Wednesday, March 27, 2024
Elder of Ziyon
“Under international humanitarian law, the place where you evacuate people to must, by law have sufficient resources for their survival — medical facilities, food and water,” said James Elder, a spokesman for the United Nations Children’s Fund.“That is absolutely not the case,” he said.
Other anti-Israel sites ran with his words, saying that Israel asking Gazans to evacuate is a "crime against humanity."
There is no such law mentioned in any IHL database I could find.
Perversely, it is Israel's adherence to international humanitarian law that is being called a violation of IHL.
The most relevant rule is IHL Rule 24: "Each party to the conflict must, to the extent feasible, remove civilian persons and objects under its control from the vicinity of military objectives." This is related to Rule 20: "Each party to the conflict must give effective advance warning of attacks which may affect the civilian population, unless circumstances do not permit."
The entire point of the rule is to save civilian lives. Evacuations from the area where there is a military target isn't against humanitarian law - it is an obligation!
The alternatives are to bomb the civilians or to end a war anytime terrorists use civilians as human shields. Neither of those are international humanitarian law. Israelis doing exactly what is required under IHL, to the letter. That makes people like James Elder angry because they want IHL to be handcuffs on only one side.
Nothing in IHL says that a war must stop if the civilians cannot go to a place that has proper medical facilities and food ready for them. If that were the case, then Hamas can stop the war anytime it wants by ensuring that food and medical aid is only available right on top of their weapons caches and tunnels.
Which is exactly what Hamas tries to do!
UNICEF's seeming concern for international humanitarian law begins and ends with lying about Israeli obligations. But they are totally silent about Hamas. And many IHL rules are flaunted by Hamas every single day.
Rule 22: "The parties to the conflict must take all feasible precautions to protect the civilian population and civilian objects under their control against the effects of attacks."
Hamas does the opposite.
Rule 23: "Each party to the conflict must, to the extent feasible, avoid locating military objectives within or near densely populated areas."
Hamas does the opposite.
Rule 96. "The taking of hostages is prohibited."
Hamas does the opposite.
Rule 97. "The use of human shields is prohibited."
Hamas does the opposite.
In all of James Elder's X timeline, he has not once condemned Hamas for any of these violations, all of which directly affect children. In fact, he has not mentioned Hamas at all. He waited until several days after October 7 to say anything, because that way he could "all lives matter" the child victims in Israel and call for a "ceasefire" to stop Israel from defending itself.
This is immorality masquerading as concern for civilians. It is an effectively pro-Hamas, pro-terror position by people who pretend to be on the side of human rights and morality.
Read every section of international humanitarian law, in the original, and not the fictional version that people like James Elder pretend to quote. Every single relevant section is being done scrupulously by Israel, and every single relevant section is being brazenly violated by Hamas.
How many NGOs and news media ever point that out?
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