10/21/14 – Stephen Zunes – The Scott Horton Show

Hey y'all, Scott Horton here.
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All right, you guys, welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
This is my show, The Scott Horton Show.
Back to more of those clips from Bill Kristol's interview with Dick Cheney in just a little bit.
But now we go to Stephen Zunis from Foreign Policy in Focus.
That's fpif.org.
And here he is reprinted at original.antiwar.com slash Zunis.
It's spelled like Zunes.
That's how everybody says it when they say it wrong.
He, of course, writes for Peace Voice and is a professor of politics and coordinator of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of San Francisco.
Again, fpif.org for Foreign Policy in Focus.
Welcome back.
How are you doing, Stephen?
Great to be with you.
Very good to have you here.
Very important piece that you've written.
I do hope everyone will take a look at this, maybe help pass it around a bit.
Because in context of talking about the legalities of the different, you know, enforcement mechanisms of war crimes, this and that, in the context of the politics of the U.S. Congress, boy, do you sure tell a story of what the Israelis have done to the people of the Gaza Strip again.
Well, briefly, in seven weeks of attacks on the crowded, besieged Gaza enclave, 1,500 Palestinian civilians were killed, along with several hundred Hamas fighters.
More than 500 of those civilians were children.
About 18,000 homes were destroyed, leaving over 100,000 people homeless.
It was devastating.
Hamas was, meanwhile, lobbing rockets into Israel.
Fortunately, did not do anything close to the damage.
Five civilians were killed on the Israeli side.
But what's striking about all this is that while polls show most Americans either blame both sides or blame, you know, believe Israel's primarily responsible, a bipartisan majority of Congress, huge majorities, have gone on record saying that Hamas was exclusively responsible and that Israel bore no responsibility, in effect, for the 1,500 civilians killed, which is quite remarkable.
I mean, it's one thing to say, oh, Israel has a right to exist, that Hamas shouldn't, you know, lob rockets into Israel.
Israel has a right to self-defense.
I mean, yeah, that's all quite reasonable.
But to deny well-documented war crimes, to make statements, as both parties did, that directly contradict findings by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, even Israeli human rights groups like B'Tselem, that documented apparent war crimes by the Israelis, to contradict findings by United Nations officials on the ground, by international journalists, for these guys in their air-conditioned offices in Washington, D.C., to say, oh, you guys don't know what you're talking about.
We know what's going on in Gaza, you know, and you should believe us, you know, not what these, you know, human rights groups say.
The same human rights groups, of course, they easily, quickly quote when they're talking about repression in Syria or repression in Iran or repression in governments we don't like.
When it comes to criticizing a strategic ally of the United States, oh, suddenly they're biased, suddenly you can't believe them, they're ignored, and the Congress will go out of their way to try to discredit them.
Well, and they even, I think, as you write here, they sort of just, by definition, exclude the possibility that the Israelis could be responsible for the death, even of anyone, I guess, even of the Hamas guys that they're targeting and killing, that those guys are all just basically committing suicide by cop, and anyone who happens to be nearby them, who also get killed, all of the responsibility, just because of, you know, words, must belong to Hamas, cannot belong to the IDF or their political leaders, period.
Exactly, yeah, for one thing, Hamas, you know, the armed wing has engaged in acts of terrorism, obviously shooting random rockets into civilian areas in Israel is illegal, it's a war crime, but basically Israel said, if you are any member of Hamas government, you know, if you're in, if you work for a Hamas-run medical clinic, if you're, you know, the Hamas-run post office, you are a terrorist by definition, and you are a legitimate target, and so is everybody in your apartment block.
Literally, this is how they've been trying to rationalize it, and then they say, oh, it's not Israel's fault, because Hamas is using human shields.
Well, human shields are defined as when you are holding, you know, civilians against their will as some kind of deterrent, and preliminary investigations by Human Rights Watch, by Amnesty International, by international journalists, have found no evidence that Hamas did this.
Now, they have criticized Hamas for storing weapons in unoccupied UN school buildings, but that does not justify Israel attacking six UN school buildings that had refugees inside, you know, killing scores of innocent people after the UN specifically told the Israelis that these had refugees in them, that there was no Hamas military activity anywhere close, and even gave the coordinates of the specific schools, and they still attack them.
Now, hold on one second, and I'm sorry, because there's so much to cover here, but this is so important.
