What most struck me about the report was it
was remarkably honest.
It was very forthright in its conclusions.
And it didn’t fake this kind of balance,
which most human rights organizations, even
reputable ones, attempt between Israel and
the United States.
So, just to take a couple of examples, it
forthrightly stated that Israel targets intentionally
children during these demonstrations.
It targets reporters.
It targets medical personnel.
And that’s unusual.
Allow me just two examples, which you would
be familiar with.
So, when there was the killings during Operation
Protective Edge of the four children who were
playing hide-and-seek—
This was back in 2014.
2014.
Recently, The Intercept had an article on
those four—killings of the four kids, and
had this story that they weren’t really
intentionally killed, it was an accident,
it was a mistake.
And same thing with The New York Times when
it had the big story on Razan al-Najjar, which
was quoted everywhere.
The essence of the story was, there was an
Israeli sniper’s bullet, it hit the ground,
ricocheted and then accidentally hit three
Israeli medical personnel.
It was a magic bullet, because there was a
huge crowd of people, but this magic bullet
only hit three medical personnel.
But this human rights report by the Human
Rights Council, it’s very straightforward.
It says intentionally targets children, intentionally
targets even disabled persons.
And that, to me, was a credit to them that
there was no fake balance.
If you look at the proportions, when it looks
at the damages done to the people of Gaza,
they devote 10 full pages.
And then there’s a section called “Impact
on Israel.”
It’s three paragraphs.
And that’s exactly what the reality shows,
that overwhelmingly—in fact, virtually entirely—all
the infliction of death and destruction is
on the Palestinian side.
For the period they covered, during the demonstrations,
there were no fatalities during the demonstrations,
and four Israeli soldiers were lightly injured.
These are massacres.
They’re not conflicts.
They’re not engagements.
They’re just outright massacres of overwhelmingly
unarmed, nonviolent demonstrators.
