Gazan Casualties Accidental?
by Stephen Lendman (stephenlendman.org – Home – Stephen Lendman)
There’s nothing accidental about Israeli snipers killing and seriously wounding defenseless Gazans, demonstrating peacefully for rights they’re systematically and illegally denied.
The IDF claim is a bald-faced lie. Numbers harmed on five Great March of Return Fridays reflect official Israeli policy – harshness intending to terrorize Gazans into submission, no matter how many are killed or wounded.
Longstanding Israeli policy permits live fire against nonviolent Palestinian demonstrators, resulting in countless thousands of casualties, many victims killed or maimed for life – physically and/or emotionally, trauma especially harming young children.
Israeli open-fire regulations only permit live ammunition use if soldiers or other security personnel face life-threatening danger.
Even then, it’s only to be used as a last resort after warnings were given, never against anyone posing no danger – clearly the case during Great March of Return Fridays.
Peacefully demonstrating Gazans threatened no one. Yet they were preemptively and viciously attacked by live fire, rubber-coated steel bullets and toxic tear gas, causing thousands of casualties, at least 45 deaths.
Israeli live-fire regulations meant to prevent harmful violence are systematically and repeatedly breached by Israeli soldiers and other security forces, ordered by commanders to violently attack peaceful Palestinian demonstrators – in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem, resulting in countless injuries and deaths.
International law principles of distinction and proportionality are violated – the former allowing attacks against participants in hostilities, not nonthreatening civilians, the latter prohibiting attacks against combatants if harm to civilians could be greater than any military objective achieved.
In persecuting and otherwise treating Palestinians harshly, Israel operates extrajudicially, ignoring rule of law principles, doing whatever it pleases, knowing it can get away with murder and much more unaccountably.
Claiming thousands of Gazan casualties since Good Friday were accidental reflects typical Israeli deception and indifference to Palestinian lives, rights and welfare.
It also contradicts a March 31 IDF statement, saying “nothing was carried out uncontrolled. Everything was accurate and measured, and we know where every bullet landed” – the statement later deleted.
Israeli rules of engagement are like Washington’s – permitting anything goes, the human toll of no consequence, accountability for high crimes of war and against humanity never forthcoming.
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