Para quem não lê em inglês, mesma notícia n'O GLOBO em 10 de janeiro:
Segundo a porta-voz do escritório de coordenadoria de ajuda humanitária da ONU (Ocha), Alegra Pacheco, testemunhas disseram que, na noite do dia 4, soldados israelenses expulsaram 110 pessoas de suas casas, entre elas cerca de 50 crianças, e ordenaram que fossem para um prédio e lá permanecessem. Menos de 24 horas depois, disparos de artilharia destruíram o local.
- Segundo várias testemunhas, soldadas de infantaria israelenses levaram cerca de 110 pessoas para uma residência em Zeitun, alertando-os para ficarem lá dentro. Depois de 24 horas, forças israelenses lançaram vários projéteis contra o loca, matando 30 -- disse Pacheco -- Os que sobreviveram e conseguiam caminhar, andaram dois quilômetros antes de serem levados para um hospital. Três crianças, a mais jovem de 5 meses, morreram no hospital.
Ahmed Samouni, de 13 anos, foi um dos sobreviventes, apesar de ferimentos numa perna e no peito. Ele perdeu seis parentes no ataque, inclusive sua mãe e um irmão. Ele descreveu como 15 soldados desembarcaram de helicópteros e bateram nos civis que foram levados para o local do massacre. (...)
O massacre ocorreu na mesma área em que a Cruz Vermelha, um dia antes, denunciara a ação de soldados, mas o número de mortos é maior. Além do ataque, os israelenses não prestaram auxílio às crianças feridas, que por quatro dias ficaram ao lado dos corpos de suas mães, e ainda impediram a aproximação de médicos.(...)
...
."Especialista em legislação de guerra, Anthony Dworkin é diretor do respeitado Crimes of War Project. Ele diz que há leis obrigatórias num conflito como o de Gaza, discorda da interpretação de Israel sobre escudos humanos e considera que há indícios de crime de guerra caso o relato da Cruz Vermelha seja comprovado."
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[http://oglobo.globo.com/mundo/mat/2009/01/21/acoes-d…54087815.asp]
Ah, eu já tinha lido um artigo sobre esse negócio dos "escudos humanos". É a mesma coisa que o André postou por último agora... essa teoria de "escudos humanos", que é a justificativa de Israel para o massacre de 400 crianças e mais uma porrada de civis em Gaza, is full of holes.
É realllllmente muito interessante ler a entrevista, na qual Mr. Dworkin, na habitual estratégia morde-e-sopra-pra-não-dar-muita-bandeira, respondendo à pergunta sobre o uso da população civil como escudo pelos terroristas, diz que [o fato dos terroristas operarem] "dentro de uma área urbana não caracterizaria isso, mas armar uma posição militar dentro de um centro de refugiados poderia ser".
Ou seja: armar uma posição militar dentro de uma escola, um edifício de apartamentos, um templo religioso, um jardim-de-infância, uma pracinha no meio de um bairro residencial, etc, etc, póóóóóde, uma vez que nenhum desses locais é oficialmente "um centro de refugiados".
Gente, isso cansa. Proponho que a discussão sobre o tema da guerra Israel X Hamas fique restrito a um tópico, o qual já está em andamento, e seja evitada a inserção de novos tópicos a cada notícia que sai, porque essa prática me parece mais exercício de propaganda do que vontade de debater. Mesmo lá, já sinto que há pouco de novo a se dizer e o assunto está se repetindo, e seria mais interessante que o André e o Pedro, que têm debatido mais e parecem ter mais a contribuir em termos de informações, fizessem uma espécie de "sumário de razões finais" sobre o tema, deixando que cada um de nós forme sua própria opinião e possa expressá-la se assim o desejar.
Porque não confinar assuntos tais como "comunismo", "revolução", "governo Lulla", "terrorismo" etc. em um só tópico? Você nao acha que essa dispersão pode ficar parecendo propaganda?
The notion does not lose currency, even as the death toll climbs. By yesterday, the war in Gaza had left at least 905 Palestinians dead, a little less than half of whom were civilians.
Still, in the view of Israeli leaders, diplomats and spokesmen, Hamas is to blame for the carnage, even though the bodies of the civilians may be pocked with wounds meted out by Israeli bombs, artillery and bullets. The slain non-combatants, they say repeatedly, have been used by Hamas as “human shields”.
