Dutch Palestinian sues Gantz for killing his family members in Gaza war
The Hague (QNN)- On Israel’s election day, a Dutch court held a hearing on a war crimes case against the former general challenging incumbent Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The Hague District Court weighed on Tuesday if it should hear a lawsuit brought by a Dutch-Palestinian man, Ismail Ziada, seeking damages from Benny Gantz and a co-defendant for their role in the killing of six of his relatives during the 2014 Gaza War.
Ziada, who holds Dutch citizenship, asserts that he cannot get justice from the Israeli judiciary as a result of discriminatory practices faced by Palestinians in their quest to hold Israeli war criminals accountable, according to the Palestine Justice Campaign. The lawsuit was therefore filed under Dutch law, which upholds the principle of universal jurisdiction in civil proceedings involving Dutch citizens who are unable to get justice elsewhere.
On Sunday, July 20, 2014, the Israel air force bombed the Ziada family home in al-Bureij refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip resulting in the death of Ziada’s 70-year-old mother, three of his brothers, the wife of one of his brothers, his 12-year-old nephew, and a visitor who happened to be in the Ziada house at the time of the attack.
The Israeli occupation army claimed the house was a Hamas “command-and-control centre” and it killed members of its military wing and Islamic Jihad fighters and, therefore, was proportional.
Al Jazeera quoted Gantz saying that “The Israeli Defense Force is the most moral army in the world and I am proud to have served in it for almost 40 years and to have commanded it”.
The Israeli army started in August 2014 a mass war on the heavy-populated besieged enclave, targeting random targets. 2147 civilians were killed and 10870 others were wounded in the 50-day-long war.
