Red Cross Condemns Israel
James Joyner | January 08, 2009
Just when you thought Israel's PR couldn't get any worse:
The International Committee of the Red Cross said Thursday that it had found at least 15 bodies and several children -- emaciated but alive -- in a row of shattered houses in the Gaza Strip and accused the Israeli military of preventing ambulances from reaching the site for four days.
[...]
Red Cross officials said rescue crews had received specific reports of casualties in the houses and had been trying since Saturday to send ambulances to the area, located in Zaytoun, a neighborhood south of Gaza City. They said the Israeli military did not grant permission until Wednesday afternoon.
In an unusual public statement issued by its Geneva headquarters, the Red Cross called the episode "unacceptable" and said the Israeli military had "failed to meet its obligation under international humanitarian law to care for and evacuate the wounded." When rescue workers from the Red Cross and the Palestinian Red Crescent arrived at the site, they found 12 corpses lying on mattresses in one home, along with four young children lying next to their dead mothers, the Red Cross said. The children were too weak to stand and were rushed to a hospital, the agency said.
A spokesman for the Israel Defense Forces declined to comment early Thursday on the specific allegations made by the Red Cross but said in a statement that the military "has demonstrated its willingness to abort operations to save civilian lives and to risk injury in order to assist innocent civilians." "Any serious allegations made against the IDF's conduct will need to be investigated properly, once such a complaint is received formally," the statement added.
[...]
"This is a shocking incident," Pierre Wettach, the Red Cross's head of delegation for Israel and the Palestinian territories, said in a statement. "The Israeli military must have been aware of the situation but did not assist the wounded. Neither did they make it possible for us or the Palestine Red Crescent to assist the wounded."
The Geneva Conventions provide that parties to a conflict "at all times" should "without delay" take "all possible measures to search for and collect the wounded and sick, to protect them against pillage and ill-treatment, to ensure their adequate care, and to search for the dead and prevent their being despoiled." The conventions also say that wounded "shall not willfully be left without medical assistance and care."
Israel has been surrounded by hostile neighbors and been beseiged by terrorists for decades, creating a mindset like no other country on the planet. That they frequently lose patience with diplomacy that seems to be going nowhere and launch military strikes is quite understandable. That they seem oblivious to the optics of war and the weight of international public opinion, however, is mindboggling. The net effect has been that the modern democracy responding to attacks by terrorists is seen by all too many as the bad guy rather than the aggrieved party.
James Joyner is managing editor of the Atlantic Council. AP Photo by Salvatore Di Nolfi.
Comments
Who does The Red Cross Think They Are? The Red Cross Carries even Less Pull than the Corrupt UN. Hasn't Red Cross vehicles been sighted transporting Troops & Rockets for Terrorits?
Screw the Red Cross they just Lost my Donations.
Joe G:
"support Israel's persecution of innocent civillians or lose my money"
How charitable.
Joe G:
Imagine yourself and your family coming under constant rocket attack by a group of terrorists that seek your destruction. Would you sit by and wait for some kind of 'friendly' resolution - which, by the way, Israel has tried repeatedly, with every truce being violtaed by the terrorists - or would you finally say you've had enough and do what it takes to make it stop - ONCE AND FOR ALL?
Did you know that Israeli forces dropped flyers warning civilians to clear out of terrorist targets they would soon destroy? Of course civilians will die in war but Hamas is ENSURING that their fellow men, women an children get killed by using schools, mosques and private homes as hiding places for terrorists, ammunition storage, and launching sites.
While Israel is trying to avoid civilian casulaties THE TERRORIST BASTARDS ARE USING THEIR OWN NEIGHBORS AS HUMANS SHIELDS! They don't give a damn about human life, not even their own. Try negotiating with them...
Israel is allowing humanitarian aid into Gaza to help civilians. Well, guess what? Hamas is intercepting much of the supplies and using it for their own purposes. I wonder what Hamas and their like would do if Israel required humanitarian aid during a battle...???
It's about time the ENTIRE world - not just the United States -blamed the TERRORISTS.
Let's support Israel in their effort to eliminate terrorists and terrorism from our planet - ONCE AND FOR ALL!
You took the words right out of my mouth.
Israel is defending itself against terrorists who use humans as shields. It is unfortunate that innocent civilians are dying but this is ALL THE FAULT OF THE HAMAS, not Israel!
