Fatah-Hamas must be held accountable for Gaza war

The United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) proves yet again that it supports terror over democracy as part of its agenda for ‘peace’. It has announced that a known anti-Israel law professor will chair a UN ‘investigation’ into Israel’s having committed war crimes in Gaza (“Israel, U.S. Reject UN's Gaza Panel”, Arutz Sheva, August 12, 2014). The UNHRC ignores completely the crimes of the terror organization Hamas. It chooses instead to criminalize the democratic state of Israel.

If the UNHRC will investigate Israel for war crimes, perhaps the UN Security Council (UNSC) should call for an immediate and credible investigation into the Fatah-Hamas Unity government for its role in waging a war of aggression against a sovereign state.  Through its Charter, the UN is committed to uphold the rule of peace. Therefore, the UN must hold the Fatah-Hamas Unity government accountable for initiating war. The UN must also hold the Fatah-Hamas government accountable for adopting criminal policies against both Jews and its own Arab citizens.  

As part of this investigation, the UNSC must label the Fatah-Hamas government as a criminal enterprise, one that has been founded and organized for the purpose of committing crimes against the state of Israel. Specifically, the UNSC must investigate the Fatah-Hamas government for organizing its policies around the criminal intent to destroy Israel.

We all know that the Fatah-Hamas government is a criminal enterprise. We see it in its founding Charters. Those Charters advocate the crime of destroying a sovereign state--Israel.

The Fatah-Hamas government creates government policies that institutionalize crimes against Jews. It encourages systematic attacks that (1) dehumanize the Jews of Israel, (2) advocate the extermination of the Jews of Israel, (3) encourage the kidnapping of Jewish civilians, (4) promote racial and religious persecution of the Jews of Israel, and (5) advocate the killing of Jewish civilians.

Most of these crimes are advocated explicitly in the Hamas Charter. All of these crimes are part of the on-going declarations of Unity government officials. Each of these crimes is advocated by that government. All of these crimes are encouraged, condoned or tolerated by that government.

By initiating a war against Israel, the Fatah-Hamas unity government has committed crimes against peace (Kochavi, Arieh J, Prelude to Nuremberg: Allied War Crimes Policy and the Question of Punishment, University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, NC, 1998, p. 225). ‘Crimes against peace’ is an old-fashioned concept. It’s not in vogue. But it helps to understand the crimes Fatah-Hamas has committed.

For example, the Fatah-Hamas government has planned, prepared and initiated a war of aggression against a sovereign state (Israel) (ibid, p. 225). It has furthermore conspired to violate the customary rules of war in the following ways: it has fired more than 12,000 rockets over nine years at a civilian population (Israel).  It has abused the sanctity of mosques, hospitals, schools and UN facilities by using each of these structures for war purposes.  It sends fighters into battle with no identifiable military uniform.

These are crimes for which the Fatah-Hamas government must be held accountable.

The Fatah-Hamas unity government must also be held accountable for inhumane criminal acts it has perpetrated against its own civilian population. This government, with malice aforethought, has committed the following crimes against its own citizens: (1) it fires rockets (at Israel) from within densely populated residential areas, (2) it stores weapons inside personal homes of civilians, (3) it builds entrances to terror tunnels inside private residences, (4) it uses ambulances for the transportation of weapons and terrorists, (5) it uses its own citizens as human shields to attempt to immunize legitimate military targets against attack and (6) it has murdered its own civilians, killing those accused of ‘collaboration’—and committing those murders with no due process given to the victim. In addition, the Fatah-Hamas government has promoted, publicized, advocated and demanded that its own civilians volunteer to become human shields.

The Fatah-Hamas unity government has a record of criminal inhumanity. Its very existence is founded upon two criminal intents—to destroy the sovereign state of Israel, and to kill and/or ethnically cleanse Jews.

The Fatah-Hamas government is a criminal enterprise. It must be held accountable.

The International Criminal Court (ICC), through the Rome Statutes, has defined a ‘crime against humanity’ as including the following activities that Fatah-Hamas undertakes as part of its systematic attack against the civilian population of Israel: the murder, imprisonment and kidnapping of Jews in/from Israel; and the discrimination against Jews for racial and religious reasons.

If the Fatah-Hamas government is not held accountable for these crimes, there will be no peace.  There will be only war. Indeed, there can never be peace with those who, without repentance, wage a war of aggression against another.

The UNSC must investigate the Fatah-Hamas government for its crimes.