Amnesty Whitewashes Another
Massacre
By Paul de Rooij
May 09, 2015 "Information
Clearing House" - "MEM"
- Amnesty International has issued four reports on the Israeli
massacre in Gaza in 2014.1 Given the scale of the destruction and the
number of fatalities, any attempt to document the crimes committed should be
welcomed. However, these reports are problematic, and raise questions about the
organisation itself, including why the reports were ever written at all.2
They also raise questions about the broader human rights industry that are worth
considering.Basic background
July 2014 marked the onset of the Israeli massacre in Gaza (I
will dispense with the Israeli sugar-coated "operation" name). The Israeli army
trained for this attack for several months before finding a pretext to attack
the Gaza Strip, shattering an existing ceasefire; this was the third such
post-"disengagement" (2004) attack, and possibly the worst so far. At least
2,215 people were killed and 10,000+ wounded, most of them civilians. The scale
of destruction was staggering: tens of thousands of houses were rendered
uninhabitable; several high-rise buildings were struck by huge American-supplied
bombs; schools and hospitals were targeted; 61 mosques were totally destroyed;
water purification and sewage treatment plants were damaged; Gaza's main flour
mill was bombed; and all chicken farms in the territory were ravaged. There was
incalculable devastation.3
Israeli control over Gaza has been in place for decades, with
violence escalating over time, and the Palestinians there have been under siege
for the past eight years. The Israelis have placed Gaza "on a diet",4
permitting only a trickle of strictly controlled goods to cross the border,
enough to keep the population above starvation levels. The whole Gaza Strip is
surrounded on all sides, blocked off from the outside world: military bulldozers
raze border areas, snipers injure farmers, and warships menace or destroy
fishing boats with gunfire. Periodically, the Israelis engage in what they term
"mowing the lawn" massacres and large scale destruction. It is this history that
must serve as the foundation of any report that attempts to describe both the
intent of the participating parties and the relative consequences.
Context-challenged - by design
The ongoing crimes perpetrated against Gaza are chronic and,
indeed, systematic. Arnon Soffer, one of Israel's Dr Strangelove types and
"intellectual father of the wall", had this to say about the enclave:
Q (Ruthie Blum): Will Israel be prepared to fight this
war?
Arnon Soffer: [...] Instead of entering Gaza, the way we
did last week, we will tell the Palestinians that if a single missile is
fired over the fence, we will fire 10 in response. And women and children
will be killed, and houses will be destroyed. After the fifth such incident,
Palestinian mothers won't allow their husbands to shoot Kassams, because
they will know what's waiting for them. Second of all, when 2.5 million
people live in a closed-off Gaza, it's going to be a human catastrophe.
Those people will become even bigger animals than they are today, with the
aid of an insane fundamentalist Islam. The pressure at the border will be
awful. It's going to be a terrible war. So, if we want to remain alive, we
will have to kill and kill and kill. All day, every day.5
To determine the reasons behind Israeli actions, one only has
to read what such Dr Strangeloves say; it is no secret. The aim is to create
miserable conditions to drive the Palestinians off their land, warehouse the
population in an open air prison called Gaza, and to repress any Palestinian
resistance disproportionately. Israelis have to "kill and kill and kill, all
day". Such pathological reasoning puts Israeli actions into perspective; they
are major crimes, possibly genocidal. Recognition of such crimes has some
consequences.
First, the nature of the crimes requires their recognition as
crimes against humanity, arguably one of the most serious crimes under
international law. Second, Israeli crimes put the violence of the Palestinian
resistance into perspective; Palestinians have a legitimate right to defend
themselves against the occupying power. Third, the long history of violence
perpetrated against the Palestinians, and the resulting power imbalance,
suggests that one should be in solidarity with the victim, not the aggressor.
Amnesty, though, refuses to acknowledge the serious nature of
Israeli crimes, by using an intellectually bankrupt subterfuge. It insists that
as a rights-based organisation it cannot refer to historical context; doing so
would be considered "political", in its warped jargon. An examination of what
Amnesty considers as "background" in its reports confirms that there is
virtually no reference to relevant history or context, such as the prior Israeli
attacks on Gaza, who initiated those attacks, the Goldstone Report, and so on.
Hey presto! Now there is no need to mention serious crimes. It also doesn't
recognise the nature of the Palestinian resistance, and their right to
self-defence. Nowhere does Amnesty International acknowledge that Palestinians
are entitled to defend themselves against Israel's military occupation. Finally,
the rights group cannot express solidarity with the victim because, hey, "both
sides" are victims!
