by Scott Creighton
George Sisk recently wrote an OpEd, published in the State Journal Register of Springfield, Il., titled “In My View: Don’t Blame Israelis for Civilian Deaths“.
This article was sent to me by Scott Humphries with the express purpose that this kind of misinformation must not be allowed to go unchallenged. He is absolutely correct.
It is not surprising that Mr. Sisk would publicly take this point of view considering that he is listed as the chair of the Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC), the self proclaimed “public relations arm” of Springfield Jewish Federation (SJF), whose stated goal is to “…advocate on behalf of Israel...”.
“Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC), is the public relations arm of SJF. The JCRC is comprised of members of the Jewish community who keep up to date on issues concerning and of interest to the Jewish community, advocate on behalf of Israel and speak out against antisemitism and other forms of discrimination and bigotry.” SJF
The SJF is an organization that openly admits on their website mission statement to “... community-wide programming...” on behave of Israel and the Jewish people. All of this is public knowledge and available right on the SJF website that is linked to Mr. Sisk’s email address that he attached to his OpEd piece.
“The mission of the SJF is to serve the Jewish People locally, in Israel, and throughout the world through coordinated fund raising, community-wide programming, social services, and educational activities.” SJF
With so much disinformation included and obvious bias in Mr. Sisk’s opinion piece, it is hard to get a grip on where to start.
Let’s begin with Mr. Sisk’s choice of reference material.
Every single quote he uses is from either the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) or the Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs; two, shall we say, less than unbiased sources when the topic at hand is whether or not Israel is responsible for civilian deaths in Gaza and other various and sundry war-crimes.
The IDF and the IMFA certainly have a dog in this fight, so to speak, as does Mr. Sisk. We should factor in that information as well as Mr. Sisk’s connection with the SJF when we consider the validity of his argument (or should I call it his “programming” piece?).
Mr. Sisk would have the people of Springfield believe that it’s just the AP or Hamas who are calling attention to the atrocities in Gaza. This is clearly not the case. Articles about the break-down of the casualties in Gaza can be found in typically pro-Israeli news papers like the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and many others and for the most part they concur that the majority of the people killed in Gaza during Operation Cast Lead were civilians.
But for the sake of argument, in this rebuttal, I am going to quote two sources for my information that should be beyond the question of bias as that they are Israeli organizations (as well as some other, mainstream sources as well). One is the leading newspaper in Israel, Haaretz, and the other is an Israeli humanitarian organization, B’TSelem.
Mr. Sisk opens his argument with an amazing statistical statement that he offers absolutely no reference for. Apparently he just made it up.
“At least 50 percent, if not substantially more, of those Palestinians who died during Israel’s military operation were Hamas extremists.”. Sisk
This doesn’t even come remotely close to being statistically accurate according to numbers provided by many sources. The Palestinian Center for Human Rights is general viewed as the authority on these numbers. They are somewhere in between the IDFs assessment and the more politically motivated Palestinian Ministry of Health (though the former is still the official count of the “moderate” Palestinian Authority; the officially recognized government in Palestine).
“(T)he Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR), released a final tally Wednesday, saying 1,284 Gazans were killed and 4,336 wounded…The PCHR said 894 of the dead were civilians, including 280 children and minors, age 17 and under, as well as 111 women … Of the remaining 390 dead, 167 were members of Hamas’ civil police… The rest, or 223, were combatants, she said. That figure is higher than the 158 dead fighters acknowledged by Hamas.” CBS News
The actual casualty list will remain in dispute for some time. I would like to wait till the Israeli human rights organization,B’Tselem, releases their breakdown of the casualty list and then compare that to the PCHR evaluation before making a definitive statement on these. But I think it’s important to note that these numbers are far and away different from the implication of Mr. Sisk that “substantially more” than 50% of the Palestinians who died were “Hamas extremists“. The truth is, the facts on the ground do not bear out his conclusion and the fact that there is no evidence for what he claims goes to show you that there is good reason he offers no proof for his “view” (a fact that often becomes the case in Mr. Sisk’s OpEd piece).
“… the PCHR count, including the distinction between militants and civilians, is based on cross-checking hospital records and interviews with survivors. The group is affiliated with Geneva-based International Commission of Jurists and has won two European human rights awards.“ CBS News
So Mr. Sisk’s assessment is based solely on IDF resources, dedicated to manipulating the public relations aspect of the facts surrounding Israel’s attack on Gaza, and my conclusions, well, you can judge for yourself.
Let us also address the term “Hamas extremists” for a moment.
As we know from all the reports, the first salvo of Israeli attacks were directed at a graduation ceremony for Hamas civil police officers.
Since Hamas is the elected government in Gaza, these policemen were the equivalent of our police officers. Their jobs were civilian law enforcement, not “extremism” or launching rockets. They were cops. And they were targeted first by Israeli bombs. Try to imagine Canadian bombs raining down on a Springfield Police Academy graduation ceremony. Would those losses be considered civilian or military? Israel would call them “extremists” in Gaza even though their duties, much like their Springfield counterparts, revolve around keeping the peace and law enforcement within the civilian population of Gaza.
Mr. Sisk chooses to use words like “extremists” because they are inflammatory, hot-button type descriptive words, chosen to sway public opinion in a subtle manner. To get people to automatically associate Hamas with the label “extremists”. What make them “extreme” is the fact that they don’t want Israel occupying their land or killing their children. I dare-say that not many people in Springfield would chose to be considered “moderates” if Canada were doing the same to them.
The people of Illinois have a long and proud history of defiance.
