Latest Amnesty International report on Gaza illustrates institutional bias
Those who follow media bias against Israel will be aware of the following tactic: quote a report from an anti-Israeli organisation but give cover for its bias by describing it as “independent”. So it is with the BBC’s coverage of the latest anti-Israeli screed from Amnesty International. Thus on the BBC’s website:
“Israel committed war crimes and carried out reckless attacks and acts of wanton destruction in its Gaza offensive, an independent human rights report says.” (My italics)
This wouldn’t be the same “independent” human rights group which in February called on the United States to immediately suspend military support to Israel would it?
But leaving the BBC’s reporting standards aside for a moment, the bigger issue here is the way in which a nominally independent human rights group has simply given in to the global anti-Israeli agenda. Some of the misconceptions peddled in the latest report are breathtaking.
Commenting on Israel’s Operation Cast Lead in Gaza (December 2008-January 2009), the report gave a breakdown of casualties purporting to show that 940 of the 1,400 fatalities were civilians. Included in the “civilian” deaths were “non-combatant police” which it numbered at 240. “Non-combatant police”? But a totalitarian militant group such as Hamas does not have “non-combatant” police officers. They are armed agents of the regime who enforce its will and carry out its orders. With as much justification one might have described agents of the Gestapo as “non-combatant” police officers. In all seriousness, under the Amnesty International definition, Winston Churchill would have been guilty of war crimes. Amnesty and its officials come at this issue from a worldview which has never understood totalitarianism. It is simply incapable of empathasing with a state in Israel’s predicament.
Similar flaws are in evidence when dealing with Israel’s assertion that Hamas used the civilian population as human shields. Amnesty said there was no evidence that Hamas used civilians as human shields though it did accept that Hamas had endangered civilian lives by firing rockets from civilian areas. The confusion here is palpable. If Hamas is firing rockets from civilian areas then, objectively speaking, it is using those areas and the civilians within them as shields. To fire rockets from crowded areas in the full knowledge that the Israelis will want to fire back at the rocket launchers is deliberately and willfully to put civilians in harms way. Hamas knows that Israel will take into account the presence of civilians in the areas they choose to attack. The civilian population is thus being used as a shield. The logic is inescapable…unless, of course, your logical faculties have been overcome by the need to demonise.
All of this is quite apart from the kind of casual absurdities peddled in comments such as the following:
“Much of the destruction [in Gaza] was wanton and could not be justified on grounds of “military necessity,” the report said. Excuse me, but how does Amnesty International know this? On what grounds does Amnesty International seek to pass judgement on what was or was not necessary from a military point of view?
The French news agency Agence France Presse, quoted a statement on the Amnesty report by the Israeli military: “The slant of their report indicates that the organisation succumbed to the manipulations of the Hamas terror organisation,” it said. It is hard to disagree.
For the BBC article click here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8128210.stm
To locate the Amnesty International report, go to its website here:
July 2nd, 2009 at 12:34 pm
Israleis…blah …blah …blah… killers… murderers… Geesh! For every one palestinian that dies because their terrorists hide in neighborhood schools and houses some innocent Israeli is murdered in cold blood. Blood thirsty killers and murderers are the palestinian killers who don’t even care about their own. Then there are the useful idiots that parrot the Hamas propaganda. The Israeli government has shown incredible restraint when faced with this dark onslaught by very bad people against their citizens. No one ever states the Israelis men, women and children that are killed by palestinian terrorists. After all they are only Israelis. No worth at all. The price for terrorist acts must be land that is forever lost. Eventually they won’t have a square inch to stand on. In the mean time the Israelis try and broker a peace deal only to have the forces of darkness break it. What they really want is to destroy the State. It’ll never happen. The Israelis can slag them all if they wanted it and they have not. That could not be said of them. And that is the difference here. So it seems that this Amnesty group is now working for Hamas/Iran…
July 2nd, 2009 at 12:36 pm
Thank you so much for your rational response to AI ridiculousness. It was much appreciated.
July 2nd, 2009 at 1:03 pm
02 July 2009 1200 Hours GMT BBC NEWS
Israel’s Defence Ministry’s arrogant retort to charges of war crimes reported today by AMNESTY International:
WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE?
WHERE DO THEY COME FROM?
WHAT ARE THEIR NAMES?
WHO DID THEY SPEAK TO?
WHERE IS THEIR EVIDENCE?
Perhaps someone could inform the Israeli Defence Ministry that Amnesty is an international human rights organization that works to bring to the attention of the world the abuse of human and civil rights. That includes such atrocities as the slaughter of 300 children and 150 women in Gaza earlier this year by the IDF.
July 6th, 2009 at 2:55 pm
Amnesty is a human rights organisation which cherry picks the countries it chooses to criticise.
First and foremost on their list is Israel, with countries like Iran, Burma, Sudan, China, etc., coming in for very little flack.