Under international humanitarian law, the definition of a “human shield” is quite specific: parties to a conflict are prohibited from using civilians to shield military objectives or military operations from attack.
A recent study by the International Committee for the Red Cross, the widely recognised arbiter over questions related to the laws of war and war crimes, said the use of human shields generally involves cases “where persons were actually taken to military objectives in order to shield those objectives from attack,” with the individuals often held against their will.
As in previous wars, Israel has used the term “human shield” more loosely during its current operation in the Gaza Strip, which today enters its 18th day.
In the deaths of at least 39 Palestinians at the UN’s Al Fakhoura school last week, it was a default position, apparently designed to blunt criticism that its forces were acting too cavalierly towards civilians in Gaza. Justifying Israel’s attack on the school, Israeli officials at first claimed that their fighters were responding to mortar fire from that location.
Then the spokesman for the UN relief agency in Gaza, Christopher Gunness, said the organisation was “99.9 per cent certain” that there had been no militants or militant activity within the school compound. The agency also said that all its schools and other facilities were clearly marked and that their locations had been provided to the Israel Defense Forces.
Mark Regev, the chief spokesman for Ehud Olmert, the Israeli prime minister, replied that Hamas was responsible for the deaths because it had used the civilians as “human shields” to try to make their own positions immune from attack. Mr Regev offered no evidence that Hamas fighters had forced Gazan civilians at gunpoint to provide cover for their attacks or protection from retaliation.
While actual proof that Hamas is using human shields appears to be lacking in this incident and others, the repeated accusation by Israel helps buy time and dilutes international pressure for a ceasefire.
It also preserves the reputation of the IDF, which has been frequently praised by the country’s leaders as the “most moral” military force in the world. Further, it panders to the widely held view in Europe, the United States and elsewhere that Islamists of any stripe are life-hating nihilists.
For the truth in that, assume hypothetically that a Hamas or Hizbollah missile struck Israeli military headquarters, the Kirya. The compound is located in downtown Tel Aviv, surrounded by commercial and residential buildings. In all likelihood hundreds, if not thousands, of civilians would be killed.
It is highly unlikely that saying they never targeted civilians would spare Hamas or Hizbollah international condemnation. It also seems unlikely that Israel or its allies would blame the IDF for the bloodshed, saying it had effectively used the people of the neighbourhood as “human shields”.
Their reproaches of Hamas and other Palestinian militants aside, Israeli political and military officials are well aware of the issues surrounding the use of “human shields”.
In 2005, Israel’s Supreme Court barred the IDF from using Palestinians as human shields, which had been a common practice.
The IDF euphemistically dubbed the procedure of forcing Palestinian civilians at gunpoint to go before them into buildings from which they feared attack its “neighbour procedure”. (“The idea is that a person is going in to warn people inside and explain the situation,” army spokesman Capt Jacob Dallal said at the time. “It’s done for the safety of everyone.”)
Despite the court ruling, the practice has continued, according to Israeli and international human rights groups. Amnesty International said last week that Israeli soldiers were taking over Palestinian homes in Gaza and using the homes as military observation and firing positions, effectively using their imprisoned occupants as “human shields”.
Although Hamas has been accused only by Israel of using “human shields”, the group has been criticised for other violations of international humanitarian law before and during the war.
Deliberately firing indiscriminate weapons into civilian populated areas, as Hamas has done with rockets into southern Israel, “constitutes a war crime”, the New York-based Human Rights Watch said late last month.
According to Amnesty International, both Hamas fighters and Israeli soldiers have violated the rules of war by firing at each other from areas close to civilian homes, endangering their inhabitants.
Hamas also may be guilty of what the ICRC describes as “locating military objectives within or near densely populated areas”.
Yuval Diskin, the head of Israel’s domestic intelligence service, has told the Israeli cabinet that the Gaza-based leadership of Hamas is holed up in underground housing beneath Gaza’s largest hospital, according to a report on Sunday in The New York Times.
In the past, Hamas leaders have defended rocket firing, suicide bombings and other violations of international humanitarian law as the necessary and unavoidable responses to Israel’s military superiority and what they describe as its treachery.
“We used peaceful demonstrations in the first intifada and Israel used force. We threw stones and they used force, deportations and mass killings,” Mahmoud Zahar said three years ago in the rebuilt car park of his Gaza home, which had been destroyed by Israeli missiles several months earlier.
