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Friday, September 05, 2014

UNICEF says that they refused to clear Gaza neighborhoods that were under threat

From Mark Langfan's blog at A7:


On August 21,2014, Ms. Pernille Ironside, the Chief of the UNICEF Gaza Field Office, held a press conference at the United Nations in New York City “on the impact on children from the conflict in Gaza.”

...In response to a question of how she, and the entire UN Gaza staff, remained “neutral” in the face of Gaza children’s and civilian hardships, Ms. Ironside stated that, “There have been attempts to instrumentalize the UN in Gaza in this conflict. Including, there have been attempts [by Israel] to try to facilitate military operations against the [Palestinian] civilian population by facilitating the clearance of certain neighborhoods. The UN has refused to be a party to that.” 
Notice the Orwellian language being used here: the UN is saying that Israel wanted to make it easier to attack the civilian population of Gaza by urging the civilian population of Gaza to leave! 

But the major issue here is that the UN had the opportunity to help Gazans get out of the way of imminent fighting in their neighborhoods, and the UN considered such an action to be "instrumentalizing" it and therefore it refused to help.

If Israel wanted to target civilians, as the UN claims, then why would they urge them to leave?

And if UNICEF is tasked with helping children - why did they follow Hamas instructions to have them stay in the line of fire?

Who really cares about the civilians of Gaza?

UNRWA similarly was urged by Israel to evacuate Gazans staying in a school in Beit Hanoun for three days, and UNRWA refused to facilitate the evacuation - and then blamed Israel for not giving them the chance to leave.

(h/t Gary)