I
am looking at the picture on the front page of the ‘World’ section of this
week’s Weekend Herald. It shows the vapour trails of missiles
departing in the direction of Israel. Around
the picture and on the following page, there is extensive reporting of the human
consequences. You fire on your adversary
from amongst the buildings of your own down-town (Gaza City, in this case) and
then you protest when your adversary fires back. What sort of nonsense is this? And the media dutifully reports on it:
“Innocents pay cruel price in conflict!”
If
the people of Gaza are really concerned about this loss of innocent life, they
should be protesting that their militia is firing from the cover of a civilian
area, and thus exposing their civilian population to harm, when the inevitable
retaliation occurs. As a matter of fact,
using civilian cover for military operations in this way, is explicitly
forbidden by humanitarian law. Both Geneva
Convention No IV and the Statute of the International Criminal Court refer to
utilising ‘the presence of protected persons (civilians), to render certain
points, areas or military forces immune from military operations’.
