AR&IO: When the U.N. Lies About Israel… Nobody Questions It.

a United Nations inquiry has found
Israeli forces may have committed war crimes and crimes against humanity by targeting unarmed children journalists and the disabled in Gaza the report released by the UN Human Rights Council Thursday looked at Israel's bloody response to weekly great march of return demonstrations launched by Palestinians in Gaza nearly a year ago if you listen to the radio you may have heard it said that Israel is now facing allegations that they are guilty of crimes against humanity that the guilty of war crimes that they're guilty of shooting and killing children with snipers when these children were engaged in peaceful protests at the Israeli border these allegations come from a United Nations Human Rights Council and right away this narrative stirs up emotions perhaps contradictory and collected emotions for some perhaps just sympathy for the side that is getting shot dead it's completely understandable but sympathy especially in politics must always be used as an analytical tool and if you want to really understand what's going on here let's not be vague let's look at the particulars and let's try to sympathize also with the side that's been pulling the triggers because I can tell you when I did the research on this when I started looking into it how could I or how could anyone else who's on the other side of that fence with orders to shoot people who are starting to cut through the fence how could they have acted differently quote Israeli security forces I'm just gonna say it the Israeli military the Israeli military chard a 16 year old in the neck with live ammunition at the demonstration or this so-called peaceful protest was taking place on August 3rd where he had crossed the barbed wire together with other youths let's just pause for a moment the picture you see on screen this is not the same young man but this is a group of young men doing the same thing part of the same protest this is not necessarily the same day not necessarily the same young men all right but this is indicative now what you see happening here at this fence barbed wire and so on if this were any other border in the world what would you expect the soldiers to do what if these were I don't know Mexicans coming up to a barbed wire fence where American boarders were guarding the fence with orders to shoot to kill someone if they try to cut through the fence or if they come through the barbed wire what if it was the border between Iran and Turkey what if it was the border between China and India what if was the border between India and Pakistan any border in the world guarded with a fence guarded by heavily armed men if you had people coming up and trying to cut through the fence and so on what do you expect these soldiers to do now in this case especially this is a context where there's smoke in the air there are in fact explosive devices being used by the Palestinian side being sent over explosive and incendiary devices there are also rocks being hurled there are various things that add to the sense of of ongoing conflict but we continue he was hurling stones at the Israeli military from a distance of approximately 20 meters from the separation fence the Israeli military opened heavy fire on the group striking the young man who was then transferred to a hospital in Hebron where he remained for two weeks he returned to Gaza and was admitted the intensive care unit but was pronounced dead in September the Commission finds that this young man did not pose an imminent threat of death or serious injury to the Israeli soldiers when he was shot so let's not be vague people this can be vaguely described as quote unquote shooting a child who was quote unquote not a threat at a quote unquote peaceful protest take a look at this short film clip and you tell me if by any reasonable definition let alone a United Nations definition this could be described as a peaceful protest a group of protesters splits off and digs in at the barbed wire the IDF is caught off guard they race up in jeeps the protesters throw stones and firebombs the IDF responds again with a barrage of gas pushing many of the protesters back having an ideology is easy having sympathy is hard work it's tough it's exhausting it's demoralizing and that's exactly what I'm here to ask you to do I'm here to ask you to have some detachment and some compassion not just for the people who got shot but also for the men who pulled the triggers and why not for the purpose of building up your self-esteem not to make yourself feel like you're better than those who happen to disagree with you those who have to be members of a rival political party I'm asking to do it for the sake understanding what this situation is the difference between fiction and nonfiction and the sometimes pernicious role that not merely national governments play in this game but the United Nations itself that the United Nations has in many ways become no better than and no different from the lowest form of biased journalism this is a separate account of a 16 year old being shot dead by the Israeli army and at 16 years old this account can be indeed categorized as a child shot dead as they're using 18 as the legal definition of the beginning of adulthood 5:00 p.m. on the 7th of September the Israeli military shot this 16 year old in the chest as he was approximately 300 meters from the fence walking toward