Friday, February 09, 2024

Media review: How to End America’s Hypocrisy on Gaza

    Friday, February 09, 2024   No comments

Sarah Yager, director of Human Rights Watch in Washington, described the US handling of the Israeli war on Gaza as “hypocrisy,” and the Biden administration must evaluate Israel’s behavior and hold it accountable for that.

Yager commented in an article published by Foreign Affairsmagazine that the staggering numbers of Palestinian casualties and injuries as a result of the war launched by Israel on Gaza in response to the attack by the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) on October 7 is impossible to consider without considering whether Israel has violated the law. International humanitarian aid during its war.

She added that a large amount of available information indicates that Israel did in fact do this, as human rights organizations and the media published reports of illegal collective punishment of the Palestinian population, the use of starvation as a weapon of war, air and artillery strikes, and the demolition of buildings that had no targets. A clear military operation, but it resulted in heavy civilian casualties and the destruction of property.

She pointed out that there was enough smoke to suspect a fire, which put American officials in a dilemma, because American law obliges the State Department to ensure that American security aid does not go to security forces that constantly commit gross human rights violations.

 Current US policy also requires the department to evaluate whether recipients of US military assistance are “more likely” to use US weapons to violate international law, and prohibit transfers to any country that meets these criteria.

 Yager questioned whether the State Department had conducted these assessments yet, despite the fact that its Secretary, Tony Blinken, and Defense Secretary, Lloyd Austin, repeated on more than one occasion the phrase that the number of civilian casualties was “very high.”

 However, despite President Joe Biden's offhanded warning last December about the risk to Israel's reputation by carrying out "indiscriminate bombing," US officials have avoided clearly stating that any specific Israeli actions in Gaza are unacceptable, taking Administration spokesmen walk back Biden's comment.

 The director of Human Rights Watch referred to the direct questions directed to White House spokesmen regarding Israel's behavior in Gaza and their twisted responses on more than one occasion.

 She commented that these official statements and many others were noticeably absent of any positive declaration that Israel is in fact adhering to international law.

 She said if American officials believed that Israel was doing this - or at least taking all possible measures to avoid harming civilians under difficult circumstances - they would say so with passion, but they did not do so even though the Biden administration was not shy about criticizing the behavior of the warring parties in Other conflicts.

 The reason is that drawing more attention to what is happening in Gaza could almost certainly force a policy change that Biden does not want to make, could confront his administration with a series of difficult choices that it would rather avoid, and could also further complicate the already complex dynamics of the US-Israel relationship. And it may create political weakness for Biden in the election year.

 She added that as long as the administration avoids the reality of Israeli violations in Gaza and selectively applies the rules for military assistance, the moral authority claimed by the United States will diminish more and more, and the Biden administration’s apparent unwillingness to apply the legal aspect to the available information will be exacerbated by its clear failure to adhere to policies that She put it herself as an expression of Biden's supposed commitment to human rights.

 Yager believes that the worst consequence of the administration's refusal to comply with the letter and spirit of American law is that Washington may make it possible for massive and perhaps criminal loss of civilian lives in Gaza.

 

She added that there is another victim of this approach, which is the credibility of the United States, which has been damaged by what can be considered at best inconsistency and at worst hypocrisy.

 

For example, in 2016, President Barack Obama condemned Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s deprivation of food and water to civilians in Aleppo. It can be said that Israel did the same thing with the civilian population in Gaza for more than 3 months without facing any criticism for this method from the Biden administration. Biden Netanyahu called for opening a corridor to Gaza to deliver more aid, but he did not directly criticize the blockade.

 

She added that to begin to rein in Israel and stop the bleeding of American credibility, the Biden administration needs to assign its lawyers to evaluate all available information - confidential and non-confidential - regarding the Israeli military campaign in Gaza and determine the time and place of Israeli forces violating the laws of war, and the results should be published and evidence submitted to Congress.

 

She concluded that the political costs resulting from looking directly at the evidence and correcting the course of American policy as necessary will not be comfortable for the president and lawmakers during the election campaign.

 

But these costs are less than the cost of US authorities acting as if the extreme suffering of the Palestinian people in Gaza does not deserve the same scrutiny as the suffering of civilians in other conflicts, a position that gives an argument to those who claim that when it comes to applying basic American principles and protecting inherent human rights, Washington applies A clearly hypocritical double standard.

