Gaza/Israel: Hamas Rocket Attacks on Civilians Unlawful
Launches from Populated Areas Endanger Israelis and Palestinians
(Jerusalem) -- Hamas should repudiate unlawful rocket attacks against Israeli population centers and hold those responsible for them to account, Human Rights Watch said in a new report released today. Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups have over several years launched thousands of rockets at Israeli cities and towns, including hundreds during Israel's three-week military offensive in Gaza in December 2008 and January 2009. A UN fact-finding investigation into serious violations of the laws of war by both sides in the Gaza conflict, led by Judge Richard Goldstone, is due to report back to the UN Human Rights Council in September.
The 31-page report, "Rockets from Gaza: Harm to Civilians from Palestinian Armed Groups' Rocket Attacks," documents attacks by Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups since November 2008 that killed three Israeli civilians and seriously injured dozens of others, damaged property and forced residents to leave their homes. The rockets unlawfully struck populated areas up to 40 kilometers inside Israel, placing roughly 800,000 Israeli civilians at risk. Rockets that fell short of their intended targets in Israel killed two girls and wounded others in Gaza during this period. Palestinian armed groups that launched rockets from densely populated areas also unlawfully put Gaza civilians at risk of Israeli counter-strikes.
"Hamas rocket attacks targeting Israeli civilians are unlawful and unjustifiable, and amount to war crimes," said Iain Levine, program director at Human Rights Watch. "As the governing authority in Gaza, Hamas should publicly renounce rocket attacks on Israeli civilian centers and punish those responsible, including members of its own armed wing."
"Rockets from Gaza" focuses on events after November 4, 2008, when Palestinian armed groups resumed rocket fire after an Israeli military incursion into Gaza. Based on interviews with witnesses to rocket attacks and launches, field investigations of strike sites in Israel and Gaza, and media and other reports, the report details the cases of Israeli and Palestinian civilians killed or wounded by rocket attacks in December 2008 and January 2009. While Human Rights Watch found no clear practice by Palestinian armed groups to deliberately use civilians to shield rocket launches from counterattack, it found they frequently violated the separate duty under the laws of war to take all feasible precautions to avoid endangering civilians when they launched rockets from densely populated areas.
"Hamas forces violated the laws of war both by firing rockets deliberately or indiscriminately at Israeli cities and by launching them from populated areas and endangering Gazan civilians," said Levine.
Hamas has significantly limited rocket attacks in recent months, but has not renounced attacks that deliberately or indiscriminately target civilians -- serious violations of the laws of war -- or brought to justice those responsible for initiating such attacks, or for endangering Palestinian civilians by launching rockets from densely populated areas in Gaza. Hamas' armed wing claimed responsibility for the three Israeli civilian deaths documented in the report. During the Israeli offensive in December and January, the armed wings of Hamas and Islamic Jihad claimed to have fired 820 rockets at Israel.
The locally made Qassam rockets and Soviet-designed Grad rockets used by Hamas and other armed groups cannot be aimed with any reliability. Under the laws of war, such weapons are indiscriminate when used against targets in densely populated areas. The absence of Israeli military forces in the areas struck by the rockets, as well as statements from the leaders of the Palestinian armed groups, indicate that the armed groups deliberately intended to strike Israeli civilians and civilian structures. For example, Abu Obeida, a spokesman for Hamas' Qassam Brigades, said in a video released on January 5, 2009 that "continuing the incursion will only make us increase our rocket range [...]. We will double the number of Israelis under fire."
Under the laws of war, individuals who willfully authorize or carry out deliberate or indiscriminate attacks against civilians are committing war crimes.
An Israeli early warning siren system, which gives civilians roughly 10 to 45 seconds to find cover in prepared shelters, depending on their distance from the launch site in Gaza, has undoubtedly limited the number of civilian casualties in Israel. However, the repeated attacks have, over months and even years, taken a psychological toll on the population in areas close to Gaza. The laws of war prohibit attacks the primary purpose of which is to spread terror among the civilian population. Because of the rocket attacks, thousands of people have moved away from frequently targeted areas such as Sderot municipality.
Palestinian armed groups have argued that the rocket attacks are appropriate reprisals for Israeli military operations and the ongoing economic blockade of Gaza, and are a lawful response to Israel's control over Gaza. Human Rights Watch has also documented numerous laws of war violations by Israeli forces in Gaza, but violations by one party to a conflict never justify violations by the other. Attacks targeting civilians are never permitted under the laws of war, which require armed forces to target only military objectives, and to take all feasible precautions to spare civilians from harm, regardless of the reasons for resorting to armed conflict.
