{"id":17576,"date":"2015-06-22T16:54:18","date_gmt":"2015-06-22T15:54:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=17576"},"modified":"2015-06-22T16:54:18","modified_gmt":"2015-06-22T15:54:18","slug":"gaza-conflict-of-2014-both-sides-condemned-for-possible-war-crimes-and-both-sides-refuse-to-accept-condemnation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=17576","title":{"rendered":"Gaza conflict of 2014: both sides condemned for possible war crimes and both sides refuse to accept condemnation"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As reported <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/world-middle-east-33223365\">here<\/a>, the\u00a0UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) has concluded an inquiry by finding that both Israel and Palestinian militants may have committed war crimes during the 2014 Israel-Gaza conflict.<\/p>\n<p>But neither side accepts this.\u00a0Israel has dismissed the investigation as &#8220;politically motivated and morally flawed&#8221;, while Hamas said it wrongly equated &#8220;the victim and executioner&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>So Israel thinks that it is not a war crime if &#8211; in its view &#8211; it is morally in the right. And Hamas believes it is not a war crime if &#8211; in its view &#8211; it is the victim.<\/p>\n<p>So what is the definition of a war crime? This is a complicated matter legally as explained <a href=\"http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/1\/hi\/world\/europe\/1420133.stm\">here<\/a>. But consider these two examples of a war crime:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>&#8220;Wanton destruction of cities, towns or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity&#8221; &#8211; sounds like the air and land attacks on Gaza by the Israeli Defence Force<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;Attack, or bombardment, by whatever means, of undefended towns, villages, dwellings, or buildings&#8221; &#8211; sounds like the rocket attacks by Hamas on Israeli towns and villages<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The point is that a war crime is not defined by whether it is moral or immoral (see Israeli comment) or by whether one is the agressor or the victim (see Hamas comment).<\/p>\n<p>As the 50-day conflict of 2014 came to an end, I did <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=15464\">a blog posting <\/a>looking at the cost of the conflict and examining what had been achieved. \u00a0Whether or not war crimes were committed, the cost was massive and the achievement minimal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As reported here, the\u00a0UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) has concluded an inquiry by finding that both Israel and Palestinian militants may have committed war crimes during the 2014 Israel-Gaza conflict. But neither side accepts this.\u00a0Israel has dismissed the investigation as &#8220;politically motivated and morally flawed&#8221;, while Hamas said it wrongly equated &#8220;the victim and executioner&#8221;. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17576","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-world-current-affairs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17576","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17576"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17576\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17585,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17576\/revisions\/17585"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17576"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17576"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17576"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}