Israel and its unmindful apologists have been repeating two contemptible lies ad nauseam for more than a year.
Ever since the Palestinian resistance group Hamas conducted a violent incursion into Israel, resulting in multiple civilian deaths and hostages being taken, the latter’s army has undertaken an outrageously disproportionate military response against not only them but the entire Palestinian population in Gaza.
To justify the savagery of the murder spree, the wanton destruction and the impunity with which it is being embraced by the Israeli Defense Force (IDF), two lies were manufactured to counter legitimate international condemnation, both of which failed very quickly to withstand critical examination. Both have reached their sell-by dates, yet hordes of uncritical apologists worldwide still use them to justify and rationalize their support.
Lie #1: Self-defense
After Hamas carried out the attack on October 7th last year, Israel claimed the right to self-defence under international law. This sovereign right is apparently enshrined in the United Nations Charter Chapter VII, Article 51.
However, several problems are inherent in Israel’s exercise of this right, which is far removed from its much-lauded Krav Maga.
- While Israel is a member state of the UN, Palestine is not officially recognized yet.
- Gaza is a defacto concentration camp under Israeli occupation. As such, it should be under the protection of Israel.
- Israel’s response to the attack by Hamas should have been a police matter, not a military one. However, it is well-known that Israel is a military state, and it has abused its armed forces to police its apartheid oppression of the Palestinians since 1948.
- Given that Israel abuses military power, any exercise of self-defence should have been immediate, not stretched out over more than a year. This continued military campaign in Gaza (and now in Lebanon) is not an act of self-defence but the action of a vengeful nation hell-bent on ramping up the ethnic cleansing it has been carrying out since 1948.
- In contravention of the UN Charter, Israel has used a shocking level of disproportionate force that experts are now labelling as genocide.
- While the UN Charter allows for intervention by the organization to restore peace, Israel, in collusion with the US, has consistently blocked efforts at reconciliation. Meanwhile, the US’s claims that it is working on a ceasefire have proved to be more lies.
- Finally, and most importantly, Israel has not clarified why it needs to defend itself against women, children and even babies, who make up a significant percentage of those killed indiscriminately by the IDF.
Lie #2: Human shields
Israel has been carrying out indiscriminate bombing of densely populated areas within Gaza. The bombing and ground exercises by the IDF have resulted in an obscenely large number of civilians being killed. While even the UN is estimating more than 40,000 Palestinians killed, other organizations say this figure is conservative.
Israel has manufactured the egregious lie that the appalling civilian death toll is due to Hamas using them as human shields. This lie was created quite early in the Israeli military campaign to counter the alarming numbers of innocent women and children who were being massacred in densely populated areas of Gaza.
Hamas operate from tunnels under these densely populated areas. The IDF has been using 2000-pound “bunker buster” bombs indiscriminately to penetrate into the tunnels. The circumstances of their enforced incarceration in a confined open-air prison necessities their use of guerrilla tactics in their resistance to the historic oppressive Israeli apartheid system.
Unsurprisingly, these bombs decimate entire city blocks, killing many innocent civilians in the process. The Palestinians have nowhere to go to avoid being pulverized to death by incessant bombing. The human shield lie has been comprehensively debunked by independent journalists here and here, so I do not need to rehash it.
Hypocritically, what Israel will not admit to, however, is their own use of human shields.
Israel has used Palestinian civilians, including children, in Gaza and the West Bank as human shields for decades, perhaps even longer. Evidence from Israel’s 51-day conflict in 2014 in the Gaza Strip was documented by Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor. More recently, in March this year, Palestinians were forced to wear Israeli army uniforms with cameras strapped on them and sent into the Hamas tunnels to check for explosives.
More recently, the pro-Israel channel CNN, which has been spreading much disinformation about the genocide, has surprisingly broadcast a segment exposing the use of human shields by the IDF.1
Three years ago, TRT World revealed how Israel embeds its military facilities in urban areas. The IDF military headquarters is 250m from the Ichilov Hospital in Tel Aviv. The building housing MOSSAD, their “intelligence” agency, is also embedded in Tel Aviv. They have a military nuclear facility in the vicinity of a rural area with around 30,000 inhabitants. More revelations of Israeli infrastructure embedded in civilian areas are in this report.
Perhaps the most obvious example of Israeli human shields are the Israelis themselves. Military service is compulsory for men and women in Israel. Only Haredi Jews are exempted, although this is now in the process of being overturned. Conscription for Arab (quasi)citizens is not compulsory, but they can volunteer to serve.
Through compulsory military service, the Israeli population became unwitting human shields for their political masters. They have no choice. They can be called up to active duty, as is happening now, to serve the diabolical will of dubious politicians who are safely ensconced in their Knesset, dreaming up ever deadlier acts of depravity.
It’s a case of crouching liars, hidden dragoons.
- Edit: Added on 30/10/2024. ↩︎
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