United Nations Report: Israel Deliberately Fired on Gaza Schools/Shelters

Scott Lucas on Press TV: The UN Report on Israel's Killing of Gaza Civilians

I'm not sure how many folks are still paying attention --- the Gaza War is so yesterday --- but a United Nations Board of Inquiry has found that the Israeli military deliberately fired on UN schools, which were being used as civilian shelters, during the conflict.

The 184-page is being kept confidential as it is sent to the UN Security Council, but a 27-page summary was released yesterday. (It's proving quite difficult to find a summary on the Internet, so any assistance would be appreciated.) News accounts, however, say Israel is held responsible for:

• The deaths of three young men killed by a single IDF missile strike at the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) Asma school in Gaza City on 5 January;

• The firing of heavy IDF mortar rounds into the UNRWA Jabalia school on 6 January, injuring seven people sheltering in the school and killing up to 40 people in the immediate vicinity;

• Aerial bombing of the UNRWA Bureij health centre on the same day causing the death of a patient and serious injuries to two others;

• Artillery firing by the IDF into the UNRWA field office compound in Gaza city on 15 January that in turn caused high explosive shells to explode within the compound causing injuries and considerable damage to the buildings. The summary notes that it disrupted the UN's humanitarian operations in Gaza;

• Artillery firing by the IDF into the UNRWA Beit Lahia school on 17 January, causing the deaths of two children

• Aerial bombing by the IDF of the Unesco compound on 29 December causing damage to UN buildings and vehicles.

(It is notable that The New York Times did not mention the report at all, and The Washington Post distorted the summary, noting only two of the incidents and ignoring the Jabaliya mass killing.)

The Board also found "there was no evidence...that Palestinian militants had used U.N. facilities to launch military attacks against Israeli troops".

Despite the seriousness of the findings, and the Board's recommendations for a full impartial inquiry, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon is moving quickly to sweep away the report. While he said he would pursue Israeli compensation for $11 million in damage, Ban added that there was no need for a further investigation.

Comments

[Phil P]

Alleged copy of the summary is found at:
http://www.innercitypress.com/banrep1gaza.pdf

Found via:
http://www.innercitypress.com/banrep1gaza050509.html
and:
http://www.undispatch.com/node/8196

[Scott Lucas]

Phil,

Thanks --- this looks legit. I hope people will read, but we may elevate it to a separate blog entry.

S.

[eric]

Kinda weird that they made it so hard to find the summary on the net? On another note, israelis claim the report didn't take into account evidence that would support the israeli side. See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jPZ7rRTxnpQ

[sshender]

The firing of heavy IDF mortar rounds into the UNRWA Jabalia school on 6 January, injuring seven people sheltering in the school and killing up to 40 people in the immediate vicinity

Wait a minute... The PCHR casualty list confirms the IDF's account of 12 (not 'dozens of') casualties near (not 'inside') the UNRWA school, thus backing up the initial accounts of IDF's retaliation to incoming mortar fire from the school's vicinity. And as we speak, the PCHR's numbers (which have not retracted their initial UNRWA school libel, that stands contrary to THEIR OWN casualty counts) are being revealed for what they truly are; part of the Palestinian psywar attempt to smear the IDF under the guise of legitimacy of human rights. One would expect that sincere people concerned with human rights would be outraged at the cynical manipulation of the facts, and yet, as is always the case in recent years, the Israelis are a priori guilty of anything they are being accused of, while Arab/Palestinian propaganda and abuse is shrugged off as the legitimate tools of an "opressed" people.

[Scott Lucas]

sshender,

Thank you for this. Do you have a link to the latest PCHR casualty list?

S.

[sshender]

Wow Scott, I'm shocked! You're meaning to tell me that you haven't actually gone through the PCHR list?
http://pchrgaza.org/files/PressR/English/2008/list.pdf

The initial reports from various Gaza organizations charged that between 30 and 50 people were killed there. The PCHR wrote then that the IDF killed "27 civilians instantly" (not counting the Deeb family which was not near the school and indeed appears to have been killed by an errant shell.) The IDF, on the other hand, has claimed that 12 were killed outside the school. The PCHR report lists exactly 12 victims from near the al-Fakhoura school, although they do not line up with the names and descriptions given by the IDF. Even so, the PCHR does not seem to be interested in publicizing the discrepancy between its initial reports of a massacre and what it later admits.

