NEW YORK, (PIC)
The UN special rapporteur on human rights defenders has accused the countries that provide Israel with weapons to kill more Palestinian civilians in Gaza of waging a “war on human rights.”
“There exist no moral arguments that can justify the continued sale of weapons to Israel by states that respect the principle of the universality of human rights,” the British daily The Guardian quoted UN rapporteur Mary Lawlor as saying on Thursday.
Saying that Israel has demonstrated over time that it will use such weapons “indiscriminately against Palestinians,” Lawlor noted that any claims by Israel of self-defense in reaction to the October 7 attacks by Hamas have long since been “invalidated” by the disproportionality of the response.
Noting that the concept of proportionality in conflict is included in Article 51 of the First Additional Protocol to the Geneva Conventions, however, the UN official stressed that now there are “ideological arguments” for continued weapons sales, “which I can only conclude place the value of Israeli lives over and above the value of Palestinian ones.”
“This is unconscionable,” Lawlor added, recalling that some Western countries including the US, the UK, Germany, France and Canada all highlighted their support for human rights defenders while continuing to arm Israel.
Citing data, she pointed out that between 2013 and 2022, 68 percent of weapons sales to Israel came from the US.
Lawlor mentioned the human rights defenders, journalists and health care workers that have been killed in the besieged Palestinian enclave over the past few months, recalling that this is a “war on women and children,” who account for a reported 72 percent of the nearly 32,000 Palestinians deaths in Gaza.
She highlighted UN reports saying that more than 122 journalists and media workers had been killed by the Israeli army in Gaza since the war started last August.
“Recently, in remarks celebrating the work of Ukrainian journalists, the US undersecretary for public diplomacy and public affairs said: ‘[I]t is our commitment to continue to lift up, empower, advocate for, and resource the voices that are showing what is happening on the ground.’”
“Not, it would seem, if those voices are Palestinian,” she said.
Health workers are another category of human rights defenders who have been killed or wounded by Israeli weapons in alarming numbers, Lawlor added.
“Israeli attacks on hospitals, medical facilities, ambulances and now aid convoys continue as if there were no international legal prohibitions, including in the first and fourth Geneva conventions, against such attacks. This is a war against humanitarian personnel: 162 staff members of UNRWA have been killed, as have 404 internally displaced persons sheltering in their premises,” she said.