 

 

 

ISR Weekly

About ISR Weekly

Site Editors

Previous
Next Post
No comments:
Write comments

Followers


Most popular articles


ISR +


Frequently Used Labels and Topics

40 babies beheaded 77 + China A Week in Review Academic Integrity Adana Agreement afghanistan Africa African Union al-Azhar Algeria Aljazeera All Apartheid apostasy Arab League Arab nationalism Arab Spring Arabs in the West Armenia Arts and Cultures Arts and Entertainment Asia Assassinations Assimilation Azerbaijan Bangladesh Belarus Belt and Road Initiative Brazil BRI BRICS Brotherhood CAF Canada Capitalism Caroline Guenez Caspian Sea cCuba censorship Central Asia Chechnya Children Rights China CIA Civil society Civil War climate colonialism communism con·science Conflict Constitutionalism Contras Corruption Coups Covid19 Crimea Crimes against humanity Dearborn Debt Democracy Despotism Diplomacy discrimination Dissent Dmitry Medvedev Earthquakes Economics Economics and Finance Economy ECOWAS Education and Communication Egypt Elections energy Enlightenment environment equity Erdogan Europe Events Fatima FIFA FIFA World Cup FIFA World Cup Qatar 2020 Flour Massacre Food Football France freedom of speech G20 G7 Garden of Prosperity Gaza GCC GDP Genocide geopolitics Germany Global Security Global South Globalism globalization Greece Grozny Conference Hamas Health Hegemony Hezbollah hijab Hiroshima History and Civilizations Human Rights Huquq Ibadiyya Ibn Khaldun ICC Ideas IGOs Immigration Imperialism india Indonesia inequality inflation INSTC Instrumentalized Human Rights Intelligence Inter International Affairs International Law Iran IranDeal Iraq Iraq War ISIL Islam in America Islam in China Islam in Europe Islam in Russia Islam Today Islamic economics Islamic Jihad Islamic law Islamic Societies Islamism Islamophobia ISR MONTHLY ISR Weekly Bulletin ISR Weekly Review Bulletin Japan Jordan Journalism Kenya Khamenei Kilicdaroglu Kurdistan Latin America Law and Society Lebanon Libya Majoritarianism Malaysia Mali mass killings Mauritania Media Media Bias Media Review Middle East migration Military Affairs Morocco Multipolar World Muslim Ban Muslim Women and Leadership Muslims Muslims in Europe Muslims in West Muslims Today NAM Narratives Nationalism NATO Natural Disasters Nelson Mandela NGOs Nicaragua Nicaragua Cuba Niger Nigeria Normalization North America North Korea Nuclear Deal Nuclear Technology Nuclear War Nusra October 7 Oman OPEC+ Opinion Polls Organisation of Islamic Cooperation - OIC Oslo Accords Pakistan Palestine Peace Philippines Philosophy poerty Poland police brutality Politics and Government Population Transfer Populism Poverty Prison Systems Propaganda Prophet Muhammad prosperity Protests Proxy Wars Public Health Putin Qatar Quran Rachel Corrie Racism Raisi Ramadan Regime Change religion and conflict Religion and Culture Religion and Politics religion and society Resistance Rights Rohingya Genocide Russia Salafism Sanctions Saudi Arabia Science and Technology SCO Sectarianism security Senegal Shahed sharia Sharia-compliant financial products Shia Silk Road Singapore Slavery Soccer socialism Southwest Asia and North Africa Space War Sports Sports and Politics State Terror Sudan sunnism Supremacism SWANA Syria Ta-Nehisi Coates terrorism Thailand The Koreas Tourism Trade transportation Tunisia Turkey Turkiye U.S. Foreign Policy UAE uk ukraine UN under the Rubble UNGA United States UNSC Uprisings Urban warfare US Foreign Policy US Veto USA Uyghur Venezuela Volga Bulgaria Wadee wahhabism War War and Peace War Crimes Wealth and Power Wealth Building West Western Civilization Western Sahara WMDs Women women rights Work World and Communities Xi Yemen Zionism

Search for old news

Find Articles by year, month hierarchy


AdSpace

_______________________________________________

Copyright © Islamic Societies Review. All rights reserved.