it he died from his injuries on the same day according to an eyewitness there was a heavy presence of the Israeli military on the Israeli side of the fence on the afternoon that he was shot a group protesters had been burning tires throwing rocks and launching incendiary kites near the fence which started a fire in an Israeli military communication tower it just pause room here I know it may sound like a joke these incendiary kites I looked into it it is not a joke these are deadly serious they've done very serious damage to property and in this case it wasn't just a field full of corn that lit on fire the Israeli military on the other side of the fence there had their tower light on fire so I don't know what definition of a peaceful demonstration or peaceful protest you're using I do not see how any objective outside observer whether from the United Nations or from the New York Times I do not see how anyone could regard what's happening here as a peaceful protest and I don't know how you could expect the military defending a border in effect defending a fence defending a border garrison defending their tower I don't see how you would expect them to practice non-violence when this is what they're facing from the other side so Israeli military vehicles responded by firing live ammunition and tear gas toward the demonstrators photographs show heavy smoke fire and tear gas that afternoon while the demonstrations were certainly chaotic and threatening the Commission does not find that this young man posed an imminent threat of death or serious injuries to Israeli military soldiers when he was shot now I ask you in those conditions if it were you if you were on the Israeli military side would you have pulled the trigger freedom of the press does not consist only of the freedom to tell the truth it does include the freedom to misrepresent and to lie and it's very very easy to misrepresent the facts when they're in such an emotionally charged context in this case we're told 35 of those killed were children three were clearly identifiable paramedics and two were marked as journalists this makes it sound as if the Israeli military were intentionally targeting paramedics how is it possible that at a protest just by accident or happenstance they would happen to shoot so many paramedics this claim becomes absurd when you simply look at the numbers at this series of protests transpiring over several months over 6,000 people were shot out of those 6,000 only a few were journalists and paramedics and as you're about to see the journalists and paramedics were very much bunched together with the protesters surrounded by smoke and so on and to some extent they were participating in the protests coming right up to the fence and so on on the contrary these same numbers do indicate the extent to which the Israeli military were taking great pains making great efforts not to shoot children journalists and paramedics because this is a tremendously small percentage of the more than 6,000 people who did indeed get shot does that sound surreal and cold and cruel for me to say that this is politics this is political analysis we have to be sympathetic cold and cruel by turns let's remind notice two people point they told us they saw where the bullet hit the ground just a few feet from the medics the bullet continued onward this is the 21st century and these events tend to be recorded from many different angles on many different video cameras on many different mobile phones not to mention security cameras maintained by the military what have you and the New York Times they took the story of a medic of a nurse who was shot in the center of her chest and they really put in the work to make a complex 3d model in a diagram and to figure out the precise trajectory of the bullet and how it was that she was shot in the center of her chest I would like to suggest to you as a speculation that when they started doing that research they probably imagined that they would want to prove that the Israeli military intentionally with cruel disregard for human life targeted and shot this woman in the middle of her chest despite the fact that she was there as a medic that she was there just to help injured protesters but in fact as you can see from this diagram on screen what the New York Times figured out was that the border guards fired a warning shot that struck the ground and then this warning shot ricocheted up and hit this woman as it happens right in the center of the chest there's absolutely no way the border guard could have intentionally planned for this ricochet to hit her on the contrary they were trying to move the protesters back in a situation again that is so violent it really cannot be described as a protest at all and I think amongst the numbers of killings what we also found which was a great concern was the fact that protected groups who are protected categories international law protected persons such as children people with disabilities and also the health workers and journalists were amongst those who were both killed it's really easy to tell this tale in terms of contrasting ideological extremes on the one hand you have the extremes of the Muslim fundamentalists and the other hand you have people like this shown on screen American Christian fundamentalists who will support Israel and support the Israeli military no matter how many crimes against humanity they may commit so on and so forth but there's