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Questions of war crimes remain as Israel shifts explanation on strike that killed 10 people from same family

Gaza buffer
Two members of the Al Dalu family, Mohammad and Raneen Al Dalu were found under the rubble four days after the Israeli military airstrike that killed nine members of the same family, Gaza, November 22, 2012. (Photo by: Anne Paq/Activestills.org)

One of the most enduring images from the latest Israeli attack on Gaza is the picture of four dead children from the al-Dalou family. The Israeli airstrike on the al-Dalou home in central Gaza was one of the deadliest single attacks during the Gaza assault, killing 10 members of the family as well as two of their neighbors.

And now, Israel is shifting their explanation as to how the deadly strike that caused the most controversy during the fighting happened. The latest explanation is that the attack was a deliberate one, the target of which was a Hamas member. The scrambling to find a line of reasoning to sell to the international community is indicative of how much attention has been given to the strike, and how much attention it will continue to command in the weeks ahead as human rights groups issue reports on the latest assault. Questions have been raised as to whether Israel committed a war crime in this specific case (though there are plenty more allegations of war crimes that will be aired as a result of the overall Israeli assault, too).

The bombing occurred on November 18. The Israeli air force strike brought the three-story home of the family crashing down, as Reuters reported. Four children and four women were among the dead. It quickly became a symbol of the effects of Israel’s bombardments, which on the whole largely harmed civilians during the one week assault.

At first, the Israeli military claimed they were targeting the commander of Hamas’ rocket launching operations, a man supposedly named Yihia Abayah. But the al-Dalou family knew nothing of this person.

After it became clear that the strike had wiped out an entire family, Israel’s story was scrutinized. Haaretz reported November 18 that the air force “mistakenly bombed the home of one of [Rabiah’s] neighbors, Mohammed a-Dallo, killing 10 members of his family and two of his neighbors. Rabiah seems to have survived the attack.”

But Israel shifted its explanation again. The latest comes courtesy of Israeli army spokeswoman Avital Leibovich. The strike was deliberate, Leibovich told the Agence France-Presse in a story published November 27. AFP reports that “Mohammed Jamal al-Dallu, 29, a member of the Hamas police unit charged with protecting important people, was…killed in the strike, and the Israeli army said on Tuesday that he was the target of the raid.” Leibovich told AFP that “the father was a known terror operative affiliated with the military wing of Hamas” and that “there was no mistake from the IDF. It’s tragic when a terror operative is hiding among civilians but unfortunately it is part of Hamas and Islamic Jihad tactics.”

This explanation raises some important questions. Under the rules of international law, the Israeli military is only permitted to target combatants, meaning those engaged in fighting. While Israel claims that any member of any Hamas institution–and this means many people in Gaza, given that Hamas is the ruling party there–is a legitimate target, international lawyers reject that premise. So the fact that Mohammed al-Dalou was a policeman in Gaza does not mean that he could be legitimately targeted. Under the laws of war, police are considered civilians. As a Human Rights Watch Q and A on the Gaza fighting noted:

Under international humanitarian law, police are presumed to be civilian – and thus immune from attack – unless formally incorporated into the armed forces of a party to a conflict or directly participating in the hostilities. Thus, police only engaged in ordinary police roles, such as ordinary law enforcement or regulating traffic, would not be subject to lawful attack, while those who are fighters for Hamas and other armed groups are subject to attack. Police who engage in both ordinary law enforcement and at times in the fighting would, like other civilians, be subject to attack whenever and for such time as they were actively participating in the hostilities.

Police stations are presumptively civilian objects. However, if a police station is being used for military purposes, such as a military headquarters or a place to store weapons for use in fighting, that station could be subject to lawful attack. Such attacks in any case must not cause disproportionate civilian loss, and so must factor in any reasonably anticipated harm to police or others who are not participating in the hostilities.

Even if we take the Israeli military at its word that their target was a legitimate one because Mohammed al-Dalou was “a known terror operative,” critical questions remain.

If we accept the Israeli army’s premise, this becomes a question of what is known in international law as proportionality. Whether an attack that kills civilians is justified depends on the military value of the intended target. In other words, if we take the Israeli army at its word, the question becomes whether the death of the Hamas policeman was justified by military necessity given that 11 other civilians were killed.

“The fact that Israel changed its position begs the question whether they are now calling one man a legitimate target to justify a strike that killed 12 people. And even if Mohamed Dalu was a combatant, was it a proportionate attack?” one researcher currently in Gaza told Mondoweiss.

The full facts of the case have yet to come out, so it’s impossible to definitively say whether Israel committed a war crime during their attack on the al-Dalou house. But what is clear is that serious questions as to whether Israel violated the laws of war in this case have to be looked at by the world.

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RE: “Even if we take the Israeli military at its word that their target was a legitimate one because Mohammed al-Dalou was ‘a known terror operative’, critical questions remain.” ~ Alex Kane

MY COMMENT: In (un)reality, many Israelis consider all men, women and children in Gaza to be terrorists.
There are precedents for this kind of thinking, but it’s probably best not to go there.

