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Israel Rejects UN War Crimes Claim
(Times of Israel) Jeremy Sharon - Israel has rejected a report issued on June 19 by the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) accusing it of having "systematically violated" key principles of the laws of armed conflict during the war against Hamas in Gaza. It detailed the IDF's use of bombs in densely populated areas, and focused on six specific incidents. The Israeli response, authored by Israel's delegation to the UN in Geneva, noted that the OHCHR based its claims on the outcomes of attacks instead of assessing the decision-making process behind them, as is required when assessing the legality of an attack. Israel pointed out that Hamas's comprehensive use of civilian infrastructure in Gaza had turned a multitude of previously civilian sites into military ones, meaning that broad swaths of urban Gaza had become legitimate military targets. Moreover, Israel observed that Hamas's list of fatalities includes male combatants who are listed as women, minors who have been identified as combatants, and men who have been identified as combatants. Hamas's fatality list also includes deaths caused by Hamas and other terror groups, including by misfired munitions and explosives placed in areas populated by civilians. Israel noted that attacks cannot be legally evaluated based on the outcome, but rather "only the harm that could reasonably be anticipated at the time of the decision." The Israeli response concluded: "It is apparent that the document suffers from hindsight and methodological biases which cast a shadow on the credibility of its legal assessment."