At this point, once Amnesty has chosen to ignore the serious
Israeli crimes, it takes on the Mother Teresa role of sitting on the fence
castigating "both sides" for non-compliance with international humanitarian law
that determines the rules of war. Thus, Amnesty criticises Israel not for the
transgression of attacking Gaza, but for utilising excessive force or targeting
civilians. The group's favourite term to describe such events is
"disproportionate". This is problematic because it suggests that there is no
problem with the nature of the action, just with the means or scale of it. While
Amnesty bleats that a one-ton bomb in a refugee camp is disproportionate, it
would seem that using a 100kg bomb would be acceptable. Another favoured term is
"conflict", a state of affairs where both sides are at fault, both are at once
victims and transgressors.
Notice that while Amnesty avoids recognising major crimes by
using its rights-based framework, it suddenly changes its hat, and takes on a
very legalistic approach to criticise the violence perpetrated by the
Palestinians. It manages then to list the full panoply of international
humanitarian law which it deems to be applicable.
The key thing to watch in the upcoming International Criminal
Court (ICC) investigation of the 2014 massacre will be whether the court will
copy the Amnesty approach. Any investigation that doesn't focus on the cause of
the violence and who initiated it will result in another fraud, and no pixel of
justice.
Criminalising Palestinian resistance
Amnesty dispenses with the Palestinians' right to defend
themselves by stating that the rockets fired from Gaza are "indiscriminate", and
proceeds to call their use a war crime. Palestinian resistance groups are also
told not to hide in heavily populated areas, not to execute collaborators, and
so on. While Palestinians are told that their resistance amounts to war crimes,
the Israelis aren't told that their attacks are criminal per se; for
them, it is only a matter of scale.
The "Unlawful and deadly rocket and Mortar Attacks..." report
condemns repeatedly Palestinian rocket firing with inaccurate weapons, deems
these "indiscriminate", and ipso facto war crimes. Amnesty confuses the term
"inaccurate" with "indiscriminate". Examining the table below suggests that
Israel killed proportionately far more civilians, albeit with more accurate
weapons. It is quite possible to target indiscriminately with precision
munitions. There is also a possibility, which Amnesty International appears to
disregard, that the Israeli military targeted civilians intentionally. Indeed,
it is likely that Israeli drones targeted children intentionally. A report by
Defence for Children International states: "As a matter of policy, Israel
deliberately and indiscriminately targeted the very spaces where children are
supposed to feel most secure."6
Regardless of the accuracy of the weapons, the key issue is
one of intent. Amnesty dwells on an explosion at the Shati refugee camp on 28
July. On the basis of one field worker's testimony, Israeli-supplied evidence
and an unnamed "independent munitions expert",7 the organisation
concludes that:
Amnesty International has received no substantive response
to its inquiries about this incident from the Palestinian authorities. An
independent and impartial investigation is needed, and both the Palestinian
and Israeli authorities must co-operate fully. The attack appears to have
violated international humanitarian law in several ways, as the evidence
indicates that it was an indiscriminate attack using a prohibited weapon
which may well have been fired from a residential area within the Gaza Strip
and may have been intended to strike civilians in Israel. If the projectile
is confirmed to be a Palestinian rocket, those who fired it and those who
commanded them must be investigated for responsibility for war crimes.
Mother Teresa certainly provides enough comic material; an
occasional joke makes it easier to read a dull report. The evidence for the
provenance of this missile is taken at face value although it is supplied by
Israel, but, of course, it requires an "investigation"; Amnesty is suggesting
that both Israel and the Palestinians should investigate this incident. If the
Palestinian resistance was responsible for this explosion, then it was caused by
a misfire; thus, there was no intention to cause the consequent deaths.
Suggesting that this amounts to a war crime is rather absurd, but the title of
the section advertising the report on the Amnesty International website suggests
a motive for harping on about this incident: "Palestinian armed groups killed
civilians on both sides in attacks amounting to war crimes". This conveys a
rather warped and negative view of the Palestinian resistance - they kill
civilians on both sides - and it suggests that it is not possible to be in
solidarity with them.
