Israeli Smear Campaign Against Forthcoming UN Report on Gaza War

by Stephen Lendman

On Sunday, Israel released its own distorted version of events during last summer's 51 day Gaza war. The whole world knows it was premeditated naked aggression.

Palestinian National Initiative (PNI) co-founder, physician, political activist and human rights champion Mustafa Barghouti separated myths from reality throughout weeks of carnage.

Hamas didn't start war, he explained. Israel bears full responsibility - 1.8 millions Gazans continue being brutalized under siege. They're being suffocated.

"Entire neighborhoods were completely eliminated last summer in 24 hours," Barghouti said. Dozens of families threatening no one were annihilated to the last man, woman, child and infant. Eight hospitals were attacked. So were clinics, ambulances and healthcare workers. UN refuges were considered legitimate targets.

Palestinian journalists were murdered in cold blood. Obama outrageously defended Israel's right to commit mass murder and destruction. So did America's echo chamber media.

Not a single major party Western official supported Gazans' right of self-defense. Instead it was shamelessly called terrorism - one of many Big Lies supporting naked Israeli aggression.

For 51 horrific days, reality was turned on its head. One of the world's most powerful militaries committed massacres affecting mostly noncombatant civilians. They were deliberately targeted.

Extreme Palestinian suffering continues being ignore. Victims are outrageously called perpetrators. Aggressors are called defenders.

"Please see the reality," Barghouti urged. "Look at the (clear, indisputable) facts." Western leaders look the other way ignoring Israeli high crimes demanding accountability.

Rogue states operate the same way - blame victims to conceal their own wrongdoing.

Israel's smear campaign against hard truths picked up steam on Sunday with the publication of its fabricated account of last summer's war.

It reads like bad fiction. It's beginning-to-end bald-faced lies - self-absolution blaming Hamas and other Palestinians for its genocidal crimes.

At the same time, Netanyahu and other Israeli officials bashed the UN Human Rights Council (HRC) report on the war before its release. Whether it has advance word of its contents isn't clear.

Israeli hardline MK/Yesh Atid party leader Yair Lapid condemned HRC's report without seeing it. He anticipates it'll unfairly criticize Israel.

He calls the report "born in sin" - evidence that the UN "lost its mind. (O)nly Israel is obsessively investigated again and again and again, always with the assumption that the Jews are to blame for everything," he blustered.

He repeated the canard about Israel having "the most moral army in the world." Its specialty is murdering defenseless women, small children at play, the elderly, frail and infirm.

Its brave airmen fire missiles at people they can't see - in civilian neighborhoods, hospitals, schools, refugee camps and UN shelters. Its ground and naval forces do the same thing - murdering defenseless people threatening no one.

Lapid and other Israeli hardliners spread Big Lies claiming otherwise. Repeated enough times gets most people to believe them.

Education Minister/notorious racist Naftali Bennett said Israel had to "fight" the forthcoming report. "The time has come to go on the offensive," he blustered.

Bennett lied claiming he "saw with (his) own eyes how the army sacrificed the basic principles of combat to avoid harming civilians."

Breaking the Silence former combat veterans explained Gaza is considered a "free-fire zone." Shoot anyone in sight, anything that moves, commanders ordered. Cold-blooded murder is OK. Civilians are no different from combatants.

Israeli critics explaining hard truths everyone needs to know are automatically called anti-Semites. Israel refused to cooperate with the Human Rights Council investigation.

It blocked UN special rapporteur on human rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Makarim Wibisono, from entering Israel last week. They did once before last year.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Emmanuel Nahshon lied claiming "Israel cooperates with all the international commissions and all (UN) rapporteurs, except when the mandate handed to them is anti-Israeli and Israel has no chance to make itself heard."

Israel's whitewash Gaza war report calling its naked aggression "lawful" and "legitimate" is one of its many Big Lies. It remains unaccountable for decades of genocidal crimes too grave to ignore.

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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