Similarly, although Israeli military operations caused far greater total harm to civilian lives -- killing several hundred civilians with air strikes, artillery, tank shelling, and other attacks -- and property than operations by Palestinian armed groups, violations of the laws of war are not determined by the number of civilian casualties, but by whether each side is refraining from conducting deliberate or indiscriminate attacks against civilians and is taking all feasible precautions to minimize civilian loss.
"Human Rights Watch is committed to documenting the worst violations of the laws of war committed by all sides in armed conflicts throughout the world," Levine said. "We published this report because civilians must never be the object of attack, regardless of the relative strength of the attacker."
Using unsophisticated weapons does not justify failure to respect the laws of war, just as an adversary's use of sophisticated weapons does not provide a pass to its opponents to ignore those laws, Human Rights Watch said. Such disparities exist in many wars, and if they provided a justification for ignoring the laws of war the civilian toll in armed conflicts would rise dramatically. The loss of civilian life from armed conflict can be minimized only if each party recognizes its legal obligations to abide by the laws of war, regardless of the weaponry at its disposal.
"Rockets from Gaza" is the fifth in a series of reports Human Rights Watch has issued on the Israeli offensive launched on December 27, 2008. Two reports are forthcoming.
-- By Iain Levine, program director at Human Rights Watch
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Well well, HRW actually is going to criticize Hamas. This former human rights turned political organization was just caught fund raising in Saudi Arabia making an appeal to wealthy Saudis to help them continue to pressure Israel. When criticized for this, their M.E. chair accused the critics of "racism." This group refused to criticize suicide terrorism for years after the genocide started. When the Palestinians bombed discos, buses, and synagoges killing thousands in Israel, HRW was silent. It was not until 2002 they issued their first declaration (and it was a small one at that) criticizing the brainwashing of children to commit suicide by killing as many civilians as possible. As Hamas sent thousands of rockets into Israel, HRW barely spoke of it and when they did, they absolved Hamas of direct responsibility and accused them of "looking the other way" while others did this. Shame on HRW.
Observation:
Anyone can /go/ to HRW's web site and take note of the fact that they have been criticizing Hamas all along. Just type 'Hamas' in the Search box and see.
Whatever HRW has said about Hamas is not the issue raised by JL, it is the collusion between HRW and the Saudi family. The collusion to raise money in order to make more attacks on Israel rather than acting as an unbiased organization.
StCuthbert Wrote
“So if I said, look,.....
(sorry 250 word limit)
“The history of the Zionists in Hungary is a sordid one, even before they established their exclusivist colonial settler state in Palestine. My cousins, who were not important people, were amongst the several thousand Hungarian Jews who survived the fire. A pact was signed by Dr. Rudolph Kastner of the Jewish Agency Rescue Committee and Nazi exterminator Adolph Eichmann in l944 allowing 600 prominent Jews to leave in exchange for Zionist silence on the fate of the remainder. Malchiel Greenwald, a Hungarian survivor, exposed the deal and was sued by the Israeli government, whose leaders at the time had actually drawn up the terms of the pact. Greenwald won. The Israeli court concluded, "The sacrifice of the majority of Hungarian Jews, in order to rescue the prominent ones (and send them to colonize Palestine - MSS) was the basic element in the agreement between Kastner and the Nazis....I
Conversations With Jewish Critics of Israel, by Seth Farber, Common Courage Press,
http://www
Wow, single handedly pwning the entire Israeli sympathizer lobby - kudos!
Do you plan on ever writing a posting that actually contributes to the discussion or is your ability limited to promoting MA and aussieposer?
StCuthbert Wrote
“So if I said, look, here is documentation from the Palestinians revoking all claims to the West Bank and Gaza Strip, but it's in Arabic, so you'll have to take my word for it that it says what I say it says, would you believe me? How is my questioning Aussie's source any different?”
Google search
“June 22, 1955, Protocol of Criminal Case 124/53 in District Court, Jerusalem.
Results 1 - 10 of about 511 for June 22, 1955, Protocol of Criminal Case 124/53 in District Court, Jerusalem.
Go for it!!
Again you are posting non-related nonsense that ignores the topic of this discussion. Hamas committed a number of crimes and rather than confront that you change the subject.
Recommendation:
Physician, heal thyself.
Query:
How often have you put up a stonewall of denial toward Israel's actions and then sought to change the topic?
Good to see that HRW is finally analyzing the conflict a little more evenly. Curious that they didn't say a thing for 5 years while Hamastan was rocketing Israeli kindergartens. Well I guess that you can't have everything. Also curious that they never remark on Egypt's closed boarder. Egypt did, after all, rule Gaza until 1967 and was offered control back by Israel. They, of course, have no interest in the well being of the refugees of Egypt's failed attempt to destroy nascent Israel in 1948. An embarrassing reminder of Arab impotency.