Tyranny of reasons
After any Israeli attack, the pro-Israel propagandists offer a
rationale about why a given target was struck. They claim that there were
Palestinian militants firing rockets from hospitals, schools, mosques, the power
plant and other civilian buildings. At a stroke, such locations are legitimised
as Israeli targets whether or not the propaganda statements are true. What is
disconcerting in the two reports on Israeli crimes is that Amnesty International
imputes reasons for the targeting of buildings or families.
One finds, for example, statements such as:
- Amnesty International believes this attack was
targeting one individual.
- The apparent target was a member of a military group,
targeted at a time when he was at home with his family.
- The fighters who were the apparent targets could have
been targeted at a different time or in a different manner that was less
likely to cause excessive harm to civilians and destruction of civilian
objects.
- The apparent target of Israel's attack was Ahmad
Sahmoud, a member of the al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas' armed wing. [...]
Surviving family members and neighbours denied this.
Amnesty parrots the rationales provided by the Israeli
military; one only needs to look at the footnotes of its reports to check the
veracity of this claim. And Amnesty discounts the intentional bombing of
buildings to create misery among the Palestinian middle class and demoralise a
key sector of society; and that destroying the power plant amounts to collective
punishment. But don't worry, Mother T will always check with the Israeli
military to determine why something was targeted.
AI is not an anti-war organisation
One would expect a human rights organisation to be
intrinsically opposed to war, but Amnesty International is a cheerleader of
so-called humanitarian intervention, and even "humanitarian bombing".8
Despite such a predisposition, it was honoured with the Nobel Peace Prize, yet
another questionable recipient of a prize meant to be given only to those
actively opposed to wars. Today, one wonders if AI is going to jump on the R2P
(Right to Protect) neocon bandwagon. A consequence of its "not-anti-war" stance
is that it doesn't criticise wars conducted by the United States, Britain or
Israel; it is only the excesses that merit Amnesty's occasional lame rebuke,
often prefaced with the term "disproportionate" or "alleged". This stance is
evident in its latest reports; here the premise is that the Israeli attack on
the Gaza Strip was legitimate, but it is the conduct of "both sides" that is the
object of the reports' criticism.
Can't see the wood for the trees
Amnesty International is a small organisation with
insufficient resources to conduct a proper report on the massacre in Gaza last
year. Given the fact that it didn't have direct access to Gaza approved by
Israel, it chose to focus on two aspects of the Israeli attack: the targeting of
entire families and the destruction of landmark buildings. Within these two
categories it chose to focus on a handful of examples of each. The main problem
is that Amnesty harps on about a few cases to the exclusion of the totality; it
can't see the wood for the trees. There is no mention of some of the most
significant total figures, say, of the number of hospitals and schools
destroyed, the tonnage of bombs dropped on Gaza,9 the tens of
thousands of artillery shells used, and so on. The seriousness of the crime is
lost by dwelling on a subset of a subset of the crimes committed. Amnesty
isolates a few examples, describes them in some detail, and then suggests that
unless there were military reasons for the attacks, then there should be an
"investigation". Oh yes, and it has sent some polite letters to the Israeli
authorities requesting some comment, but the Israelis have been rather
unresponsive. Quite possibly the likes of Netanyahu, Ya'alon, Ganz and their
colleagues are too busy rolling on the floor laughing.
Given such a warped framework one would expect symmetry in the
way that the attacks are described, but no. While Amnesty provides the total
number of rockets fired by the Palestinian resistance, it gives no similar
numbers of the tens of thousands of Israeli artillery shells fired, nor the
total tonnage of bombs dropped on Gaza. The Israeli military propagandists were
all too happy to provide detailed statistics about the Palestinian rockets, and
Amnesty does not seem to express any misgivings about using this data. It is
also clear that Mother T didn't ask the propagandists to supply statistics on
the lethal Israeli tonnage dropped on Gaza.
Methodology and evidence
Every report contains a methodology section admitting to the
fact that AI didn't have direct access to Gaza. All of its research was done on
the Israeli side, and by two Palestinian fieldworkers in the besieged and
occupied territory. The inability to enter Gaza possibly explains the reliance
on many Israeli military statements, blogs and the foreign ministry about the
Palestinian rocket attacks. One can verify all the footnotes to find a
significant number of official Israeli statements to provide so-called evidence.
It is rather jarring to find Amnesty relying on information provided by the
offensive military forces to implicate Palestinian resistance in war crimes. How
appropriate is it to use "Hamas' Violations of the Law" issued by the Israel
Ministry of Foreign Affairs, or "Declassified Report Exposes Hamas Human Shield
Policy" issued by the Israeli military?
