John Oliver said:
You know how everyone was up in arms about the school being bombed? Turns out the IDF were 100% telling the truth about weapons being fired from it:
From Reuters
EXCLUSIVE-Gaza headmaster was Islamic Jihad "rocket-maker" | Reuters
Turns out Israel doesn't just bomb places for the lulz.
Ohmy, that completely makes it right. I mean if they kill one 'terrorist' then the death of over 40 innocent people is perfectly okay.
If this happened in any other country it wouldn't be accpetable, but since it's Arabs/Muslims who are dying, for no point at all, it's acceptable.
BTW, what's it to you if we support Hamas or not? You do seem to think it's perfectly acceptable to support Israel and them killing 40+ civilians, don't you? Oh and please spare me the 'i dont support the deaths of civilians' bullshit, because you seem to think killing one 'terrorist' and 40+ civilians as something 'normal' or 'okay'.
Also;
Israel's violation of specific provisions of the Fourth Geneva Convention
a) Humane treatment
Article 27: 'Protected persons are entitled, in all circumstances, to respect for their persons, their honour, their family rights, their religious convictions and practices, and their manners and customs. They shall at all times be humanely treated, and shall be protected especially against all acts of violence or threats thereof and against insults and public curiosity.'/p>
Violations:
- Every day tens of thousands of Palestinians are subjected to a checkpoint system involving body searches, humiliation and inconvenience.
- B'Tselem (The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories ) reports many incidents of violence, at times gross violence against Palestinians that are unnecessary and without justification. Many claims of police brutality remain uninvestigated and have become the norm.[1]
- The building of the Wall/ 'Security Barrier', has created an area between the barrier and the Green Line referred to as the "seam area". B'Tselem estimates that this section of the barrier alone "will infringe the human rights of more than 210,000 Palestinians who live in 67 towns and villages: 13 communities, containing 11,700 residents, will become enclaves trapped between the barrier and the Green Line; the barrier's winding route and the additional barrier (the depth barrier) east of the separation barrier will turn 19 other villages, in which 128,500 Palestinians live, into enclaves; 36 villages situated east of the separation barrier or depth barrier, containing 72,200 residents, will be separated from a substantial part of their farmland, which lies west of the barriers."[2]
- Only Palestinians are required to apply for a permit in order to remain living within the seam area and separate permits to enter the seam area to carry out activities such as farming. Such permits are subject to renewal. The criteria for obtaining a permit are unclear and allow complete discretion to the Civil Administration to deny the permit and thus eject Palestinians from their homes or refuse them entry to their fields. In June 2004 B'Tselem reported that "Palestinians wanting to obtain a permit face a bureaucratic nightmare".[3]
- The Family Unification Law, forbids Israelis married to, or who will marry in the future, residents of the Occupied Territories to live in Israel with their spouses. This law does not apply to spouses who are not residents of the Occupied Territories and is therefore discriminatory.
b) No use of torture or brutality
Article 31: 'No physical or moral coercion shall be exercised against protected persons, in particular to obtain information from them or from third parties.'
Article 32 prohibits the use of 'any measure of such a character as to cause the physical suffering or extermination of protected persons', a prohibition that applies not just to murder, torture etc 'but also to any other measures of brutality whether applied by civilian or military agents'.
Violations:
- According to a recent report by the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel and other human rights organisations, there is evidence of systematic and routine torture of Palestinian prisoners causing "severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental".[4]
- According to the report, violence, painful tying, humiliations and many other forms of ill-treatment, including detention under inhuman conditions, are a matter of course.
- The ill-treatment of Palestinian detainees by IDF soldiers and other detaining forces is manifested through ill-treatment of relatives of the detainee; violence during arrest and on the way to the detention facility; shackling of detainees with "azikonim" (small handcuffs); inhuman conditions of detention; and other means of ill-treatment, including being suspended with legs up, 'goal' (a stone-throwing contest at the detainee), forcing the detainee to run blindfolded and tripping him, stripping (sometimes to complete nakedness), intimidation using a dog, cocking a weapon as if intending a summary execution, and more.
- According to the same report, and based on official data, Israel's General Security Service (GSS) agents have interrogated thousands of Palestinians per year during the Second Intifada, and over 200 at any given moment.[5] In July 2002, the GSS related to the press that 90 Palestinians were defined as 'ticking bombs' and were tortured (that is, were exposed to 'physical pressure').[6] Research by the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel shows that the number tortured is actually much greater.
- Information obtained by the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel shows that the official sources have admitted to using a large portion of the torture methods, including slapping, 'bending,' shaking, sleep deprivation, and prolonged shackling.
- Israel's policy of targeting and killing Palestinians believed to have some connection to hostilities, is also a clear violation of this provision.
c) No collective punishment
Article 33: 'No protected person may be punished for an offence he or she has not personally committed. Collective penalties and likewise all measures of intimidation or of terrorism are prohibited.'
Violations:
- The Family Unification Law (see above), is a from of collective punishment.
- The sweeping nature of restriction of movement in the form of closure, siege and curfew constitutes a form of collective punishment. Since the outbreak of the second Second Intifada, Israel has imposed a total closure on the occupied territories and has prohibited Palestinian movement between the occupied territories and Israel and between the West Bank and Gaza, unless they have a special permit. Since 2000 Israel has issued no new entry permits.