“We’re playing inside the body of Israel. It used dirty methods in order to strengthen their existence and to extend their borders. We don’t admire violence, but we have been forced to use methods against Israeli aggression.”
In other words, taken together with Israel’s repeated accusation that Hamas is using “human shields”, each side in the current war has what it regards as justifications to continue violating international humanitarian law when it comes to respecting the lives of civilians.
The difficulties of fighting in the warren of narrow streets and crowded apartment blocks that mark Gaza’s three main population centres – Gaza City, Khan Yunis and Rafah – are no excuse, human rights organisations insist. Humanitarian law requires that the parties to a conflict take constant care during military operations to spare the civilian population.
In particular, “the attacking party is not relieved from its obligation to take into account the risk to civilians simply because it considers the defending party responsible for having located legitimate military targets within or near populated areas”, Human Rights Watch has said.
Porque não confinar assuntos tais como "comunismo", "revolução", "governo Lulla", "terrorismo" etc. em um só tópico? Você nao acha que essa dispersão pode ficar parecendo propaganda?
For eighteen months the entire 1.5 million people of Gaza experienced a punishing blockade imposed by Israel, and a variety of traumatizing challenges to the normalcy of daily life. A flicker of hope emerged some six months ago when an Egyptian arranged truce produced an effective ceasefire that cut Israeli casualties to zero despite the cross-border periodic firing of homemade rockets that fell harmlessly on nearby Israeli territory, and undoubtedly caused anxiety in the border town of Sderot. During the ceasefire the Hamas leadership in Gaza repeatedly offered to extend the truce, even proposing a ten-year period and claimed a receptivity to a political solution based on acceptance of Israel's 1967 borders. Israel ignored these diplomatic initiatives, and failed to carry out its side of the ceasefire agreement that involved some easing of the blockade that had been restricting the entry to Gaza of food, medicine, and fuel to a trickle.
Israel also refused exit permits to students with foreign fellowship awards and to Gazan journalists and respected NGO representatives. At the same time, it made it increasingly difficult for journalists to enter, and I was myself expelled from Israel a couple of weeks ago when I tried to enter to carry out my UN job of monitoring respect for human rights in occupied Palestine, that is, in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, as well as Gaza. Clearly, prior to the current crisis, Israel used its authority to prevent credible observers from giving accurate and truthful accounts of the dire humanitarian situation that had been already documented as producing severe declines in the physical condition and mental health of the Gazan population, especially noting malnutrition among children and the absence of treatment facilities for those suffering from a variety of diseases. The Israeli attacks were directed against a society already in grave condition after a blockade maintained during the prior 18 months.
As always in relation to the underlying conflict, some facts bearing on this latest crisis are murky and contested, although the American public in particular gets 99% of its information filtered through an exceedingly pro-Israeli media lens. Hamas is blamed for the breakdown of the truce by its supposed unwillingness to renew it, and by the alleged increased incidence of rocket attacks. But the reality is more clouded. There was no substantial rocket fire from Gaza during the ceasefire until Israel launched an attack last November 4th directed at what it claimed were Palestinian militants in Gaza, killing several Palestinians. It was at this point that rocket fire from Gaza intensified. Also, it was Hamas that on numerous public occasions called for extending the truce, with its calls never acknowledged, much less acted upon, by Israeli officialdom. Beyond this, attributing all the rockets to Hamas is not convincing either. A variety of independent militia groups operate in Gaza, some such as the Fatah-backed al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade are anti-Hamas, and may even be sending rockets to provoke or justify Israeli retaliation. It is well confirmed that when US-supported Fatah controlled Gaza's governing structure it was unable to stop rocket attacks despite a concerted effort to do so.
What this background suggests strongly is that Israel launched its devastating attacks, starting on December 27, not simply to stop the rockets or in retaliation, but also for a series of unacknowledged reasons. It was evident for several weeks prior to the Israeli attacks that the Israeli military and political leaders were preparing the public for large-scale military operations against the Hamas. The timing of the attacks seemed prompted by a series of considerations: most of all, the interest of political contenders, the Defense Minister Ehud Barak and the Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, in demonstrating their toughness prior to national elections scheduled for February,
but now possibly postponed until military operations cease. Such Israeli shows of force have been a feature of past Israeli election campaigns, and on this occasion especially, the current government was being successfully challenged by Israel's notoriously militarist politician, Benjamin Netanyahu, for its supposed failures to uphold security. Reinforcing these electoral motivations was the little concealed pressure from the Israeli military commanders to seize the opportunity in Gaza to erase the memories of their failure to destroy Hezbollah in the devastating Lebanon War of 2006 that both tarnished Israel's reputation as a military power and led to widespread international condemnation of Israel for the heavy bombardment of undefended Lebanese villages, disproportionate force, and extensive use of cluster bombs against heavily populated areas.
