Damodar Dahal
Debunking lies about the 2023 Israel/Palestinian conflict
Tue 14 November 2023“It is the responsibility of intellectuals to speak the truth and to expose lies,” Noam Chomsky.
On November 13, 2023, I received several questions and comments from my colleagues regarding the Israel-Hamas conflict. I will be responding to several of them in this post. I shall try to “speak the truth” to the best of my sources and expose prominent lies, knowing fully that mainstream media and governments often present false information, in whole or in part. If you have thoughts, I request a civil and respectful debate in the comments, one for each topic. I wish to have a dialectical and important debate on a sensitive topic in a scholarly manner.
This is part 2 of many. Previous one can be found here.
1. “IDF is very careful regarding human lives.”
Nothing could be far from this claim.
Since 1967, the Israeli military has consistently violated nearly every provision of the Fourth Geneva Convention (Pacheco, p. 184-185). The International Criminal Court is currently investigating both Israel and Palestine, stating that “there is a reasonable basis to believe that war crimes have been or are being committed in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip [since 2014]”(ICC-01/18, 20 Jan 2020). This is the same body that issues arrest warrants even for top officials like Vladimir Putin. Perhaps IDF isn’t so careful about human lives after all? Let’s look at some actual evidence.
October 2023 - present
Amnesty International: Damning evidence of war crimes as Israeli attacks wipe out entire families in Gaza.
The Great March of Return, 2018.
UN OHCHR (2019) A/HRC/40/74: “Report of the independent international commission of Inquiry on the protests in the Occupied Palestinian Territory” (during the Great March of Return). Notice that 189 Palestinians and 0 Israelis were killed. I wonder what the instructions on the IDF forces were.
Lebanon, 2006
Human Rights Watch. (2006). “Fatal Strikes: Israel's Indiscriminate Attacks Against Civilians in Lebanon. https://www.hrw.org/report/2006/08/02/fatal-strikes/israels-indiscriminate-attacks-against-civilians-lebanon.
South Beirut, 1982
“As the massacre [of 3000 Palestinians] unfolded, the IDF received reports of atrocities being committed, but did not take any action to stop it.”
Malone, Linda A. (1985). The Kahan Report, Ariel Sharon and the Sabra-Shatilla Massacres in Lebanon: Responsibility Under International Law for Massacres of Civilian Populations, p. 390.
Denial about White Phosphorous, 2009 and 2023
A picture says it all. Human Rights Watch lays out the details. Read about Israel’s denial in Amnesty International’s reports.
Other lies about beheading children, rape, and so much more. If you have counter-evidence or comments, please respectfully share them in the comments.
2. “We cannot trust the numbers that are coming from Hamas, which would be every single number coming out of Gaza.”
“The Associated Press noted that the Ministry of Health’s figures from previous conflicts have broadly matched the numbers arrived at by both the Israeli government and the United Nations. And the State Department itself has long considered the numbers reliable.” (The Intercept, 2023).
“These figures are professionally done and have proven to be reliable,” said Omar Shakir, Human Rights Watch’s Israel and Palestine director (AP News, 2023).
See example discrepancy between the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza (“ministry”) and U.N.:
— 2008 war: The ministry reported 1,440 Palestinians killed; the U.N. reported 1,385.
— 2014 war: The ministry reported 2,310 Palestinians killed; the U.N. reported 2,251.
— 2021 war: The ministry reported 260 Palestinians killed; the U.N. reported 256.
(Source)
3. “If Hamas would have the decency to wage war with a shred of integrity instead of hiding behind civilians, far fewer civilians would have died. Also, they operate from within the city, schools, and hospitals.”
“Amnesty International is monitoring and investigating [reports of human shields use in Gaza], but does not have evidence at this point that Palestinian civilians have been intentionally used by Hamas or Palestinian armed groups during the current hostilities to “shield” specific locations or military personnel or equipment from Israeli attacks” (Amnesty International, July 2014).
“International observers including Norwegian doctor Mads Gilbert, who worked at the [al-Shifa hospital] for 16 years, said they never encountered any indication of any military activity beneath the facility.” (Al Jazeera, Nov 13, 2023)
“The very fact that we have seen 44 [Israeli] soldiers killed in this conflict and almost 11,000 [Palestinian] civilians gives an indication that the calculation of proportionality in Gaza has left the bounds of reasonableness” (Al Jazeera, Nov 13). International law also makes clear that even if an armed force is improperly using civilian objects to shield itself, its opponent is still required to protect civilians from disproportionate harm. (The Guardian, October 30)
4. “Hamas is responsible for all the civilians dying in Gaza at the moment. Part of war is that civilians die, which is why Hamas should not have started a war.”
The crimes committed by a deeply unpopular government cannot have prompted the State of Israel to drop an equivalent of two nuclear weapons in one of the world’s densest areas, murder tens of thousands of civilians, internally displace 1.4 million people, and enforce a complete seizure. A prominent Holocaust scholar stated it’s “A Textbook Case of Genocide.” The Israeli response to the October 7 attack is highly disproportionate, as always.
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Originally published on Substack at https://penguing.substack.com/p/debunking-lies.