Amnesty International has renewed its call to impose an arms embargo on Israel, following recurring clashes between the IDF and protesters in the Gaza strip.



As a reason for the demand, the London-based non-governmental human rights organization named the “killing and wounding of civilians demonstrating in Gaza by the Israeli forces, despite the fact that they don’t pose any immediate threat.”

Malicious tactics are being employed by the Israeli military who are deliberately using weapons of war to cause life-changing injuries to Palestinian protesters. Why are weapons still being sold to #Israel? pic.twitter.com/kvfvCCKSfo — AmnestyInternational (@amnesty) April 27, 2018

Palestinians have been gathering at the Gaza border for several weeks with the objective of storming the security fence in order to mark what they claim to be the return to their original homeland. Last Friday’s events marked the fifth week of the protests, dubbed the “Great March of Return.”Amnesty International’s statement over the weekend claimed that during the protests, Israel has carried out “intentional” and “murderous” attacks against Gazan civilians, including shooting protesters in the back.“For four weeks the world has watched in horror as Israeli snipers and other soldiers, armed with full protective gear and behind the border fence, attack Palestinian demonstrators with live ammunition and tear gas,” Amnesty International’s Middle East and North Africa deputy director Magdalene Mugrabi said. “Despite international condemnation, the Israeli army has not retracted its illegal orders to shoot unarmed demonstrators.“The nature of the reported injuries attests to the fact that Israeli soldiers are using weapons intended to cause maximum harm.“...These incidents appear to be deliberate attempts to kill or at least injure the protesters in a way that causes disability. This is a serious violation of the Geneva Convention and a war crime,” Mugrabi emphasized.In response to these acts, the world must impose a comprehensive arms embargo on Israel, Amnesty International demanded.“The time has come to stop symbolic condemnation. The international community must act decisively and stop the delivery of arms and military equipment to Israel,” Mugrabi stated. “The failure to do so will add fuel the most serious human rights violations against thousands of men, women and children living under the cruel siege imposed by Israel on the Gaza Strip.”In addition, Mugrabi called on the International Criminal Court to investigate the situation in Gaza. “Unless Israel ensures an effective and independent investigation leading to criminal charges against those responsible, the ICC must open an official investigation into these killings and ensure that those responsible are brought to justice.”Amnesty International is known for speaking out against Israel and frequently and extensively critiques the country for alleged violations of human rights.This February, the organization published its annual report, which stated that Israel was killing and torturing Palestinian children, committing unlawful killings, subjecting the approximately two million inhabitants of the Gaza strip to collective punishment and using excessive force.In July 2017, Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon called to remove tax breaks for Amnesty International’s Israeli donors in light of the organization’s campaigning against Israeli policies.Likud MK Miki Zohar then said that “unfortunately, Amnesty defines itself as a human rights organization but behaves in the opposite way. The organization constantly persecutes IDF soldiers and defames them. The organization supports draft dodgers and infiltrators and acts with all its might against Israel. And despite this, its tax benefit as a non-profit organization is renewed, because of the argument that these are legal actions.”After a heated debate between the coalition and the opposition, Amnesty’s tax break was only renewed for a year, as opposed to the usual three years.Lahav Harkov contributed to this report.

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`; document.getElementById("linkPremium").innerHTML = cont; (function (v, i){ });</s>“Israel is carrying out a murderous assault against protesting Palestinians, with its armed forces killing and maiming demonstrators who pose no imminent threat to them,” Amnesty International said on Friday as thousands of Palestinians taking part in Great March of Return rallies in Gaza faced Israeli bullets for the fifth week.

Over those weeks, Amnesty stated, “the Israeli military has killed 35 Palestinians and injured more than 5,500 others – some with what appear to be deliberately inflicted life-changing injuries.”

“In most of the fatal cases analyzed by Amnesty International victims were shot in the upper body, including the head and the chest, some from behind,” the group stated.

“Eyewitness testimonies, video and photographic evidence suggest that many were deliberately killed or injured while posing no immediate threat to the Israeli soldiers.”

In video at the top of this page, Amnesty states that Israel is carrying out these crimes using weapons,including the American-mde Remington M24 sniper rifle, which is sold in the United States “as a hunting rifle to kill deer.”

The video also highlights the case of Muhammad Khalil Obeid, a Palestinian footballer whose promising career was ended when an Israeli sniper shot him in both knees.

