A war crime?

       A United Nations Human Rights Commissioner has said that Israel's attack on Gaza, causing more than 600 deaths - nearly half of them children - and the deliberate destruction of hundreds of homes  might be a war crime.   Children were being killed at the rate of one an hour.
        Criticism of Israel for any action is often muted, because of the general guilt felt about Jewish history - the Holocaust and the oppression of Jews down the ages    Apart from that, the strong Western backing for Israel has protected it from much condemnation of its invasion into an imprisoned Palestine.
         In fact, some protests against Israel's action have been labelled as anti-Semitic.    Media reporting has been balanced  more carefully than usual.   The rockets fired by the ruling Hamas organisation from Gaza with minor military effect on Israel are reported equally with the offensive from the tanks firing their way through Gaza's streets as drones bomb the houses.     The Obama/Putin disagreement over the responsibility for the shot-down passenger plane in the Ukraine has instead been the main focus of interest for the media.
    The lack of protest about the Gaza attack  from the US is understandable,   It is set to provide $30 billion of military aid to Israel over 20 years.    EU countries have exported billions of euros' worth of weapons to Israel, which ranks now as a leading military world power.
        The ruthless attack on civilians, offering pictures of dying and wounded children and bombed hospitals and homes have aroused anger and compassion, not lessened because the acts were carried out by a people who were themselves victims of the worst crime against humanity in recorded history.
         The horror when considering that history has links to the anger aroused by the inhumane destruction of people in Gaza.   These were not Hamas rocket firers, but people enduring their trapped existence in what has been described as "the world's largest open-air prison" in the borders sealed by Israel.  They had no control over the rockets which killed over 25 Israelis
     Six Nobel Peace Prize winners, including Archbishop Desmond Tutu, with 58 others supporting them, has called the invasion of Gaza "an inhumane and illegal act of military aggression" which it could carry out only with the complicit aid of international military co-operation and trade.  They called on the UN and governments across the world to put a legally binding and comprehensive military embargo on Israel, like the one imposed on South Africa during apartheid.   That would be a much-contested move, though the United Nations now has negotiators at the scene to put an end to what is being called "the war" but which the thousands of marchers and protesters in this country and throughout the world see as a bloodthirsty invasion which must be stopped.


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