551 Palestinian children were killed by Israeli forces last summer
One year on from the tragic events in Gaza last summer, and the British Israel lobby is still trying to distract us from Israel’s crimes by highlighting perceived wrongdoing by other sides.
In her piece for Left Foot Forward, Jennifer Gerber makes a number of claims which require refutation: Hamas’ responsibility for provoking ‘the conflict’; the use of ‘terror tunnels’; Hamas use of human shields; and finally what Gerber laughably calls, ‘Israel’s attempt to avoid civilian casualties’.
But the worst distortion of all is the narrative which Gerber is seeking to peddle from her position as director of Labour Friends of Israel – which is that whatever violence its occupation of the Palestinians metes out, whatever injustice is done, Israel is somehow beyond reproach. It is never Israel’s fault.
Gerber writes that ‘the lives of all those civilians – Palestinian and Israeli – who died during the conflict are of equal value’ but doesn’t care to mention that the numbers of Palestinian and Israeli dead were 2,251 to 72; or that just six of those Israeli casualties were civilian.
Gerber seeks to situate the ‘conflict’ – if that is what one can call such a one-sided massacre – with, ‘the teenagers’ abduction and brutal murder which triggered the war’.
By using what some historians call ‘emplotment’, Gerber creates a narrative that starts not with Israel’s blockade of Gaza in 2007, nor when its occupation of Palestine began in 1967, nor even the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1947-9. It starts with a Hamas killing in 2014.
Let’s take Gerber’s other claims in turn.
If ‘terror tunnels’ were the main justification for Israel’s attack, then why did tanks operate a no-go zone in 44 per cent of the Gaza strip and shell schools, hospitals and houses?
These tunnels cannot explain the Israeli occupying forces’ murder of Khalil Anati, the 10-year-old boy shot dead by Israeli forces in al-Fawwar refugee camp in the West Bank, or 14-year-old Yousef al-Shawamrah, killed picking plants.
On human shields, Amnesty International have found no evidence of Palestinians using them, but evidence has emerged of Israeli troops forcing groups of up to sixty Palestinians to stay in residences and act as human shields.
In fact, Israel has a well-documented history of systematically using Palestinian civilians as human shields, particularly children.
What Gerber misses out from the report is damning of Israel. Not only did Israel repeatedly deny entry to the Human Rights Council, but they did not reply to any questions from the commission.
It details how the blockade has been ‘strangling the economy in Gaza and imposed severe restrictions on the rights of the Palestinians’.
Of the 2,251 Palestinians killed, 299 were women and 551 children. 18,000 housing units were destroyed in whole or in part; much of the electricity network and of the water and sanitation infrastructure were incapacitated; and 73 medical facilities and many ambulances were damaged.
At one point, 28 per cent of the population of Gaza, around half a million Palestinians, were internally displaced by the bombing.
Most disturbingly, but unsurprising to those acquainted with Israel’s tactics in ‘conflict’, the report, ‘identified patterns of strikes by Israeli forces on residential buildings’, and, ‘found that the fact that precision-guided weapons were used in all cases indicates that they were directed against specific targets and resulted in the total or partial destruction of entire buildings.’
Is it any wonder that Labour Friends of Israel is so keen to draw our attention to the half a dozen Israeli civilians killed by Hamas in the midst of all this death and destruction that was rained down on Gaza?
For too long Labour Friends of Israel has been taken at face value, and been granted platforms which it constantly uses to whitewash the war crimes of Israel. It is a losing battle.
Last year, Labour’s biggest trade union Unite, which represents over a million and a half workers, voted to support the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign in solidarity with Palestine, while the National Union of Students has twice voted since the 2014 massacre in Gaza to support BDS.
I wonder whether Labour Friends of Israel will long remain a voice that is taken seriously in debates around the Middle East while its whitewashing is unpicked by countless pages of human rights reports, journalism and documentation of the war crimes of the state they believe can do no wrong.
James Elliott is deputy editor of Left Futures and a member of the NUS National Executive Council. Follow him on Twitter
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32 Responses to “Labour Friends of Israel continues to whitewash war crimes”
Gaz Lewis
A land grab, even the the only reason they held on to that land in the first place is because Egypt and Jordan wouldn’t take WB and Gaza back? Okay, sure.
The King David bombing, commit by a faction group, where they alerted the building to what was going to happen to give them a chance to evacuate because they wanted to destroy records? Okay. Really comparable to 60 years of hiding behind children and blowing up school buses. Nice one, buddy.
“The wars have been followed by land grabs”
You keep using that word land grabs. Did I not mention they gave Gaza back..? Oh, look how well that turned out by the way.
Please get your facts right. I’m tired of correcting the same old nonsense from people over and over again.
blarg1987
Then what they should have done is given the land back and negotiated a non militarised zone enforced by say the UN?
And they did not tell everyone that needed to know, so innocent people got killed.
They only gave Gaza back after pressure that was applied to them, not out of free will.
And as I have said both sides are culpable in bad acts.
Paul 保羅 باول Billanie
Yeah a democracy that takes the land of others. Which when other nations do it they are condemned, sanctioned and have war declared (Iraq/Kuwait springs to mind) rightly so I must add. So why not when Israel does it? Oh I forget, don’t want to look anti-Semitic now do we. Maybe this image will put it in context https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10207218036953826&set=p.10207218036953826&type=1
Is it any wonder the Palestinians defend themselves? That map is just up to 2000 as well, it has probably changed a hell of a lot since then. Would you take that in your backyard without putting up a fight?
In a wider context though this whole business has wider implications. The continued support given to Israel is partially what makes countries like the UK and USA among others a target for some terrorist activity, that along with what we did in Iran and other places. Have you seen Argo with the opening sequence? https://youtu.be/_6RGeqNFaQM?t=1m3s Is it any wonder they hate the west?
damon
I’m not a fan of Israel particularly, but why do people obsess about this quite small region so much?
There have been far worse crimes against people in the wider middle East region over the last fifty years, but everyone seems to focus disproportionately on Israel.
Whatever the rights and wrongs of the Zionist project, many of the people who now live in Israel were from the middle east and north Africa themselves. Jews who were usually second class citizens in those Arab countries.
Sure there was some ethnic cleansing that went on to create Israel, but why were those people never encouraged to move on with their lives like Germans, Greeks and loads of other ethnically cleansed people have done in the last century?
It all seems a bit pathetic in the end.
Paul 保羅 باول Billanie
To be honest it is all a bit pathetic. except for the fact that real people are dying day after day for this scrap of land. it seems ironic that the City of Peace is one of the most contested places on Earth.
‘Sure there was some ethnic cleansing’ There should have been none. This is exactly the crime that the Nazi’s started to commit against the Jews among other people in WWII so then to commit it to others is abhorrent, they know the damage it did to them back then so certainly shouldn’t do it themselves.