Sunday, December 31, 2006
Jeff Robbins, former U.S. delegate to the United Nations Human Rights Commission under President Clinton, writes in the Boston Herald: Human shields violate human rights in Gaza: Bent on destroying Israel, terrorists sacrifice civilians
Indeed, since evacuating Gaza some 16 months ago, Israelis have been subjected to a nearly daily rain of rockets launched by Palestinians in Gaza. As always, the purpose of these rockets has been to kill or maim Israeli civilians. As always, the attacks are launched from Palestinian civilian centers, frequently from within or alongside homes.
The strategy is no less effective for its transparency: With any luck, not only will Israeli civilians die, but Israel will be forced to choose between doing nothing and attempting to retaliate against the attackers and thereby risking harm to Palestinian non-combatants. If, as is particularly likely in the densely populated Gaza Strip, the Palestinian attacks on Israeli civilians also bring about Israeli reprisals that harm Palestinian civilians, the thinking goes, Palestinians will win a public relations victory at Israel’s expense.
One might imagine that the United Nations would either criticize the Palestinians’ deliberate targeting of the Israeli civilian population, or, at least criticize the Palestinians’ victimization of their own civilians by using them as human shields since both practices constitute egregious violations of international law.
Alas, one would have to be truly unfamiliar with the United Nations in order to expect that to occur. Keeping faith with an inviolate and astonishingly ill-hidden anti-Israel bias, the U.N. General Assembly and its new Human Rights Council have chosen not to criticize either the Palestinian targeting of Israeli civilians or the Palestinians’ use of their own civilians as human shields. Instead, they have criticized only the Israelis.
The fecklessness of the United Nations is nothing new, and it is barely worth bemoaning.
But we have a right to expect more of the human rights community which, like the United Nations, continues to ignore the obvious when it comes to the Middle East. In its zeal to criticize Israel, it has substituted political fashion for clear and honest thinking. The inhabitants of the Middle East suffer as a result, and the cause of human rights suffers as well.
Robbins is also attorney for The David Project.
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I think that this exerpt points to the tactical advantage that guerrillas and terrorists have everywhere: West Bank and Gaza, Northern Ireland, Iraq, Vietnam, etc. Terrorists hide among the general population and strike out at an enemy equipped only for conventional warfare. The enemy's army cannot strike back without hitting civilians in the process, thus generating more opposition.
What is amazing is that world opinion falls for this over and over again.
I think that a particularly brilliant propaganda coup was when some Palestinian coined the phrase "state terrorism." That really turned the tables. Not only was Israel forced to fire at civilian areas, but were termed "terrorists" for doing so.