlets, it arranges mass phone calls, and drops sound weapons on the places it plans on attacking. Still civilians die, and often take the brunt of the losses. Their basic human right to live is extinguished by their very location.
Matt, you’re right we should acknowledge it. Yet, I’m not buying the analogy that your language implies.
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