Physical evidence and interviews with several eyewitnesses, including a teacher who was in the schoolyard at the time of the shelling, make it clear: While a few people were injured from shrapnel landing inside the white-and-blue-walled UNRWA compound, no one in the compound was killed. The people who died in the incident were all outside, on the street, where all three mortar shells landed.
Stories of one or more shells landing inside the schoolyard were inaccurate. While the killing of civilians on the street may itself be grounds for investigation, it falls short of the act of shooting into a schoolyard crowded with refuge-seekers. The teacher who was in the compound at the time of the shelling says he heard three loud blasts, one after the other, then a lot of screaming. The teacher, who refused to give his name because he said UNRWA had told the staff not to talk to the news media, was adamant: "Inside [the compound] there were 12 injured, but there were no dead." "Three of my students were killed," he said. "But they were all outside." Two residents of the area who spoke by telephone said they saw a small group of militants firing mortar rounds from a street near the school, the Associated Press reported. They spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal, the AP said. The residents said the two brothers were known to be low-level Hamas militants. They said a group of militants - one of them said four - were firing mortar shells from near the school.

The truth, which was murky at the time, is becoming clearer. Terrorists (oops, I mean freedom fighters) shot mortars from the middle of a busy street and Israel responded, apparently killing at least two of them, Imad Abu Askhar and Hassan Abu Askhar, along with the unfortunate Gazans who were being used cynically as human shields. The UNRWA school was not hit at all (at the time I wondered why we saw no pictures from inside the school of the damage - no holes in walls or roofs that one would expect.) The "refugees" who were in the school are all alive.

So to sum things up, the entire episode as originally reported was a lie: Israel didn't hit the school, 40+ civilians didn't die, and most of the deaths were in fact of terrorists.

(I coppied most of the info from the blog http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/)

Oh, and by the way, Elder and a few other bloggers have so far identified no fewer than 287 terrorists who were listed as civilians by the PCHR. Now, if you add these numbers to the number of Hamas police killed (of whom more then half were affiliated with known militant group, making the PCHR claim to their innocence void), together with PCHR's initial militants, you arrive strikingly close to the IDF's statisttics of about 700 militant casualties.

So if anything, these ratios are unparallel in the history of warfare, given Hamas' attempt to maximmize its civilian casualties for psywar, and the IDF should be given a medal for accuracy and restraint, instead of hypocritically being accused of War Crimes by the UN whose record on Human Rights is appaling. This is like the KKK accusing blacks in the south of Racism.

[Scott Lucas]

sshender,

I am very familiar with the PCHR report, which is why I asked about your misleading figures.

The PCHR lists 66 civilians killed in Jabalia on 6 January 2009. Because of the nature of battle, the movement of bodies, etc., the PCHR rarely lists place of death beyond neighbourhood; however, as the firing near the UN school/shelter was the major fighting in Jabalia on that day, the estimates of 30 to 40 dead are plausible.

From the Board report: "The Board was not able to carry out the extensive investigations necessary to verify the number of persons killed or injured in the immediate vicinity of the school. It noted that OCHA [the UN Office of the Coordinator of Humanitarian Assistance] and local human rights organizations estimated between 30 and 40 killed."

As for your "truth" about "terrorists" and "human shields"....

"The Board found there was no firing from within the compound and no explosives within the school."

And on the repeated attempt to portray most of the dead civilians as "fighters", there is an ongoing propaganda war over the PCHR list, which treats unarmed leaders of Hamas as "civilians" (much as you would claim that leaders of the Israeli Government are civilians). Yet, even if one accepts every "correction" from Israeli sources and even if one defines police as "militants" (which is a stretch, as is the claim that they were "affiliated with known militant group"), the most conservative figures from these revisionists is that at least 700 civilians.

(I recall --- though I would need to double-check --- that about 700 women and children died in the conflict. If that is right, presuming that none of those women or children were "militant fighters", the revisionist accounts treat almost every male teenager and adult as a "militant".)

