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Viewpoint - March 5, 2015
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Israel must investigate civilian killings in Gaza war: U.N. envoy
By: Stephanie Nebehay
(Reuters) - A United Nations envoy called on Israel on Tuesday to investigate the killing of more than 1,500 Palestinian civilians, one third of them children, during the 2014 Gaza war, and to make the findings public.
Makarim Wibisono, a former Indonesian ambassador, issued his first report to the U.N. Human Rights Council since becoming its special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories last June.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry accused the forum on Monday of being obsessed by allegations of Israeli abuses and said the United States would defend Israel against efforts to isolate it.
Some 2,256 Palestinians were killed during the July-August conflict, of whom 1,563 were civilians including 538 children, while 66 Israeli soldiers and five civilians died, Wibisono said. Israel says it launched the offensive after rocket attacks by militants operating out of the Islamist Hamas-ruled strip.
"The stark disparity in casualty figures on the two sides ... reflects the (skewed) balance of power and the disproportionate cost borne by Palestinian civilians, raising questions as to whether Israel adhered to the international law principles of distinction, proportionality and precautions," Wibisono said.
Most civilian victims were "not simply bystanders on the street in the wrong place at the wrong time", he said. "Most victims were families killed in missile strikes on their own homes, usually at night."
He interviewed victims in Amman and Cairo or witnesses on video calls in Gaza, as Israel had not let him go there. A separate report on possible war crimes committed by both sides is to be issued by a U.N. commission of inquiry soon. Its chairman was forced to step down last month.
Unexploded ordnance still litters Gaza, causing further casualties, he said, with an estimated 7,000 devices needing to be defused. Some 100,000 people remain displaced while 450,000 are disconnected from water mains.
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Memo to US Secretary of State Kerry: serial genocide, coupled with brisk land annexations, are Tel Aviv's way of creating "Eratz Israel" (greater Israel).
You might find this concept rather peculiar at your level of personal wealth, but no person is expendable; particularly not Palestinian kids who were slaughtered with wild abandon after the UN Rapporteur for human rights gave the IDF the GPS coordinates of schools and hospitals sheltering the innocent. As reported by WaPo last year:
United Nations officials accused Israel of violating international law after artillery shells slammed into a school overflowing with evacuees Wednesday, an attack that Palestinian and U.N. officials said killed at least 20 people and wounded dozens as they slept. It was one of the worst mass-casualty incidents of the three-week war. The building was the sixth U.N. school in the Gaza Strip to be rocked by explosions during the conflict.
This is NOT the UN "...being obsessed by allegations of Israeli abuses"; this really happened, and the more the US government tries to defend the indefensible, by supporting this serial genocide of Palestinians by the IDF, the more this country looks like a scumbag pariah in the eyes of the world.
I would suggest to you, sir, that thinking Americans do NOT have ADHD when it comes to Palestinian human rights. -- Michael Rivero
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