another more subtle and pervasive form of idealism at work here in terms of what the United Nations has done in publishing this report and what the mainstream press has done in recycling and propounding it in a totally unquestioning manner and the report if you just even read what I have on screen for you here the report has internal contradictions it makes no sense for Barbara Bebo who's earning a good living earning a salary from Al Jazeera to write this article it makes no sense for it a simply quote wholesale to just word-for-word copy what to die Nations has told her the situation is especially not when look at the highlighted text there highlighted in yellow when you're reporting that these people were hurling stones using incendiary kites and balloons so fire bombs of various kinds and we're cutting through the fence at the border and you're just reporting this as if there's no contradiction there if there's nothing further to reflect on there's no contradiction within the source recording from your reporting that this was a peaceful protest and then it was a crime against humanity for these people to be shot when cutting holes through the fence etc now if you go up to a prison and you're on the outside you're having a quote unquote peaceful protest in front of a prison and then you start cutting through the fence will you be shot is it or is it not the job of the prison guards to shoot you if you are protesting at the border between any two countries pick any example you like again the border between Iran and Turkey to use to Muslim nation so let's say hey the border between Turkey and and Cyprus there's a contentious border where there sometimes are protests if you're who don't quote protesting at that bar border and there are fire bombs etc and then people are cutting through the fence and you're just gonna report on this in this manner you're just gonna reproduce without questioning the contradictions within the United Nations report why does the United Nations even exist and why does so-called independent journalism exist if this is what you get from sources as diverse as Al Jazeera and democracy now I'll play the clip again democracy now as we heard the opening of this video a United Nations inquiry has found Israeli forces may have committed war crimes and crimes against humanity by targeting unarmed children journalists and the disabled in Gaza let's not fall into the trap of complaining that a human being is merely all too human when they went to the United Nations to get an opinion they did not get an objective and unbiased opinion from a faceless institution they got the opinion of Sarah Hossein Sarah Hossein has her own Wikipedia article if you think Sarah Hossein is an unbiased and detached observer of the asleep that's the conflict you must be dreaming Sarah Husain represents someone who has lived her entire life an unbelievable level of privilege beginning with her degree from Oxford University and proceeding to being in the Supreme Court of Bangladesh and now being one of the Lords of poverty over at the United Nations so don't judge based on appearances don't just judge based on her name or the fact that she is Bangladeshi but the perspective of Sarah Hussain is going to be much much different than if you employed someone either to conduct this research or to present the findings in a reasonable way to the press on behalf the other nations if you employed someone who maybe had combat experience someone who had himself or herself served as a border guard who had been through those types of conflicts maybe you'd get a different perspective than you would from presenting someone who was the winner of the 2016 International Women of Courage Award awarded by the United States Secretary of State Sarah Husain does not represent the United Nations and there's the further deeper question of who or what the United Nations itself is supposed to represent these questions were already raised decades ago in a book that was popular at the time but has now been forgotten 1994 lords of poverty the more fundamental questions we have to ask you in terms of what are the vectors for political change I don't think they can be productively directed towards the Palestinians you're not really going to be able to appeal to Hamas to having a more enlightened perspective on this and they can't be directed towards the teenagers doing military service pulling the triggers standing on the other side of that fence it is not reasonable to demand that in the name of human rights they stand idly by and let people cut through the barbed wire and cut through the fence and come through that would only lead to them shooting them what's the through the other side of the fence it's absurd but what we can do productively I think here and now a difference we can make in just the next couple of years is start to criticize and question the United Nations the role played by the United Nations here and then the role played by the mainstream press people who are earning a lot more money than I do click on the link below this video you can find out exactly how many dollars and cents that make our doing political analysis on YouTube by the way people were making more money than I do and who are taking propaganda generated by particular people with particular political biases of the United Nations and they're just repackaging it and presenting it to the public as so-called independent journalism [Music]