- Israel also imposes internal closures on specific towns and villages. Since October 2000, most Palestinian communities in the West Bank have been closed off by staffed checkpoints, concrete blocks, dirt piles or deep trenches. During curfews, residents are completely prohibited from leaving their homes. As B'Tselem has put it: "The sweeping nature of the restrictions imposed by Israel, the specific timing that it employs when deciding to ease or intensify them, and the destructive human consequences turn its policy into a clear form of collective punishment. Such punishment is absolutely prohibited by the Fourth Geneva Convention.'[7]
- The requirement of all Palestinians who wish to remain living in or to enter the "seam area" to apply for the permits is a form of collective punishment. Residents in this area, as well as those who wish to enter the area, will now be dependent on the benevolence of the defense establishment, even though they are suspected of no wrongdoing. These residents are affected solely because of their poor luck in living or working east of the route where Israel decided to construct the barrier.
- House demolitions are carried out under the emergency regulations (DER 119) of the British mandate which provide for an authority to demolish a house as a response against persons suspected of taking part in or directly supporting criminal or guerilla activities. Recently, application of DER 119 has become limited to instances in which an attack was launched from a specific house or cases in which an "inhabitant" of the house was suspected of involvement in an offense. The term "inhabitant," however, has been broadly defined to include persons who do not necessarily reside in said house regularly, and often is applied to family homes in which a suspected offender previously resided. The regular occupants' knowledge of the offense has been deemed irrelevant by the Israeli authorities. This is clearly a form of collective punishment.[8]
d) No deportations Article 49 states: 'Individual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory to the territory of the Occupying Power or to that of any other country, occupied or not, are prohibited, regardless of their motive.' In addition, 'The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.'
Violations:
- The Israeli policy of deporting relatives of terrors suspects from the West Bank to Gaza is a clear violation of the provision.
- The Israeli policy of authorizing houses and settlements in the West Bank and Gaza is clear violation of this provision and cannot be justified.
e) No imprisonment without due process
Article 71 states: 'No sentence shall be pronounced by the competent courts of the Occupying Power except after a regular trial.'
Violations
- According to the Public Committee against Torture in Israel, over 28,000 Palestinians were arrested between the beginning of the Second Intifada in September 2000, and the beginning of April 2003. (see above report)
- In May 2003, 5,362Palestinians were being held in IDF and Israel Prison Service (IPS) detention and prison facilities, of whom 1,107were detained but neither charged nor tried (i.e. were under administrative detention).
f) No destruction of personal property
Article 53 states: 'Any destruction by the Occupying Power of real or personal property belonging individually or collectively to private persons, or to the State, or to other public authorities, or to social or cooperative organizations, is prohibited, except where such destruction is rendered absolutely necessary by military operations.
Violations:
- Over 500 Palestinian homes have been demolished in the last 3 years. While the convention recognises a wide scope of discretion to the military commander, the concept of military necessity is not a "carte blanche" to the military. There are criteria for assessing military necessity' (see below) and if the demolition fails to fulfill one of these criteria, it is illegal. It is impossible to sustain the view that the large number of demolitions have complied with these criteria.
- According to a recent Human Rights Watch report, the IDF has rendered 16 000 people homeless over the past four years, regardless of whether their homes posed a genuine military threat.[9]
- The uprooting of tens of thousands of olive and orange trees and the confiscation of large amounts of land to build the Wall/ 'security barrier' are in direct violation of this provision.
- A recent article in Ha'aretz describes how the military authorities have done nothing to prevent settlers from stealing Palestinian olive harvests. (30 Sept 2004)
g) Grave breaches
Article 147 specifies 'grave breaches' of the Convention as including willful killing; torture or inhuman treatment; willfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health; unlawful deportation or transfer or unlawful confinement of a protected person; willfully depriving a protected person of the rights of fair and regular trial; taking of hostages and extensive destruction and appropriation of property, not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly.
Violations:
As demonstrated above, each of the acts described as a grave breach has been carried out by the IDF or been sanctioned by the Israeli government. Clear and comprehensive records of these acts have been documented by reliable Israeli human-rights organizations and can be easily found on the internet.
[10]
More@
Israel and International Law
Isn't it fun knowing all the shit Israel does and seems to get away with?
AND
GENEVA, Jan 8 (Reuters) - Relief workers found four starving children sitting next to their dead mothers and other corpses in a house in a part of Gaza City bombed by Israeli forces, the International Committee of the Red Cross said on Thursday.
The ICRC accused Israel of delaying ambulance access to the hit area and demanded it grant safe access for Palestinian Red Crescent ambulances to return to evacuate more wounded.
"This is a shocking incident," said Pierre Wettach, ICRC chief for Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories.
"The Israeli military must have been aware of the situation but did not assist the wounded. Neither did they make it possible for us or the Palestinian Red Crescent to assist the wounded," he said.
In unusually strong terms, the neutral agency said it believed Israel had breached international humanitarian law in the incident. In a written response, the Israeli army said it works in coordination with international aid bodies assist civilians and that it "in no way intentionally targets civilians".
EXCLUSIVE-Gaza headmaster was Islamic Jihad "rocket-maker" | Reuters
Ohmy. I'm guessing the mother was a terrorist, or some guy two streets away from the place they were in was a terrorist, so that totally makes killing them much better.
&look, they were STARVING. I guess they really didn't have supplies, and it wasn't a lie the Palestinians made up. Seems to me like Israel lies a fair bit though.
Ohh & they don't intentionally target civilians. Aww. Makes you wonder, what would they do if they did 'intentionally target civilians'.
