Friday, June 14, 2024
Elder of Ziyon
But the phrase she used, "humanitarian camouflage," is actually from previous accusations she made of Israel.
And they were just as absurd.
In a report she released in March, Albanese wrote:
In its defense, Israel has argued that its conduct complies with international humanitarian law (“IHL”). A key finding of this report is that Israel has strategically invoked the IHL framework as “humanitarian camouflage” to legitimize its genocidal violence in Gaza.
So, is Israel adhering to international law or not? Albanese cannot seem to find any actual violations - so she made up a new category, essentially saying that when Israel adheres to international law, it is really violating it.
The paper has an entire section called "Humanitarian camouflage: distorting the laws of war to
conceal genocidal intent" which says:
After 7 October, this macro-characterization of Gaza’s civilians as a population of human shields has reached unprecedented levels, with Israel’s top-ranking political and military leaders consistently framing civilians as either Hamas operatives, “accomplices”, or human shields among whom Hamas is “embedded”. In November, Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs defined “the residents of the Gaza Strip as human shields” and accused Hamas of using “the civilian population as human shields”. The Ministry defines armed groups fighting from urban areas as deliberately “embedded” in the population to such an extent that it “cannot be concluded from the mere fact that seeming ‘civilians’ or ‘civilian objects’ have been targeted, that an attack was unlawful”.Two rhetorical elements of this key legal policy document indicate the intention to transform the entire Gaza population and its infrastructures of life into a ‘legitimate’ targetable shield: the use of the all-encompassing the combined with the quotation marks to qualify civilians and civilian objects. Israel has thus sought to camouflage genocidal intent with humanitarian law jargon.
This is, simply, slander. The November IDF paper - which is quite worth reading - describes normative humanitarian and international law, and the difficulties of fighting in an area where Hamas is deliberately using the civilians as human shields. It does not say, as Albanese implies, that every Gaza civilian is a legitimate target. It does not justify genocide. It just says that the laws of war do not prohibit attacking seemingly civilian objects which are used for military purposes - which is 100% true.
The IDF document is a completely accurate description of international law and the legality of the IDF targeting military targets even when civilians are placed in the way, given the international laws of applying the principles of distinction and proportionality.
Albanese cannot stand that Israel is acting in accordance with international law. So she has to make up a new crime: pretending that Israel is twisting international law into a means to perform genocide in a technically legal way.
The antisemitic rapporteur, in her zeal to try to parse the words of the IDF paper to find genocidal intent, ignores the many statements that explicitly say otherwise. Here are only a few:
"Israel is operating against Hamas and other terrorist groups in Gaza, not against the civilian population. It is directing its attacks only at military objectives...""Israel wishes no harm to civilians and is committed to addressing the humanitarian needs of those suffering as a result of Hamas’s brutality and instigation of these hostilities. ""As repeatedly affirmed by Israel’s senior political and military leadership, the IDF is fighting Hamas and the other terrorist organizations in Gaza, not the civilian population. In accordance with the principle of distinction, the IDF only targets persons who are members of organized armed groups or civilians directly participating in the hostilities, and objects that qualify as military objectives."
Moreover, Albanese cannot deny that Hamas is indeed using all Gaza civilians as human shields - a war crime that she is not concerned with, or even implicitly denies. Hundreds of miles of tunnels underneath a territory that is only 25 miles long and 5 miles wide, most of them under the most densely populated areas in Gaza, is proof if Hamas' intent to use the highest number of Gazans as actual shields for the terrorists underground.
Ironically, Albanese's inability to actually find Israel violating international law, and her having to make up a new category of crime just for Israel, proves Israel's case.
(h/t Irene)
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