SEE: “‘You are fighting a religious war against gentiles’: What rabbis told Israeli soldiers in Gaza war”, By Mail Foreign Service, The Daily Mail, 3/20/09

[EXCERPTS] Rabbis in the Israeli army told battlefield troops in January’s Gaza offensive that they were fighting a ‘religious war’ against gentiles, it has been revealed.
An army commander wrote of the shocking command in an Israeli newspaper today – one day after it emerged that Israeli soldiers were told they could kill innocent civilians during the war.

‘Their message was very clear: we are the Jewish people, we came to this land by a miracle, God brought us back to this land and now we need to fight to expel the gentiles who are interfering with our conquest of this holy land,’ the commander said.
The account by Ram, a pseudonym to shield the soldier’s identity, was published by the left-leaning Haaretz newspaper in the second day of revelations that have rocked the Israeli military.
They were leaked from a February 13 meeting of armed forces members to share their Gaza experiences.

Some veterans, alumni of an Israel Defence Force (IDF) military academy, told of the killing of civilians and their impression that deep contempt for Palestinians pervaded the ranks of the Israeli forces.
The institution’s director, Danny Zamir, confirmed that Thursday’s published accounts were authentic.
In longer excerpts in its Friday ‘Week’s End’ edition, the daily quoted ‘Ram’ as saying his impression of the 22-day operation was ‘the feeling of an almost religious mission’. . .
. . . [T]he rabbinate’s message imparted to many soldiers the sense that “this operation was a religious war”.

A squad commander from Ram’s Givat Brigade, named as Aviv, recounted his misgivings about orders to break down doors with armoured vehicles and shoot anyone inside, floor by floor. In the event, the order was amended to include ‘operating megaphones’ so advancing troops could tell people they had five minutes to get out or be killed.
Aviv said ‘there was a very annoying moment’ when he briefed his men and one challenged that order, saying: ‘Yeah? Anyone who is in there is a terrorist, that’s a known fact. . .
‘And then his buddies join in: “We need to murder any person who’s in there, yeah, any person who’s in Gaza is a terrorist’ and all the other things that they stuff our heads with, in the media,’ Aviv said. . .

ENTIRE ARTICLE – http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1163508/You-fighting-religious-war-gentiles-What-rabbis-told-Israeli-soldiers-Gaza-war.html

@Alex –

Has the IDF ever given an explanation for why their story has ‘evolved’ so much?

Of course this is nothing new. The IDF kills Palestinians, and in those few instances in which they are called to account for the killing, they offer whatever excuse is handy. When that doesn’t work, they just offer a new excuse that is entirely contradictory to the first one, and don’t even bother to explain how they were so wrong the first time. I wrote about this with respect to another incident a couple of years ago in which three civilians were killed – http://mondoweiss.net/2010/09/idf-finally-admits-its-three-victims-were-civilians.html – and also with respect to using white phosphorous on a UN food storage facility – http://mondoweiss.net/2010/02/latest-white-phosphorus-tale-is-israels-4th.html.

As Alex points out, this latest excuse raises other questions. The IDF does not claim to have targeted someone engaged in terrorist activity, but only someone who acted as a bodyguard. If Israel feels that all members of Hamas in any capacity have committed a capital offense, what about members of the IDF? Are they all legitimate targets for death wherever they might be? If so, Gilad Shalit got off quite easy. He was only “kidnapped” whereas his abductors would have been well within their rights to slaughter him and any civilians in the immediate vicinity.

Of course, the IDF uses this opportunity to trot out its favorite mantra: Palestinians hide among civilians, thereby inviting their deaths. Even Emily Hauser, the rather mild-mannered columnist at Open Zion, asks: is it really “hiding among civilians” to go to your own house? Is it really “hiding among civilians” to drive down a residential street? And what if the shoe were on the other foot? Are we willing to say that Israeli soldiers are “hiding among civilians” when they ride city buses, or that Israel’s Defense Ministry is “hiding among civilians” because it’s located in the very heart of Tel Aviv? http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/11/20/incompetence-or-indifference.html

The death toll in this incident is not quite as high as the 15 people slaughtered when Israel dropped a bomb on Salah Shehade in his home 10 years ago. At least then, their explanation was consistent, and even true: they wanted to kill the guy, and didn’t care how many civilians would be killed along with him. My guess is that here, they came up with the targeting-the-neighbor excuse before they discovered that one of the dead was a Hamas bodyguard (if that’s even true); then, they thought it would be better to claim that they targeted this family member.

One might be tempted to think that Israel should be embarrassed about such shenanigans. But they are speaking to a very small, powerful, and willingly gullible audience – US opinion-makers. They understandably have no fear of being held to account for their outrageous conduct and transparently false excuses. Hopefully the tide is indeed turning.

Anyone know if there are plans to take Israel to the ICC immediately, or is this going to be a two-decade process, like the peace-process…

What? The IDF committed a war crime? After all this time? That’s amazing, don’t you think? This is a testament to the fact that Israel has such precision weapons that can make such surgical strikes, that after all this time, only ONE war crime has been committed. Any other country (and G-d knows there are plenty of other ones) would have committed MANY MORE war crimes already. So we should all be happy that the only existing democracy in the Middle East has committed ONLY ONE war crime, because it could have been a lot worse, you know, given Palestinians and terrorism and anti-Semitism, and all that.

Go Israel!