Israel’s war on “terrorists”

15Jan08

On Sunday, Shin Bet chief Yuval Diskin claimed that Israeli military forces have killed roughly 1,000 “terrorists” in Gaza over the past two years. In doing so, he branded every Palestinian killed by the IDF in Gaza throughout 2006 and 2007 a “terrorist” – including, as B’Tselem points out, 152 minors, including 48 children under the age of 14, as well as “many men and women [who] were killed in Gaza who took no part in the hostilities”.

Security sources later issued a correction, stating that 810 Palestinians were killed in that time period, roughly 200 of whom were ‘not clearly linked to terrorist organisations’ (i.e. they were non-combatants). Even this correction was a mistake, as Ha’aretz notes, since it significantly underestimates the number of civilian deaths, which Ha’aretz puts at 360 and B’Tselem places at 453.

This is not the first time Israeli officials have made this “mistake”. In December 2006, Ehud Olmert boasted that the IDF had killed “more than 400 members of terrorist organisations” in six months. In fact, 206 of those Palestinians killed were civilian non-combatants.

It seems that for the Israeli government and the IDF, all Palestinians are terrorists. That would certainly explain a lot.


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