I respect your point of view. But I do wish that those supporting the Israeli invasion, instead of turning black into white, would have the honesty to say, "We killed a lot of civilians because that is what happens when you attack in built-up areas, trying to break up and overthrow a Government and its security services," instead of maintaining the pretence that "most of the deaths were in fact of terrorists".

This would at least allow an honest debate on the politics and consequences of the Gaza War, rather than hiding behind the pretence of moral superiority.

S.

[sshender]

Just a few points:

1. In April 2009, PCHR listed 12 people as killed "near" the school. Anyway you spin it, it doesn't come close to 30 or 40, nor does it support the initial claim of the school being targeted.

2. Your claim that PCHR "rarely lists place of death beyond neighbourhood" is irrelevant, since it identifies all of the al-Fakhoura casualties as being killed "near" or "opposite" the school compound. (a distinction I find hard to understand), further supporting the claim that a dozen or so, and not dozens as was initially claimed, were killed in the incident that day.

3. I fail to see what could have prevented the board from carrying such an investigation once the hostilities were over. There should be no problem to track down the place of death, given the high numbers of people who were present on the ground at the time. Or did the bodies just got up and moved themselves making it hard for investigators to find out exactly where they were killed? As any rookie police investigator will tell you, there are many question marks that require time and effort to be resolved, but the place of death is hardly one of them. Since this is not Mafia style executions we're talkign about, where the victim can be shot at one place and the body disposed of in another, I see no plausible reason why it should have been difficult to zero in on the exact spots where people had been killed.

4. Most of the 'civilians' exposed as militants were done so by their own admission. If you actually take the time to see, each single name is cross-refferenced to prove its point.

5. Your comparison between Israeli and Hamas officials is laughable. You should really try adjusting your moral compass - it's off by a notch.

6. More than half of the Police force are now identified as being affiliated with known militant groups. Check out the blog for more info. Now, given that info, it's quite a stretch to call the remaining ones civilians. Moreover, there is no doubt that these man are at least POTENTIAL COMBATANTS and there is not the slightest doubt that they would have turned their guns against the IDF had they not been taken down earlier. So the IDF had every right to traget them - to do otherwise would have been suicidal madness.

7. You are right about the estimates of Civilian deaths, however you have to explain the discrepancies between the total number of casualties reported by the PCHR and the IDF. Given that so far the PCHR numbers of combatants have been discredited, and in fact match closely with the IDF count, I assume that the IDF numbers are more reliable overall (there are also countless other factors that favour the reliability of the IDF over that of the Palestinians). It would not be a stertch to imagine that the 300 or so gap is due to PCHR counting natural deaths as casualties of war.

8. Among the 881 ―civilians (including confirmed noncombatants and unknowns)only 121 were women and another 72 were girls. That adds up to less than 200. Further 190 boys (under 18) were killed. That's still under 400. Needless to say that in during the fighting young boys (as young as 12) were being used as couriers, spotters and generally hung around combatants (remember that Gaza documentary about the 2 boys?), effectively putting them in the line of fire and accounting for the more than twofold numbers vis-a-vis the girls. Moreover, at least a dozen have been identified as combatants and it's no secret that many more took an active part in the fighting. Now, given Gaza's demographics, an indiscriminate attack should have reflected this demographics. The reality does not. Check out the ICT report.
http://www.ict.org.il/Portals/0/Articles/ICT_Cast_Lead_Casualties-A_Closer_Look.pdf

9. The fact remains that we did not "kill a lot of civilians". Even if we accept the unlikely 1:1 ratio, it still is an amazing feat, given the ratios of former similar engagements in urban warfare and the tactics employed by the Palestinians designed to maximize them. Anyway you look at it, Hamas bears full responsibility for these casualties. Your self-righteous appeals for Israeli repention are the hight of hypocracy. Truth is, your struggle is the means to a political end that is the dissolvement of the Jewish state of Israel, and as we all know, truth can be sacrificed at times for a greater cause. Human rights are a convenient political tool to promote your political agenda, and the suffering of people is of little significance here. I used to be in the far left of the political spectrum, until I actually studied the historical background and the compexities and nuances involved. But what eventually tipped the balance for me was the hypocracy of the left towards Israel. At first I dismissed it as naivete and good intention gone wrong, but the more I became intimately familiar with these views, the more the ugly head of the monster began to show. Yes, there are some genuine but misguided people (see Rachel Corrie) who care about the victims, but for the most part it's a calculated effort to exploit the tragedy and suffering of people to promote a political agenda (see Finkelstein, Galloway and their ilk). Little do you realise that your actions only serve to embolden the enemies of peace and to undermine any real progress towards a solution.

