This month marked six months since the "official" conclusion to Israel's assault on the Gaza Strip, "Operation Cast Lead." From 27 December to 18 January, the might of the one of the world's strongest militaries laid waste to a densely-packed territory of 1.4 million Palestinians without an escape route.
The parallel propaganda battle fought by Israel's official and unofficial apologists continued after the ceasefire, in a desperate struggle to combat the repeated reports by human rights groups of breaches of international law. This article will look at some of the strategies of this campaign of disinformation, confusion, and lies -- and the reality of Israel's war crimes in the Gaza Strip. Very early on in Operation Cast Lead, the scale of Israel's attack became apparent. In just the first six days the Israeli Air Force carried out more than 500 sorties against targets in the Gaza Strip. That amounted to an attack from the air roughly every 18 minutes -- not counting hundreds of helicopter attacks, tank and navy shelling, and infantry raids. All of this on a territory similar in size to the US city of Seattle.
As the International Committee of the Red Cross noted in a report published in June, "during the 22 days of the Israeli military operation, nowhere in Gaza was safe for civilians," with "whole neighborhoods" turned "into rubble." With areas looking "like the epicenter of a massive earthquake," there is still "half a million tons of concrete rubble" to clear. [1]
By the end of an assault which targeted schools, homes, mosques, university buildings, police stations, ministries and the legislative council building, 3,600 housing units were totally destroyed, 2,700 sustained major damage and 52,000 houses need minor repair, according to a joint UNRWA-UNDP housing survey.
Even though Israel had banned the international media from entering the Gaza Strip to see for themselves what was unfolding, enough visuals and testimonies were getting out of the fenced-in territory for Israel to have what it would call a "PR nightmare" on its hands. Israel's spinners and spokespersons fell back on a stock set of responses and talking points...
...... The truth of what happened in Gaza though has been emerging over recent months in various reports that catalog the multitude of crimes committed by the Israeli army. Crucially, what has been documented is not a series of individual mistakes or "bad apples," but evidence of Israel's systematic assault on the fabric of life in the Gaza Strip.
The Gaza-based Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) reported in March on fatalities during the offensive, confirming that there were over 1,400 Palestinians killed. Civilians made up 65 percent of the total, not including the 255 police officers killed by the Israeli army.
In April, Israeli human rights groups including B'Tselem and the Association for Civil Rights in Israel released a joint which said that "many civilians were killed in Gaza not due to 'mishaps' but as a direct result of the military's chosen policy implemented throughout the fighting." [3]
Earlier this month, Amnesty International published its own report into Operation Cast Lead, accusing Israel of committing "war crimes" and "acts of wanton destruction." Amnesty insisted that the hundreds of civilian deaths "cannot simply be dismissed as 'collateral damage' incidental to otherwise lawful attacks - or as mistakes." "Amnesty details Gaza 'war crimes," BBC News, 2 July 2009.
More evidence for the deliberate nature of the wide scale destruction has since emerged. On 23 April, Haaretz quoted "two infantry officers who held key positions during the fighting" who told how "we just leveled neighborhoods." British journalist Peter Beaumont wrote in May of "the aftermath of a wholesale urban un-planning through military force." ("Death and devastation in Gaza neatly filed and documented," The Guardian, 29 May 2009). Returning some weeks later, he noted that Israel's targets "suggested wider aims" than simply stopping rocket fire -- "not least the dismantling of Palestinian institutions." ("A life in ruins," The Observer, 5 July 2009)
In June, the BBC reported on the struggle of Gazan industries to rebuild, featuring a family-owned food manufacturer. The businessman, Yaser al-Wadiya, had "photographs of caterpillar tracks amid the ruins of the biscuit factory, which he believes the Israelis finished off with bulldozers after hitting it from the air." The same story then noted that "the UN's top humanitarian official, John Holmes, has accused Israel of the 'systematic levelling' of Gaza's industrial area." ("Gaza industries struggle to rebuild," BBC News, 26 June 2009)
With such a high proportion of civilian dead, it is no surprise that investigations into Israel's operation in Gaza have turned up shocking stories -- and asked difficult questions. In the introduction to Breaking the Silence's collection of testimonies by Israeli veterans of the Gaza assault, the group highlighted how the "bad apples" theory was insufficient: "the massive and unprecedented blow to the infrastructure and civilians of the Gaza strip were a direct result of IDF policy."
Just one month after Operation Cast Lead, Palestinian stories were being corroborated by the likes of Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, who said "there appeared to be a consistent pattern of Palestinian families being killed by Israeli tank shells fired into their homes, apparently as they approached windows or stepped on to balconies." [4] A delegation of US attorneys visited the Gaza Strip and concluded that "Israeli forces" had indeed "deliberately targeted civilians" during the offensive. [5]
Palestinian testimonies have flooded in of crimes committed by the Israeli army in Gaza, and so have the investigations by human rights groups. At the end of June, Human Rights Watch (HRW) reported on the use by Israel of aerial drones in attacks that killed dozens of Palestinian civilians. HRW noted that the drones are "one of the most precise weapons in Israel's arsenal" yet "killed civilians who were not taking part in hostilities and were far from any fighting."
Also recently, Amnesty International's detailed study on Operation Cast Lead included cases of "close-ranging shootings" by Israeli soldiers, most of which involved "individuals, including children and women, who were shot at as they were fleeing their homes in search of shelter." [6] Others were simply "going about the daily activities." The human rights body reiterated that "wilful killings of unarmed civilians are war crimes."
A report into the number of children killed by Israel during the war on Gaza (over 300) showed that 38 percent of child fatalities were aged 0-11 years old. The "overwhelming majority" were "killed either whilst inside their own homes or within the near vicinity of their homes." [7] Here is one story:
At approximately 16:00 on 5 January 2009, Amal Olaiwa and four of her children were killed in the kitchen of their home in Shijaiyeh in the east of Gaza City, when the house was struck by an artillery shell. The shell smashed through a bedroom window and landed in the kitchen, decapitating Amal Olaiwa and killing three of her sons and one of her daughters. Three other members of the Olaiwa family were injured in the attack, including Amal's husband, Haider, and her eldest son, Muntasser, who both witnessed the attack...Full story
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