In strike after strike, a growing number of children have paid the price in Israel's offensive in Gaza
Throughout its military campaign in Gaza, Israel has faced mounting accusations of war crimes and genocide, including in a case brought by South Africa before the International Court of Justice, the United Nations' top court. The ICJ last year ordered Israel to do everything it can to prevent genocidal acts in Gaza, issuing a symbolic blow condemning the Israeli military's campaign in the enclave since the court has no power to enforce its rulings. Both Israel and the United States have rejected accusations of genocide.
But condemnation has also grown from within, with former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert telling the British newspaper The Guardian in a recent interview that by the spring, when the Israeli government abandoned negotiations for a permanent end to fighting, he had reached the conclusion that his country was committing war crimes.
Meanwhile, he said, a widely condemned proposal from Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz to build a so-called 'humanitarian city' over the ruins of hard-hit Rafah in southern Gaza and force Palestinians to live there would constitute ethnic cleansing. Olmert called the proposed site a 'concentration camp.'
Avi Melamed, a former Israeli military intelligence official, said that often in strikes, decisions of life and death are inevitably being made.
'If there is a person there that is, you know, responsible for terrible things … I would say, of course, we have to take this person down. But then, of course, comes the question, 'OK, what's the cost?''
'Is he sitting surrounded by 20 kids in a classroom? Probably, I would say I would not, I would not attack,' he said in a phone interview. 'If say, there is a probability that this person is finding shelter around among civilians, I would try to verify that to the best of my capacity and then to take the decisions.'
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NBC News
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