Every once in a while you'll hear a tidbit about how Israelis are mistreating Palestinians. Usually when something really terrible is perpetrated, like when a settler goes into a Mosque to kill people praying, or when the state of Israel sees fit to bombard the Church of Nativity for over a month, causing damage to century-old structures. While it is good that the world sees this the immensity of these acts make the actions of the state of Israel seem like abberations. The perception of these acts as so terrible and the resulting hue and cry raised over these acts obscures the small daily crimes perpetrated by Israel against Palestine and Palestinians, the accumulation of which is far more drastic in result than a massacre here or the desecration of a cultural landmark there.
I received these images a while back but haven't had the right context to write about them. I realized today that there never is a right context. These images don't show abberations in the behavior of the state of Israel but only one type of behavior exhibited daily by the state of Israel.
Article 18 of the Fourth Geneva Convention states in part:
Civilian hospitals organized to give care to the wounded and sick, the infirm and maternity cases, may in no circumstances be the object of attack, but shall at all times be respected and protected by the Parties to the conflict.
Israeli Military Damages Clinic 00: Palestinian clinic damaged after Israeli attack
Israeli Military Damages Clinic 03: Palestinian clinic damaged after Israeli attack
Note the part where Article 18 says: "maternity cases" as the next images shows destruction of a section of a clinic that is assigned to maternity care"
Israeli Military Damages Clinic 06: Palestinian clinic damaged after Israeli attack
Here the Israeli military destroyed an Ultrasound machine:
Israeli Military Damages Clinic 05: Palestinian clinic damaged after Israeli attack
Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention states in part:
No protected person may be punished for an offence he or she has not personally committed. Collective penalties and likewise all measures of intimidation or of terrorism are prohibited.
When a healthcare organization has not committed an offence then the convention states that it can't be punished. Destroying this clinic is collective punishment, intimidation and terrorism. It punishes Palestinians collectively for offences unlisted, it intimidates law abiding Palestinians to stop them from taking care of Palestinians, and it is terrorism because the only reason to destroy property in such a way is to induce fear for the purpose of stopping Palestinians from taking care of sick people. Not just sick Palestinians but any sick person who walks through the doors of a clinic because that is what healthcare workers do.
