26 aug 2016
UNRWA has not been given an opportunity to review the evidence but we have seen the explanation on the Israeli Military Advocate General’s website. In the circumstance it is therefore impossible for us to make specific comments about the way the case has been conducted.
According to the UN Secretary General’s Board of Inquiry, the incident took place at an UNRWA school which had been designated as an emergency shelter on 18 July.
Between 2,700 to 2,900 people were sheltering there. The Israeli Army launched a precision-guided missile striking the road outside the school, which had opened its gates. 15 persons in the vicinity were killed, including a guard hired by UNRWA. As many as 30 people were injured. The Secretary General’s Board of Inquiry found that the missile was targeting people passing on a motorcycle.
We notified the Israeli Army on 33 separate occasions that this school in Rafah was being used to accommodate the displaced, the last time only an hour before the attack.
This raises serious questions about the conduct of military operations in relation to obligations under international humanitarian law and respect for the inviolability and sanctity of United Nations premises under international law.
UNRWA has consistently called for accountability. Investigations into such incidents are crucial and UNRWA has provided evidence in the process. We remain determined to ensure that incidents are thoroughly investigated.
UNRWA itself is not a tribunal or a judge. We have called for accountability in this case and in others that took place during the 2014 war. Any indication that responsibility was being evaded would be a matter of grave concern.
We note that no criminal responsibility seems to be accepted for any concluded cases concerning UNRWA premises. The families affected have had no effective redress and, from their perspective, this would certainly be seen as a further denial of their rights.
Two years after the end of the 2014 war, Israeli criminal investigations are still ongoing into the strikes on UNRWA emergency shelters in Beit Hanoun (24 July) and in Jabalia (30 July) that resulted together in some 29 civilian deaths and dozens of injuries. UNRWA has cooperated with the Israeli investigations.
Despite follow up, however, UNRWA has received no news to date about progress on these investigations.
~ Christopher Gunness, Spokesperson, Director of Advocacy and Strategic Communications, UNRWA
According to the UN Secretary General’s Board of Inquiry, the incident took place at an UNRWA school which had been designated as an emergency shelter on 18 July.
Between 2,700 to 2,900 people were sheltering there. The Israeli Army launched a precision-guided missile striking the road outside the school, which had opened its gates. 15 persons in the vicinity were killed, including a guard hired by UNRWA. As many as 30 people were injured. The Secretary General’s Board of Inquiry found that the missile was targeting people passing on a motorcycle.
We notified the Israeli Army on 33 separate occasions that this school in Rafah was being used to accommodate the displaced, the last time only an hour before the attack.
This raises serious questions about the conduct of military operations in relation to obligations under international humanitarian law and respect for the inviolability and sanctity of United Nations premises under international law.
UNRWA has consistently called for accountability. Investigations into such incidents are crucial and UNRWA has provided evidence in the process. We remain determined to ensure that incidents are thoroughly investigated.
UNRWA itself is not a tribunal or a judge. We have called for accountability in this case and in others that took place during the 2014 war. Any indication that responsibility was being evaded would be a matter of grave concern.
We note that no criminal responsibility seems to be accepted for any concluded cases concerning UNRWA premises. The families affected have had no effective redress and, from their perspective, this would certainly be seen as a further denial of their rights.
Two years after the end of the 2014 war, Israeli criminal investigations are still ongoing into the strikes on UNRWA emergency shelters in Beit Hanoun (24 July) and in Jabalia (30 July) that resulted together in some 29 civilian deaths and dozens of injuries. UNRWA has cooperated with the Israeli investigations.
Despite follow up, however, UNRWA has received no news to date about progress on these investigations.
~ Christopher Gunness, Spokesperson, Director of Advocacy and Strategic Communications, UNRWA
15 aug 2016
Nada Kiswanson says that she is being targeted because of her role seeking accountability for Israeli war crimes at the International Criminal Court.
