War Crimes, Human Shields, and the Real Bad Guys in Gaza
Marty Nemko is producer & host of Work with Marty Nemko on KALW-FM, a National Public Radio affiliate in San Francisco.
Imagine that the head of the neighborhood adjacent to your own hated your neighborhood so much that its charter said that its goal is to destroy your neighborhood.
To that end, over the last year, the mayor of that neighborhood had his police force fire ever more bombs into your neighborhood.
One bomb has already destroyed your neighbor's house, injuring one of your child's friends. From her bedroom, your terrified daughter can hear the bombs exploding.
To help prevent your neighborhood from retaliating, the head of the adjacent neighborhood placed bomb launchers and gunmen near your neighborhood's schools and in densely populated residential areas so that those civilians could serve as human shields for its bombers.
That neighborhood's police force has now fired over 8,000 rocket bombs at your neighborhood and warns that even stronger bombs will soon be fired.
Let's say you were the head of your neighborhood. What would YOU do?
Wouldn't you try to dismantle those terrorist cells even if innocent civilians were killed? Even if some innocent civilians were hurt, wouldn't you use white phosphorus smokescreens, which is NOT deemed a chemical weapon by the Geneva Conventions, to try to penetrate into their terrorist installations so your policemen would be less likely to be killed and more likely to disarm the bombers?
Now let's add this: To minimize civilian injury, you decided to incur the liability of tipping off the enemy to your impending attack so you could try to save their neighborhood's civilians' lives: You made hundreds of cellphone calls and E-mails to the civilians and put large speakers out in the area begging the civilians to leave.
Let's add one more thing: After dismantling the terrorist encampment, you paid for and sent over 300 trucksful of humanitarian aid to the people of the enemy's neighborhood, so much so that an independent agency said all needed food had been supplied.
Now let's say that the attacking neighborhood's director of PR and a representative of a damaged school building accused YOU(!) of war crimes because in your attempts to quash their bombing, innocent civilians were killed or injured. Remember that the adjacent neighborhood deliberately placed its attack encampments near schools and densely populated residential neighborhoods so it could use civilians, including children, as human shields, which is a clear war crime according to the Geneva Conventions. If you were a judge, which neighborhood would you judge to be the war criminal?
Of course, this is what is occurring in the Middle East, with Israel responding to the Hamas attacks launched from within residential neighborhoods, yet amazingly, some people are accusing Israel of war crimes for the response described above. I am still trying to figure out why. Is it really, ultimately, at its root anti-Semitism? I really don't know.
What I do know is that a double standard is being applied: one standard for the rest of the world, one standard for Israel. For example, America bombs Afghanistan from 30,000 feet, having done far less to protect innocent Afghanis than Israel has done to protect Gazans.
I ask you again: If your neighborhood was so attacked, would you be as measured even as Israel has been? And how would you feel if YOU and not the adjacent neighborhood were accused of war crimes?
Reader Comments
Israel vs Islamo Arab Genocide, as always
Since the 1920s Israel, Jews in the holyland faced annihilation from Arab Muslim bigots, so much for so called "occupation" and other fake excuses.
http://geocities.com/israelvsgenocide
And regarding Islamic Palestinian tactics of using its kids to die for propaganda, where else on earth have you seen such an inhumane population??? To cause its own flesh and blood to die so that Israel looks bad???
Nemko thinks Palestinians are worth less than Israelis
End of the day, it's important to know where Nemko comes from. He's not explaining much about what he really thnks here.
What he really thinks is - dressed up in careful words - that Israelis and accomplished people generally are worth more than everyone else. He also tends to find his 'accomplished people' generally, shall we say, rather lighter-complected than the less-accomplished.
On his blog he has written a piece explaining that Israelis are worth more than Palestinians are.
http://martynemko.blogspot.com/2008/04/false-equivalency.html
"The liberal media wants us to believe that all peoples are the same. We're not."
It's just a breathtaking piece.
His hair comes down even farther when he thinks no one will see what he's saying, in email.
He once wrote approvingly to another blogger that both Muslims and blacks want to decimate Jews.
http://www.ilanamercer.com/Archivedcomments.htm
His views on Latinos are pretty outstanding, too.
http://www.martynemko.com/articles/core-reason-people-fear-mass-legalization_id1249
In this essay he argues that Latinos present a special threat to the US, not presented by the other waves of immigrants who've arrived here throughout our history. His evidence on this is that he doesn't like the way that Latin American societies work. He talks about the last thousand years of Latin American history as if it's meaningful to compare what was happening before and after the Conquistadors arrived and apparently doesn't think that the 19th and 20th century history of US intervention and military and economic policy of restricting access to Latin America has any bearing.
If you're Muslim, black or brown you start out at a disadvantage with Dr. Nemko.
DORFY...
Ah, your lack of logic fits your monicker....
Hamas uses civilians as human shields. Their's is a government of "holywar-gangsters" The "Homeland" thing is anything but clear cut. Israel is fighting for its existence. If the Arabs win they will exterminate Israel and all its inhabitants, or so they promise. When your backs to the wall you swing pretty hard at your attackers.
Dorfy, your analogies are goofy. When the allies bombed German cities and factories, in WWII, they were bombing a country that was attempting to kill or enslave their neighbors...They weren't nearly as careful as Israel has been in selecting targets.
Sometimes even civilians are responsible for the government that leads them - and it costs them in lives.
advertisement