Mr. Sisk then muddles his own argument about who ultimately bears the responsibility for the civilian casualties in Gaza by discussing the leaflets dropped and the “warning” calls the IDF made to the people of Gaza.
Now this is a rather obvious attempt to shift the blame for civilian casualties to the civilians themselves (when all else fails blame the victims), and was done so for this very reason.
Israel dropped leaflets and made calls specifically so that “programming” organizations like the one Mr. Sisk works for could later point to these efforts as some kind of twisted “humanitarian” effort on the part of the IDF.
But this has been soundly debunked as a frivolous and shameful devise already by many authors before me. All I will say to the matter is simply, where were they, the people of Gaza, to go?
Where exactly within the parameters of the sealed off Gaza Strip were the 1.5 million civilians to go as Israeli White Phosphorus weapons rained down on them? Even the UN buildings and schools were targeted by the IDF, so where were they going to be safe running down the street with nothing but their children and a few personal articles in tow?
And, again, to draw an analogy, would the people of Springfield flee their homes and their communities because Canada drops leaflets telling them to do so? And if they didn’t, would Canada’s army be free from blame for civilian fatalities if they shelled White Phosphorous munitions into Springfield after dropping those leaflets? The argument is ridiculous. It is the worst kind of “blame the victims” approach to diverting responsibility away from Israel and it really shouldn’t be tolerated by anyone in a civilized society. In fact, it probably shouldn’t have even been printed in the first place.
Just for the record, many Gaza civilians who were able to pick up and flee like the IDF leaflets told them to, returned home to find outrageous and unnecessary vandalism to their homes and property committed by IDF soldiers while they occupied the area. The notion that this was done to offend Hamas fighters is ridiculous. It was done to offend and violate the homes of Palestinian civilians.
“In the midst of all of this were plastic bottles of urine and many closed bags - in some houses, olive-colored ones - of excrement. People assumed that the commanders stayed there. There are houses where excrement was smeared on the walls, or where dry piles of it were found in corners. In many cases, the smells indicated that soldiers had urinated on piles of clothing or inside a washing machine. In all the houses the toilets were overflowing and clogged, and there was filth all around. When the Abu Eidas returned to house No. 5 in Jabalya, they discovered pots of urine and excrement in the refrigerator.” Haaretz
Lastly, after siting his source-less conclusion about the numbers of actual civilian casualties and then trying to fix the blame for the rest of them on the victims themselves, Mr. Sisk then conjures up the ghost of propaganda past in an effort to blame Hamas for the civilian deaths. I guess Mr. Sisk is covering all the bases in his effort to “program” the community of Springfield.
“Palestinian civilians, consistently used by Hamas as human shields and political pawns...”. Sisk.
The old “human shield” meme, huh?
This claim has been widely dismissed as Israeli political cover for their collateral damage in the occupied territories for years. Though there doesn’t seem to be any substantiated evidence of members of Hamas using Palestinian civilians as “human shields”, it is a gross distortion of reality that just won’t go away. There are no actual, verifiable cases of Hamas using Palestinians as human shields.
IDF using Palestinians as human shields
But in fact there are several examples of Israeli soldiers using Palestinian children and civilians in such a manner. There are ample photos and videos floating out there where you can plainly see IDF soldiers forcing children to proceed them as they kick in doors in the West Bank and Gaza, and there is even a 2005 Israeli Supreme Court case where the IDF argued to keep the practice of “human shields” legal.
“Israel’s supreme court has banned the use of Palestinian human shields in arrest raids, saying the practice violates international law.” BBC
But of course, the IDF
practice continues anyway and there are plenty of videos out there
since 2005 showing them still using hand-cuffed Palestinians as as
shields as they go door to door, or in some cases at check-points.
There are also reports of IDF soldiers keeping Palestinian civilians
in houses that they occupied and fired weapon from, knowing that the
Hamas fighters would be less likely to retaliate against their
position because the civilians were there. This is another example of
this IDF “human shield” practice that has been widely reported.
Now after all of this strained and predominately artificial “evidence”, Mr. Sisk finally comes to his Springfield Jewish Federation approved conclusion:
“And people actually have the chutzpah to say that Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians is inhumane or that Israel has even committed war crimes against the Palestinians? Please.“ Sisk
Though what I have touched on here doesn’t begin to address the vast litany of documented cases of human rights violations leveled at the IDF and Israel by multiple credible sources, including Israeli human rights organizations and the world at large, I certainly hope it shows the people of Springfield the hollow nature of Mr. Sisk’s opinion piece: how it’s shallow and transparent attempt to twist the story of what happened in Gaza for the benefit of the IDF casts a rather disturbing light on what passes as historical “fact” these days.
It’s quite obvious, to anyone with the most cursory knowledge of what happened in Gaza, that serious violations of international law occurred there at the hands of the IDF. Violations that must be addressed lest we forget the mantra “never again”.
It is also obvious that Mr. Sisk is allowing his own personal agenda and that of the SJF to distort his view of the realities on the ground in Gaza.
We should not, we must not, allow Mr. Sisk’s perverted version of history become our common understanding of the recent events in Gaza. Truth is important, far more so than the biased ’spin” that Mr. Sisk here would have the good people of Illinois believe.
It is for that reason and that reason alone that I take the time to respond to the twisted history of Mr. Sisk.
I have no agenda like Mr. Sisk does and I sit atop no committees of “community-wide programming” like he does.
But to me, and many others like Scott Humphries, the truth is important; it is powerful.
Which is exactly why Mr. Sisk doesn’t want the people of Springfield to have it and why we felt the need to offer it to them.
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