[sshender]

Oh and a few more points:

1. Artillery firing by the IDF into the UNRWA field office compound in Gaza city on 15 January that in turn caused high explosive shells to explode within the compound causing injuries and considerable damage to the buildings

I'm shocked!!! Does this mean that high explosive shells were stored in an UNRWA field office compound, proving the IDF's accusation of those facilities being used as weapon cashes? And how exactly is that Israel's fault instead of those who stored these shells or allowed them to be stored there?

2. What rational is there for the IDF to shoot at UNRWA installations unless they're being used as military outposts? Even if we assume IDF's moral bankrupcy for the sake of argument and contrary to the evidence, one would think that it's rather counterproductive to target UN infrustructure and risk the inevitable condemnation and reports like the one this thread is about. Israel stands to gain absolutely nothing, and much to lose, from targeting these places, so what can truly account for this? I'd suggest a few possible scenarious. Either they were fired at from or immidiately adjacent to these places and returned fire, or they were the result of errant shells. Mind you, such friendly fire accounted for more than half of the IDF casualties during the war, so it is inevitable that similar things could happen with innocent civilians and UN facilities.

[Scott Lucas]

sshender,

I fear that you will always treat black as white, not even allowing for shades of gray. I could put in a lot of time dissecting your assertions on casualties, almost all of which are drawn from individuals/organisations pursuing a one-sided discrediting of investigations which were done on the spot, or your gymnastics to prove the majority of those who died were militants (a policeman who was a Hamas party member is treated the same in your explanation as a "fighter", young boys who "hang around" are treated as combatants, etc.) or your tautology "if the IDF fired on an installation, that means it must be a military outpost".

I could set out again the political calculations, from both sides, in which the Israeli Government tried to take out the Hamas Government, its security services, its social services, and the Gaza infrastructure, and correspondingly how the Hamas Government and most of its fighters went "underground" (and thus survived). I could cite the economic cost in damaged and destroyed buildings, the health costs from disease, homelessness, and destroyed sanitation, the political costs from Gazan civilians who are less rather than more likely to see merit in reconciliation with Israelis.

I could do that but it wouldn't make a jot of difference to your belief system. Instead, I'll continue to post information --- all of it from reliable sources, in most cases cross-checked --- and hope that readers can complement that with their own facts and analyses to look for resolutions rather than polemics.

I will come off the emotional fence, before wishing you well, to say this: if hundreds of Israeli civilians (300, 700, 1000) died because of not only Hamas rockets but also Hamas tanks, artillery, bombers, and missiles, I would spare no effort to cite rather than obscure the evidence of that violence. If Hamas used white phosphorous in the centre of Tel Aviv or Ashkelon or Sderot and then covered up the use of that white phosphorous, I would criticise that without reservation. If Hamas had killed almost 100 people, almost all civilians, in one incident (as happened in the Zeitoun mass killing), I would not hide behind a public-relations campaign to say the opposite.

Because all the denials, the obfuscation, the desperate effort to stand on a false moral high ground do not bring any hope of resolution --- they do the opposite. They stoke up further anger and desperation. They end not in security but in perpetual insecurity.

Farewell with respect,

Scott Lucas

[sshender]

Why didn't you address at least any of the purely empirical points?

I could put in a lot of time dissecting your assertions on casualties, almost all of which are drawn from individuals/organisations pursuing a one-sided discrediting of investigations which were done on the spot

Be my guest. The people who are making the allegations are irrelevant. Everything they say should be judged on its merits, regardless of who's making the claim. The PCHR had months to compile the list of casualties, so I can hardly call it "on the spot".

a policeman who was a Hamas party member is treated the same in your explanation as a “fighter”, young boys who “hang around” are treated as combatants

"Militant affiliantion" means belonging to the armed wing of Hamas, as far as this particular org. goes, which means that policemen who were 'just members' of Hamas (whom I personally regard as legitimate targets) were not even included. Indeed, an armed policeman who was a member of Hamas' (not sure about the spelling here) armed wing, or of other Palestinian armed factions is a fighter and a legitimate target.

