Guilty anyway, suggests Fairfax reporter

Reporters so imbued with Palestinian chic and so keen to denounce Israel for war crimes might care to examine a certain cultural difference. Fairfax’s Ruth Pollard reports: 

Militants believed to be from the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigade publicly executed six men accused of collaborating with Israel, as Israel’s air force stepped up its aerial bombing campaign in one of the deadliest days of its military campaign in Gaza.

The corpse of a collaborator [alleged collaborator, please, Ms Pollard] was tied to the back of a motorcycle and dragged through central Gaza City in front of a convoy of bikes, his pants pulled down and his arms splayed behind him. 

Witnesses said six men had earlier been taken onto a main street in the Sheikh Radwan neighbourhood in Gaza City and forced to lay down on the ground, where they were shot to death.

The rest of Pollard’s article seems to treat the dead as guilty, the incident an aberration, the sentiments understandable, and the possibility of Muslim resistance to terrorist Hamas inconceivable - and I wonder if the same leniency would have been extended to Jews shooting “collaborators” and dragging their bodies through the street: 

“Some of the names that have been mentioned to me tonight [as collaborators who were killed] had already been charged and sentenced to death. They were not just taken from the street today and shot,” Mr Yousef said.

Charged by whom? Sentenced by whom? Which court ordered the dragging of the bodies? 

“Collaborators are a very serious issue in Palestinian society. According to many hundreds of cases there have been extremely serious crimes committed by collaborators, especially in situations like this.”

Is “collaborators” another word for “anti-Hamas”?

 

“It is the state of Israel targeting civilians and leaders of the resistance – they are doing it with drones but they are also using collaborators,” he said.

Israel is “targetting civilians”? Really? 

Indeed the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights notes that collaborators with Israel “are an integral part of the occupation’s structure and one of the most effective weapons used by the Israeli military in maintaining the illegal occupation”.

“Indeed” what, Ruth? And do you really mean “notes” or actually “claims”?

“Collaborators cooperate in, and even carry out, crimes of the Israeli military – crimes which often constitute war crimes as defined under international humanitarian law.”

Oh, “indeed” Israel commits “war crimes” through the use of “collaborators”? It maintains an “occupation”? Makes dragging these criminals through the streets seem too kind.

The Gaza conflict, through the eyes of a Fairfax reporter.