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Democracy Now! reports
Meet Tarek Loubani, the Canadian Doctor Shot by Israeli Forces Monday While Treating Gaza's Wounded (Transcript)
As Palestinians vow to continue protesting against the Israeli occupation of Gaza, we speak to a Canadian doctor who was shot by Israeli forces in both legs Monday [May 14] while he was helping injured Palestinians. Israeli forces shot dead at least 61 unarmed Palestinian protesters taking part in the Great March of Return Monday, including one doctor. Canada, Britain, Germany, Ireland, and Belgium have called for an investigation into the killings. The United Nations Human Rights Council has announced that it will hold a special session Friday to discuss escalating violence in Gaza. We speak with Dr. Tarek Loubani, an emergency room medical doctor, one of 19 medical personnel shot in Gaza on Monday.
Audio and video links at the top of the page.
Pacifica Radio KPFK has a partial audio file, available till mid-July, ~7MB for the story. (KPFK is in fund drive mode.)
Gaza coverage begins at 13:25. The doctor's story is from 15:15 - 31:30.
He notes that the doctor who treated him was subsequently shot, resulting in his death--this, while he was wearing high-visibility clothing to denote his first-responder status.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Thexalon on Friday May 18 2018, @04:24PM (5 children)
Intentionally attacking somebody rendering medical care is a war crime under the First Geneva Conventions, of which Israel is a signatory.
The Israelis know this full well. And demonstrably don't care. And why should they? Anytime somebody points out that their policy towards the occupied territories is in violation of the Geneva Conventions, that somebody gets drowned out with cries of "OMG! ANTI-SEMITISM!" (if the critic is Jewish, then they get called "self-hating" instead), and the US uses its Security Council veto and military threat level to prevent the UN or any other individual country from doing anything about it.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 18 2018, @09:10PM
True, but if you're already shooting an unarmed civilians with sniper rifles, you're so far over the line that you might as well start shooting at medical personnel and see if you can get away with it.
The Israelis are rather impressive. They've managed to progress to the point of more or less literal Nazis in only 70 years. It took Germany much longer than that.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by tftp on Friday May 18 2018, @09:54PM (3 children)
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Friday May 18 2018, @11:57PM (2 children)
However, a lot of injuries appear at least to be of the "Boom! Headshot!" variety, not automatic rifle fire variety.
And I agree with you that no investigation will ever happen. Just a couple of days ago, I read an article calling for the US to mediate the dispute in Gaza, without even acknowledging the widespread understanding that the current US government, like the current Israeli government, would rather like to see both Gaza and its residents no longer exist.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday May 19 2018, @04:06PM (1 child)
Head shots? People tend to shoot high, more often than low. If there are a lot of head wounds, that would lead me to speculate that the troops were not accustomed to live firing on live targets. That is, excitement and adrenaline probably caused them to revert to untrained shooting, which tends to be high.
Even Israel probably doesn't field entire formations of snipers. If a sniper were employed here, he would have gone for high value targets. The men in the vehicles with the PA speakers, psyching the crowd up to attack, for instance. Or, may people who were more obviously in charge of things.
But, I don't want to argue. Let's just say that Israel had an entire company of snipers, all assembled at this protest/riot, and those snipers targeted random targets, getting almost universal head shots. If you follow that line of reasoning, it's not terribly far to the intersection of "Jews are evil" and "Jews are unhuman devils".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 19 2018, @10:06PM
One third of the total casualties from a small group of high-visibility medics off to the side of the main action. It is pretty obvious they were targeted.
That many medical aid workers shot mostly in the legs seems like a clear warning from Israel not to provide any support to the Palestinians.
They are not stupid, they know what 19 headshots would have provoked. Note that none of the medics were shot with the 'butterfly' bullets they are using on protesters.