It's time to reattach Gaza to Egypt and let those poor people into the Sinai. By electing Hamas in one of the Arab world's only reasonably clean elections (I guess they learned something from the Israelis), the residents of Gaza/Hamastan have proven that they can't run their own affairs, its time for Egypt to step up and take responsibility for the Gaza disaster they caused.
Observation:
Clearly, you don't actually /read/ HRW's reports.
Please, post a link where you have "observed" HRW condemning Hamas rocket launches prior to operation Cast Lead.
After all the Israeli screaming about how this group is prejudiced against israel : another israeli Big Lie exposed.
well said arvay
Hardly, this one instance proves nothing at all about the bias against Israel by HRW.
another israeli Big Lie exposed.
Really?
I'm sure you mean to say HRW's lies of omission were finally expossed because of Israeli protests
12,000 rockets and mortars from 2005 when not an Israeli remained in Apartheid Gaza ... but not a word from HRW
Oh but is that really a surprise ... from a recent Atlantic Mag piece
"In other words, yes, the director of Human Rights Watch's Middle East division is attempting to raise funds from Saudis, including a member of the Shura Council (which oversees, on behalf of the Saudi monarchy, the imposition in the Kingdom of the strict Wahhabi interpretation of Islamic law) in part by highlighting her organization's investigations of Israel, and its war with Israel's "supporters," who are liars and deceivers. It appears as if Human Rights Watch, in the pursuit of dollars, has compromised its integrity.
Another Israeli lie exposed?
No, the real motives behind HRW exposed
http://jef
Good comments, GZ. There's been a knee-jerk anti-Israel contingent here at Huffpo for as long as I can remember and it hardly pays to argue with them. Their opinions are facts because ... well, because whoever they read, whoever influences them, has told them so.
Not a bird falls from the sky but for the hand of a Zionist somewhere, conspiring against it with AIPAC, CIA, and their lackeys in the media. Idi Amin gave them talking points back at the U.N. in the 1970s.
As for HRW actually condemning Hamas, I've gotta say I'm surprised to hear it. Their fund-raising is gonna take a hit, bet on that.
Hedonist Wrote
“They did not want an alliance with the Nazis. They tried to negotiate to save some of the Jews who were about to be murdered. The negotiations led nowhere.”
A little further information for you. You are after all owed the truth, as are the readers at Huffpost.
“The culmination of Zionist betrayal was the sacrifice of Hungary's Jews in a series of agreements between the Zionist movement and Nazi Germany which first became known in 1953. Dr. Rudolph Kastner of the Jewish Agency Rescue Committee in Budapest signed a secret pact with Adolf Eichmann to "settle the Jewish question" in Hungary. This took place in 1944. The pact sealed the fate of 800,000 Jews”
June 22, 1955, Protocol of Criminal Case 124/53 in District Court, Jerusalem.
If you can read Hebrew
http://www
“The court declared that the imperative condition of this pact was that neither Kastner nor the Zionist leaders would interfere in the action of the Nazis against the Jews. These leaders undertook not only to eschew interference, but they agreed they would not, in the words of the Israeli court, "hamper them in the exterminat
http://www
Have a cigar.
Rather ironic the motto "never again", when the same people are trying to cover up inconvenient facts.
All aussie has done is to try to derail the discussion about the crimes committed by Hamas, a group of thugs and cowards. He/She has added nothing to the conversation, which is typical, and the best way thing to do is to ignore this weak attempt to provide cover for Hamas.
The inconvenient fact is that Aussieposter claims a certain document is in Hebrew when, in fact, it is in Arabic. What a sick, pathetic joke.
What nonsense. That pdf document is in Arabic - not Hebrew. Your other ridiculous link is so easily discredited as being completely and utterly biased.
Hedonist Wrote
“They did not want an alliance with the Nazis. They tried to negotiate to save some of the Jews who were about to be murdered. The negotiations led nowhere.”
You obviously have not read the document. They only allow 250 words here and the full record of the letter would take far more than that. Perhaps a snippet will suffice. You can google it on the internet for the full text
On January 11, 1941, Avraham Stern proposed a formal military pact between the National Military Organization (NMO), of which Yitzhak Shamir, the current Prime Minister of Israel, was a prominent leader, and the Nazi Third Reich.. This proposal became known as the Ankara document, having been discovered after the war in the files of the German Embassy in Turkey. It states the following:
“ Proceeding from these considerations, the NMO in Palestine, under the condition that the above-mentioned national aspirations of the Israeli freedom movement are recognized on the side of the German Reich, offers to actively take part in the war on Germany?s side. (Proposal of the National Military Organization - Irgun Zvai Leumi - Concerning the Solution of the Jewish Question in Europe and the Participation of the N.M.O. in the War on the side of Germany. Original text found in David Yisraeli, The Palestine Problem in German Politics. 1889-1945. (Ramat Gan, Israel: Bar Ilan University, 1974), pp.315-317
Follow rge footnotes too.
