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B Y S A M U E L S O K O L

ISRAEL CORRESPONDENT

The United Nations Afghanistan

Annual Report on Protection of Civilians

in Armed Conflict, issued in January, has

absolved coalition forces of culpability

for the majority of civilian casualties in

the almost decade long allied occupation

of Afghanistan.

According to the report issued by the

United Nations Assistance Mission in

Afghanistan, at least 5,978 civilians were

killed and injured in 2009, the highest

number of civilian casualties recorded

since the fall of the Taliban regime in 2001.

Already in 2009 the United Nations

reported that the annually rising death toll

in the war ravaged Muslim nation was

mostly due to suicide attacks and impro-

vised explosive devices placed by insurgent

groups. While there was blame placed on

American forces for unnecessary casualties

amongst the civilian population, the 2009

report explained that the Taliban would

frequently attack coalition forces in dense-ly populated areas. The report did suggest

that coalition forces keep only a necessary

minimal military presence in civilian

zones, but did not go so far as to blame the

United States army for resultant deaths.

The Afghanistan report stands in stark

contrast to a report recently written by a

United Nations investigative team head-

ed by Judge Richard Goldstone, a South

African Jewish judge, which was sent to

conduct a post-mortem on Israels

January 2009 incursion into the Hamas

ruled Gaza Strip.

The Goldstone Report, as it is colloqui-

ally known, discusses eleven incidents in

which Israeli forces launched direct

attacks against civilians with lethal out-

come in which the facts indicate no jus-

tifiable military objective pursued by the

attack. These allegations of war crimes

on behalf of the Israeli Defense Forces

have been vociferously protested by

Israeli and Jewish leaders. Israeli Prime

Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called

the report a strategic threat, saying that

it hampers the ability of democracies to

fight terrorism and to engage in asym-

metrical warfare.

Ashley Perry, media advisor to Israeli

deputy foreign minister Danny Ayalon,

told the Five Towns Jewish Times that

Israel is held to a different standard than

other countries in international forums.

While not speaking about any particular

UN resolution, Perry said if the

Palestinian Authority said that the earth

was flat, an automatic majority at the

United Nations would vote to confirm it.

Dan McNortan, UNAMA spokesman in

Afghanistan, refused to comment regard-

ing allegations that the United Nations has

applied a different standard to the coali-

tion forces than it has in judging the IDF.

The United Nations alleged that

Israeli forces engaged in intentional

attacks against the civilian population

and civilian objects, in discussing

attacks on Gaza mosques.

While the mission only checked two

mosques, the missions military expert,

retired Irish Col. Desmond Travers, stated

with assurance that there was no evi-

dence that mosques were used to store

munitions. He said, Those charges

reflect Western perceptions in some

quarters that Islam is a violent religion,

ignoring the role that radical political

Islam plays in the worldview of Hamas.

When the IDF produced documentary

evidence of weapons being stored in

mosques in the Gaza Strip, Travers said

that he did not believe the photographs,

calling them spurious.

One of Hamass favorite tactics in fight-

ing Israeli forces is to cause the IDF to

respond to attacks originating from civil-

ian infrastructure such as hospitals and

mosques. Subsequent deaths and proper-

ty damage are then carefully filmed and

distributed to the press by members of

the de-facto Hamas government.

Noted Jewish-American jurist Alan

Dershowitz has spoken out harshly

against Richard Goldstone, calling him a

traitor and stating that his report accus-

es Israel of using Hamas rocket attacks

against its civilians as an excusea

coverfor a carefully planned and exe-

cuted policy of deliberately targeting

innocent civilians for mass murder.

Israel entered the Gaza Strip as a result

of almost a decade of continuing rocket

and mortar fire on its population centers

in the Western Negev desert.

The Israeli Defense Forces recently

issued a counter-report addressing some

of the war crimes allegations. The United

Nations blames Israel, rather than Hamas,

for the conflict, with the United Nationsreport going so far as to suggest Israeli

reparations to the population of the Gaza

Strip, a territory ruled by an internation-

ally recognized terrorist organization.

In the case of Israel, the United

Nations decided, the incident and pat-

terns of events that are considered in this

report have resulted from deliberate plan-

ning and policy decisions throughout the

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UN Afghanistan Report Shows DoubleStandard In Judging Civilian Casualties

Continued on Page 58

If the Palestinian Authority said

that the earth was flat, an

automatic majority at the United

Nations would vote to confirm it.

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chain of command, down to the standard

operating procedures and instructions

given to the troops on the ground.

The United Nations Afghanistan report,

on the other hand, noted that many attacks

on civilian targets originate from forces out-

side of the normal coalition chain of com-

mand. However, the UN stopped short of

saying that attacks on civilians or unintend-

ed deaths because of night bombing raids

were the product of a formal policy deci-sion to harm non-combatants.

Coalition forces have been given cred-

it for attempting to minimize civilian

casualties in Afghanistan. International

military forces did take strategic and spe-

cific steps to minimize civilian casualties

in 2009, according to the United Nations.

The change in ISAF command, clearer

command structures, and a new tactical

directive have all contributed to the

efforts by ISAF to reduce the impact of

the armed conflict on civilians.

In contrast, Israeli attempts to warn

civilians before airstrikes with pre-record-

ed telephone calls were dismissed as lack-

ing credibility and clarity.In summarizing its findings, the

Afghanistan Annual Report on Protection

of Civilians in Armed Conflict found the

ISAFs declared strategy of prioritizing

the safety and security of civilians is a

welcome development. By the same

token, the Taliban was blamed for active-

ly attacking Afghan civilians. The report

concludes, the inability or unwilling-

ness of the armed opposition to take

measures that preempt and reduce the

harm that their tactics entail for civilians

translates into a growing death toll and

an ever larger proportion of the total

number of civilian dead.

TheNew York Times reported in 2009

in the name of the United Nations that

for all the civilians killed at the hands of

the Afghan government and American-led

forces, the Afghan people have more to

fear from the insurgents. Significantly

more non-combatants have been injured

or killed in Afghanistan by allied troops

than by IDF forces in the Gaza Strip.

The former British commander in

Afghanistan, Col. Richard Kemp, told the

BBC that he did not think there has ever

been a time in the history of warfare

when any army has made more effort to

reduce civilian casualties and deaths of

innocent people than the [Israel Defense

Forces] is doing in Gaza.

A career diplomat with years of experi-ence at the United Nations confided that

it is no surprise that the United Nations

uses a different standard to judge Israel.

Speaking off the record and requesting to

remain anonymous, he mentioned the

UNHRCs refusal to condemn the brutal

tactics used by the Sri Lankan army

against Tamil insurgents last year. The

United Nations, he said, referred to the

brutal civil war as an internal matter.

Speaking in Dublin, Navi Pillai, the UN

High Commissioner for Human Rights,

called for an investigation of human

rights abuses in Sri Lanka. According to

the BBC, she expressed disappointment

that the issue of alleged war crimes in Sri

Lanka was not properly addressed at the

Human Rights Council.

The United Nations spokesman in

New York could not be reached by the

Five Towns Jewish Times for comment.O

UN ReportContinued from Page 57