UN Rights Chief Warns Of Israel-Gaza War Crimes

[DonViejo]

Source: ASSOCIATED PRESS

By ASSOCIATED PRESS Published JULY 23, 2014, 6:24 AM EDT

GENEVA (AP) — The U.N.'s top human rights official has told diplomats that Israel's military and Hamas militants appear to have violated international humanitarian law and might have committed war crimes during their two-week war in the Gaza Strip.

U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said Wednesday that around three-quarters of the 650 Palestinians and 31 Israelis killed in the conflict were civilians, and thousands more have been injured.

Pillay told the 47-nation U.N. Human Rights Council that the situation in Gaza requires its urgent attention because of "a strong possibility that international humanitarian law has been violated, in a manner that could amount to war crimes."

Pillay says every allegation of human rights abuses "must be properly and independently investigated."

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Read more: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/un-human-rights-chief-israel-gaza-war-crimes

[starroute]

1. Misleading text -- as so often

I don't know what the UN High Commissioner actual said, but "around three-quarters of the 650 Palestinians and 31 Israelis killed in the conflict were civilians" is wildly misleading. The last figures I saw, the Israeli figures were two civilians and 29 soldiers. But by lumping those deaths in with the disproportionate number of civilian deaths among Palestinians, it makes it sound as if Israel was also suffering from high civilian casualties.

This is a pattern I keep seeing. Headlines will say things more or less like "600 dead in Israel-Palestinian conflict" to make it seem as though the numbers aren't all on one side. I think they just don't want Americans to realize how lopsided it really i.

[Comrade Grumpy]

3. Yeah. That immediately jumped out at me, too.

How about this:

"Around three-quarters of the 650 Palestinian killed in the conflict were civilians, but only 2 of the 31 Israelis killed were."

It wasn't that difficult.

[Billy Budd]

2. gee you think ?

UN Rights Chief Warns Of Israel-Gaza War Crimes