January 7, 2009

Does the United Nations knowingly and willfully give material support to Hamas terrorists?
by Bill Levinson

It is now a proven fact that Hamas terrorists were using a United Nations (UNRWA) school in the Gaza Strip as a position from which to shell Israel. When the Israeli Defense Forces returned the terrorists’ fire, a shell struck the terrorists’ booby traps and the resulting secondary explosions killed thirty or more civilians who had taken refuge at what they believed to be a noncombatant or neutral building.

The information that we have is that there was the launching of a mortar from the school’s yard towards one of our forces. Our forces retaliated but it turned out that the school was booby trapped and as a result of our retaliation, everything flared up. There were a lot of secondary explosions from which probably those people were wounded.

It is therefore a fact that Hamas committed a war crime by using a noncombatant building (school) as a combat position. The only remaining question is the depth of the United Nations’ complicity in Hamas’ war crime against Palestinian civilians, and whether the UN went even further by setting up civilian refugees to be killed in a firefight.
The linked article adds,

[The United Nations is] absolutely outraged; absolutely outraged. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency is the one that runs these schools. It says it has given Israel the GPS coordinates of all of its schools, that all of its schools are well marked.

And it’s calling for an independent investigation, saying that this attack on the school violates international humanitarian law and says that that law protects buildings like schools from being attacked and that if international law has been violated that those responsible should be brought to justice.

We do not contest the fact that the school was clearly identified as such. However, even if it had been marked with a Red Cross, it would have lost its immunity to military action the instant the IDF received rocket or mortar fire from the position. We are sure that the United Nations is aware of this, but chooses to ignore it because of its complicity with the terrorists–a complicity that is underscored by this Reuters article.

RAFAH, Gaza Strip, May 5 (Reuters) - By day, Awad al-Qiq was a respected science teacher and headmaster at a United Nations school in the Gaza Strip. By night, Palestinian militants say, he built rockets for Islamic Jihad.

The Israeli air strike that killed the 33-year-old last week also laid bare his apparent double life and embarrassed a U.N. agency which has long had to rebuff Israeli accusations that it has aided and abetted guerrillas fighting the Jewish state.

Note that, in the United States, provision of “material support” (money, lodging, weapons, use of facilities, and so on) to terrorists is a Federal felony that is punishable by a long prison term. If the United Nations knowingly allowed a terrorist and Hamas weapon-maker to serve as headmaster of one of its schools, the United Nations is guilty of providing material support to terrorists. Furthermore, if the United Nations knew that Hamas was using the school as a combat position but nonetheless allowed or encouraged civilians to take refuge there, the United Nations is an accessory to murder.

What incentive would the United Nations have to set up civilians to become casualties in a firefight between terrorists and the IDF? The answer is obvious, because the world is now bleating about how “Israel killed thirty civilians in a school.” Under international law, Hamas murdered the civilians by making them unwilling parties to a mortar and rocket battle and, if the United Nations played any material role in those civilians’ presence at a Hamas combat position, the United Nations is an accessory to that mass murder. If so, this is far from the first time that Hamas and its accessories have set up civilians to be killed to make propaganda.

Almost six years ago, the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) encouraged a young and idealistic peace activist named Rachel Corrie to KNEEL in front of an Israeli bulldozer, below the driver’s line of sight (noting that the bulldozer blade came between his eyes and whatever was in front of it). Then, according to the ISM members’ own accounts of the events, none of them made the slightest effort to pull her out of the bulldozer’s path when it became clear that the bulldozer was not going to stop. The ISM then accused Israel of “murdering” Rachel Corrie, but it is a bad idea to use the word “murder” when your own people have expressed a motive for wanting the decedent dead.

(Originally from Standwithus.com) “Recently, the Director of the Solidarity Movement, George Rishmawi, explained to the San Francisco Chronicle that the recruitment of American student volunteers is useful to the Palestinian Movement because “if some of these foreign volunteers get shot or even killed, then the international media will sit up and take notice.“”

Joseph Smith, who was present when Corrie died and whose highest priority was apparently to take pictures, said, “”The spirit that she died for is worth a life. This idea of resistance, this spirit of resisting this brutal occupying force, is worth anything. And many, many, many Palestinians give their lives for it all the time. So the life of one international, I feel, is more than worth the spirit of resisting oppression.”

A Hamas terrorist said openly that Rachel was worth more dead than alive. “‘Her death serves me more than it served her,’ said one activist at a Hamas funeral yesterday. ‘…Her death will bring more attention than the other 2,000 martyrs.’” Making of a Martyr by Sandra Jordan, Guardian Newspapers

Here we have two ISM leaders and a Hamas terrorist saying openly how Rachel Corrie was more useful to their cause dead than alive so, according to their own words and not ours, the ISM and Hamas had a motive for wanting Rachel Corrie dead. By the same token, it is quite likely that Hamas wanted those thirty civilians in that school dead, and maybe the United Nations had a role in making them that way.

Be careful what you wish, you might get it.
The United Nations said of the destruction of its school, “If international law has been violated that those responsible should be brought to justice.” We agree 100 percent. To begin with, the Hamas terrorists who used the school as a combat position are guilty of a serious war crime that, at least under the Articles of War (the draconian predecessor to the Uniform Code of Military Justice and similar military legal systems) might have been punished with death, just like espionage and deliberate murder of civilians. Next we need to look at the United Nations itself. If the United Nations KNEW that terrorists were using the school as a combat position, and allowed or encouraged civilians to regard it as a place of safety anyway, then the UN itself could be guilty of crimes ranging from reckless endangerment to manslaughter or even accessory to murder.

This message is extremely important. Right now, the United Nations is trying to blame Israel for the civilians’ deaths even though it knows that Hamas is responsible. Instead of fighting defensively (e.g. by pointing out that Israel was totally within its rights to return the enemy fire), we must adopt an offensive doctrine by citing the United Nations’ own probable complicity in the incident, with the intention of discrediting the United Nations not only on this issue but others, with the ultimate objective of destroying the United Nations as a credible organization in the civilized world. It is therefore not only necessary to remind the civilized world of the UN’s probable complicity with terrorists, but its long litany of pedophilia and child molestation (Google on “United Nations” and “sex for food”) and also corruption in general.