For the last six months, Nada Kiswanson has received a steady stream of death threats while she has worked with the International Criminal Court as it probes possible war crimes committed by Israel against Palestinians.
The Jordanian-Swedish human rights lawyer with the Palestinian group Al-Haq has reported receiving intimidating phone calls, emails and a bouquet of flowers with an ominous message, threatening the lives of her and her family. She has been also been contacted by someone impersonating a Dutch governmental official.
Al-Haq and Kiswanson believe the intimidation campaign is designed to discourage their advocacy.
This month Kiswanson received a message stating she was “not safe at all and hopefully this would remain.”
“It’s very clear that the reason I’m being threatened is because of the work that I do in Europe and particularly at the International Criminal Court,” she told the Associated Press.
“My channels of communication have been totally compromised,” she told Reuters.
Sophisticated, organized attacks
Kiswanson believes that Israel may be behind the threats because of the sophisticated nature of the harassment campaign and the substance of her work.
For instance, within a day of purchasing an anonymous prepaid cell phone, she received threats in English, Dutch, and “broken Arabic.” Threats have also reached her through her family’s prepaid cell phones. She told Reuters that one of her relatives in Sweden was called and told that Kiswanson would be “eliminated.”
FIDH, the International Federation for Human Rights, describes the campaign as a well-organized, sophisticated pattern of attacks that requires financial backing. One incident involved thousands of flyers bearing Al-Haq’s logo and Kiswanson’s personal details being distributed throughout her neighborhood.
Amnesty International temporarily closed its office in The Hague after an employee’s email account was hacked to send Kiswanson a message. Three other organizations working with the International Criminal Court on Israeli war crimes have also shut down as a precaution, according to the Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad.
Al-Haq first revealed its employees had been targeted last March, but has kept the details and scope of the harassment discreet.
Last week the Dutch authorities announced they were investigating the threats made against several human rights organizations.
Israeli foreign ministry spokesperson Emmanuel Nahshon dismissed suspicions of his government’s involvement, telling the Associated Press, “We do not react to such preposterous allegations.”
But Dutch authorities have said they are not excluding that possibility. The prosecutor has said they are investigating “various scenarios” but have not come to any conclusions.
The Dutch authorities say they are providing Kiswanson with security.
“We are taking this very seriously,” prosecutors told the Associated Press, saying they’ve requested international assistance.
Herman von Hebel, the registrar of the International Criminal Court, told NRC Handelsblad that the body has never seen such threats to employees of nongovernmental organization working with the court. He said the Dutch authorities were dismissive of the problem until the court intervened.
“We saw immediately: these threats are serious. This should be looked at. And there should be more protection for [nongovernmental organizations] in the Netherlands,” he said.
Von Hebel emphasized that the International Criminal Court relies on groups like Al-Haq to provide documentation which is used by the court to determine whether there is a criminal case.
“It is an attempt to prevent someone to give us information. That is an attack on the very idea of fighting large-scale injustice,” he said.
Wider campaign
Another Palestinian group advocating for prosecution at the International Criminal Court has also been threatened.
The Gaza-based Al-Mezan Center for Human Rights stated last week that its staff had been “subjected to a protracted campaign” of harassment and intimidation, including an email sent to a senior staff member threatening him and his family with death, showing “recent pictures of his house [taken] from a close range.”
“These attacks have intensified when our staff members were working on international litigation, including reporting to the International Criminal Court, and international advocacy focusing on accountability for serious violations of international law by the Israeli military,” the group added.
Al-Mezan said they decided to go public once the harassment, which included “suspicious email messages, Facebook posts, [and] telephone calls to staff, donors and friends” escalated to direct death threats.
“This pattern of attacks follows a wave of hostility towards human rights [nongovernmental organizations] involved in advancing accountability in what Israel considers as ‘lawfare.’”
Documenting war crimes
Since January 2015, the ICC has been conducting a preliminary examination of possible war crimes committed by Israel in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip in the summer of 2014. The investigation will also look into allegations of war crimes committed by Palestinians during the same period.
