Who even cares what these organizations say? We’ve all seen the videos of children being burned alive, we’ve seen the (ultra conservative) death tolls, we’ve heard the Jewish statements calling the Arabs “human animals� and saying they are going to use food and water as weapons. We didn’t need to wait 14 months for Amnesty... Read More

Previously: Amnesty Demands Iranians Release Stupid Bitch Arrested for Walking Around in Her Undergarments This is totally goofy. The Iranians said that this woman was mentally ill, which makes a lot of sense. The Western media constantly promotes mentally ill people as brave defenders of human rights and democracy values. The Guardian: Human rights organisations... Read More

White women are the total and ultimate tool of the Jewish occupation of Western countries. As long as women are “empowered,� Jews have a standing army willing to support whatever sort of maniacal gibberish they are trying to ram through. A certain portion of feminized men will go along with whatever women are doing, so... Read More

I have received a letter from Margaret Huang, Amnesty International’s executive director. She is fundraising on the basis of President Trump’s “chilling disregard for our cherished human rights� and his exploitation of “hatred, misogyny, racism and xenophobia,� by which he has “emboldened and empowered the most violent segments of our society.� Considering the hostility of... Read More

In an 11-part series exclusive to Byline, Norman Finkelstein subjected Amnesty International’s reports on Operation Protective Edge, Israel’s summer 2014 assault on the Gaza Strip, to a forensic critique. But why is it important to keep organizations like Amnesty honest? Jamie Stern-Weiner, who is co-authoring a forthcoming book, HOW TO SOLVE THE ISRAEL-PALESTINE CONFLICT, with... Read More

CONCLUSION It cannot be seriously disputed that Amnesty International’s reports on Operation Protective Edge lacked objectivity and professionalism. They betrayed a systematic anti-Palestinian bias amounting to apologetics on Israel’s behalf. They also marked a steep regression from the high standard Amnesty set in its reports on the Israel-Palestine conflict during the past two decades. Amnesty... Read More

Failure to Take All Feasible Precautions International humanitarian law obliges all parties to a conflict to take “all feasible� precautions/precautions “to the maximum feasible extent� in order “to protect civilians and civilian objects under their control against the dangers resulting from military operations.� One example is to “avoid locating military objectives within or near densely... Read More

The criminal dimensions of OPE can be gleaned from the Breaking the Silence testimonies (see Table 5). TABLE 5 How Israel Fought OPE: A Selection of IDF Testimonies 18* When we left after the operation, it was just a barren stretch of desert…. We spoke about it a lot amongst ourselves, the guys from the... Read More

Beyond indicting Hamas for the commission of war crimes because it used indiscriminate weapons, Amnesty also, and as a discrete line in its ledger, indicts Hamas for the commission of war crimes because it used these indiscriminate weapons to launch “indiscriminate attacks� and “attacks targeting civilians.� Article 51 of the Additional Protocols to the Geneva... Read More

The allegation that not just Israel but Hamas as well committed massive war crimes underpins Amnesty’s “balanced� indictment of both sides. Amnesty’s accusations that Hamas was guilty of “flagrant violations of international law�—that is, war crimes—fall under two heads: (1) its use of inherently indiscriminate weapons, and (2) its indiscriminate or deliberate targeting of Israeli... Read More

The ghastly truth of what unfolded in Gaza is captured, not in Amnesty’s effective whitewash but, instead, in the Breaking the Silence collection of testimonies of Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers who served in Gaza during OPE (see Table 4).[1] TABLE 4 Property/Home Destruction in Gaza during OPE: A Selection of IDF Testimonies 1* [Did... Read More

Amnesty’s biased evidentiary approach is also manifest in Families under the Rubble, which examines targeted Israeli attacks on inhabited civilian homes. It does find that the eight attacks on which it focused were on various grounds unlawful and possibly war crimes.[1] However, although it asserts that “the onus is on Israel to provide information concerning... Read More

Hospitals (cont.) Shuhada al-Aqsa. Israel shelled Shuhada al-Aqsa hospital, killing at least four people and wounding dozens. Noting that Israel alleged it had targeted a cache of antitank missiles stored “in the immediate vicinity of the hospital,� Amnesty states that it “has not been able to confirm this� incident and calls for it to be... Read More

Amnesty’s citation of official Israeli sources produces skewed results that validate Israeli propaganda at Hamas’s expense. In some instances more credible contrary evidence is simply ignored. In its hyperbolic inventory of Hamas’s arsenal, Amnesty quotes the Israeli allegation that it intercepted a vessel carrying Iranian rockets “bound for Gaza.� It omits the widely reported finding... Read More

To justify its unchecked violence in Gaza, Israel invariably spotlights the arsenal of rockets Hamas allegedly amassed. Amnesty echoes this story line. Thus, the reader learns from Unlawful and Deadly that, as far back as 2001, Hamas had been stockpiling short-range rockets; that it then “developed longer-range Qassam rockets�; that “in more recent years, armed... Read More

The stupid Attack Iran meme seems to have infected virtually all discourse on the Middle East. Marc Lynch said something stupid…then Amnesty International said something stupid…and how about those stupid Islamic terrorist plots? I have already written about Marc Lynch’s rather terminal and embarrassing misunderstanding of the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court in the... Read More