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
32 Responses to “Labour Friends of Israel continues to whitewash war crimes”
Paul 保羅 باول Billanie
I will investigate whether it is a fake map as you assert, I will of course apologise if I am wrong. I would like to see your evidence for this as well however and will ask if you deny that any land has been stolen? As to your other comment about it being a total exaggeration as the article itself says 551 children last year, and that is not counting adults. That is around 1.5 per day on average, and that is counting only the children. Although granted not actually ‘daily’ attacks (on either side both are culpable to a degree).
Yoni Higgsmith
Hi James,
I believe that your efforts are interesting – I disagree with many of your explanations and think that you have one half of a story. Your telling basically says – “One Pro-Israel writer said a bunch of things that are Anti-Palestine and I can explain it all back as being anti-Israel.”
In your telling you are white washing Hamas’ rocket fire / use of tunnels –> which start or end somewhere in Gaza / and aggression against Israel.
In Gerber’s she is white washing Israel’s aggression / blockade and treatment of Palestinians.
There is little balance here.
Lets start by accepting that we are looking to a long term solution to the situation in Gaza, West Bank, and Israel.
Lets also accept that all peoples in those countries and their ancestors, have suffered enough.
Finally lets accept that the problem with ‘legitimate resistance’, something that pro Palestine groups use to defend Hamas and pro Israel groups use to defend IDF, is that the legitimacy of armed resistance has not been checked with a fine human rights comb.
Both LFI and LFPME want a viable peaceful 2 state solution.
Religious Settlers in the West Bank – they want a one state solution with majority Israel. (bad) This means the end of Palestinian Nationality, something people who believe in a 2 state solution have to rally against.
BDS wants a one state solution based on a right of return for all Palestinians to go to Israel and become a majority there so that Israelies no longer get to self determine. It has no interest in the fact that over a million of the population of Jews in Israel are there because they were refugees, at least 0.8 million of them from nearby Arabic countries who are anti-Israel’s Nationality. (bad)
We need to end the blockade, we need a 2 state solution and lasting peace.
The problem I see with BDS is that they are an obstacle to peace.
I wonder how long they will remain a serious voice in debates around the middle east unless they change their tune.
Last week BDS managed to get Cardiff council to ban a photo exhibition about peace between Arab and Jew football teams because the teams where both based in Israel. They said it showed a political bias to Israel. So BDS now has the power to silence peace efforts that are of equal importance to Palestine & Israel – of peace between peoples.
BDS also practice antisemitism. – In Spain they singled out a Jew – who is not an Israeli – and asked him to declare that he had no Political allegiance to Israel before being allowed to perform. He was so upset with the antisemitism he refused to participate and was not allowed to perform. We never ask people who are affiliated with a culture to declare their personal opinions before allowing performance.
BDS also are anti-Zionist in an oppressive way. They have succeeded in changing the conversation of what Zionism is so that it has come to mean to many a mixture of the following. Ethnic cleansing, racism, apartheid, etc…
Anti-Zionists say it means one thing, but the majority of people who would say they are zionist dont feel that those terms have anything to do with zionism.
So Pro Zionists believe in a cultural centre for Jews in Israel – a safe place to seek asylum if you are Jewish, and a country where you can live a Jewish, or secular, or any religious from any background, life.
And both anti-Zionists and Zionists do unspeakable horrendous things in the name of their identity, like indiscriminate rocket fire at Israeli civilians or blockading Gaza – harming all civilians there.
If I said I was a socialist and you said “Im anti Socialist because it means lynching the rich”
I’d respond and explain why it doesnt mean that and why I positively identify with it.
I am a Zionist pro Palestine Humanist Israeli British Socialist Jew.
I welcome dialogue on how to solve the problems – not how to point fingers. Both sides have work to do, would you join me in trying to create peace in the middle east?