According to Muhammad Khalid Sayed (Politicsweb, 2 July), boycotting Israel is not a “malicious response” but one called for by straightforward principles of international law and human rights. This he illustrates with reference to the 2014 Israel-Hamas conflict, which he depicts as having been essentially an unprovoked act of criminal aggression by Israel against the innocent Palestinian population of Gaza, one in which over a thousand innocent men, women and children were wantonly slaughtered. Such caricatures of the conflict were commonplace at the time, and have since resurfaced following the recent publication of the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) report on what transpired.
In reality, threats to hold Israel accountable for “war crimes” are empty ones. Were it to appear before a genuinely impartial judicial tribunal, Israel would have little difficulty in tearing such allegations to shreds. It would show that the 2014 Gaza conflict was a war forced upon it by continual missile attacks by Hamas on its citizens and territory.
It would present incontrovertible evidence that in carrying out these attacks, Hamas based its operations in the very heart of its own civilian population, knowing full well that deaths and injuries to non-combatants would inevitably ensue. Perhaps most importantly, it would present in exhaustive detail the lengths its military went to avoid, or at least minimize civilian casualties and how in the process it not only met an acceptable international standard of observance of the laws of armed conflict, but in many cases significantly exceeded that standard.
Testifying to this effect would be experienced military professionals who fully understand how formidable the challenges are for military forces to protect civilians while still fight effectively in densely populated civilian areas. In the words of an independent team of military experts who conducted their own investigation into the war, “none of us is aware of any army that takes such extensive measures as did the Israeli Defence Force last summer to protect the lives of the civilian population in such circumstances”.
Significantly, even the UNHRC report acknowledged the efforts Israel had made to avoid harming civilians. It further unequivocally condemned Hamas for, amongst other things, deliberately firing of missiles at Israeli civilians, executing dozens of Palestinians without trial, encouraging Gaza residents to disregard IDF warnings and using terror tunnels built with humanitarian aid to attack and kidnap Israelis.
More pertinent from a specifically South African point of view is Sayed’s assertion that the campaign by Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) to promote a boycott of Israel is not ‘malicious’. Theoretically, this may be true, but how, in practice, have BDS campaigns played out in South Africa?