What you say sounds unbelievable, or even if, okay, maybe that happened, I don't know, I wasn't paying attention a few weeks ago when you say this took place, but it must have been an accident.
Six times, it must be Hamas's fault.
Somehow, how in the world, tell us this story.
Explain what you mean that the Israelis attacked schools full of refugees on six different occasions.
Yes, there are six separate schools that were attacked by Israel, and three of them, there were fatalities totaling 46 civilians, including 10 UN staff members.
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency, which runs the schools, had notified the Israelis of their exact locations, the absence of any Hamas military equipment or activity, and even gave the coordinates of where they were, saying, we've got a lot of civilians here.
Basically, the congressional resolution saying, oh, Israel doesn't have any responsibility for the civilian deaths, because they told Israel to leave areas that they were bombing.
Well, a lot of civilians did leave these areas, and where did they seek refuge?
In these schools, and what happens?
They get bombed anyway, and so then Hamas said, maybe it's not a good idea to flee, because it might even increase your chances of getting attacked.
So then Congress says, oh, see, Hamas is using human shields by telling people they should stay put when Israel told them to leave.
They're twisting all this, they're twisting this information to try to, desperately, to try to justify for these kinds of killings.
Let me quote from some of these congressional resolutions.
Very quickly, this break is creeping on us here.
They're saying that Israel, a Senate resolution passed by unanimous consent that claimed that the government of Israel has taken significant steps to protect civilians in Gaza.
Israel's attacks have been focused on terrorist tactics.
A House resolution, Israel goes to extraordinary lengths to target only terrorist actors, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
All right, hold it right there.
We'll be right back, everybody, with Stephen Zunis.
Go to original.antiwar.com slash Zunis for Gaza and the bipartisan war on human rights.
One second.
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All right, y'all, welcome back.
I'm Scott Horton.
I'm talking with Stephen Zunis.
And he wrote this great article for Foreign Policy Focus.
We're running on antiwar.com.
Gaza and the bipartisan war on human rights.
And so we're talking about and he's documenting with details here and citing his sources about the attacks on the UN schools as part of this story here.
Congress saying, you know, everything that happens there is all Hamas's fault.
And the Israelis, again, by definition, couldn't possibly do anything wrong.
But so I wonder, though, if you could elaborate on and maybe this is asking you to speculate and you don't have to or you can identify speculation as such, if you want or however you want to answer.
But I wonder what you think is the motivation of attacking a bunch of schools full of refugees?
Because after all, we live in an age of Twitter.
And, you know, these guys, they may be the last ones to find out, but they found out by now that, you know, hey, you guys look really bad.
And people who used to like you are saying, come on, that's too many UN schools full of refugees to be an accident at this point.
And that's the kind of thing that, you know, a bad guy might do.
Not our friends, the plucky little Israeli Democrats.
What is going on here?
And so I wonder what's more important for them to accomplish by doing such that it overrides the absolutely horrible public relations on a global scale for the state of Israel going forward?
Stephen, I think the main reason is they know they have the superpower umbrella protecting them, that the United States will not eliminate or reduce the billions of dollars of military aid and other support.
We provide that government, you know, I mean, no doubt there will be no consequences.
But so still, why do it just for the fun of it?
And I think I don't know what motivates them.
I don't know.
I haven't seen the evidence.
They're deliberately just trying to kill children.
But I think they're basically saying that if you're fighting terrorism, you know, that basically you don't have to worry about it, that if we can kill one terrorist, who cares if we, you know, kill dozens of other people in the process?
And, you know, they're also and there may indeed be individual tank commanders or whatever who are racist and extremist enough to get off on killing Palestinian children.
I don't know.
But it's basically that they take this idea that if you're dealing with a ruthless group like Hamas, you know, there's no limits to what you can do.
And what's rather frightening about this is, again, the language that the congressional resolutions have that are basically rewriting international humanitarian law to basically to prove this, you know, have implications far beyond Israel-Palestine.
In fact, one of the House resolutions that was accusing Hamas of using human shields, therefore giving Israel carte blanche to kill as many people as they wanted, you know, claimed that ISIL was using human shields as well.
Well, guess what?
Within weeks, the United States started bombing Syrian and Iraqi cities.
You know, there's, so, you know, the implications there are really disturbing.
Actually, for that matter, you can justify Assad's regime slaughtering civilians in Syrian cities, as he's been doing for the past three years.
