Hamas Shouldn’t Fire Rockets … But Israel Has Violated HUNDREDS of UN Resolutions

Hamas Firing Rockets Is Unforgivable … But Israel Has Done MUCH Worse

We condemn Hamas for firing rockets into Israel. We believe that targeting civilians is unconscionable, and is a war crime.

But by any objectives measure, Israel has broken the law much more than Hamas. Haaretz noted in 2002:

Israel holds the record for ignoring United Nations Security Council resolutions, according to a study by San Francisco University political science professor Steven Zunes.

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[Zunes] systematically went through all the states given instructions by the security council to find out how common a phenomenon it was. His results were somewhat surprising: “Some of the countries are considered and are known to be friendly to the U.S.,” he told Ha’aretz yesterday. “In the vast majority of cases I examined, the governments violating UN Security Council resolutions are countries that receive significant military, diplomatic and financial aid from the U.S.”

Israel leads the list. Since 1968, Israel has violated 32 resolutions that included condemnation or criticism of the governments’ policies and actions. Turkey is in second place, with 24 violations since 1974, and Morocco is third with 17 resolutions it ignored.

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Zunes specifically avoided counting resolutions that are vague or unclear so that governments could claim different interpretations to the meaning of the resolutions. Thus, the famous UN Security Council resolutions 242 and 338 are not included in his study. He also did not count resolutions that only included condemnations. Instead, he focused on those that included specific calls for changes in the subject governments’ policies.

The resolutions Israel violated were either about its annexation of East Jerusalem or settlements in the territories. Israel also ignored UN Security Council resolutions that called for Israel to cease using harsh measures against the Palestinian population and to cease expelling Palestinians.

Pulitzer prize winning journalist Chris Hedges points out that Israel has broken nearly a hundred UN Security Council resolutions regarding Gaza alone:

The continued presence of Israeli occupation forces defies nearly a hundred U.N. Security Council resolutions calling for them to withdraw. The Israeli blockade of Gaza, established in June 2007, is a brutal form of collective punishment that violates Article 33 of the Fourth 1949 Geneva Convention, which set up rules for the “Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War.”

 

Read more:  http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2012/11/israel-has-violated-hundreds-of-un-resolutions.html

 

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