While the western media is busy filling the gaps with the failed assassination attempt on former US president Donald Trump, contesting against the incumbent Joe Biden in the upcoming US elections, the media has been mum on Israel’s targeted sniper shots killing Palestinian civilians, including children, in broad daylight. The global surge in “condemnation of violence” from leaders across the world has surfaced all over the internet, sending prayers to Mr Trump, but what has been done for common defenceless Palestinians stranded to be shot dead by Israeli Defense Force (IDF) in besieged Gaza?
Failed assassination attempt on Trump
On Sunday, when Mr Trump was addressing a crowd at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, gunshots by a 20-year-old man injured his ear, making him bleed and fall. Soon he regained his balance and was evacuated to a safe location. The retaliation attack by the Secret Service killed the sniper, Thomas Matthew Crooks, and a 50-year-old attendee, Coret Comperatore. While the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has taken up the urgent investigations instantly into the shooter and his intent, condemnations from world leaders have poured in support of Mr Trump, starting from his political rival, Mr Biden.
Condemning the attack, Mr Biden wrote on X (formerly Twitter), “There’s no place in America for this kind of violence—or any violence. An assassination attempt is contrary to everything we stand for as a nation.”
“Political violence in any form has no place in our societies and my thoughts are with all the victims of this attack,” said the new British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer.
In his prime-time national address, Mr Biden expressed, “We cannot allow this violence to be normalised.” He urged for unity as “one nation to condemn it.”
However, does this solidarity against targeted violence only apply to septuagenarian American politicians like Mr Trump or does it extend beyond the borders, to other victims as well?
Israeli sniper shots kill Palestinian children
Located near the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea, Gaza is one of the most densely populated areas of the world, where Israel has committed some of the heinous war crimes since October 7th. The most horrific among those are targeted killings of defenceless women and children, even by Israeli snipers.
Hind Rajab, a six-year-old Palestinian child was shot 355 times while she was trapped inside a car with her family members, all killed by the Israeli Defense Force (IDF), for hours. Miss Rajab had managed to call the Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PCRS) to seek emergency help. The members reached the location and got the green signal to rescue the trapped child, however, upon advancing, the IDF’s deliberate rain of gunshots killed the members of the PCRS as well as the little girl.
The world has been helplessly watching Israel’s onslaught with wide eyes as even the proliferated body of Miss Rajab did not stop the Israeli forces from targeting innocent children.
Just last week, the IDF aimed and shot dead multiple civilians, including women and children, in Gaza right after issuing a new evacuation order to the south. The Israeli military shot the fleeing civilians directly in their heads and chests, making it difficult even for the paramedics to advance to retrieve the fallen bodies.
Two 15-year-old children, Mahmoud Amjad Ismail Hamadneh, and Osama Mohammad Naim Abdulatif Hujair, were killed in a military offensive into the Jenin camp by the IDF in May, as per the Defense for Children’s International Palestine (DCIP). Hamadneh, a defenceless child, was fatally shot multiple times in his chest, head and foot. Hujair was shot dead near Jenin Government Hospital while he was riding his bicycle.
The DCIP also reported the shooting of 16-year-old Khaled Raed Suleiman Arouq by Israeli snipers in April in the West Bank, hitting his chest from a distance of 40 to 50 metres.
In another event, on February 9th this year, Israeli snipers killed over a score of innocent Palestinian civilians outside Nasser Hospital in Gaza.
In the same month, the targeted killing of women and children by the IDF highlighted Israel’s war crimes, with no real repercussions. The UN experts expressed their shock in acknowledgement of the killings and kidnappings of women and children by the IDF.
“We are shocked by reports of the deliberate targeting and extrajudicial killing of Palestinian women and children in places where they sought refuge, or while fleeing. Some of them were reportedly holding white pieces of cloth when they were killed by the Israeli army or affiliated forces,” the experts said on February 19th.
The Euro-Med Monitor recorded at least eight Palestinians being killed in Israeli sniper and shooting operations in Khan Yunis of Southern Gaza. Among the victims of the horrific targeted killings was 14-year-old Ru’a Atef Qadeeh, who was killed by the Israeli snipers while she was struggling to retrieve water from a nearby area.