Moreover, I never heard the Red Cross condemn Hamas or other Muslim terrorists for the many gallons of innocent Jewish blood spilled by exploding buses, rocket shells or other TERRORIST activity.
Blame the TERRORISTS not a country trying to defend itself!
To hell with the Red Cross.
Israel was birthed in an orgy of terrorist massacres, as Benny Morris and other Israeli historians have evinced, using declassified IDF files. For 40 years, Israel has spurned more U.N resolutions than any other nation, calling on it to end the illegal apartheid occupation of Palestinian land. That is the principal issue. I have read horrific accounts, by Israeli activists who have a conscience greater than their narrow tribal ethnocentrism, of Gaza fishermen blown up and drowned "just to show the Palestinians who's boss." IDF soldiers, including the Refuseniks, have testified to indicriminately murdering Palestinian children to terrorize the population. I've seen IDF soldiers breaking Palestinian's arms with rocks if they were too disrespectful at the humiliating checkpoints ON THEIR LAND. That's the tip of the iceberg.
Now we were of Israelis herding 110 refugees, mainly women and children into a house and then shelling it... ambulances and U.N. school shelled. White phosphorus used illegally... while Gaza has been starved as ruthlessly as the Warsaw Ghetto, which U.N. human rights official Richard Falk (who is Jewish) calls a "crime against humanity." Naomi Klein has called for a boycott of Israel.
The Israelis have become the very Zionazi barbarians they inveigh against. Fortunately, there are many Jews of conscience, both in and outside Israel, who redeem the reputation of Judaism against the mindless tribal chauvinists who posted above.
Donny:
Whenever we hear about terrorism we think of Muslim extremists because they are, in fact, responsible for most of the terror around the world, from New York to Israel to Mumbai...It's always the same...Muslim extremists...
We don't hear about Israelis or Jews hijacking planes, infiltrating synagogues, taking hostages, beheading journalists, etc. etc. etc.
Israel is now finally reacting after YEARS of silence following attacks from TERRORISTS on their civilians.
Israel is targeting HAMAS, not civilians.
Israel is occupying its OWN land just as we occuppy ours.
The UN itself is clearly anti-Israel. We have seen time and again how when Hamas kills Israelis the UN is virtually silent but when Israel DEFENDS itself it is labelled the aggressor.
Nonetheless, you and your like, enjoy blaming Israel and not the terrorists. Shame on you!
May Israel succeed in destroying Hamas and all its enemies.
Donny:
It sounds like you do a lot of reading. Have you read about all the innocent Jewish and Israeli blood spilled at the hands of Palestinian terrorists?
What we know for certain is:
(1) Israel has proven that it does what it can to avoid civilian casualties, including in THIS war.
(2) Hamas does what it can to target innocent civilians. Hamas uses it's OWN civilians as human shields, including in THIS war.
You bring up mostly events of the past which are the opinion of the author. I am talking about CURRENT events as they are happening RIGHT NOW!
If terrorists came knocking at your door, you'd also support the breaking of a few bones...and more. Perhaps Israel should have maintained a hard-line, ZERO tolerance stance against terrorism; it would make terrorists think twice about launching rockets at Israeli civilians.
Be thankful that you are not surrounded by terrorists that seek your utter destruction.
Let's give Israel our support and pray for the ultimate destruction of terrorism..ONCE AND FOR ALL.
Donny:
Here is something you may be interested in regarding Israel's attack on the UN school:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvBf-Vh4pNg
BE CAREFUL WHERE YOU LAY BLAME!
James Joyner, your article 'Red Cross Condemns Israel' makes for good press, and undoubtedly many webclicks.
When will you be able to issue your next article: 'Red Cross Condemns Hamas'? Hmmm, no one has written such an article yet. You can check that on Google. Also Google: 'Red Cross Condemns Nazis', and you'll get the same number of results: 'zero' (0). Would that be a coincidence, or slightly more than a coincidence?
Lets see, the Nazis probably murdered 15+ million *civilians* of all stripes during the war.... How often were they condemned by the Red Cross? And how often did the Red Cross insist on examining the German's concentration camps? (please don't mock us with their visits to Theresienstadt concentration camp, where it was reported: 'On June 23, 1944, the Nazis permitted the visit by the Red Cross in order to dispel rumors about the extermination camps....'. You can find a review of that visit listed under 'Red Cross Visit to Terizin Used as Propaganda Tool'.
I'll be waiting with baited breath....
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