Stephen Zunes, a professor of politics and chair of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of San Francisco, discusses Israel’s “Hannibal protocol” that advocates killing Israeli soldiers rather than allowing them to be captured alive; the Geneva Conventions’ definition of “human shields;” and how the US is rewriting the laws of war.
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Oh, great, man.
Just as the music starts playing, our friend Steven Zunas calls in on the Skype from Greece.
Hi, Steven.
How are you doing?
Hey, how you doing?
I'm doing really good.
Oh, let me turn you down here.
Back off that microphone just a little bit for me.
Thanks.
I'm sorry.
I don't have it in front of me.
You're the professor of what all now?
I am professor of politics at the University of San Francisco, where I chair the Middle Eastern Studies program, and I'm here in Greece.
I'm bound for an academic conference in Istanbul next week, but I'm taking a vacation with my family.
We're in an outdoor cafe in the shadow of the Acropolis, so I don't have ...
I'm just finishing up dinner, so I don't have too long, but I wanted to give you all a few minutes if you wanted to discuss Gaza or whatever you wanted to talk about.
Yeah, yeah.
Great, man.
What a scene, right there in the shadow of the Acropolis, huh?
Right on.
First of all, before we get started, I have a correction.
Earlier I said I wasn't aware of anything but speculation about the so-called Hannibal procedure or doctrine or whatever it's called, but that is incorrect.
Here it is in Haaretz that, yes, they have official Israeli government and military sources saying that, yes, they did resort, in fact, to this Hannibal procedure when it came to blowing up their own guy.
Lieutenant Hadar Golden, who was very temporarily captured by Hamas before they were all blasted with artillery, which is just amazing to me.
Can you imagine American generals saying, yes, that's our policy is we shoot artillery at any Marines or Army being captured by the enemy?
Israel's been violating a lot of international norms, particularly bombing civilians, bombing and telling people they had to flee to safe areas in these United Nations-controlled schools and then attacking the schools.
There have been no less than seven attacks against schools, and the Israelis and their bipartisan supporters in Washington that say, oh, well, Hamas stored some rockets in some schools or other military equipment, which, of course, is really as bad, really as illegal, but these were unoccupied schools.
The ones that were attacked by the Israelis had refugees in them.
There were no military activities or equipment anywhere near them.
United Nations had given the coordinates of these places and saying, look, these are refugees here.
There's no military activity here, and they attacked them anyway.
Indeed, Israel has killed more children than they have fighters.
And yet, just last week, by a huge bipartisan majority in the House of Representatives, in fact, it was so overwhelming that you even just had a voice vote, but it had like scores of co-sponsors, both the Republicans and Democrats, claimed that Israel had no culpability whatsoever for any of the civilian deaths.
It was all Hamas's fault.
They were using human shields, and this is just after Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the United Nations had said that while Hamas had been doing some illegal things like bobbing rockets into Israel and storing equipment in unoccupied UN facilities and doing some of the things they shouldn't do, they found no evidence whatsoever that Hamas was actually using human shields, which is basically keeping civilians against their will in harm's way as a deterrent for attack.
And I have called these congressional offices, where is the evidence, where is the evidence, and they don't have it.
Basically, they're quite willing to quote Amnesty International or the UN Human Rights Council when they criticize Syria, or they criticize Iran, or they criticize governments the United States doesn't like, but if they criticize a government the US supports, oh my God, they're biased, you can't trust them.
These guys in their air-conditioned offices in Washington, D.C. know more about what's going on on the ground than the people who are there, the human rights experts, the monitors.
I mean, the Democrats and Republicans who support this, when it comes to empirical findings of human rights organizations, they're like some Republicans on climate science, you know, they say, they don't let the facts confuse me, the ideology is what counts.
It's just, it's nuts there.
I mean, I am the last person to apologize for Hamas, so these guys are bad news, but the atrocities by Israel have just been extraordinary.
