The Official Israel-Gaza Thread

Kokoro

Kokoro

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Lord Beasley said:
Idiot Hamas keeps provoking. I guess Israel is supposed to play baby hands and do nothing, but if they didn't have Iron Dome a lot of Israeli citizens would be dust.....just like Palestinians. They both are guilty of indiscriminately targeting noncombatants, but Israel hits far more.
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Using the word provoking feels like bad hasbara
 
mastermind

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Patrick Leahy, a Democrat, served as a U.S. senator from Vermont for 48 years.

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Over the years, the Leahy law has been applied to many countries, and secretaries of state and defense of both political parties have affirmed its importance as a practical and effective tool to shield the United States from involvement in horrific crimes and to build forces that respect human rights and the laws of armed conflict. But though the Leahy law applies the same requirements to every country, it has not always been equally enforced. Israel, among the largest recipients of U.S. military aid, is a glaring example.

Beginning in the early 2000s, I wrote to successive secretaries of state about the failure to apply the Leahy law to Israel. The responses were either inconclusive or inaccurately claimed the law was being applied to Israel the same as to other countries, which the State Department continues to insist today.

Unlike for most countries, U.S. weapons, ammunition and other aid are provided to Israeli security forces in bulk rather than to specific units. The secretary of state is therefore required to regularly inform Israel of any security force unit ineligible for U.S. aid because of having committed a gross violation of human rights, and the Israeli government is obligated to comply with that prohibition.

Since the Leahy law was passed, not a single Israeli security force unit has been deemed ineligible for U.S. aid, despite repeated, credible reports of gross violations of human rights and a pattern of failing to appropriately punish Israeli soldiers and police who violate the rights of Palestinians.

Recently, Secretary of State Antony Blinken determined that four Israeli security force units had committed gross violations of the human rights of Palestinians in the West Bank, months or years ago, but that Israel had taken effective steps to bring those responsible to justice, so the Leahy law was not applied. Yet two of those cases involved the fatal shooting of unarmed Palestinians for which the Israeli soldiers served little or no time in prison.

In the case of a fifth unit, in January 2022, soldiers of the Israeli Netzah Yehuda Battalion falsely detained a 78-year-old Palestinian American citizen, Omar Assad, bound his hands behind his back, gagged him and left him facedown on the ground. He died from a stress-induced heart attack. Israel cleared the soldiers of any wrongdoing, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu praised Netzah Yehuda and pledged to thwart any U.S. attempt to implement the Leahy law. Although Blinken determined that Netzah Yehuda had committed a gross violation, the Leahy law has not been applied.

Thus, according to the State Department, in the decades-long history of the Leahy law, only five Israeli security force units have committed a gross violation of human rights, of which four were appropriately punished. That not only beggars credulity; it also makes a mockery of the law.
 
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