More than 2,200 Palestinians were killed during Israel’s assault on Gaza that summer.
In November, Al-Haq joined several other human rights groups, including Al-Mezan, Al Dameer and the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, in delivering documentation of alleged crimes committed by the Israeli army during the 51-day onslaught to the International Criminal Court prosecutor.
Amnesty International has urged the Netherlands to commit more to protecting Kiswanson and other human rights workers.
“We call upon the Dutch government, at the highest level, to publicly state that these grave threats, which may be international in origin, are unacceptable on Dutch territory,” the group stated.
For the last six months, Nada Kiswanson has received a steady stream of death threats while she has worked with the International Criminal Court as it probes possible war crimes committed by Israel against Palestinians.
The Jordanian-Swedish human rights lawyer with the Palestinian group Al-Haq has reported receiving intimidating phone calls, emails and a bouquet of flowers with an ominous message, threatening the lives of her and her family. She has been also been contacted by someone impersonating a Dutch governmental official.
Al-Haq and Kiswanson believe the intimidation campaign is designed to discourage their advocacy.
This month Kiswanson received a message stating she was “not safe at all and hopefully this would remain.”
“It’s very clear that the reason I’m being threatened is because of the work that I do in Europe and particularly at the International Criminal Court,” she told the Associated Press.
“My channels of communication have been totally compromised,” she told Reuters.
Sophisticated, organized attacks
Kiswanson believes that Israel may be behind the threats because of the sophisticated nature of the harassment campaign and the substance of her work.
For instance, within a day of purchasing an anonymous prepaid cell phone, she received threats in English, Dutch, and “broken Arabic.” Threats have also reached her through her family’s prepaid cell phones. She told Reuters that one of her relatives in Sweden was called and told that Kiswanson would be “eliminated.”
FIDH, the International Federation for Human Rights, describes the campaign as a well-organized, sophisticated pattern of attacks that requires financial backing. One incident involved thousands of flyers bearing Al-Haq’s logo and Kiswanson’s personal details being distributed throughout her neighborhood.
Amnesty International temporarily closed its office in The Hague after an employee’s email account was hacked to send Kiswanson a message. Three other organizations working with the International Criminal Court on Israeli war crimes have also shut down as a precaution, according to the Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad.
Al-Haq first revealed its employees had been targeted last March, but has kept the details and scope of the harassment discreet.
Last week the Dutch authorities announced they were investigating the threats made against several human rights organizations.
Israeli foreign ministry spokesperson Emmanuel Nahshon dismissed suspicions of his government’s involvement, telling the Associated Press, “We do not react to such preposterous allegations.”
But Dutch authorities have said they are not excluding that possibility. The prosecutor has said they are investigating “various scenarios” but have not come to any conclusions.
The Dutch authorities say they are providing Kiswanson with security.
“We are taking this very seriously,” prosecutors told the Associated Press, saying they’ve requested international assistance.
Herman von Hebel, the registrar of the International Criminal Court, told NRC Handelsblad that the body has never seen such threats to employees of nongovernmental organization working with the court. He said the Dutch authorities were dismissive of the problem until the court intervened.
“We saw immediately: these threats are serious. This should be looked at. And there should be more protection for [nongovernmental organizations] in the Netherlands,” he said.
Von Hebel emphasized that the International Criminal Court relies on groups like Al-Haq to provide documentation which is used by the court to determine whether there is a criminal case.
“It is an attempt to prevent someone to give us information. That is an attack on the very idea of fighting large-scale injustice,” he said.
Wider campaign
Another Palestinian group advocating for prosecution at the International Criminal Court has also been threatened.
The Gaza-based Al-Mezan Center for Human Rights stated last week that its staff had been “subjected to a protracted campaign” of harassment and intimidation, including an email sent to a senior staff member threatening him and his family with death, showing “recent pictures of his house [taken] from a close range.”
