Double
Standards That Kill
By Hasan Abu
Nimah
14 October 2004
The Electronic Intifada
As
usual, there has been a disproportionate and unbalanced reaction to
recent and ongoing violence in our region. Since late September, Israel
has been butchering civilians in the occupied Gaza Strip. As I write,
the death toll has passed 115, of which over 30 are children.
Israel routinely
kills 10 to 12 Palestinians per day, the daily equivalent of a Palestinian
suicide bombing or two. Israel is engaged in the mass destruction of
the Gaza Strip, subjecting people who have been suffering for decades
from what in any other circumstances world leaders would denounce as
ethnic cleansing if not outright genocide. Yet, other than pro forma
criticism, there is great tolerance for the ongoing massacre.
Not only that, but
some parties have even rushed to Israel's assistance. At the beginning
of this month, Israel accused UNRWA, the UN agency that has been providing
basic services to Palestinian refugees since their expulsion from their
homeland, of allowing an ambulance to be used by Palestinians to transport
rockets for attacks on Israel. Israel's ambassador at the UN was quick
to demand the dismissal of UNRWA Commissioner General Peter Hansen.
Instead of rejecting the Israeli charges as the obvious fabrications
and propaganda that they were, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan immediately
appointed a team of investigators and rushed them to Israel to investigate
the accusations. This gave entirely undeserved credibility to the Israeli
claims, which it eventually embarrassingly withdrew, and cast UNRWA
in a highly unfavourable light. While Israel was embarrassed, the damage
had been done as the American media often report only the initial charges
and rarely follows a story to the end.
Had Annan treated
every issue in the region with such seriousness, his action would not
have stood out. But while rushing to investigate alleged actions against
Israel, he did not lift a finger to investigate or halt the Israeli
assault on Gaza during which, among other things, Israel destroyed an
UNRWA-run kindergarten in Beit Lahia. Annan's shocking pandering to
Israel contrasts with the way he disbanded the Security Council-ordered
investigation into Israel's destruction of the Jenin refugee camp in
April 2002. Before disbanding the investigation team, Annan caved in
to Israeli pressure by removing Hansen as one of the members of the
team, thus casting doubt on his integrity and neutrality.
The fact is that
UNRWA, and indeed any agency, that aims to assist Palestinians and mitigate
the deliberate and sadistic harm that Israel is doing to them has been
targeted by Israel and its allies for liquidation. In the region, Israel
has been attacking the agency and its personnel, impeding their work
and occasionally killing its personnel, as it killed Iain Hook in Jenin
in November 2002. Meanwhile, Israel's allies in the United States have
been conducting a campaign against UNRWA in the media and in Congress,
charging the agency, absolutely falsely, of assisting Palestinian "terrorists"
and inciting violence in the schools it runs. The secretary general
of the UN knows all of this background, yet by failing to stand up to
Israel in defence of his own people, and a UN organisation, he simply
encourages this campaign of hate and incitement, as he encourages defiance
of international law and UN resolutions by Israel.
The allegations
against UNRWA were not even the most repulsive of Israel's lies. On
Oct. 5, Israeli troops shot dead a 13-year-old schoolgirl, Iman Al Hams,
in Rafah, southern Gaza. As usual, Israel claimed that the child had
been attempting to plant a bomb and thus constituted a deadly threat
to its heavily armed occupation troops. Yet, on Oct. 11, the Israeli
military prosecutor announced an investigation into allegations made
by other soldiers that after the girl was shot, their company commander
fired two bullets into her head at close range, and then returned a
third time and emptied an entire magazine into her body.
Since the Intifada
began, Israel has killed over 500 children. Virtually none of these
cases has been investigated, despite overwhelming evidence that the
children are usually shot in the head or chest, indicating a deliberate
pattern of targeting. Perhaps only because this case was reported by
other soldiers is it among those rare cases being investigated. When
Palestinians describe the daily atrocities they suffer, not only are
their stories dismissed, but the criminals are not punished.
On top of the atrocities
in Gaza, the region was left reeling by the bomb attacks in Taba which
targeted Israeli tourists and killed several dozen people, among them
many Egyptians and other nationalities. This brought bitter denunciations
from world leaders who naturally viewed it as an atrocious terrorist
outrage. In the current anti-terrorism hysteria, why are we supposed
to feel that the murder of civilians by a suicide bomber in an exploding
truck is more terrible than the murder of civilians by a man in a tank,
or a helicopter or a bulldozer wearing a uniform?
Israel's assault
on Gaza killed more children in a few days than the entire number of
victims in Taba. It is simply immoral to continue to pretend that there
is any difference whatsoever between the two types of terrorism. The
point here is not to say that the attack in Taba is in any way excusable
or justifiable, but rather to underline that the attacks in Gaza should
be treated just like the attacks in Taba, as terrorist outrages, viciously
targeted and calculated to kill innocent people.
If Western leaders
and commentators recoil at this equivalence, they should at least understand
that people here in this region already see the parallel. What they
see are powerful nations that treat the lives of Jewish Israelis and
other Westerners as inherently more valuable and worthy of protection
than those of Arabs, Muslims and other people of colour. This is the
case in Palestine and in Iraq. Europeans and Americans kidnapped by
Iraqis and sometimes brutally murdered receive far more attention than
the Iraqi children and guests at weddings that Arab television viewers
routinely see being pulled out of rubble of buildings bombed by the
United States in Fallujah and Samarra. Every sane person must unreservedly
condemn the horrifying beheadings that have been taking place in Iraq,
but it should be no crime to ask why they are taking place now, and
why they never occurred before in the history of Iraq or the region.
More and more we
see a world in which those who possess high-tech weaponry and uniforms
are entitled to kill people far from their shores with absolute impunity
and call it "self-defence" while those who challenge them
in their own streets and villages in any way are labelled "terrorists".
The world's expressed outrage at Taba and relative silence about Gaza
and American actions in Iraq does not go unnoticed in the region. Rather,
the double standard only fuels the fires of anger and extremism and
leads to ever more desperate and horrid reactions.
Strangely though,
Israel, which usually blames the Palestinians for absolutely everything,
went to great lengths to exonerate them of any responsibility for the
Taba attacks and was quick to blame Al Qaeda despite the absence of
any evidence one way or the other. This was, of course, no act of generosity.
Israel is simply desperate for the world not to draw the most obvious
conclusion: as long as Israel occupies and terrorises an entire nation,
Israelis will never find safety or security and will never build a wall
high enough to hide from the consequences of the horrors they have wrought.