The World Council of Churches puts out yet another statement about Gaza:
The Gaza war during Christmas season took a terrible toll on lives and communities that were already fragile. Bombs, missiles and rockets striking densely populated areas spread an unconscionable sorrow from Gaza to much of the world. Approximately 1400 Palestinians are dead – mostly civilians, children and women – thousands more are wounded, countless thousands are traumatized, and there remains widespread destruction and damage to homes and institutions including church clinics and a hospital. Four civilians are dead in neighboring Israel and 11 soldiers were killed during the fighting and many other people injured.
Actually, it was about 1300, and most were in fact men, with most likely being terrorists. According to UPI:
The Israeli military’s Gaza Coordination and Liaison Administration said its accounting of the conflict has found that 300 of a total of 1,200 Palestinians killed during the assault were “non-combatants,” The Jerusalem Post reported Monday.
The report said 580 of those killed have been identified as fighters of the Hamas Palestinian militant group. Another 320 victims have yet to be classified but they have been described as all men, two-thirds of whom were deemed likely by Israel to be terror operatives.
Such numbers are of course discounted by the WCC, since it believes whatever Hamas says. Moving on:
The humanitarian situation in Gaza remains extremely alarming. More than one million people, 80 percent of the population, depend on food aid. Thousands of jobs have been lost. The educational and health systems have broken down due to the blockade that is still being imposed by the Israeli government.
Somehow they managed to never mention the Hamas thefts of UN supplies meant for the civilian population. Perhaps they are unaware of them, since Hamas hasn’t reported them.
Israel, like any other state, has the right of self defense, but is also bound by humanitarian principles of proportionality and distinction. The imperative to protect human lives is mandatory for all parties involved – including the international community. All have failed in this responsibility. Civilians have suffered on both sides. However, as the United Nations Special Rapporteur for Human Rights noted, “the scale of civilian harm resulting from Israeli unlawful conduct was far greater than that of Palestinian unlawful conduct.”
The UNSRHR is a fanatical anti-Zionist whose “reporting” can be safely ignored. As for the rest, it’s a neat trick to condemn a military operation that sought to keep civilian casualties as low as possible, while never mentioning the use of civilians as human shields by the terrorist organization that actually has a political stake in maximizing civilian casualties among its own people.
What happened in Gaza is not an isolated tragedy. It is to be seen in the context of the illegal occupation of Palestinian territory that began in 1967. In the case of Gaza the last three years have seen siege and collective punishment harden into a stringent 18-month blockade. Without an end to the occupation, the cycle of violence continues.
Let’s say it all together again: Gaza isn’t “occupied,” it hasn’t been “occupied” in three years, and the only reason for the continuing blockade is because Hamas refuses to give up terror and admit that Israel has a right to exist. There is no blockade on the West Bank, and there’s a reason for that–Fatah, for all its faults, isn’t still terrorizing its neighbor, and has conceded that it is dealing with a state with a right to self-defense.
Gaza’s suffering should serve as a reminder to governments to carry out their third state responsibility. International law requires states not to knowingly aid or assist another state in internationally unlawful acts and not to recognize such acts as lawful. They bear indirect responsibility if they assist or recognize such acts, for example, the illegal use of force and violations of laws and rights that take place daily in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
But evidently third states are supposed to continue to support the use of terrorism as a weapon against a member of the UN. I come to that conclusion by virtue of the lack of condemnation of nations such as Iran and Syria, which continue to provide money, weapons, and logistical support to Hamas, Hezbollah, and Islamic Jihad.
Palestinians who take up arms are also accountable under the law for their use of force. We join the international condemnation of the violence perpetrated by members of Hamas and other groups against civilians in Israel and against their own people.
This is the only reference to Hamas in the course of this screed. And note the qualifying “members of Hamas”–it isn’t the organization itself that engages in such tactics, but only renegade “members” who should be held to account by their more responsible overseers.
The piece goes on to come to several conclusions, which include:
Recommends that member churches and related organizations in a position to do so practice morally responsible investment and purchasing in regard to corporations whose products or services support the occupation of Palestinian territory.
In other words, divest from Israel. Apparently there is no “morally responsible investment” in the Palestinian territories.
Calls for the United Nations to investigate alleged war crimes and other violations of international humanitarian law and human rights law by the parties to the Gaza conflict, including the use of weapons that have indiscriminate effects; and calls for the full implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 1860 which requires inter alia that the government of Israel lift the siege of Gaza.
Right. Get the UN, the world headquarters of the anti-Israel movement, to investigate Israel. There’s nothing like an impartial investigation to get the result you want.
Calls on the government of Israel to facilitate the on-going work of United Nations agencies in Occupied Palestinian Territory including access for the UN Special Rapporteur for Human Rights to the populations living under occupation[.]
Israel will of course go along with this demand because it has a death wish, and desires to help two of the most anti-Israel agencies in the world, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (whose facilities have been used by terrorist organizations for decades as safe havens and training grounds) and the UNSRHR, carry out their own special forms of jihad against the Zionist entity.
Predictable, absolutely predictable.