It is also jarring to find Amnesty referring to Israeli claims
that rockets were fired from schools, hospitals and the electricity power plant.
This information was provided as a justification for Israel's destruction of
such sites, but in the report Amnesty uses it to wag its finger at the
Palestinian resistance.10
Amnesty International's access to Israeli victims of
Palestinian rockets produced emotional statements by the victims, and complied
with Israeli propaganda needs. Israeli PR was keen to take journalists or
visiting politicians to the border towns to show the rocket damage, and Amnesty
seems to have been pleased to tag along. At the same time, Israel prevented any
Amnesty access to Gaza; clearly, any information coming out of the territory
would not be compliant with Israeli PR requirements. Thus, why send any
researchers to the Israeli border area?
Execution of collaborators - who will be criticised?
Amnesty has announced the publication of a forthcoming report
on the execution of collaborators, and one can only speculate on its contents.
It is odd that while AI is not opposed to wars it is opposed to the death
sentence; it is opposed to some deaths, but silent about others. Couple this
stance with an unwillingness to recognise the Palestinian right to self-defence
and, consequently, AI will inevitably deem the execution of Palestinians who
collaborate with Israel as abhorrent.
There are many collaborators in the West Bank and they are
evident at all levels of society, even in the so-called Palestinian Authority.
The PA has even committed itself to their protection. Collaboration with Israel
in the West Bank is thus a relatively low-risk activity. In Gaza there are also
collaborators, who are used to infiltrate and inform on the armed resistance
groups, and also to sow black propaganda. During the 2014 massacre,
collaborators were instrumental in pinpointing the location of the resistance
and its leadership. In most countries, treason and espionage in time of war
merits execution, but it is doubtful that Amnesty International will accept
this, and will instead urge a judicial process with no death sentence.
The key aspect of the forthcoming report will be whether the
organisation deems the Israeli use of collaborators as an abhorrent practice.
Israel not only uses collaborators to gather information, but they are also
meant to fragment Palestinian society, and to sow discord. With a society
already under massive stress due to economic hardship and military repression,
collaborators are a pernicious means to break morale and undermine Palestinian
resilience. Will Amnesty criticise Israel's use of collaborators, or will its
report merely castigate Hamas for the way it deals with collaborators?
Why were these reports written at all?
All Amnesty International reports follow the same formula: a
brief overview, a methodology section about data sources, some emotional
quotations by the victims, a section on accountability, and then some
recommendations. They are trite, barely readable and certainly not very useful
either for legal purposes or to educate its volunteers. So why are these reports
published and who actually reads them? Amnesty would like to be known as one of
the leading human rights organisations and it must be seen as reporting on major
human rights violations and crimes. Its volunteers must be given the impression
that the organisation cares for some of the wholesale atrocities, and not merely
the retail crime or violation.
The timing of the publication of one report ("Unlawful and
deadly: Rocket and mortar attacks...") is rather curious. The report dealing
with the Palestinian rockets was published a few days before the Palestinian
accession to the International Criminal Court. A coincidence? While some
Palestinians are gearing up to prosecute Israel for war crimes and crimes
against humanity, a leading human rights organisation publishes a report which
goes on about Palestinians being guilty of war crimes. Amnesty has published
reports in the past that were exploited for propaganda purposes; the Iraqis
throwing-the-babies-out-of-the-incubators propaganda hoax, for example.11
Those reports were published just in time to provide a justification for war.
Impotence by design
All the reports contain a list of recommendations for
Israelis, Palestinians and other states. One is struck by the impotence of the
recommendations. The group urges Israel to cooperate with the UN commission of
inquiry; allow human rights organisations access to Gaza; pay reparations to
some victims; and ensure that the Israeli military operates within some legal
limits. Given that Israel can more or less do as it pleases in any case -
ignoring commissions of inquiry, proclaiming loudly that it will engage in
disproportionate attacks (that is, the Dahiya doctrine), and that it refuses to
compensate any Palestinian victim of its previous massacres - all these
recommendations ring hollow.
Amnesty urges Palestinians to address their grievances via the
ICC. It is curious that while international law apparently provides the
Palestinians with no protection whatsoever, they are urged to jump through
international legal hoops. It is also questionable to suggest a legal framework
meant for interstate conflict when dealing with a non-state dispossessed native
population. Of course, Amnesty fails to mention that Israel has avoided and
ignored international law with the complicity and assistance of the United
States.