Amnesty also pointed to the evidence provided by doctors and medical personnel “that many of the serious injuries they have witnessed are to the lower limbs, including the knees, which are typical of war wounds that they have not observed since the 2014 Gaza conflict.”

The charities Medical Aid for Palestinians and Médecins Sans Frontières have also extensively documented “horrific injuries” likely to leave hundreds of people with permanent disabilities.

Amnesty is renewing its calls for “governments worldwide to impose a comprehensive arms embargo on Israel.”

“The time for symbolic statements of condemnation is now over. The international community must act concretely and stop the delivery of arms and military equipment to Israel,” the group stated. “A failure to do so will continue to fuel serious human rights abuses against thousands of men, women and children suffering the consequences of life under Israel’s cruel blockade.”

That blockade is so tight that even members of the US Congress are not being allowed into the territory. This week, Representative Mark Pocan publicly called on Israel to let members of Congress into Gaza so they could see how US humanitarian aid is being used.

Earlier this month, the International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor warned Israeli leaders that they could face trial for violence against civilians in Gaza.

Amnesty appears to be urging the court to move on that warning.

“Unless Israel ensures effective and independent investigations resulting in criminal prosecutions of those responsible, the International Criminal Court must open a formal investigation into these killings and serious injuries as possible war crimes and ensure that perpetrators are brought to justice,” Amnesty added.

Amnesty now appears to be taking a stronger position than it has in recent weeks when it urged Israel merely to avoid “excessive force” against Palestinians.

But human rights defenders have long dismissed investigations undertaken by Israel’s military as nothing more than whitewashing mechanisms that only serve to bolster impunity and deter investigation by the ICC.

This point was emphasized by the UN human rights chief Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein on Friday.

“Israel’s failure to consistently prosecute violations committed by members of its security forces, encourages them to use deadly force against their fellow unarmed human beings, even when they present no threat,” Zeid stated.

The UN human rights chief pointed out that “serious investigations only seem to take place when video evidence has been gathered independently.”

“For the many more alleged killings of unarmed civilians by Israeli security forces that take place off camera, there seems to be little or no effort to apply the rule of law,” he added.

However that is an overly generous assessment. Even in high-profile cases where there has been ample video evidence, Israel’s system has only reinforced impunity by handing down lenient sentences to soldiers who carried out cold-blooded killings.

And there have been many cases of killings or injuries captured on video which have not resulted in any serious investigation.

It is also illogical to call on Israel to investigate killings and injuries as crimes or violations within its own system, when soldiers are being directly ordered to kill and injure unarmed protesters.

While the UN human rights chief at least recognizes that Israel has consistently failed to hold killers of Palestinians accountable, the European Union has decided to continue pretending that Israel is ready, willing and able to do so.

On Thursday the EU put out a statement that uncritically “takes note of the Fact-Finding Assessment Mechanism established by the Israel Defence Forces to review its own actions.”

The EU also continues to promote Israel’s propaganda used to justify killing unarmed protesters that there have been “violent attacks against Israel under the guise of the protests.”

Not a single Israeli has been reported injured as a result of the protests in Gaza and Israel has failed to date to present evidence of such attacks.

The EU, again echoing frequent Israeli government talking points, demanded that Palestinians “avoid any incitement to violence.”

However, the EU said nothing about the actual incitement coming from Israel.

In an example of the government propaganda used to justify the deliberate killing of civilians including children, Israeli government spokesperson Ofir Gendelman tweeted a video he claimed showed “a little Palestinian girl that recites what Hamas terrorists told her before they sent her today as a human shield to tear down the Gaza border with Israel.”

Subtitles in the video clip claim the young woman says, “We are are not afraid of them, we want to kill them.”

However speakers of Palestinian Arabic, including this writer, were able to hear clearly that the girl said no such thing, despite how the audio sounds as if it has been doctored.

In fact, the girl says, “We are not afraid of them, We want to enter [cross the boundary] to them.”

One of the main demands of the Great March of Return is that Palestinians be allowed to exercise their internationally recognized right to return to lands from which they and their families were expelled and from which Israel excludes them solely because they are not Jews.</s>Palestinians participating on Gaza’s non-violent Great March of Return have called for an arms embargo against Israel. This has been backed by the Amnesty International statement; Israel: Arms embargo needed as military unlawfully kills and maims Gaza protesters.

