UN report a ‘sham’

Re: UN Report Critical Of Both Sides In Gaza War, June 23. The United Nations’ report on the 2014 Gaza war is a sham. Hamas’s actions — targeting Israeli civilians while using Palestinian civilians as human shields — were war crimes. Israel’s efforts to defend its citizens from attack were not.

Hamas, whose avowed aim is to annihilate Israel, started the war by using underground “terror tunnels” to sneak into Israel and kidnap and murder three Israeli teenagers. It illegally stored weapons in UN schools, fired rockets and mortars at Israel from Gaza’s dense population centres, placed its military command centre in the basement of Gaza’s largest hospital, and violated 11 ceasefires. Hamas’s attacks killed innocent Israelis like four-year-old Daniel Tragerman.

Israel, by contrast, made herculean efforts to protect Gaza’s civilians, including warning of impending strikes against nearby military targets. Col. Richard Kemp, former commander of British forces in Afghanistan, observed that Israel “has taken greater steps than any other army in the history of warfare to minimize harm to civilians in a combat zone.” Sadly, Hamas discouraged civilians from leaving military zones in a deliberate effort to create Palestinian “martyrs” whose deaths Hamas, the Palestinian Authority and the United Nations have all cynically exploited.

Stephen A. Silver, San Francisco.