UN-report on Gaza-war concludes: multiple violations of international law

Picture of Shuja'iyeh, a distcit in Gaz-City, as it looks now. (Photo The Guardian) 

The Guardian: 
A United Nations inquiry into the 2014 Gaza war has accused Israeli and Palestinian factions of multiple potential violations of international law including suspected war crimes. Calling on Israel to “break with its lamentable track record” and hold wrongdoers responsible, the hard-hitting report commissioned by the UN human rights council laid most of the blame for Israel’s suspected violations at the feet of the country’s political and military leadership. The commission said leaders should have been aware as the war progressed that their failure to change course was leading to huge civilian casualties. “Those responsible for suspected violations of international law at all levels of the political and military establishments must be brought to justice,” it says.
Israel, which refused to co-operate, said on Monday the report failed to recognise the “profound difference” between “Israel’s moral behaviour” and the “terror organisations” it confronted. The Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, said: “The report is biased. The commission that wrote it is under a committee that does everything but protect human rights.”
Hamas also rejected the findings. Senior official Ghazi Hamad said on Monday that its rockets and mortars were aimed at Israeli military sites, not at civilians.
The report accuses both Hamas and the Israeli military of breaches of international law in the way they fought the conflict. The UN commission says it gathered “substantial information pointing to serious violations of international humanitarian law and international human rights law” by both sides.

Prosecutor International Criminal Court opens preliminary probe into Israeli war against Gaza

Beit Hanoun, Fall 2014 (Photo Bahaa Salman)  

The International Criminal Court's prosecutor on Friday opened an initial probe to see if war crimes have been committed against Palestinians, including during last year's Gaza war. "Today the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court Fatou Bensouda opened a preliminary examination into the situation in Palestine," her office said in a statement, adding it may lead to a full-blown investigation.
 Bensouda said her office would conduct its "analysis in full independence and impartiality."
"A preliminary examination is not an investigation but a process of examining the information available in order to reach a fully informed determination on whether there is a reasonable basis to proceed with a (full) investigation," Bensouda said. Depending on her findings, Bensouda will decide at a later stage whether to launch or quash the investigation, based on the initial probe.

Number of casualties Gaza offensive significantly higher than previously reported

Funeral of 26 members of the Abu Jami family killed by Israel in Khan Younis on 21 Juy 2014, 18 of them were children. (Photo: Activestills.org) 

New figures released by the Palestinian Ministry of Health to mark the end of 2014 reveal that the number of casualties from Israel's summer assault on the Gaza Strip is significantly higher than previously reported.
The ministry figures show that the total number of deaths among Palestinians in the 51-day offensive between July 7 and Aug. 28, 2014 reached 2,310, around 100 more than commonly-cited figures.
The revised toll likely includes a large number of Palestinians whose bodies were found in the rubble following the end of the Israeli bombardment, as well as dozens who have died of their wounds in hospitals in the months since the conflict's end.

Israel distributed falsified video about Hamas beating civilians back into their houses

A few days ago far rightist Zionist sites like "'The Allgemeiner'' and similarly rightist blogs carried a video that showed Hamas police chasing civilians in the streets of Gaza. The suggestion was made that it showed how Hamas prevented people, who had been warned by Israel of an imminent strike and wanted to flee, from leaving their houses. That was also what the subtitle of the video said: "Hamas members brutally beating civilians of Gaza who leave their homes following IDF warning".
My attention was drawn to the video some time after it was tweeted by Esther Voet, director of the local Dutch Israel lobby called "CIDI'', and found its way to Facebook pages. Unfortunately, however, for the believers of hasbara, the video is a clear fake. It has been put together by an Israeli entity called ''IsareMedia'', from  images taken from a German documentary by Doku Channel, which was broadcasted  two years ago. The beating actually had to do with differences of opinion about religion.
I first show the Israeli fake version:

 And next part 4 of the German original from 2012 (which can be found here on Youtube in 5 parts). The similarity is clear, from about 3' 50'' minute in the film.


The above video was actually by no means the only one of a kind. Another one which ''showed'' how Hamas  was using children as a human shield, had earlier been unmasked by blogger Ali Abunimah of The Electronic Intifada. He showed  the video had been shot  in Syria. There will probably be others as well. 

Gaza 2014: ''If you'd looked your victim in the eye...''

This is just too terrible, there is only room here for tears and helpless rage.
Or maybe these words by Mahmoud Darwish

To a Killer:

If you had looked your victim in the eye,

perhaps you’d have remembered your mother in the gas chamber,

perhaps you’d have changed your mind

and set yourself free from the logic of the gun.

This is no way to claim your ‘real identity’.

            *                      *                      *

To another Killer:

If you’d left that unborn child

thirty more days in his mother’s womb

just think what could have happened:

the occupation over, this child

would have forgotten the siege,

would grow up healthy and strong,

studying Asia’s ancient history 

next to one of your daughters at college,

where maybe they’d fall in love,

and have a little girl, a Jewess by birth.

Look what you’ve done!

You’ve made your own daughter a widow,

you’ve turned your own granddaughter into an orphan!

See how you’ve ruined your family-to-come!

Look how you’ve killed three birds with one bullet!

Mahmoud Darwish (from the poem A State of Siege)

Horror in Gaza-city as a house for the handicapped is destroyed without warning

The body of 38 year old Suha Abu Saada, a disabled woman, killed in an Israeli air attack that hit a shelter for disabled adults, has been pieced together in the morgue. (Photo Ayman Mohieldin via Twitter).

A story by AFP, via Ma'an News: 
Twenty-year-old Palestinian Sally Saqr lies in a hospital bed in Gaza's Shifa hospital with burns that have turned her cheeks an angry pink beneath her ventilation tube. She survived an Israeli strike in the early hours of Saturday morning that hit a care home for Palestinians with special needs.Two of her fellow residents were not so lucky. Thirty-year-old Ola Washahi and 47-year-old Suha Abu Saada were killed when the rocket slammed into the home, destroying it.The two women's body parts were still being pulled from the rubble hours later, causing initial confusion over whether another person had been killed.
The facility's director, Jamila Alaywa, is unable to contain her fury as she describes the tragedy that has befallen the center she set up in 1994. "Both Ola and Suha had severe mental and physical handicaps, and had been living at the center since it was founded," she told AFP. The building in northern Gaza's Beit Lahiya housed 13 residents, including some who were on weekend visits at their family homes when the strike hit. Five residents and a helper were inside, screaming in terror as the building collapsed around them.
"They didn't understand what was happening and they were so frightened," Alaywa said. "They fired the rocket and it hit us without any warning. There was no warning strike with an empty rocket," she said.