Respected and conservative Israeli commentators go further. For instance, the prominent historian, Benny Morris writing in the New York Times a few days ago, relates the campaign in Gaza to a deeper set of forebodings in Israel that he compares to the dark mood of the public that preceded the 1967 War when Israelis felt deeply threatened by Arab mobilizations on their borders. Morris insists that despite Israeli prosperity of recent years, and relative security, several factors have led Israel to act boldly in Gaza: the perceived continuing refusal of the Arab world to accept the existence of Israel as an established reality; the inflammatory threats voiced by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad together with Iran's supposed push to acquire nuclear weapons, the fading memory of the Holocaust combined with growing sympathy in the West with the Palestinian plight, and the radicalization of political movements on Israel's borders in the form of Hezbollah and Hamas. In effect, Morris argues that Israel is trying via the crushing of Hamas in Gaza to send a wider message to the region that it will stop at nothing to uphold its claims of sovereignty and security.
There are two conclusions that emerge: the people of Gaza are being severely victimized for reasons remote from the rockets and border security concerns, but seemingly to improve election prospects of current leaders now facing defeat, and to warn others in the region that Israel will use overwhelming force whenever its interests are at stake. That such a human catastrophe can happen with minimal outside interference also shows the weakness of international law and the United Nations, as well as the geopolitical priorities of the important players. The passive support of the United States government for whatever Israel does is again the critical factor, as it was in 2006 when it launched its aggressive war against Lebanon. What is less evident is that the main Arab neighbors, Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia, with their extreme hostility toward Hamas that is viewed as backed by Iran, their main regional rival, were also willing to stand aside while Gaza was being so brutally attacked, with some Arab diplomats even blaming the attacks on Palestinian disunity or on the refusal of Hamas to accept the leadership of Mamoud Abbas, President of the Palestinian Authority.
The people of Gaza are victims of geopolitics at its inhumane worst: producing what Israel itself calls a 'total war' against an essentially defenseless society that lacks any defensive military capability whatsoever and is completely vulnerable to Israeli attacks mounted by F-16 bombers and Apache helicopters. What this also means is that the flagrant violation of international humanitarian law, as set forth in the Geneva Conventions, is quietly set aside while the carnage continues and the bodies pile up. It additionally means that the UN is once more revealed to be impotent when its main members deprive it of the political will to protect a people subject to unlawful uses of force on a large scale.
Finally, this means that the public can shriek and march all over the world, but that the killing will go on as if nothing is happening. The picture being painted day by day in Gaza is one that begs for renewed commitment to international law and the authority of the UN Charter, starting here in the United States, especially with a new leadership that promised its citizens change, including a less militarist approach to diplomatic leadership.
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[http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/issues/israel-p…standing.htm]
Israel accused of executing parents in front of children in GazaIsrael has refuted allegations of war atrocities in Gaza after Palestinian children described how their parents had been "executed" by Israeli troops.
By Murray Wardrop
Last Updated: 9:50PM GMT 21 Jan 2009
One nine-year-old boy said his father had been shot dead in front of him despite surrendering to Israeli soldiers with his hands in the air.
Another youngster described witnessing the deaths of his mother, three brothers and uncle after the house they were in was shelled.
He said his mother and one of his siblings had been killed instantly, while the others bled to death over a period of days.
A psychiatrist treating children in the village of Zeitoun on the outskirts of Gaza City, where the alleged incidents took place, described the deaths as a "massacre".
Rawya Borno, a Jordanian doctor, said civilians, including children, were rounded up and killed by Israeli troops.
Israel has denied the claims, dismissing them as Hamas propaganda, but said that an investigation is being conducted into soldiers' conduct in the area.
In interviews with ITV News, Palestinians claimed that Israeli forces knowingly killed civilians in Zeitoun on the morning of Jan 14.