“These attacks have intensified when our staff members were working on international litigation, including reporting to the International Criminal Court, and international advocacy focusing on accountability for serious violations of international law by the Israeli military,” the group added.
Al-Mezan said they decided to go public once the harassment, which included “suspicious email messages, Facebook posts, [and] telephone calls to staff, donors and friends” escalated to direct death threats.
“This pattern of attacks follows a wave of hostility towards human rights [nongovernmental organizations] involved in advancing accountability in what Israel considers as ‘lawfare.’”
Documenting war crimes
Since January 2015, the ICC has been conducting a preliminary examination of possible war crimes committed by Israel in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip in the summer of 2014. The investigation will also look into allegations of war crimes committed by Palestinians during the same period.
More than 2,200 Palestinians were killed during Israel’s assault on Gaza that summer.
In November, Al-Haq joined several other human rights groups, including Al-Mezan, Al Dameer and the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, in delivering documentation of alleged crimes committed by the Israeli army during the 51-day onslaught to the International Criminal Court prosecutor.
Amnesty International has urged the Netherlands to commit more to protecting Kiswanson and other human rights workers.
“We call upon the Dutch government, at the highest level, to publicly state that these grave threats, which may be international in origin, are unacceptable on Dutch territory,” the group stated.
8 aug 2016
Op-ed: B'Tselem's recent report about Operation Protective Edge not only charges Israel incorrectly with disregarding civilian life, it almost completely ignores Hamas' culpability in the deaths of those who were killed in the 2014 Gaza conflict.
Just when it appears that all records have been broken, it turns out that this is not the case.
The newspaper that hovers somewhere between anti-Zionism and something far more serious came out last week with the question "Is Israel an Evil State?" Two days later, one of the paper's senior journalists provided the answer: "Yes, it is an Evil State."
Two days before writing that Israel was an "evil state," that same senior journalist published an article entitled "180 babies," who were killed in the Gaza Strip. Behold, the shocking proof of this "evil state."
This "proof" appeared in a report by the B'Tselem organization about the fatalities of Operation Protective Edge, released to mark two years to the war. The report uses the same recycled claims of a mass killing of innocents, while adding interpretation, in the report itself, according to which, "one party breaching the law does not permit its opponent to do the same." That is the most B'Tselem could write against Hamas, that comes out of his report almost entirely blameless. Meanwhile, the decisions made by Israel's leadership make them "fully responsible — both morally and legally — for the extreme harm to civilians."
According to B'Tselem, 2,202 people were killed in the Gaza Strip during Operation Protective Edge. Of them 1,394, 63 percent, were civilians not involved in the fighting. B'Tselem's numbers are controversial, but we'll leave that aside for a moment.
To see just how farfetched the NGO's claims are, one need only look at the very data it provides, including the gender and age of each fatality. Let's leave for a moment the group of 808 fatalities that even B'Tselem graciously admits were terrorists. We're left with 1,394. If they were indeed all innocents, killed as a result of indiscriminate or random fire, the age distribution would be identical, or at the very least close, to the age distribution in the Gaza Strip.
But lo and behold, it turns out that the real statistics are quite different. Among those defined as innocents between the ages of 18-32, 275 are men and 127 are women. Among all fatalities aged 18-59, 1,296 are men and 247 are women. Five times(!) more men than women. Such high numbers of fighting-aged men, compared to such small numbers of women from the same age group do not point toward randomness. Such a discrepancy could not have occurred if indisriminate fire towards population centers had actually taken place. It indicates that the vast majority of those killed are fighters.
It doesn't end here. Teenagers, 14 and over, were involved in the fighting as well. Sometimes they were used as human shields, sometimes they were brainwashed into joining the fight by the anti-Semitic propaganda to which they are subjected from birth. The question of involvement can be checked by examining gender distribution. Among 14-17 year olds, there were 123 boys killed, compared to 32 girls. That's nearly four times(!) as many.
