I've been a regular reader and fan of Clive Davis' blog since before the time when he became one of the Spectator's resident bloggers. He published the photo above on Friday, with just the included caption and no further comment, headlined "In Gaza".
What so interests me about this image is that you could not have a more blatant image of a war crime in action. Here is a missile very clearly being fired from the midst of a crowded city; it is not as if the territory of Gaza lacks open areas, orchards, farms and other places away from civilian areas. And Hamas openly boasts that its rockets are deliberately targeted at civilians in civilian areas. Both are war crimes.
Why does Clive Davis ignore this?
Why does the BBC, which so tirelessly refers to Israel as illegally occupying Palestinian land choose not to mention that when it reports Hamas launchings of rockets from within Gaza City that Hamas is committing a double war crime, both in the location from which it chooses to launch its rockets and in its targeting?
Clive's caption is also curiously phrased ("rockets are launched") so that it glosses over the role of Hamas as the launcher of the rockets and the enabler of terrorism and war crimes from the territory it controls.
Meanwhile, the BBC News website has a lengthy feature casting doubt on the widely publicised Israel Defence Forces' Youtube video of its strike on a claimed shipment of Grad rockets. It goes on to refer to the IDF Youtube channel and its use of spokesmen as a "propaganda campaign", a term it does not use when the BBC reports British forces' accounts of their actions in Afghanistan including obviously staged PR interviews with celebrity soldiers like Prince Harry.
One of the curious and regrettable features of the Israeli and IDF campaigns is that they too rarely point up that the rocket launches from Gaza City and their strikes on Israeli cities, towns and villages are double war crimes. It's true that Israeli government spokesmen and supporters regularly refer to Hamas as a terrorist organization, which it is. But in the present situation, it is going beyond terrorist acts, because it is a de facto governing entity. State or quasi-state authorities which station combatants and store military equipment in the midst of civilian populations commit war crimes
Perhaps the Israeli authorities and the IDF could consider repeatedly and invariably using the terms " Hamas war crimes" every time they report or publicize any rocket launched from inside Gaza City and any mortar or rocket launched from Gaza with no other purpose than to hit Israeli civilian areas, including repeated "war crimes" references every time its spokespersons appear on international news media. Maybe the Twitter feed that logs Hamas' Qassam rocket attacks on Israel as they happen could update its name to "Qassam War Crime Count".
The Palestinian cause was hugely furthered by the PLO and subsequently Fatah adherence to its mantra of "illegally occupying Palestinian land."
To some extent, the wider world public can recognise Hamas as a terrorist organization when it's parading masked would-be suicide bombers at mass rallies. But as soon as it goes into victim mode, and puts up quietly spoken "Gaza residents" and spokesmen who rail about Israeli "genocide" operations, it's as if the wider world envisages an embattled, besieged tiny country of democrats whose government is unable to function because of Israeli intransigence and vindictiveness.
"War crimes" continue to resonate with the wider world public. They are all too ready to believe that any bombardment of a group based in a civilian setting is a war crime. Michael Totten's summary of some key scholarly discussions of international law on proportionality in national self-defence actions shows that Israel's actions are not war crimes. But those of Hamas clearly are. And this point is not being made nearly clearly or regularly enough.
I agree with all your decent sentiments, Judy. But there are many out there for whom decency is a secondary consideration, where hubris trumps humility and propaganda trumps enquiry.
Why does the BBC ...
The answer to that is that it has become infested with metropolitan Lefties, who have an agenda. As Andrew Marr once remarked: "The BBC is not impartial or neutral. It's a publicly funded, urban organisation with an abnormally large number of young people, ethnic minorities and gay people. It has a liberal bias." That's diversity, thanks to the "hideously white" Greg Dyke and his ilk.
The bigger question is why do Lefties give a free pass to some of the most monstrous people and political movements since the Jacobins? Why do they drop their moral compass and place ideology above compassion? The answer could be the facile one that they want to change the world, and politics gives greater leverage than charity.
Perhaps you remember the Paris riots of 1968? Weeks of smashings and torchings by mindless (well, followers of Foucault is pretty synonymous) anarchists, followed by a peaceful demonstration of some 650,000 ordinary Parisians against the rioters and everything they stood for. I take succour from the belief that the majority remain decent, though mostly silent.
Posted by: Alcuin | January 04, 2009 at 12:25 PM
Just dropping a line to let you know I'm back blogging! Love //Imaan
Posted by: Imaan | January 04, 2009 at 07:59 PM