Nearly a thousand civilian lives have been lost just in the past few weeks, and virtually all of them with US-made equipment.
Amnesty International called for the United States to suspend armed shipments to Israel because of these war crimes.
Congress responded by increasing military aid to Israel.
Alright, so, a lot there.
First of all, on the specific point of the human shields, it seems like now it's just a term of, you know, it's a matter of semantics and jargon.
What they mean by human shields now is, well, they're fighting amongst civilians, and so, you know, but that's the same difference, right?
Even though IDF headquarters can be right next to a strip mall, and, you know, they're not guilty of using human shields, even though they're just as guilty if that's what it means now, but that's what it means now.
They've got to shift the definition a little bit.
Yeah, they've rewritten it, and the definition of human shields is very clear.
It's in the Fourth Geneva Convention, to which the United States, and Israel, and almost every country in the world are signatories to, but, yeah, they're basically, and here's the thing, even if they were using human shields, that still doesn't give a country the right to attack civilians.
In fact, it says that explicitly in the Fourth Geneva Convention, that, you know- Well, and that's what Israel really means by this, too, Stephen.
No, I was just saying, in a domestic situation, let's say there's a botched bank robbery, and the bad guys hold some tellers and customers hostage, and let's say they're shooting at the cops.
You know, the SWAT team, would the SWAT team go in and kill all the, kill the hostages along with the bank robbers, and say, oh, it's their fault, it's not ours, they're using human shields?
No, actually, that's a bad example, because, of course, the answer is yes, the SWAT teams can kill whoever they want with impunity, and never get in trouble for it, ever, ever.
At least, there'd be outrage.
There would be outrage at that kind of thing.
Well, there's supposed to be, yeah.
Some police forces, unfortunately, would indeed do that, but you wouldn't have these liberal Democrats, you know, who are lining up, defending what Israel's doing, you know, like Alan Grayson, and Jared Polis, and Jan Tarkowski, and these kind of folks, you know, who are being endorsed by groups like Progressive Democrats of America, and Bold Progressives, and all these folks as being all these wonderful, you know, peace people, you know, you wouldn't have people like that, you know, defending, if the cops do it, but sure enough, they're lining up defending Israel.
Yeah.
Well, and, of course, the PR, I forgot who it was that wrote a great little piece about this that we ran on the blog at antiwar.com, about how it sounds like what they're saying at first on the surface is just, look at how evil Hamas is for using human shields, and it's just a talking point against Hamas, but what it really is, is they're writing a permission slip that it's okay to kill civilians, because, after all, Hamas is the one that's putting them in harm's way, not us.
So, go right ahead and blast them.
Don't even bother hesitating.
That's the real, it's not the explicit point of the propaganda, but it's what underlies it.
Let me finish with this little piece right here.
The house resolution that passed, in addition to accusing Hamas of using human shield, mentioned that ISIS, you know, those guys, you know, who are taking over these Iraqi cities, also use human shields.
Now, why would they bring that up, if instead this resolution's supposedly about Gaza?
Well, you know, there's talk of a joint U.S.-Iraqi military assault on Mosul and other big Iraqi cities to try to rid them of ISIS control.
If they do that, there are going to be large-scale civilian casualties, you know, and I think this is in preparation for a U.S.-Iraqi massive assault on northern Iraqi cities held by ISIS.
This is not just about Israel.
This is, and this is not just the thing about AIPAC or the Zionist lobby or anything like that.
This is bigger than this.
I think this, they are rewriting the laws of war to make that, make it permissible that in the name of the war on terror, the United States and its allies can do whatever the hell they want, no matter how many civilians they kill, and it's going to be the fault of the terrorists, not the people who are actually killing the civilians.
Right.
Yeah, exactly.
Such an important point.
You sure you can't stay one more segment here?
I know.
I'm afraid I've got to run.
All right.
Well, talk to you soon.
Great talking with you.
Thanks.
That's Steven Zunis, everybody.
We'll be right back.
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