Abdullah Samouni, nine, described the moment his father was allegedly "executed" by Israeli soldiers.
Holding his arms in the air, he said: "He was surrendering like this. My father came out and they shot him right away."
A boy named Ahmed said he was trapped for days in the wreckage of the shelled Samouni family's house.
He said: "My mother was dead beside me, she was clutching my brother Nasser and they were dead. My brother Itzaq was bleeding for two days and then he died. My brother Izmael bled to death in one day. My uncle Talal was bleeding for two hours and he died. God bless them."
Dr Borno said: "It's a massacre. They collected them from their houses. They knew that they were civilians. They were children."
When asked if Hamas had been in Zeitoun, Dr Borno replied: "Suppose that there is one of the fighters around, what is it to do with all these? Is the price to kill the family as a whole? Is this baby carrying a machine gun?"
Israeli spokesman Mark Regev suggested the claims could be Hamas propaganda and said an investigation was under way. However, he said that Israeli troops had reported that Zeitoun was "full of Hamas" militants and that soldiers encountered booby traps in "every house" in the village.
He said: "When people live in an authoritarian regime, when it's clear there is an official message and the message is to give out atrocity propaganda, [then] at least I think we should ask questions.
"Hamas has an interest in sending out this sort of atrocity propaganda.
"What happened in that village is under investigation. I know from speaking to IDF officers that there was very serious combat in that village, that every house was booby-trapped, there were guns. Very difficult military operation.
"If there is any Israeli solder that has done something inappropriate of course that will be discovered and there will be law, but I am very concerned about a situation where children are manipulated, where everyone is on the same message.
"We know that village was full of Hamas fighters. It's against the rules of engagement of the Israeli army to shoot innocent civilians." http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast…in-Gaza.html
Ou seja, um massacre para o qual há uma pancada de testemunhas. A Cruz Vermelha e funcionários da ONU, além destes palestinos -- muitos deles vítimas -- também vêm sustentando a veracidade dessa denúncia. Agora parece claro o porquê Israel vinha obstaculizando a presença de jornalistas em Gaza.
Agora, pra entender o porque a ação de Israel em Gaza foi ela mesma um massacre, eu sugiro a leitura de um artigo de Eric Margolis publicado no Lewrockwell há duas semanas.
Trechos:
According to the UN, most of Gaza's 1.5 million Palestinian refugees subsist near the edge of hunger. Seventy per cent of Palestinian children in Gaza suffer from severe malnutrition and psychological trauma.
Medical facilities are critically short of doctors, personnel, equipment, and drugs. Gaza has quite literally become a human garbage dump for all the Arabs that Israel does not want.
Gaza is one of the world's most-densely populated places, a vast outdoor prison camp filled with desperate people.
(...)
Israel's security establishment is committed to preventing the creation of a viable Palestinian state, and refuses to negotiate with Hamas. Unable to kill all of Hamas' men, Israel is slowly destroying Gaza's infrastructure around them, as it did to Yasser Arafat's PLO.
Israel's hardliners point to Gaza and claim that any Palestinian state on the West Bank would threaten their nation's security by firing rockets into Israel's heartland.
(...)
The tragedy of Palestine will thus continue to poison US relations with the Muslim world.
Those Americans who still do not understand why their nation was attacked on 9/11 need only look to Gaza, for which the US is now being blamed as much as Israel.
Unless Israel can make 5 to 7 million Palestinians disappear, it must find some way to coexist with them. Israeli leaders on the center and right continue to avoid facing this fact.
The brutal collective punishment inflicted on Gaza will likely strengthen Hamas and reverse any hopes of a Middle East peace in the coming years.
Video showing injuries consistent with the use of white phosphorus shells has been filmed inside hospitals treating Palestinian wounded in Gaza City.
Contact with the shell remnants causes severe burns, sometimes burning the skin to the bone, consistent with descriptions by Ahmed Almi, an Egyptian doctor at the al-Nasser hospital in Khan Younis.
Almi said the entire body of one victim was burned within an hour. It was the first time he had seen the effects of what he called a "chemical weapon".
"It is an absolute certainty," said Marc Garlasco, a senior military analyst at Human Rights Watch. He had seen Israeli artillery fire white phosphorus shells at Gaza City, Garlasco said.
The Israeli military has denied using white phosphorus during the assault on Gaza, but aid agencies say they have no doubt it has been used.