Amira Hass :How many Palestinian civilians is a single militant worth?
A digger removes debris of a home destroyed in an Israeli air strike on Gaza City's Sheikh Radwan neighborhood, August 20, 2014.
Photo by AFP
The Israeli military spokesman seized on this comment as a smoking gun: proof that Hamas was deliberately concealing militant fatalities to boost the apparent numbers of civilians killed.
The Israel Defense Forces cannot refute the images of dead women and children that are broadcast abroad, so instead the army is trying to construct a narrative proving that its targets — and the aftermath of its attacks — are legitimate.
The Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center is a vital partner in constructing this narrative. The center, which is checking the name of each Palestinian said killed in the Gaza fighting (it has gotten to 450 so far), estimates that some 46 percent of them are “terrorist operatives.” This figure may change in accordance with further investigation.
The center’s lists are accompanied by photographs of posters and death notices of some of the militants. Each name is marked “non-involved,” “unidentified” or “terrorist operative.” The source for the information of each person’s “involvement” is not mentioned, apart from operatives whose photograph appears in death notices or public reports of the militant organization to which he belonged.
Hamas’ military wing has released few of the names of its own operatives, though it did announce the deaths of the senior military leaders who had been on Israel’s wanted list for many years: Raed Attar, Mohammed Abu Shamaleh and Mohammed Barhoum, who were assassinated in Gaza this week. If concealing the names of fatalities is really part of Hamas’ propaganda strategy, a way of forging a counter-narrative to that of the IDF, then it contradicts the deep Palestinian and Hamas ethos of pride over those who were killed fighting the Zionist enemy.
“Even if Hamas had decided to hide the names of its fallen combatants and their numbers for a long time, the families wouldn’t agree,” a veteran Hamas activist told Haaretz.
He said ultimately everything will come to light. “Now we don’t know if there are fighters who were killed in the tunnels and are still buried there, or if they’re living in the tunnels. There are bodies that have been under the rubble for so long that they are unrecognizable,” he said.
The IDF and Amit center saw the Palestinian Facebook comment as a warning and an instruction not to release information, for propaganda purposes. But Palestinians saw it as an expression of concern. Releasing the casualties’ names would enable Israel to target their families as well by bombing their homes, thus turning even more civilians into “targets” or “collateral damage.”
This is not propaganda; it is the reality in which 1.8 million Palestinians have been living in the past six weeks.
“The occupation gathers this information and testimonies and uses them to excuse its crimes against the civilians and destroy the homes,” the Palestinian Facebook post says.
The IDF’s English translation of the post omits the words “against the civilians and destroy the homes.”
The IDF itself is well versed in hiding information about the exact location of rocket landings for security, not propaganda, reasons. Hamas also has military considerations in not mentioning where its people were killed.
The concern for civilians is justified. The Gazan human rights organization Mizan reported that 952 people have been killed in their bombarded homes, including 307 children and 204 women, including two disabled women who were in a bombarded rehabilitation center.
On Thursday 50 civilians were added to the list, including Hassan Younis, the 80-year-old father of Mizan director Issam Younis and his wife. The 12 “accurate” missiles fired at dawn were aimed at a neighbor’s house in the Tel Sultan neighborhood, home of three Iz al-Din al-Qassam fugitives.
So far B’Tselem has documented 72 direct bombardments that have destroyed buildings and killed their inhabitants. Of the 547 people killed in these strikes, 125 were women under 60, 250 were minors and 29 were men and women aged 60 or older. B’Tselem also gives the name of an operative in Hamas’ military wing who was killed in the bombing.
The IDF does not say why these 72 buildings were bombed with their inhabitants inside, while it took the trouble to warn hundreds of other families a few minutes before bombing their homes.
In any case, targeting 72 buildings directly and striking them with no warning cannot be excused as a mistake. The IDF does not explain what the acceptable rate of collateral damage is, or how many people is it okay to kill in order to assassinate a single militant.
As of Thursday, 76.8 percent of the 2,090 fatalities documented by Mizan have been civilians. The UN team’s preliminary examination showed Wednesday that 71 percent of the fatalities — 1,434 out of 1,999 — are civilians.
The UN team, Palestinian human rights organizations and B’Tselem are examining every fatality, seeing every body in the hospital, checking every death report and talking to eyewitnesses, family members and survivors.
The attempt to undermine the figures provided by independent Palestinian groups who are more familiar than anyone else with the territory, and to present them as false or distorted, is part of this war. The Palestinian organizations are waiting for the moment international inquiry committees start their probe.
That’s why they are determined to be as accurate in their findings as possible. They want to see an end to what they view as a tradition of not punishing Israel for flouting international law.
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