Even human rights group antagonistic to Israel acknowledge, according to a New York Times report, that Hamas probably counts among the “civilians killed by Israel” the following groups: Palestinians killed by Hamas as collaborators; Palestinians killed through domestic violence; Palestinians killed by errant Hamas rockets or mortars; and Palestinians who died naturally during the conflict. I wonder if Hamas also included the reported 162 children who died while performing child slave labor in building their terror tunnels. Hamas also defines combatants to include only armed fighters who were killed while fighting Israelis. They exclude Hamas supporters who build tunnels, who allow their homes to be used to store and fire rockets, Hamas policemen, members of the Hamas political wing and others who work hand in hand with the armed terrorists.
LONDON — An opposition monitoring group that has tracked Syria’s widening civil war said on Wednesday that more than 100,000 people had died in the 27-month-old conflict, with pro-government forces taking far more casualties than rebels seeking the overthrow of President Bashar al-Assad, while civilians accounted for more than one-third of the overall fatalities, the biggest single category.
Perhaps the old days were better after all: assemble the armies on an open plain, send the warriors into it, and leave the noncombatants of both sides for the spoils of the winner.
Just kidding.
*****
“As always, numbers like these gloss over the many people who have been so grievously wounded, physically or psychologically, that they will never again live productive lives. What the latter figure amounts to in Syria is anyone’s guess. What’s certain is that it’s even larger than the death toll.”
Rajan Menon’s report on the suffering goes on to note 1.7 million refugees on top of 4 million Internally Displaced Persons, or 5.7 million displaced souls altogether, about 25 percent of Syria’s total population before the onset of serious hostilities (but I’m not sure I’m getting consistent numbers from any source published within the past two years).
*****
“In one trailer we meet 13-year-old Najwa. She curls back in the corner next to her husband, 19-year-old Khaled, and her mother, hardly saying a word.
Najwa is the youngest of three, her two older sisters in their late teens are also recently married.”
Evidently, grim statistics don’t tell a whole story, or not much of whatever is to be told at all.
*****
“The head of the International Terrorism Observatory think tank, Roland Jacquard, told Reuters Television the group appeared to be sending fighters abroad, likely to Syria.”
“Special informed sources from London revealed to the Palestinian al-Manar newspaper that the British security forces arrested early June a group of 11 terrorists in London who had come back from Syria where they were involved in the fighting there.”
While Israel’s cardinal military defense rule seems to remain, “Do not intervene; do not interfere” (DM Yaalon), Israel’s first virtue would seem to remain compassion to the extent that it may provide that.
“The two boys, 9 and 15 years old, were transferred to Ziv Hospital in Safed for treatment. The 9-year-old suffered moderate injuries from shrapnel wounds across his body and lost his right eye, according to a report by Maariv. The 15-year-old was listed in serious condition, according to the report.”
Every wounded Syrian is guarded by either an IDF soldier or by a civilian security guard in an attempt to isolate them from speaking with anyone unauthorized to do so who might photograph them or pass on their information to Syria, potentially harming them or their families upon their eventual return to Syria.
As stated, more than a 100 wounded Syrians have crossed the border in recent months. Some 70 of them have been taken to Israeli hospitals, and two have passed away as a result of their injuries.
After 2,000 years or so, Hillel’s negatively stated dictum seems to hold. “That which is distasteful to thee, do not do to another” — and certainly, the choice between enabling or denying access to hospital services related well to that.
*****
“The request came in a letter handed to Prime Minister’s Office Director-General Harel Locker at a meeting with Druze leaders on the Golan Heights Thursday. The letter included an unprecedented request for Israel to take in Druze students who had left the Golan and settled in Syria, Maariv reported.”
Druze along the Golan have served both in the IDF and in Syria’s defense forces according to their decisions about citizenship and location, and with the fighting as I’ve described — “Two mad wasps in a bell jar” — Israeli Druze are seeking sanctuary for their relatives.
God knows God would seem to give Jews the toughest ethical and survival challenges.
Both.
At the same time.
Providing infirmary to wounded to be turned back into the field — and who want to be returned to their land — is one thing.
Affording sanctuary to those endangered by this war that only loosely respects boundaries and seems absent of compassion and conscience both in relation to innocents, noncombatants, neutral parties, and so on makes for a more difficult decision.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based group opposed to the Syrian regime, says Mohammad Qataa was shot in the mouth and neck a day after being seized.
The Taliban have denied involvement in the beheading cited in the above report, but there seems no question that the crime took place. False flag or true deed, one would be hard pressed to find a more deliberately monstrous crime.
Contempt for an enemy’s life should have limits.
Muhammad Hassan Sultan, a slender brown-haired 12-year-old, became a postwar casualty when the shrapnel from a cluster bomb cut into his head and neck.
In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, 58 children (23 girls and 35 boys between 2 and 17 years of age) were abducted by LRA in 2012. In contrast to previous years, they were used mainly as porters to carry looted goods, rather than to participate in attacks. Children continued to be victims of LRA attacks, however. In two separate LRA attacks, a girl and a boy were killed and a girl and three boys injured in Haut Uélé prefecture between January and May 2012. A case in which a girl was raped by LRA was documented in May 2012, while two other girls who escaped from the group in 2012 reported having been raped while in captivity. In total, 41 children (19 girls and 22 boys) escaped or were released from LRA during the reporting period. Between January and October 2012, LRA also attacked two health centres and three schools.
Meanwhile, New York-based Human Rights Watch said that evidence has emerged that an airstrike using cluster bombs on the village of Deir al-Asafir near Damascus killed at least 11 children and wounded others on Sunday. Cluster bombs have been banned by most nations.
Yesterday’s news or today’s, the picture is more than grim, for the image of war in this dimension reflects most directly on the adults whose decisions failed to protect innocents, whether their own or others.
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