The United Nations has imposed arms embargoes within the sanctions regimes of:
• None Sudan for ‘Those who impede the peace process, constitute a threat to stability in Darfur and the region, commit violations of international humanitarian or human rights law or other atrocities”
• None Congo for “Engaging in or providing support for acts that undermine the peace, stability or security of the DRC” such as “planning, directing, or committing acts in the DRC that constitute human rights violations or abuses or violations of international humanitarian law, as applicable, including those acts involving the targeting of civilians, including killing and maiming, rape and other sexual violence, abduction, forced displacement, and attacks on schools and hospitals’
• None Libya for “Individuals and entities involved in or complicit in ordering, controlling, or otherwise directing, the commission of serious human rights abuses against persons in Libya, including by being involved in or complicit in planning, commanding, ordering or conducting attacks, in violation of international law, including aerial bombardments, on civilian populations and facilities’ UN Sanctions

All the above criteria for sanctions (and more) apply to the Jewish state’s military occupation and control of Palestinian lives over the past 70 years and apply to its blatant belligerence during the past month against Gaza’s unarmed protesters that has culminated, to date, in 46 martyrs and over 6000 injuries that began with the Good Friday massacre.

The killings and maiming are indisputable evidence of the violation of International Law and International Humanitarian Law ( IHL) which prohibits under Rule 70 ,

100 Jewish snipers were ordered to shoot unarmed civilians with semi-jacket bullets which are variously called dumdum, hollow-point, expanding bullet, explosive, soft-point, soft-nosed, that inflict horrific Grade 3 wounds as on contact, the bullet splays out talons massive internal tissue damage,

These high velocity bullets ‘are prohibited under a number of treaties’ for causing ‘superfluous injury or unnecessary suffering’.

That the Jewish state uses Gaza to field test new weapons has been well documented and today in Gaza doctors have also remarked on a new tear gas, not gray but green in colour, that causes severe spasms and ‘cramps, vomiting and stress, severe cough and a faster heartbeat…Because the gas is unknown and the health complaints are also unknown, the use of this gas is very dangerous and one does not know what more damage the gas can cause to the body.’ Khamakar Press

Of course testing weapons on civilians is a war crime and yet Israeli armament companies boast that their weaponry is field-tested which boosts sales to morally shoddy western governments. This impunity and complicity can come to a halt with campaigns focusing on the S in BDS- Boycott Divestment and SANCTIONS.

Speaking of sanctions, take the UK for example; it was hot to screech for sanctions against Russia after the magically non-lethal unproven ‘nerve agent’ attack in Salisbury but has not condemned the ongoing real massacre of unarmed protesters in Gaza and has, furthermore sold to Israel, according to Middle East Eye, $445 million of arms, including spare parts for sniper rifles’ since Israel’s 2014-war-crimes-war on Gazan families despite the UK having ratified the UN Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) on 2nd April 2014.

Article 6 of the ATT provides a solid legal structure and obligations for arms embargoes,

Article 6: 3. A State Party shall not authorize any transfer of conventional arms covered under Article 2 (1) or of items covered under Article 3 or Article 4, if it has knowledge at the time of authorization that the arms or items would be used in the commission of genocide, crimes against humanity, grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions of 1949, attacks directed against civilian objects or civilians protected as such, or other war crimes as defined by international agreements to which it is a Party.

94 countries have ratified the ATT. We can demand that our governments honour their obligations and end arms trade with Israel and lobby our governments to support a UN arms embargo. It is the least we can do.

ATT campaigns will erase any sense of bystander helplessness in the face of the Jewish state’s slaughter and maiming of brave young Gazans who are simply demanding their Right of Return under international law.

Dr. Vacy Vlazna is Coordinator of Justice for Palestine Matters and editor of a volume of Palestinian poetry, I remember my name. She was Human Rights Advisor to the GAM team in the second round of the Acheh peace talks, Helsinki, February 2005 then withdrew on principle. Vacy was convenor of Australia East Timor Association and coordinator of the East Timor Justice Lobby as well as serving in East Timor with UNAMET and UNTAET from 1999-2001.
Amnesty International makes a fresh call for an arms embargo against Israel, claiming "malicious tactics" and "murderous" attacks on Gazan civilians justify one.