Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Elder of Ziyon
for military purposes or to shield military activities, the Mission cannot exclude that this might
have occurred in other cases. As far as hospitals and United Nations facilities are concerned, the
Mission found that it could not exclude that Palestinian armed groups engaged in combat
activities in the vicinity of these protected sites. The Mission wishes to emphasize that the
launching of attacks from or in the vicinity of civilian buildings and protected areas are serious
violations of the obligation on the armed groups to take constant care to protect civilians from
the inherent dangers created by military operations.
496. The Mission asked the Gaza authorities to provide information on the sites from where
the Palestinian armed groups had launched attacks against Israel and against the Israeli armed
forces in Gaza. The Mission similarly asked whether, to their knowledge, civilian buildings and
mosques had been used to store weapons. In their response, the Gaza authorities stated that they
had no information on the activities of the Palestinian armed groups or about the storage of
weapons in mosques and civilian buildings. The Mission does not find this response to be
entirely plausible. The Mission notes, more importantly, that, whether the answer reflects the
reality or not, the Gaza authorities are obliged under international law to control the activities of
armed groups operating on the territory under their control.346 If they failed to take the necessary
measures to prevent the Palestinian armed groups from endangering the civilian population by
conducting hostilities in a manner incompatible with international humanitarian law, they would
bear responsibility for the damage done to the civilians living in Gaza.
The basic assumption that somehow the Gaza "authorities" are not exactly the same as the "armed groups" is bizarre. It is almost like the UN needs to hold onto the fiction that Hamas is somehow a respected civilian authority in order to jam their ideas of human rights into a neat category and ignore the reality.
At any rate, the idea that Goldstone could find no "proof" that mosques were used for weapons is ridiculous. This seems like proof to me:
And so does this, unless Korans have particularly flammable qualities:
