Aliens landing on Earth from the moon would be struck by amazement and disbelief upon hearing the latest official statements condemning Israel by the United Nations Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, and the so-called High Representative of the EU for Foreign Affairs, Josep Borrell, regarding Israel’s recent military action against the terror infrastructure in Jenin.
They would immediately imagine in their mind’s-eye Israel’s forces, one sunny July morning, deciding out of the blue to willfully, cruelly, and disproportionately attack a sleepy refugee camp in the town of Jenin, for no apparent reason, while the camp’s innocent and peace-loving residents rest in their tents.
They would not fathom why anyone would want to attack such a sleepy refugee camp.
This, indeed, is the way in which the UN and the EU, as well as the International Committee of the Red Cross and others such as US Congresswoman for Minnesota Ilhan Omar, have, lock stock, and barrel, so willingly, completely and utterly bought-into and openly repeat deliberately false and misleading Palestinian propaganda.
As UN Secretary-General Guterres stated: “Israeli airstrikes and ground operations in a crowded refugee camp were the worst violence in the West Bank in many years, with a significant impact on civilians,” calling on Israel to abide by its obligations under international law, including the duty to exercise restraint and use only proportional force.
Our alien visitors from the moon would obviously not have any idea of the fact that Palestinian terrorists have turned what they have been given to perceive as such a sleepy refugee camp, into an armed, aggressive, and fanatic fortress.
They would not imagine a scenario in which explosives are implanted under the roads, where weapons and ammunition are stored in hospitals, clinics, mosques, civilian infrastructure, and in almost all private residences.
They would not understand how, in such an apparently peaceful and calm ambiance, terrorists would have burrowed and built a 300-meter tunnel under the local mosque in order to store weapons and produce thousands of lethal weapons in laboratories.
By the same token, they would not imagine that such a quiet and peaceful refugee camp could serve as the center, shelter, refuge, and exit-point for countless cruel acts of terror committed by residents of the camp against Israelis over the years.
Given the amazing accusations of Israel’s committing a ‘massacre,’ and visualizing hundreds and thousands of casualties, they would also not believe that the Israeli operation was so surgically carried out as to avoid such a large number of casualties. They would not believe that the action was directed against weapons production laboratories and other facilities, operational, offensive headquarters and weapons storage points, and a small number of terrorists who had not succeeded in running away in order to protect themselves.
The UN’s Guterres together with the EU’s Borrell and the international Red Cross have called upon Israel to respect “obligations under international law, including the duty to exercise restraint and use only proportional force”. Others wildly take this opportunity to accuse Israel of carrying out war crimes.
But such accusations and calls would appear to display either ignorance or deliberate disregard of the requirements of international law and practice which specifically prohibit the use of civilian areas, especially refugee camps, as centers for staging terror.
International law on the matter
The rules of international law clearly provide that such civilian areas may even lose their privileged protection if they are indeed used for offensive, military purposes of terror and war. Such rules provide Israel with the prerogative to use a requisite and proportionate amount of force needed to neutralize the military threat emanating from them.
Numerous international counter-terror conventions and UN Security Council resolutions condemning terror also require states to act decisively to prevent acts of terror, to prevent cooperating with and financing terror and to refrain from encouraging, inciting, and supporting acts of terror.
One wonders why the UN, EU and the Red Cross, and others appear to overlook Israel’s prerogative as a sovereign and equal member of the international community, to defend itself against the deadliest forms of terror emanating from the various Palestinian terror organizations, the sole, declared purpose of whom is to kill Israelis.
One may similarly wonder why the leading international bodies in the international community continue to close a blind eye to, and minimize Palestinian terror, and indulge the Palestinians while deliberately overlooking their declared penchant for killing Israelis.
The calls upon Israel to exert “restraint and proportional force” are curious at the least.
One wonders how such proportionate force could be exerted to deal with explosive devices planted beneath roads, or weapons produced in laboratories and stored under mosques.
How would such principles of ‘restraint and proportionality’ deal with the sending of hundreds of terrorists to kill Israelis?
What do they really expect of Israel?
Clearly, those pontificating for the use of restraint and proportionality in such a violent and pure terror ambiance have no idea what they are talking about. They have merely chosen to arbitrarily adopt a false propaganda narrative directed against Israel, in order to match their preexisting inclination to condemn Israel for defending itself.
Israel’s need to defend itself against those intent on killing its citizens is a right of self-defense to be viewed in the light of objective facts and criteria, and not by a series of politically motivated international kangaroo courts and biased leaders that automatically flaunt their hostility to Israel whenever Israel is obliged to defend itself.
Such hypocrisy and double standards damage the credibility of such bodies and place in question the selective and biased reliance by such bodies and leaders on international law. As such, they achieve nothing but to encourage and close a blind eye to a Palestinian terror apparatus supported and encouraged by Iran, and encourage it to continue to harm Israel, knowing that the international community really couldn’t care less.
After a career as an international lawyer in Israel’s military, the writer served as the legal adviser of Israel’s Foreign Ministry and as Israel’s ambassador to Canada. He participated in international conferences on international humanitarian law and laws of armed conflict. He is presently a fellow of, and directs the international law program at, the Jerusalem Center of Public Affairs.