Nowhere did I even imply that young boys are treated as combatants. I simply described the involvement of youth in and around the fighting as a plausible explanation to the male-female gap in the numbers of that age categorty. Mine was an empirical, not a categorical statement. But if we're on the subject of male children, there is little doubt as to where lies the blame: A moral person/org. would not employ children in combat, and would try to get them to safety as far away from the action as possible. Given that the Palestinians do the exact opposite, and often boast about it, the choice for Israel is between killing thoes children as collateral damage or standing down and putting its citizens on the line. Needless to say, that a countries first obligation is towards its own citizens. I'm curious, have you even spoken out about the cynical use of their children by Palestinians?

or your tautology "if the IDF fired on an installation, that means it must be a military outpost”.

Very convenient cherry picking. Maybe this sentence was not phrased in the best way possible, but I'm sure you understand full well what I meant and could have replied to the point.

I could set out again the political calculations, from both sides, in which the Israeli Government tried to take out the Hamas Government, its security services, its social services, and the Gaza infrastructure, and correspondingly how the Hamas Government and most of its fighters went “underground” (and thus survived). I could cite the economic cost in damaged and destroyed buildings, the health costs from disease, homelessness, and destroyed sanitation, the political costs from Gazan civilians who are less rather than more likely to see merit in reconciliation with Israelis.

First. your tale is really heartwrenching but the reality remains that had there been no rockets there would have been no war. As simple as that. Israel pullled out of the Gaza strip for a reason - it was tired of fighting and wanted to be left alone. Unfortunately, Hamas (and the general Gazan populace) did not share this vision. Second, there could be no reconciliation. At least not in the next few generations, who were poisoned with the venom of propaganda that makes Der Sturmer look amatuer. I'm sure there are numerous "simple folk" in Gaza who don't care much for politics and just want peace, security and the prospect of a decent life for their children. But unfortunately they're not the ones calling the shots (no pun intended) and they're not as numerous as we would like to have thought. They are in fact hostages of hamas, while the rest are hostages of their own hatred and fanaticism, so there is trully little that Israel or anybody else can do to free them from their self inflicted misery. All throughtout history its the 'simple' people who had to bear the grunt of their leadership's disastrous dicisions.

And please, spare me the moral equivalence. Numbers are meaningless, what matters is intent and conduct. The fact remains (and I'm getting sick of repeating myself here) that the civilian vs. combatant ratios are unprecedented even by western standards. Specifics can and should be examined, and the perpetrators should be brought to justice if misconduct took place, but that does not negate the fact that the IDF went to extraordinary lenghts to ensure that as few civilians are hurt as possible, all the while making it clear that people who mingle with militants can and would be hurt.

You know, I find it amazing how people can arrive at diametrically opposed conclusions given the same data. The Palestinians have made crystal clear their goals and aspirations through decades of conflict, and yet you choose to fall back on wishful thinking instead. See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. I will finish with a term coined by Richard Landes:

LIBERAL COGNITIVE EGOCENTRISM (LCE):

The projection of good faith and fair-mindedness onto others, the assumption that “other” shares the same human values, that everyone prefers positive sum interactions. In a slightly more redemptive mode, LCE holds that all people are good, and if only we treat them right, they will respond well. This is a form of empathy that, like MOS, aspires to the radical victory of justice, and robs the “other” of his or her own beliefs and attitudes. It projects onto rather than detects what the “other” feels.

and just in case you're wondering what MOS is:

Masochistic Omnipotence Syndrome (MOS): a form or pathological self-criticism that essentially holds that “everything is my (our) fault, and if we could only do/be better, we could fix anything.” This is a form of messianic aspiration and moral perfectionism that, however admirable at one level, robs the “other” of all agency, and avoids a genuine relationship and the natural “messiness” of human life. It can become a pathological form of self-criticism that renders people easy marks for demopaths (people who use democratic language and invoke the values of civil society only when it serves their advantage in demanding restraint from their opponents so that they can undermine those very rights. They themselves show few signs of commitment to these values when it calls for restraint or self-correction on their part, engaging in demonizing stereotypes).

Peace (but not at all costs)

Sergei