And, you know, they claim that Hezbollah used human shields back in 2006.
What's interesting about that is that they had some detailed, not just preliminary reports, as we've gotten so far regarding Gaza, but very detailed reports with top human rights investigators, forensics experts, and others who went into south Lebanon after the 2006 invasion, and again, were very critical of Hezbollah on a whole number of marks, including, of course, sending missiles and killing civilians in Israel, but found that they found absolutely no evidence of human shields.
Amnesty International said that.
Human Rights Watch said that.
Even a report from the U.S. Army War College said that.
And yet, here's Congress completely rewriting history and saying that, oh, that Hezbollah, you know, constantly used human shields.
I mean, these guys, so it's not just a matter of a bias.
These guys have a bias.
It's not a bias for Israel.
These guys have a bias against reality.
Yeah.
It's not even just that they're lying, too.
They're lying about what words mean.
So, if you live in a tiny little urban prison, and you dare to be in an urban place while you resist at all, then anyone nearby you in that close environment, you are using them as a shield.
Well, I mean, no.
As you said, we already know what that means in real life to use somebody as a human shield.
And we can just type it into Google Images and see pictures of Israelis tying little Palestinian kids to the front of their trucks, or marching them at gunpoint down the path like John Kerry in the Mekong Delta that people can read about at counterpunch.
And so, anyway, that's what a human shield is.
Everybody knows that.
But they just lie about what words mean in order to get away.
They just redefine things and get away with it.
Yeah, exactly.
And it's and there's all sorts of stuff they made up in there.
They're saying that, for example, that Syria was training and supplying Hamas to attack Israel.
Well, Hamas and Syria don't get along.
In fact, they're enemies.
Hamas is actually supporting armed Palestinian refugees in the Yarmouk refugee camp outside Damascus that are fighting the Syrian regime.
The Syrians closed down their small diplomatic office they had in Damascus years ago.
And yet, you know, here they have this, you know, Congress goes on record insisting that, none of that ever happened.
In fact, that Syria is actively training and making these attacks possible.
I mean, it's just amazing that these folks are being so out of touch with reality for ideological purposes.
And these were supported by the leadership of both parties.
They were adopted by unanimous consent.
Now, that doesn't literally mean unanimous.
Technically, any member of the House or Senate could block these resolutions.
But, you know, half the time, they're snuck through and there's hardly anybody on the floor or anything like that.
But the fact that they forced this through without real debate, without a roll call vote, and done with the consent of both major parties, it just really shows how broad this consensus is.
And what's also disturbing about me is that you had both liberal Democrats and libertarian Republicans who should know better, who should say to their leadership, hey, cut this out.
This is ridiculous and raise hell.
We're largely silent.
Yeah.
Well, and now, I mean, and really, these resolutions don't do anything other than allow Congress to paint red targets on the American people, basically, right?
I mean, it's not like, I mean, or is there something more specific about these resolutions or they're just sort of blanket endorsements of Israeli behavior and denial of facts?
They're non-binding sense of Congress, you know, kinds of things.
So they don't accomplish anything other than to just make sure that, like, yeah, you're right.
It's America behind this.
Don't forget it.
And it makes Obama, who doesn't always act as a profile in courage in these sorts of matters, it makes it more difficult for the administration to speak out, even though there are some indications that they were actually fairly disturbed about what was going on.
They just didn't do anything about it.
And it also makes people in the Middle East and Muslims around the world say, whoa, you know, here we have virtually the representatives of the people of the United States defending the killing of Arab and Muslim children.
And that is not something that is going to make the United States look good.
And it's just the kind of excuse that you're going to have extremists and terrorists are going to use to end up attacking Americans.
Right.
Well, and it has been at least officially.
And I know not everyone agrees on this, but at least the official story was that Robert Kennedy was killed by a guy who was angry about his work to guarantee the sale of Air Force jets to the Israelis.
That was his gripe.
And we've been suffering blowback on that very same issue, you know, maybe before, but certainly ever since then, including Mohammed Atta, who signed up to join al Qaeda after Operation Grapes of Wrath in southern Lebanon in 1996.
And on it goes.
But anyway, so now the music's playing.
We got to go.
And I know you got to go.
But thank you very much for your time on the show, Stephen.
Great to talk to you again.
My pleasure.
That's Stephen Zunis, everybody.
Original.antiwar.com slash Zunis.
We'll be right back.
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