Saturday, June 18, 2011

18-Jun-11: The ordinariness of rockets being fired at ordinary people

Too often, the thugs who fire rockets like this one into civilian homes and
farms are called, as in this Gerry Image pic, 'militants'. The choice
of language is no accident, and deserves to be condemned. People who fire
rockets deliberately and indiscriminately into civilian areas
are terrorists. 
With Sabbath having just ended, we are catching up on some unreported developments here, including the fact that late Thursday evening, yet another Qassam rocket, intended to destroy or kill anything Israeli, was fired into Israel by the missile-rich Palestinian Arab terrorists of Gaza.

The rocket-borne explosives crashed into an open field in the Eshkol region, on the Israeli side of the Israel/Gaza border. Both Ynet and Jpost say there were neither injuries nor damage, but this is more a matter of the incompetence of the Gazan terror groups than a reflection of their plans.

What would your feelings be if an armed-to-the-teeth group of thugs periodically fired rockets indiscriminately in the general direction of your home and your children? How comforted would you be by the fact that there was no damage this time

In reality, as Human Rights Watch has noted, "The problem for most people was not being hit, but the fear, uncertainty and stress."

The numerous Palestinian-Arab terror groups that fire missiles and mortar shells into Israel state openly, proudly and repeatedly, their intention to hurt civilian Israelis. None of them denies it, and none of them denies that these actions are immoral, illegal and a grave breach of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which makes them a war crime. Their rockets meet the definition of illegal weapons whether or not they are directed - as they almost never are - against military targets. They violate two fundamental principles of the laws of war: distinction (between civilian and military targets) and proportionality.

By the way, can you remember the last time a public figure or commentator referred to such attacks against Israelis as war crimes?

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