Volunteers and security guards have also been targeted victims of the IDF as they lost their lives earlier this year to Israeli snipers. Four Palestinians, including the director of the Youth and Volunteers Department, Hadaya Hamad, were killed on February 2nd in the Khan Younis area.
Late in January, a security guard at the Al-Amal Hospital, (PRCS)-run by the Palestinian Red Crescent Society in Khan Yunis, was shot to death by Israeli army snipers while standing near the back door of the hospital.
Why snipers are a big threat?
These targeted killings by Israeli snipers, victims of whom are innocent children and defenceless civilians, have not stopped since October 7th. The problem of sniper shots
Sniper shots are taken by trained snipers with long-range rifles. While Hamas fighters generally use Soviet, Chinese and Iranian weapons, according to the IDF, its snipers use “industry standard 7.62mm ammunition, in use by many state militaries including NATO members.” IDF also uses several US-made sniper rifles.
While over 38,000 Palestinians have been killed since October 7th, there is a stark contrast in sniper shots and aerial bombings or missile strikes.
Now when a target is hit by a missile or using an aerial raid, the IDF and Israel’s supporters can use excuses to justify killing innocent civilians. The most common among them is to call it “collateral damage” or claim innocence stating that it couldn’t see all the people inside a building while dropping a bomb on it. However, that’s not the case for sniper shots.
According to the IDF, it has a standard operating procedure (SOP) for its snipers.
This is what it states:
“According to IDF Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs), in contexts such as the Gaza border events, potentially lethal force could only be used in circumstances in which there is a real and imminent danger to human life or bodily integrity. Dangers that are not as serious could not be dealt with by the use of such force. Moreover, the use of potentially lethal force must be a measure of last resort, and thus could only be used when non-lethal means have been exhausted, when it was necessary to use such force in order to address the danger. In addition, the use of such force must be proportionate in relation to the danger (sic).”
Suppose Hind Rajab’s killing and that of several other victims of Israeli sniper shots are considered. In that case, it can be easily found that the IDF not only violates international combat rules but also violates its own SOP.
Did Miss Rajab pose a “real and imminent danger to human life or bodily integrity” or were all “non-lethal means” exhausted when the IDF decided to kill her? All those children who were shot, did they pose an imminent threat? Did the IDF use force “proportionate” to the threat posed?
These are questions that haven’t been answered yet by any top IDF officials and the US, which wholeheartedly supports Israel’s aggression, has never questioned the IDF’s intent behind the massacres.
Why the hypocrisy over targeted attacks on children in Gaza?
The victims of targeted killings by the IDF are innocent Palestinian civilians whose only crime seems to be born as a Palestinian, in a land they are indigenous to. The world leaders seem to normalise the atrocities and violence against the Palestinian children while they remain “united against violence of any kind” against their ilk after a failed assassination attempt on a political leader.
The quick surge of condemnation and rapid action into the investigation highlights the double standards among world leaders, especially the Americans who have been regularly and openly supplying arms to Israel to carry out “violence” and destruction in the besieged Gaza Strip.
As per the 2023 report on arms and conflicts by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), the USA accounted for 69% of Israeli arms imports. The decades-long import of weapons, especially combat aircraft, is being heavily used in the ongoing onslaught by Israel in Gaza against unarmed and displaced civilians. The report read, “At the end of 2023 the USA rapidly delivered thousands of guided bombs and missiles to Israel.”
Fuelled by instant actions over Mr Trump’s failed assassination attempt, people ask why there is hypocrisy when Palestinians are killed by Israeli snipers vis-a-vis a high-profile political leader’s ear injury.
A war Chief International Correspondent, Elijah J. Magnier writes, “The Palestinians get thousands of bullets everyday and the shooters are free, supported by the West, and the world doesn’t move an inch(sic).”
Questions on why one injury of a political leader shook the world but hundreds of victims of Israeli snipers go unnoticed are compelling and underline the double standards of the West on violence and human rights.
What else could be the destructive implications of such an attitude of the western leaders, apart from the haunting numbers—over 38,000—of Palestinian civilians killed by Israel for nine months continuously?
