Did you know there was a big battle in Rafah, near the Egyptian border? Did you also know that it took place in a mosque and a home? Did you further know that civilians were killed in the crossfire?
Of course you didn’t. Because it was Palestinians killing Palestinians (or maybe some foreign Arab fighters). So there’s no outcry from HRW. There’s barely a blip of notice in the wire services’ radar. No statement from the UN, no world outcry—because dead Palestinians don’t count unless they were killed by—or accused of being killed by—Israelis.
The fighting broke out late Friday when Hamas security men surrounded a mosque in the southern Gaza town of Rafah on the Egyptian border where about 100 members of Jund Ansar Allah were holed up.
[…] The Hamas forces raided the mosque, setting off a fierce gunbattle. Flares lit up the sky and the sound of machine gun fire echoed throughout the night.
Moussa escaped with some bodyguards to his home where another standoff ensued.
Here’s the AP spin:
Gaza’s Hamas rulers said they had restored law and order to the seaside territory Sunday after a bloody weekend of clashes with an al-Qaida-inspired group.
The militant Palestinian group crushed a challenge from Jund Ansar Allah, or the Soldiers of the Companions of God, one of a number of small, shadowy factions that are even more radical than Hamas.
[…] At least 150 people were wounded in the fighting, which began Friday afternoon after Moussa’s fiery speech and continued throughout the night in two fierce gunbattles outside his mosque and his home.
No mention of the fact that an 11-year-old girl was killed. There were two human rights groups protesting the casualties—Palestinian human rights groups, and props to them for speaking out. The more shame to the UN and HRW.
I won’t hold my breath waiting for HRW to issue a special report condemning this. As I recall, they didn’t condemn the Lebanese for brutally suppressing another al Qaeda splinter group last year, though many civilians were killed. Because, of course, it wasn’t Jews doing the killing.
You are wrong here, Meryl. The world did not ignore this slaughter of innocents. In the national edition of the New York Times it was discussed in a small article on page A10. So there. What did you want, for them to treat the murder of twenty-odd Palestinians as a moral outrage comparable to Israel’s evicting a few non-rent payers after lengthy litigation, which is the real international scandal?
They’ll be counted, eventually… added to one of the “Palestinians killed in 2009 by Israeli actions or inactions” statistics or somesuch.