A civil rights organisation has criticised the White House National Security Council’s weekend statement on the attack in the Israeli-occupied Syrian village of Majdal Shams.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations pointed out that the US condemned the attack that killed 12 children and teenagers in the Israeli-occupied Syrian Golan Heights, but did not equally condemn an Israeli airstrike that killed dozens of civilians in Gaza over the weekend. Hezbollah also denied playing any role in the raid, while Lebanese and European officials have called for an independent international investigation of the incident.
"It should be universally condemned," according to a public statement issued by the White House from NSC Spokesperson Adrienne Watson on the rocket attack on Majdal Shams. "Our support for Israel’s security is ironclad and unwavering against all Iran-backed threats, including Hezbollah."
On Saturday, within hours of the attack on Majdal Shams, an Israeli airstrike killed at least 30 Palestinians in Gaza, mainly civilians, at a school in Deir al-Balah, where 4,000 wounded and displaced Palestinians in Gaza were seeking refuge.
Since Israel's war on Gaza began in October, at least 40,000 Palestinians, the vast majority of them civilians, in Gaza and the occupied West Bank have been killed by Israeli airstrikes.
In addition to the NSC's lack of condemnation of Israel's weekend attack on civilians in the Golan Heights, CAIR also condemned their reference to it as "northern Israel". In the 1967 War, Israel captured the Golan Heights, annexing the territory in 1981, a move that was not internationally recognised and considered illegal.
In 2019, under former US President Donald Trump's administration, the US officially recognised the Golan Heights as being under Israeli sovereignty, considered a gift to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the 2019 legislative election. In 2021, President Joe Biden's administration said that they would continue the previous administration's policy, which is not internationally recognised.
"By only condemning the killing of children on a playground in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, while completely ignoring the latest killing of Palestinian children at a refugee school in Gaza, the White House National Security Council once again highlighted its longstanding selective valuation of human life. Killing children is unacceptable, regardless of their identity and where they are killed," said CAIR's director of government affairs Robert McCaw in a public statement.
"Furthermore, we condemn the NSC’s use of the term ‘northern Israel’ to describe the Israeli-occupied Syrian Golan Heights, a designation that perpetuates the illegal policy of recognition established by the Trump administration. The Trump administration's illegal position should not be affirmed, but rather reversed," the statement added.