Finally, Amnesty International requests other governments to
assist the commission of inquiry and to assist in the prosecution of war
criminals. It remains to be seen whether the commission of inquiry will actually
publish a report that has some teeth. The group also urges other countries to
stop supplying weapons to "both sides". There is no mention of the fact that the
US resupplied Israel with weapons during last year's massacre in Gaza. It is
very unlikely that the US or Britain will stop arming Israel; as such, Amnesty's
recommendations are ineffective rhetoric.
Amnesty trumpets that it has 7 million supporters world-wide;12
a few months ago this number was 3 million; two years ago it was 400,000, and a
few more years ago it was 200,000. One should marvel at this explosive growth.
If the organisation really can tap into the support of even a fraction of these
volunteers, then it can urge them to do something that has tangible results; it
could, for example, ask its members and supporters to boycott Israeli products
or products made by western companies complicit in Israeli crimes. Such action
would be far more effective than the meaningless recommendations that are
ignored regularly by Israel and its western backers. Alas, it is difficult to
conceive that Amnesty will issue a call for a boycott to its ever expanding army
of supporters. It is difficult for Mother T to change her stripes.
The human rights industry
There are thousands of so-called human rights organisations.
Anyone can set up such a group, and thereby specify a narrow focus for the NGO,
determine the parameters within which it will operate - even define who is human
- and then the new organisation can chime in with press releases, host wine and
cheese receptions, bestow prizes, lobby politicians, launch investigations and
castigate the enemy du jour. Bono, Geldof and Angelina might even hop
along and sit on the NGO's board. The human rights framework is elastic and can
be moulded to fit legitimate purposes, but it can also be manipulated for
propaganda purposes. The history of some of the largest human rights
organisations shows that they were created originally with the propaganda
element foremost in mind.13 This suggests that NGO output, such as
Amnesty's reports, for example, merit scrutiny not so much for what they say,
but for what they omit. In the Palestinian context, a simple test on the merits
of a so-called human rights organisation is whether it challenges state power,
calls for accountability and the prosecution of war criminals, and urges its
supporters to do something more than write out cheques or very formal and polite
letters to governments engaged in criminal acts.
Another test for the merits of a human rights NGO is whether
it is in solidarity with the victims of violence, and whether victims are
treated differently depending on their support or demonisation by "the west". In
Amnesty's case, consider that on the one hand it provides long lists of
"prisoners of conscience" pertaining to prisoners held in Cuba, Syria, etc., but
on the other hand it explicitly does not make such a list of Palestinian
prisoners available.[14] We have no means of knowing how many Palestinian
political prisoners Amnesty actually cares about, and whether its volunteers
engage in letter writing campaigns on their behalf. One thing is certain,
though, that while the majority of Cuban political prisoners are considered
prisoners of conscience, only a tiny fraction of the Palestinian political
prisoners have been given such status. In reality, of course, Mother Teresa
doesn't give a hoot about political prisoners who might have been involved in
violence, so Palestinians are just a stone's throw away from being ignored by
Amnesty International. Some victims are more meritorious than others.
In trying to justify the organisation's double standard,
Malcolm Smart, Amnesty's Director of the Middle East and North Africa Programme,
stated:
"By its nature, the Israeli administrative detention
system is a secretive process, in that the grounds for detention are not
specified in detail to the detainee or his/her legal representative;
inevitably, this makes it especially difficult for the detainee to challenge
the order for, by example, contesting the grounds on which the detention was
made. In the same way, it makes it difficult or impossible for Amnesty
International to make a conclusive determination in many cases whether a
particular administrative detainee can be considered a prisoner of
conscience or not."15
It thus provides yet more comic material. AI admits that
Israeli military courts can determine who can be considered a Palestinian
prisoner of conscience. The only thing that those courts need to do is to keep
their proceedings secret or not reveal "evidence". Alternatively, they can
simply imprison the victims without trial or declare that they are members of a
"banned" organisation16 and then the Israelis won't have to reply to
those pesky polite letters written by AI volunteers. Once again, double
standards in the treatment of victims raise questions about the nature of any
human rights NGO.
Human rights is denatured justice
Pushing for the observance of human rights doesn't necessarily
imply that one will obtain justice. The human rights agenda merely softens the
edges of the status quo. As Amnesty's position on the Israeli attacks on Gaza
illustrates, pushing human rights can actually be incompatible with obtaining
justice. Human rights are a bastardised, neutered and debased form of justice.
