Gazans accuse Hamas of war crimes against Gazans. Lawyers for the Gazan residents have submitted a 40-page application to the International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor, seeking investigations into 14 named Hamas leaders over alleged crimes committed against the Gazan residents.
The alleged war crimes include Hamas’s use of Gazan civilians as human shields, Hamas’s intentionally directing attacks on Gazan civilians, appropriation of property, enlisting children into the Hamas armed attacks on Israelis, and execution of Gazans without due process, (two recent Gazan protests against Hamas resulted in Hamas shooting the protestors, and killing speakers and and protest organisers and subsequently leaving these Gazan protesters’ dead bodies on their families door steps as warnings against any future dissent against Hamas).
The Gazan’s ICC application alleges Hamas engaged in crimes against humanity, including murder, extermination, torture and persecution.
The application argues that Hamas’s alleged use of Palestinian civilians as human shields was principally responsible for the high death toll and extensive destruction in Gaza, and alleges that the use of human shields was not peripheral to Hamas’s approach, but central to it, by embedding themselves among civilians to produce increased public deaths and destruction of housing and businesses, to produce global political support for Hamas.
Hamas is on record as using internal intimidation, repression, violence and execution of Gazans since their bloodbath when Hamas violently took over Gaza in 2007, (which led to Israel and Egypt imposing the present land, and legal under international law, sea blockade).
This doesn’t excuse Israeli officials from prosecutions, but identifies that which is true in Gaza, and true in Israel – that it is not a black/white, Palestinian/Israeli conflict, and it is the Palestinians and Israelis opposing violence and repressive regimes, that are deserving of support.
Last month, The Peoples Peace Summit in Israel had thousands of attendees, with over 80 Muslim and Jewish, Israeli and Palestinian peace-building and shared society organisations, working together with determination and courage to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
With all the pro Palestine/anti-Israel protests here, we are yet to see such vision.
And such vision is needed here, if we are to bring the majority of Australian Muslims into being a part of Australian society, where we all consign the violent Islamists, and their curse of a philosophy, to the reviled extremities of our society with all our other hate groups.
John Lazarus, Byron Bay
The International Criminal Court (ICC) Pre-Trial Chamber has also issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Minister of Defence, Yoav Gallant. The Court found reasonable grounds to believe they bear responsibility for war crimes – specifically starvation as a method of warfare – and crimes against humanity including murder and persecution. – Letters Ed
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