A further step is required: Comparing those killed during Protective Edge to the fatalities in similar conflicts. There's no need to make comparisons with third-world militaries as those of western nations suffice. Various sources have published statistics about the number of people killed in the first year of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. According to British medical journal The Lancet, the number stands at about 100,000 killed, among them about 46,000 children under the age of 14. The 0-14 age group in Iraq consitutes about 42 percent of the general population, which idicates a much stronger tendency of "indiscriminant fire" than Israel's critics seem to find.
In comparison, 391 children of that age group were killed. They constituted 17 percent of deaths, but are about 43 percent of the general population of Gaza. Further indication that Israel took care to avoid civilian casualties is that even Iraq Body Count, whose estimates are much lower, indicates that the percentage of civilians killed in Iraq is much higher than that in Gaza.
The problem isn't that B'Tselem is publishing figures. On the contrary, that's well and proper. The problem is that the NGO is erasing the background of the bigger picture. It doesn't write about Hamas' repeated refusal to accept Netanyahu's ceasefire offers. It doesn't report Hamas' refusal of the Quartet's conditions. It doesn't document Hamas' official encouragement of its people to locate themselves in civilian homes and fire at the IDF from within, knowing that an IDF retaliation would be a PR victory for Hamas that way. The B'Tselem report doesn't speak about these key issues. It places responsibility almost exclusively at Israel's door.
These are people, including many children. Every person killed is a tragedy, and everyone should regret the harm caused to innocents. But this does not give people a license to engage in such flagrant manipulations. A close look at B'Tselem's report, as well as comparisons with other conflicts, show the deception, which turns into anti-Israel propaganda. There's no bigger lie than this.
The figures show Israel's valiant efforts to protect human life. US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs at the time, General Martin Dempsey, said that he has sent US military officers to Israel in order to learn how to protect innocents. The plain statistics show that the US military still has a lot to learn.
Nazi propaganda said Europe must be cleansed of the evil presence of Jews. Hamas propaganda says that the Middle East must be cleansed of the evil presence of the Jewish state. The new anti-Semitic propaganda points to Israel as the focal point of the axis of evil. And an Israeli newspaper has determined that Israel is an "evil state," explaining that this evil," cannot happen anywhere, and it has political and social roots that are deeply embedded in Israeli society." The anti-Semites couldn't put it better themselves.
The B'Tselem report didn't aim for this kind of result. Intentions can be good. Self-criticism is part of democracy. Manipulations however, are another matter. The problem, according to B'Tselem, is not Hamas – which calls for the murder of Jews, educates Gazan children to kill Jews, and dedicates its resources to digging attack tunnels and manufacturing rockets instead of rebuilding the Gaza Strip – but Israel.
Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic said recently that Haaretz's articles were being used by neo-Nazi propagandists. What more do I have to say?
Just when it appears that all records have been broken, it turns out that this is not the case.
The newspaper that hovers somewhere between anti-Zionism and something far more serious came out last week with the question "Is Israel an Evil State?" Two days later, one of the paper's senior journalists provided the answer: "Yes, it is an Evil State."
Two days before writing that Israel was an "evil state," that same senior journalist published an article entitled "180 babies," who were killed in the Gaza Strip. Behold, the shocking proof of this "evil state."
This "proof" appeared in a report by the B'Tselem organization about the fatalities of Operation Protective Edge, released to mark two years to the war. The report uses the same recycled claims of a mass killing of innocents, while adding interpretation, in the report itself, according to which, "one party breaching the law does not permit its opponent to do the same." That is the most B'Tselem could write against Hamas, that comes out of his report almost entirely blameless. Meanwhile, the decisions made by Israel's leadership make them "fully responsible — both morally and legally — for the extreme harm to civilians."
According to B'Tselem, 2,202 people were killed in the Gaza Strip during Operation Protective Edge. Of them 1,394, 63 percent, were civilians not involved in the fighting. B'Tselem's numbers are controversial, but we'll leave that aside for a moment.
