Israel Whitewashes Mass Murder

by Stephen Lendman

Israeli investigations of its high crimes against peace are consistent. Every time they OK mass murdering noncombatant Palestinian men, women and children - in clear violation of core international law.

Israel is a fascist apartheid regime worse than South Africa. State terror is official policy. It ruthlessly persecutes Palestinians for not being Jewish.

It wages premeditated wars of aggression at its discretion - the most recent one last summer against Gaza committing high crimes against peace too horrific to ignore.

During 51 days of mass slaughter and destruction, multiple war crimes were committed daily. Israel's whitewash report focused on three incidents:

• murdering four young Palestinian boys threatening no one playing soccer on a Gaza City beachfront;

• an attack on an Al-Salam residential building killing 15 noncombatants; and

• a separate one murdering 18 Najjar family members.

In summer 2014, Gaza's health and interior ministries reported Israeli attacks killed all members of at least 89 families - noncombatants viciously targeted in cold blood.

Israel's report was a combination of whitewash and self-justification for cold, calculated, premeditated naked aggression. IDF spokesman Peter Lerner lied about the Gaza beachfront incident saying:

It "took place in an area that had long been known as a compound belonging to Hamas' Naval Police and Naval Force…and was utilized exclusively by militants."

The boys were aged 9 to 11. They were nonthreatening children, not combatants. Journalists at a Gaza beachfront hotel witnessed what happened - cold-blooded murder by any standard.

Lerner ludicrously said the boys "were believed to be militants from Hamas' Naval Forces, who had arrived at the compound in order to prepare to execute (a) military activity against the IDF."

"(I)t was decided to conduct an aerial attack against the figures which had been identified, after all the necessary authorizations for an attack had been obtained, and after a civilian presence in the area had been ruled out."

False! Official Israeli policy authorizes treating civilian men, women and children like combatants - fair game to attack in blatant violation of international law systematically spurned with impunity.

Israel knew four non-threatening young Palestinian boys were playing beachfront soccer yet murdered them anyway in cold blood.

Its summer 2014 Gaza aggression one of history's great crimes. It slaughtered over 2,200 Palestinians, including nearly 600 children and 300 women.

It wounded over 11,000 - including about 3,300 children and 2,100 women. Around 80% of casualties were civilians. Many are disabled for life.

Large parts of Gaza remain in ruins - including residential neighborhoods, schools, hospitals, mosques and vital infrastructure. Accountability is nowhere in sight.

Western support for Israeli high crimes leaves its culpable officials untouchable - free to kill again at will.

A Final Comment

New York Times reports on Israel/Palestine are largely one-sided. Its Jerusalem correspondent Jodi Rudoren is an Israeli propagandist.

Her article titled "Israeli Report Backs Tactics by Military in Gaza War" was a virtual IDF press release substituting for legitimate journalism.

She regurgitated Israeli justification for killing four young boys instead of explaining they were willfully murdered in cold blood.

• Times photojournalist Tyler Hicks provided a rare exception to the publication's systematic misreporting.

He witnessed what happened on Gaza's beachfront. At the time, he said no place in Gaza is safe. Civilians are as vulnerable as combatants.

"Bombs can land any time, anywhere…Children maybe four feet tall, dressed in summer clothes, running from an explosion, don't fit the description of Hamas fighters," he explained.

So why were they viciously murdered. Don't expect Rudoren, most other mainstream correspondents or Israeli whitewash investigators to explain.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

His new book as editor and contributor is titled "Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III."

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

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