PALESTINIANS ARE PEOPLE

They have names, as do Israelis. A simple new report recording of the known dead is not good enough. Allowing for cultural sensitivities some recognition of the dead should be made. Perhaps  the script would include who they were, their age, and how they were killed.

Most of the people who died in the Gaza Massacre were not combatants. They had no weapons, unless if you count sling shots, and is that a David and Cyber-Goliath image to conjure. Their deaths appear to be in some case deliberate and in other cases negligent. Even before the question of the use of white phosphorous is considered, there would appear to be prima facie war crimes to be adjudicated.

The Boston Globe reports, via Juan Cole at Informed Comment:

As Israel completed a rapid troop pullout yesterday morning, the World Health Organization released a report estimating that 1,300 Palestinians were killed during the fighting, including 410 children and 104 women. About 5,300 Palestinians were injured, half of them women and children, the report said.

At least 13 Israelis died, three of them civilians and four of them military personnel accidentally killed by Israeli fire.

In addition to allegations of indiscriminate violence, critics accuse Israel of violating international law restricting the use of phosphorus weapons, which can inflict horrific burns. Phosphorus artillery shells and similar weapons are not illegal, but the law bars their use in densely populated areas such as Gaza City, one of the most crowded urban areas in the world.

The deaths are one set of numbers, as are the horrific physical injuries, not to mention I can suppose traumatic shock. The following accounts were collated by Chris Floyd, and bear repeating.

Here is what happened in summary to Mahmoud Mattar, via The Times, who is 14 years old:

Israel’s three-week offensive in the Gaza Strip may be over but Mahmoud Mattar, 14, will not be able to sense the quiet that has descended on his home town of Jabalya.

Blinded in both eyes, with third-degree burns over much of his torso, Mahmoud lies unconscious in the Sheikh Zayid Hospital on the outskirts of Cairo. He has said little since January 6, when an Israeli attack on his village in northern Gaza left him nearly dead on the street outside his mosque. Doctors say that he will never see again — and that the burns on his body were caused by white phosphorus, a controversial incendiary weapon that Israel originally denied using.

“He was walking to the mosque when the attack started,” his uncle, Nahad Mattar, said. “Two of his friends who were walking with him were killed instantly. Their bodies are in pieces. He was hit by something and his body began to burn.

The Gulf News reports:

Doctors operating the only brain-scanning machine at an Egyptian hospital near Gaza have been almost overwhelmed by the number of Palestinian children arriving with bullet wounds to the head.

On just one day last week, staff at the Al Arish hospital in Sinai were called to perform CAT scans on a nine year old, two 10 year olds and a 14 year old, each of whom had a bullet lodged in their brain after coming under fire during the Israeli ground assault on Gaza.

Israeli officials continued to deny on Saturday that their soldiers had deliberately targeted civilians, blaming Hamas fighters for sheltering in the houses of ordinary Gaza residents and using them as human shields.

The story of the Samouni family, via The Guardian, defies belief:

Helmi Samouni knelt yesterday on the floor of the bedroom he once shared with his wife and their five-month old son, scraping his fingers through a thick layer of ash and broken glass looking for mementoes of their life together. “I found a ring. I might find more,” he said.

His wife Maha and their child Muhammad were killed in the second week of Israel’s 22-day war in Gaza when they were shelled by Israeli forces as they took shelter nearby along with dozens of relatives. In total 48 people from one family are now known to have died that Monday morning, 5 January, in Zeitoun, on the southern outskirts of Gaza City.

Of all the horrors visited on the civilians of Gaza in this war the fate of the Samounis, a family of farmers who lived close together in simple breeze-block homes, was perhaps the gravest.

Nothing can justify this behavior and these outcomes, which are plainly forseeable. Those who gave permission to a small country, Israel to commit such crimes, are morally, and I would believe legally culpable.

It would seem to me, less than sufficient to have made, as the Israel Foreign Minister claims, 90,000 phone calls. Aside from anything else there are fundamental questions about the legal status of Gaza in relation to Israel. The utility of court judgments are that they could determine these matters in terms of legal consequences and responsibility. The absence of trials means the international system is broken, as is the United Nations, whose property and personnel are in the Israel arrogance can be a target of war. Where is the outrage?

Robert Fisk said the other day that Ban Ki Moon and the United Nations were “pathetic”. The Australian Government, which has taken no action, to my knowledge, belongs in the same category.

A possible way to remember the people killed in the slaughter, making no distinction between Palestinian or Israeli, would be plant a set of trees for each person. The gesture would be, subject to acceptability, be practical as well as symbolic memorial.

ELSEWHERE:

Anita Rice, at Al Jareeza English, suggests that Israel is home free on the war crimes front. It seems to have the 007 licence.

We must fight an unrelenting struggle against Israel. A struggle that will restore the humanity of their leaders and the decency of their people. There are no excuses for inaction.

An alternative view, is that some people in Gaza blame both Israel and the Hamas Government. On balance, I think it is the international system, the intransigence of Israel in not recognizing the human rights of the Palestinians, including the history of destroying their leadership and the evolution of their government, the weakness and division of the Arab Governments, among others. None of these factors would count if the people of Palestine and Israel decided to live together, however they might chose to do that.

AT CounterPunch, Patrick Cockburn is sharply insightful:

Israeli society was always introverted but these days it reminds me more than ever of the Unionists in Northern Ireland in the late 1960s or the Lebanese Christians in the 1970s. Like Israel, both were communities with a highly developed siege mentality which led them always to see themselves as victims even when they were killing other people. There were no regrets or even knowledge of what they inflicted on others and therefore any retaliation by the other side appeared as unprovoked aggression inspired by unreasoning hate.

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