To see just how farfetched the NGO's claims are, one need only look at the very data it provides, including the gender and age of each fatality. Let's leave for a moment the group of 808 fatalities that even B'Tselem graciously admits were terrorists. We're left with 1,394. If they were indeed all innocents, killed as a result of indiscriminate or random fire, the age distribution would be identical, or at the very least close, to the age distribution in the Gaza Strip.
But lo and behold, it turns out that the real statistics are quite different. Among those defined as innocents between the ages of 18-32, 275 are men and 127 are women. Among all fatalities aged 18-59, 1,296 are men and 247 are women. Five times(!) more men than women. Such high numbers of fighting-aged men, compared to such small numbers of women from the same age group do not point toward randomness. Such a discrepancy could not have occurred if indisriminate fire towards population centers had actually taken place. It indicates that the vast majority of those killed are fighters.
It doesn't end here. Teenagers, 14 and over, were involved in the fighting as well. Sometimes they were used as human shields, sometimes they were brainwashed into joining the fight by the anti-Semitic propaganda to which they are subjected from birth. The question of involvement can be checked by examining gender distribution. Among 14-17 year olds, there were 123 boys killed, compared to 32 girls. That's nearly four times(!) as many.
A further step is required: Comparing those killed during Protective Edge to the fatalities in similar conflicts. There's no need to make comparisons with third-world militaries as those of western nations suffice. Various sources have published statistics about the number of people killed in the first year of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. According to British medical journal The Lancet, the number stands at about 100,000 killed, among them about 46,000 children under the age of 14. The 0-14 age group in Iraq consitutes about 42 percent of the general population, which idicates a much stronger tendency of "indiscriminant fire" than Israel's critics seem to find.
In comparison, 391 children of that age group were killed. They constituted 17 percent of deaths, but are about 43 percent of the general population of Gaza. Further indication that Israel took care to avoid civilian casualties is that even Iraq Body Count, whose estimates are much lower, indicates that the percentage of civilians killed in Iraq is much higher than that in Gaza.
The problem isn't that B'Tselem is publishing figures. On the contrary, that's well and proper. The problem is that the NGO is erasing the background of the bigger picture. It doesn't write about Hamas' repeated refusal to accept Netanyahu's ceasefire offers. It doesn't report Hamas' refusal of the Quartet's conditions. It doesn't document Hamas' official encouragement of its people to locate themselves in civilian homes and fire at the IDF from within, knowing that an IDF retaliation would be a PR victory for Hamas that way. The B'Tselem report doesn't speak about these key issues. It places responsibility almost exclusively at Israel's door.
These are people, including many children. Every person killed is a tragedy, and everyone should regret the harm caused to innocents. But this does not give people a license to engage in such flagrant manipulations. A close look at B'Tselem's report, as well as comparisons with other conflicts, show the deception, which turns into anti-Israel propaganda. There's no bigger lie than this.
The figures show Israel's valiant efforts to protect human life. US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs at the time, General Martin Dempsey, said that he has sent US military officers to Israel in order to learn how to protect innocents. The plain statistics show that the US military still has a lot to learn.
Nazi propaganda said Europe must be cleansed of the evil presence of Jews. Hamas propaganda says that the Middle East must be cleansed of the evil presence of the Jewish state. The new anti-Semitic propaganda points to Israel as the focal point of the axis of evil. And an Israeli newspaper has determined that Israel is an "evil state," explaining that this evil," cannot happen anywhere, and it has political and social roots that are deeply embedded in Israeli society." The anti-Semites couldn't put it better themselves.
The B'Tselem report didn't aim for this kind of result. Intentions can be good. Self-criticism is part of democracy. Manipulations however, are another matter. The problem, according to B'Tselem, is not Hamas – which calls for the murder of Jews, educates Gazan children to kill Jews, and dedicates its resources to digging attack tunnels and manufacturing rockets instead of rebuilding the Gaza Strip – but Israel.
Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic said recently that Haaretz's articles were being used by neo-Nazi propagandists. What more do I have to say?
