Please Israel Stop
By Ben Zaadz
July 2006
“If I was in your position…
I’d put down all my ammunition…
and wonder why it had taken me so long”
More of the same. And more of the same. And more and more and more of the same. The bully kills and the victim gets blamed. The symptoms are addressed but not the root causes. The spoilt little brat country literally gets away with murder and no-body has le palle to stand up to it.
Three and a half months ago, there was the case of Akaber Abdelrahmen Zaid, the seven-year old Palestinian girl shot in the head by Israeli specially trained sharpshooters (undercover IDF Duvdevan unit) in a town near Jenin. One article I read voiced the questions many of us were asking ourselves: who would bear responsibility for her death and what would the consequences be for the soldiers/policemen who killed her? At the time the IDF stated that it had regretted the “harm” caused to the child, thus acknowledging that in effect Israeli security forces bore the responsibility. Yet so far it seems as though there have been absolutely no consequences to bear by the individual soldiers/policemen or the institution they belong to or the state that they represent.
Three weeks later, eight-year old Hadeel Rabe’eya Ghaban was killed in Beit Lahiya, Gaza, when at least six artillery shells fired by the Israeli military fell on her family house. The shelling managed to injure seven of Hadeel’s siblings, their ages ranging from 18 months to 17 years old. Again there were no apparent consequences for the perpetrators.
On 9 June, exactly two months and one day after the killing of Hadeel, four children (in most reports it states five but subsequently it was discovered that the fifth sibling killed was over 18 years of age) and three adults, all belonging to the same family, were killed on a beach in Northern Gaza by shells coming from an Israeli gunship stationed off the Gazan coastline. First Israel apologized and, again, gravely regretted the harm caused by the incident. Later Defence Minister Peretz officially denied that the responsibility lay with Israel, insisting that an IDF inquiry had proven that no evidence of IDF shells had been found at the scene of the killing and that, although the gunship had fired shells, the timing disqualified the possibility of those shells hitting the beach when the Ghalia family was killed. Marc Garlasco, a senior military analyst at Human Rights Watch, begged to differ, after he did find fragments of IDF shells at the scene and embedded in the victims. He also gathered computerized and hand-written hospital records that show that children injured at the beach were admitted to the hospital at a time that would suggest that the blast that caused the family’s death occurred during the time of the IDF shelling. Israel dismissed or declined to accept this evidence, only acknowledging the possibility that unexploded ordnance from an IDF artillery shell fired earlier in the day could have caused the fatal injuries. The dubious fact remains however that the IDF inquiry relied solely on internal sources. Ex-Pentagon analyst Garlasco opined, “an investigation that refuses to look at contradictory evidence can hardly be considered credible…The IDF’s partisan approach highlights the need for an independent, international investigation.” Other voices have also called for an independent investigation such as Amnesty International and the international child rights organization, Defence for Children International, which issued an open letter to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child and UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Prof. John Dugard urging them to spearhead this mission.
The response from state governments and intergovernmental institutions has ranged from silent to lame to shocking. Kofi Annan wagged his finger and said in not so many words “Israel, please don’t be so barbaric when you kill. Try to be gentler in your attacks”, while the good ol’ US not only failed to condemn the attack, but went as far as saying Israel had the right to defend itself…Does Israel need to defend itself against an unarmed family of seven picknicking on the beach? I would like to believe not.
Then on 13 June, high precision Israeli Air Force missiles managed to collaterally kill two more Palestinian children (and eight adults) in another attack on a car in Gaza, aimed supposedly at rocket-carrying militants who were supposedly travelling in the targeted car. The spate of child killings continued on 20 June when three more Gazan children were wiped out by yet another Israeli targeted assassination gone wrong.
Then came the 25 June kidnapping incident; the subsequent “Saving Private Shalit” mission has wrought even more senseless destruction and killing on Gaza. The body count is on the rise and nobody is doing anything effective to stop it. I say effective, because there have been attempts by civil society all over the world to try to bring Israel to its senses. Hundreds of articles and reports have been written in the wake of this latest intensification of killing and collective punishment, denouncing and strongly criticizing Israel’s actions and urging, begging, for someone, SOMEBODY, SOMETHING to stop this insanity. In her article “Kidnapped by emotions”, journalist Akiva Eldar reminds the Israeli and foreign public that Prime Minister Olmert was spouting a very different tune to the gun-totting kill ‘em all attitude of recent weeks when he addressed a New York Jewish audience just one year ago when he was still deputy PM. He spoke of wanting to be friends, partners and good neighbours with the Palestinians. He spoke of daring to take the risks to move towards better understanding and greater trust. What made him change his mind? A few pathetic Qassam rockets? I am becoming increasingly suspicious that Israel does not want peace; that they do not want a solution to this never-ending conflict.
With this desperate conclusion, I see no point in civil society continuing to toil over hundreds of reports and articles, bearing witness to these atrocities. Regardless of how well-argued, well-researched and well-referenced these commentaries are they are falling on deaf ears, so we might as well find another purpose for them. How about printing them all off and using them to build the coffins of the next victims of Israel’s indiscriminate killing – judging by the latest trend, we will need all the paper we can get.
Let this one go into the coffin of the youngest victim; insert it on the inside panel, closest to the heart.
Ben Zaadz is human rights activist from the UK. This is his first article.
