Israel is not above international law
Tel Aviv must be held accountable for war crimes against Palestinians for seven decades
After a student in a high school in Santa Clarita, California, pulled a powerful handgun from his backpack last Thursday and started firing indiscriminately at his fellow students, killing two, a survivor of the carnage, a 15-year-old, was heard crying out, “What kind of world is this?” Palestinians were asking that same question on that same day about the world they inhabit in that little, tormented strip of land we call Gaza.
As a movement, then as a state grafted on Palestine seven decades ago, Israel has taken credit — but is yet to be taken to task — for multiple massacres against Palestinians, from Deir Yassein (1948) to Qibya (1953), and from Kafer Qassem (1956) to Sabra-Shatila (1982), where horrendous acts of wanton mayhem were inflicted on civilians, but its greatest service to the cause of that mayhem is the unspeakable horror it has inflicted, repeatedly and often gratuitously, against the people of Gaza, confined as they are behind the walls of what is universally recognised as the largest open-air prison in the world.
The sad fact is that the familiarity of the violence has, as it were, bred contempt in those of us who follow it. Note, for example, how the shocking news of the killing of 60 unarmed Palestinian demonstrators, and the injury of 1,200 others, at the Gaza-Israel border on May 14 last year, which coincided with the ceremony marking the relocation of the US embassy to Jerusalem, was given in the American media the same gravitas of a late notice from one’s public library.
All of which reminds one of what Noam Chomsky wrote back in 2009: “The crimes that the US and Israel were committing in Gaza as [the year] opened do not fit easily into any standard category — except for the category of familiarity”.
In international law no one is above the law. It would appear, however, that, as understood by Western capitals in our time, those who were yesterday's oppressed minority in Europe, but are today's war criminals in the Middle East, have a privileged status that shields them from indictment. That's why. At this time in history, above the law they are.
No moral outrage
The killing and maiming of so many people, all in one day, all in one fell swoop, did not appear to elicit a hint of moral outrage — certainly from no editorialist — in the country that grandiosely calls itself leader of the free world.
Imagine yourself Esmail Al Swarka, an elderly man who lives in Dar Al Balah, in central Gaza, being shaken from a deep sleep after midnight last Thursday by the sound of four missiles blasting away at a home adjacent to yours, and walking outside in the dark to find your neighbours on the street all screaming with horror at the spectacle: Eight of your own relatives had been killed in the air strike. The victims, including 5 children, were all members of the same family.
The house targeted had belonged to, or at one time inhabited by, Rasmi Abu Malhous, who Israel claimed was suspected of being a commander of Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ).
But, Oops, the man wasn’t there, and, Gee, Israeli military intelligence didn’t know there were just ordinary, innocent folks living there. Honest, it was all a mistake. And, yes, Scout’s honour, Israel will investigate — hold on to your hat if effrontery makes you bristle — “the harm caused to civilians”!
It is bad enough that the cruelty unleashed against Gazans has ceased to leave us nauseated at our core, but it is worse when you hear American politicians repeat that mantra — by now a trite refrain — about how “Israel has every right to defend itself”, as if the killing of Palestinians, including women and children in their very homes, was mere collateral damage, to be given the flick of a finger.
Human shields
As for the massacre at Deir Al Balah, Israel has already found a way to spin it, with the spin parroted by the New York Times, which quoted Israeli military spokesmen — thus giving the quotes credence — accusing militants of “using civilians, including their own relatives, as human shields”, while Israel “always takes numerous precautions to prevent unnecessary civilian deaths” My, the compassion of the Israeli entity, and the cruelty of its enemies.
When will Israel be restrained? When, more to the point, will Israel be held accountable, in an international tribunal, for the breadth and depravity of its war crimes?
After the Second World War, the victorious Allies rounded up all of the top Nazis responsible for the killing of millions of Europeans — including, above all, Jews — and put them on trial in the bombed out German city of Nuremberg, charging them with committing acts that constituted war crimes. Why not hold Israeli war criminals equally accountable for theirs?
In international law no one is above the law. It would appear, however, that, as understood by Western capitals in our time, those who were yesterday's oppressed minority in Europe, but are today's war criminals in the Middle East, have a privileged status that shields them from indictment. That's why. At this time in history, above the law they are.
— Fawaz Turki is a journalist, lecturer and author based in Washington. He is the author of The Disinherited: Journal of a Palestinian Exile.