Robin Beste 16 August 2014. Posted in News
Numerous
pregnant women have been killed in Israel's assault on Gaza. Is it because they
are human shields for unborn 'terrorists'?
After five
weeks of Israeli bombing and invasion the United Nations reported that the
death toll in Gaza was 1,973, 72% of them civilians, including 459 children and
238 women.
Not included
in that figure were the nine unborn children that Israel killed.
Three
pregnant mothers were among the 25 members of the Abu Jamaa family who were
killed on 20 July, when Israeli forces struck a house near Khan Younis, without
warning. The dead included 18 children and five women. The family was eating
iftar, the meal that breaks the Ramadan fast.
Just as this
family was being slaughtered, by an indisputable Israeli war crime, the US secretary
of state John Kerry gave an interview in which he said, Israel's attack on Gaza
was an "appropriate and legitimate effort" to defend itself.
A little
earlier in the day, Kerry's boss, President Obama, repeated his "strong
support for Israel's right to defend itself".
Obama gave
this green light to Israel, "after speaking with Israeli Prime Minister
Binyamin Netanyahu earlier in the day". Predictably, Netanyahu was soon
all over the media crowing about US support for Israel's indiscriminate
bombardment of the most densely populated place on Earth, and announcing that
Israel planned to intensify the carnage in Gaza over the coming days.
At a press
conference on 3 August, Netanyahu praised the United States for its
"terrific support" and Obama for his "unequivocal stand with
Israel on our right to defend ourselves".
Britain's
prime minister David Cameron also spoke regularly to Netanyahu, to whom he
repeated "our recognition of Israel's right to take proportionate action
to defend itself".
Whether it was
'proportionate' to kill 459 children, or four boys playing football on a beach,
or 25 family members as they sat down for a meal, David Cameron hasn't said.
Was it 'proportionate to litter the streets of the Shujai'iya dictrict in Gaza
City with dozens of bodies of mainly women and children, after it had been
effectively carpet-bombed? Was it 'proportionate' to bomb hospitals and a home
for the disabled? David Cameron didn't say.
Cameron said
he had asked Netanyahu "to do everything to avoid civilian casualties, to
exercise restraint".
This clearly
did not include restraining from sending the world's fifth most powerful
military force to invade a tiny area, just 25 miles long and just a few miles
wide, into which are crammed 1.8 million people, who have been held captive in
a brutal siege for seven years, that has deprived the inhabitants of food,
power, access to clean water, a functioning sewage system, medical supplies and
other essential resources.
Israel's
justification for killing so many civilians is the claim that Hamas is using civilians
as human shields for its rockets and fighters. These same accusations, were
made in 2008 and 2009 during Israel's Operation Cast Lead bombing of Gaza and
were found to be without evidence by Amnesty International.
Israeli
spokesman Mark Regev has been given free rein by the mainstream media to repeat
this accusation, despite journalists like the BBC's Jeremy Bowen reporting that
they "saw no evidence of Hamas using Palestinians as human shields."
In fact, the
human shields' argument is a complete myth, which is why Israel has produced no
evidence to support it. It is the reason Israel gave for the missile attack on
a home for the disabled in Beit Lahiya, killing two disabled residents and
injuring four others. Jamilla Alaiwa, a 59 year old social worker who founded
the home, said,. "If the Israelis have proof of this let them make it
public. There was no one from Islamic Jihad or Hamas living there. We are not
involved in politics."
No
Palestinian civilian has been found to corroborate Israel's claim they are
being forced by Hamas to become unwilling human shields. Why then, says Israel,
do people stay in their homes when we drop leaflets telling them to evacuate
because we are about to bomb? Abdullah al-Daweish, a relative of the family of
five killed in Khan Younis, explains:
“Where do we
go to? Some people moved from the outer edge of Khan Younis to Khan Younis
centre after Israelis told them to, then the centre got bombed. People have
moved from this area to Gaza City, and Gaza City has been bombed. It’s not
Hamas who is ordering us in this, it’s the Israelis.”
The United
Nations said on 22 July that 43% of the Gaza population had been affected by
evacuation or no-go area warnings from Israel. By the beginning of August, the
number of displaced Gaza residents was over half a million.
Over 200,000
Palestinians fled to centres set up by the United Nations. A total of 344
babies were born in UN schools designated as shelters.
But even here
they were not safe, with the UN relief agency reporting that six of its
facilities, including three schools were struck by Israeli shells. On 22 July
at least 15 Palestinians sheltering in a UN school were killed and 200 injured,
most of them women and children. UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon called the
attack a war crime. But this didn't stop Israel attacking another UN school a
week later, this time killing a further 17 civilians.
Even the
United States, supplier of the shells that did the killing, felt it needed to
call the attack "disgraceful", but at the same time it was rushing
arms to Israel as its munitions stocks were running low, so much of it used to
devastate Gaza.
The British
government was shown to be no slouch either in supplying arms to Israel, when
it was revealed that UK manufactured weapons and components were being used in
Israel's current assault, including drone technology that the Israeli airforce
described as the "backbone" of its targeting and reconnaissance
missions.
With the
borders of Gaza sealed by the Israeli and Egyptian siege, no wonder the
desperate response from its people -- as Israel bombarded the whole area by
land, sea and air -- was, where else is there for us to go?
Nowhere, is
the reply for the two families -- eleven people -- killed overnight on 23 July.
A distraught man told the BBC how his dead relatives there had been relocated
twice, first from Beit Hanoun and then from Shujai'iya, areas that received
Israeli evacuation orders.
Netanyahu
says another reason for so many civilians being killed by Israel, is because Hamas
wants to "pile up as many civilian dead as they can to make Israel look
bad. They use telegenically dead Palestinians for their cause. They want the
more dead, the better."
Netanyahu was
allowed to make this despicable accusation without challenge on the mainstream
media news broadcasts. But "the more dead the better" is certainly
the view of not a few Israelis, including the member of the Israeli parliament,
Ayelet Shaked, who said recently,
"Behind
every terrorist stand dozens of men and women, without whom he could not engage
in terrorism. They are all enemy combatants, and their blood shall be on all
their heads. Now this also includes the mothers of the martyrs, who send them
to hell with flowers and kisses. They should follow their sons, nothing would
be more just. They should go, as should the physical homes in which they raised
the snakes. Otherwise, more little snakes will be raised there."
Put a little
less graphically, Israeli army major general Oren Shachor, explained: “If we
kill their families, that will frighten them.”
So, is the
reason so many pregnant women were killed in Gaza because Israel believes they
were acting as human shields for unborn 'terrorists'?
When an
Israeli air strike killed an expectant mother in the early hours of 23 July,
Gaza health officials told the BBC how they tried to rescue the baby from the
dead mother, only for the child to die. No doubt two deaths welcomed by Ayelet
Shaked and major general Shachor.
Source: Stop
the War Coalition
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