A little bit about the "author" Lenni Brenner - sums it all up
"Lenni Brenner (born 1937) is an American Marxist Trotskyist writer. In the 1960s, Brenner was a prominent civil rights activist and a prominent opponent of the Vietnam War.
Brenner was born into an Orthodox Jewish family. He became an atheist at age 10 or 12 and a Marxist at age 15. Brenner's involvement with the American Civil Rights Movement began when he met James Farmer of the Congress of Racial Equality, later the organizer of the "freedom rides" of the early 1960s. He also worked with Bayard Rustin, later the organizer of Martin Luther King's 1963 "I Have a Dream" march on Washington. (Neither were Marxists.)
Brenner was arrested three times during civil rights sit-ins in the San Francisco Bay Area. He spent 39 months in jail when a court revoked his probation for marijuana possession, because of his activities during the Berkeley Free Speech Movement at the University of California in 1964.
In the 1990s, he and Kwame Ture (aka Stokely Carmichael), the legendary "Black Power" leader of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, co-founded the Committee against Zionism and Racism. They also published The Anti-War Activist.
In 2003, Brenner spoke at the inaugural meeting of Jews Against Zionism in London."
I am confused.
Are you trying to put him down or talk him up?
To me his credentials look fine.
So he smoked a little weed in the 60’s……….wh
agreed violence of any kind should be condemmned, now what about a report on the other side actions:
http://new
"You take the kid, you blindfold him, you handcuff him, he's really shaking... Sometimes you cuff his legs too. Sometimes it cuts off the circulatio
Hamas is an ultra- fundamentalist organization dedicated to hopelessly outdated, if paranoid view of reality.
Only people with the same worldview support Hamas. The only other alternative, Westerners easily brainwashed by PC language.
That the rocket attacks from Gaza are illegal and a crime against civilians is not in dispute. What should be remembered is that in the past 7 years Hamas rockets have killed 20 Israeli civilians. 40 to 45 Israelis per month die in auto crashes. 60% are children. Thats 3,360 Israelis killed during the same time. Hamas rockets are fired blindly. Israeli rockets know exactly who they are targeting and who they are killing.
So, your point is Hamas rocket attacks are justified becuse Israeli car crashes have killed more people. That is complete and total nonsense. But it does prove Arab apologists are willing to consider anything done by Arab terrorists as justifiable.
Guess you didn’t read "rocket attacks from Gaza are illegal and a crime against civilians".
Perspective, my friend, not justification or an apology. Like the over reaction of the IDF in Gaza. The illegal targeting of civilians and the use of WP in a crowded urban environment.
FINALLY Hamas is accused of the War Crimes they use a matter of procedure. Will they be held accountable ? Will this change anything ?
No, because neither side will accept respnsibility for their human rights atrocities. Wonder how this organization will view US drone attacks in Pakistan?
Finally Hamas is held accountable.
Query:
Finally? Haven't you been paying attention all this time?
Alpha - looks like you're taking on the whole A/PAC by yourself - good work. It's impossible to criticize any wrongdoing by the Israelis without being called an anti-Semite. Any act against any unarmed/un
I guess the killing of all those non-human Palestinians was not holding the whole population of Gaza accountable.
I'm glad the report criticizes Hamas for its war crimes. Now the world will know the true face of Hamas, the cowardly organization that kills civilians while hiding behind children in their schools.
Observation:
Do you have the same response to HRW's reports on Israel?
Observation:
Your comment is a question not an observation.
Question:
Is the validity of lightningbolt's comment dependent upon the answer to your question? Or, are you just trying to change the subject?
the same organization claimed that _only_ Israel did in fact use human-shields, your response?
I care not what HRW declares Hamas has done, the fact of the matter is Israel did not use human shields. But once again an Arab apologists is unable to accept any criticism of Hamas or any of the terrorist groups.
Prediction:
The pro-Israeli posters will spend a day or two posting hate speech against Palestinians on this blog, and then a week from now conveniently forget it ever existed and resume accusing Human Rights Watch and other progressive organizations of siding "with the terrorists
Criticizing Palestinians is not hate speech, just like criticizing Israel is not hate speech, unless that criticism is not based on facts.
Statement:
"...just like criticizing Israel is not hate speech..."
Notation:
I will remember that the next time I get called an anti-Semite for criticizing Israel.
You should work towards some objectivity. Hamas is guilty of war crimes - acknowledging that is not hate speech - the actions of Hamas are hateful. you need to get a tighter grip on reality.
... and Israel is not ???
Query:
And in the next breath, you will declare 300 Gazan children dead as "self defense."
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