Why is the UN gaslighting Israel about kites?
Imagine a guy who gets mad and whips a frisbee at someone at close range. She’s too late raising her arms to protect herself, and it hits her right in the mouth, knocks a tooth loose, and she winds up needing dental surgery.
Later on, he gets angry at that same person again and picks up another frisbee. Now she hides her face while looking for something to defend herself with. He accuses her of overreacting and being manipulative to try to make him look threatening. “What are you worried about?” he says. “A frisbee is just a harmless toy.”
This is similar to how a UN human rights official is treating Israel now.
Recently, dozens of kites have flown over the Gaza border into Israel, including four in August that landed on Kibbutz Nahal Oz. Then on August 25th, a reporter asked Ravina Shamdasani, spokesperson for the UN Human Rights Office, as follows:
Israel has threatened Palestinians with expulsions and attacks, claiming that children’s kites from Gaza Strip landed in Israeli settlement near the border. What is your reaction to Israel offering such a pretext to escalate its attacks on Gaza?
Shamdasani didn’t challenge the assumptions that kites are just toys and that Israel is merely using them as a pretext for attacks. Instead, she replied by saying that threats of expulsion due to children’s kite flying are outrageous.
Whether Israel’s reaction to the kites is wise or proportionate is certainly open to question. But Israel’s concern that the kites could be weapons is completely reasonable, since Hamas has repeatedly used them in the past to start fires and carry explosives.
In 2018, numerous fires in Southern Israel were set by kites and balloons sent from Gaza with burning material attached. Hundreds of acres of forest were consumed. Some of these kites also carried explosives. Israel doesn’t even need the UN to take its word for it. A commission established by the United Nations Human Rights Council itself released a report which included the recommendation that Hamas, which it calls the ‘de facto authorities in Gaza,’ stop the use of incendiary kites and balloons.
In 2021, additional waves of incendiary balloons sparked more fires. As recently as September 2023, just weeks before the Oct. 7th massacre, incendiary devices carried by balloons from Gaza were once again setting fires in Southern Israel.
In this most recent round of kites, Israel acknowledges there is no evidence that they were carrying weapons or any other material capable of starting fires. But that doesn’t mean the purpose was innocent. Israeli authorities suspect that Hamas organized the kite launches in order to test how the IDF would react, in preparation for future attacks. Whether or not that’s the case, it would be foolish for Israel not to at least consider that possibility.
When Shamdasani ignored all this history in her press conference, it was a form of gaslighting — erasing or downplaying past events in order to make a current fear seem paranoid, groundless and unreasonable. It also points to a larger problem in human rights advocacy: the temptation to believe that minimizing threats helps prevent the excessive use of force.
Unfortunately, this has it backwards. Acknowledging that a security concern is legitimate does not require endorsing a government’s response. But when people believe their fears are being trivialized or dismissed, they are less likely to listen when told that their response is excessive.
Shamdasani may believe Israel is responding to the kites in a way that is disproportionate or misguided. But gaslighting Israel makes her call for restraint weaker.
The UN does not have to accept every Israeli security claim, and Israel should not have a blank check to respond to the current, unarmed kites however it wants simply because in the past kites have been used as weapons. But the UN cannot hope to persuade Israel that it is overreacting while dismissing the kites as toys and refusing to acknowledge that the threat of them being used as weapons is real.
