JOHN PRESCOTT - Former deputy Prime Minister. Imagine a country claiming the lives of nearly three times as many as were lost in the MH17 plane tragedy in less than three weeks. A nation which blasted a hospital, shelled and killed children from a gunboat as they played football on the beach and was responsible for 1,000 deaths, at least 165 of them children, in just two weeks. Surely it would be branded a pariah state, condemned by the United Nations, the US and the UK. The calls for regime change would be deafening. But these howls of protest are muted. The condemnation softened. For this is Israel. Israel’s hawkish Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu trots out the same excuses. Hamas “militants” in Gaza fired their rockets first. Israel has a right to defend itself. It needs to protect its citizens. And he’s right on all three counts – but as always with Israel this is not the full story. The military action supposedly targeting Hamas is so brutally disproportionate and so grossly indiscriminate that it makes it impossible not to view Israel’s actions as war crimes.
Posted on: Sat, 26 Jul 2014 22:55:00 +0000
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