The application and effectiveness of international law is bad enough, but a pick
and choose legal framework with no enforcement is even worse. If one seeks
justice, then it is best to avoid the human rights discourse; above all, it is
best to avoid human rights organisations.
Palestinians should be wary of Mother Teresas peddling human
rights snake oil. In exchange for giving up their resistance and complying with
Amnesty's neutered norms, they are unlikely to obtain any justice. One should be
wary of human rights groups that don't push for justice, play the role of
Israel's lawyer, and are bereft of solidarity with the victims. When the likes
of Amnesty International come wagging their finger, it is best to keep the old
blunderbuss near to hand.
Further Reading
- Nabeel Abraham, et al.;
International Human Rights Organizations and the Palestine Question,
Middle East Report (MERIP), Vol. 18, No. 1, January-February 1988, pp.
12 - 20.
- Dennis Bernstein and Francis Boyle,
Amnesty on Jenin: an interview, CAQ, Summer 2002, pp. 9 - 12, 27.
- Paul de Rooij,
AI: Say It Isn't So, CounterPunch, 31 Oct. 2002
- Paul de Rooij,
Amnesty International: The Case of a Rape Foretold, CounterPunch, 26
November 2003
- Paul de Rooij, Double Standards and Curious Silences /
Amnesty International: A False Beacon, CounterPunch, 13 October 2004.
- PIWP database:
list of articles on the politics of human rights
Footnotes
- Families Under the Rubble: Israeli Attacks on Inhabited
Homes (MDE 15/032/2014), 5 November 2014.
"Nothing is immune": Israel's destruction of landmark buildings in Gaza (MDE
15/029/2014), 9 December 2014.
Unlawful and deadly: Rocket and mortar attacks by Palestinian armed groups
during the 2014 Gaza/Israel conflict (MDE 21/1178/2015), 26 March 2015.
The fourth report about the execution of collaborators has not been
published yet.
- I distinguish between Amnesty International, the
international organization, and its well intentioned letter-writing
volunteers.
- Possibly the best overview of the Gaza Massacre 2014 is
Al Haq's Divide and Conquer; http://alhaq.org/publications/publications-index/item/divide-and-conquer
- Statement made in 2006 by Dov Weisglas, one of Israel's
Dr. Strangeloves and close confidant of Ariel Sharon. Source: http://www.corkpsc.org/db.php?qid=1013
- Ruthie Blum interviews Arnon Soffer, ONE on ONE: It's the
demography, stupid, Jerusalem Post, 10 May 2004
- Ali Abunimah , Israel "directly targeted" children in
drone strikes on Gaza, says rights group, Electronic Intifada, 17 April
2015.
- Amnesty loves to trot out military experts and dwell on
the type of weapons used. First, there is an issue about the military
expert, and who they are. What is the ethics about showing up in Gaza with a
military person who might still be in the armed forces of, say, the UK? One
can hardly expect them to be "independent". And why dwell on the type of
munitions if their use is already criminal to begin with? Focusing on the
type of weapon deflects attention from the damage and the victims – that
should be the emphasis.
- Alexander Cockburn, "How the US State Dept. Recruited
Human Rights Groups to Cheer On the Bombing Raids: Those Incubator Babies,
Once More?", CounterPunch newsletter, April 1-15, 1999.
- While AI reports the total number of Palestinian rockets
fired, there is no equivalent number to the totals used by the Israeli
military. That number would be of interest because it would indicate the
scale of the crimes committed. Tens of thousands of artillery shells were
used, requiring them to be restocked by the United States in the middle of
the offensive.
- The UN report on the Israeli attacks against schools
lists several incidents where the Israelis falsely accused the Palestinians
of firing on these schools. Such evidence should reduce the credibility of
Israeli statements. See, e.g., Ali Abunimah, UN finds Israel killed dozens
at Gaza schools but ducks call for accountability, Electronic Intifada, 28
April 2015.
- In the lead up to the 1991 invasion of Kuwait/Iraq,
Amnesty issued a report on the so-called babies out of incubators story.
President Bush Senior showcased the report on the eve of the attack, and
used it for its full propaganda potential. When it was pointed out to
Amnesty that they were pushing a propaganda hoax, it doubled its estimate of
the number of children dumped from the incubators. To this day, the
organisation has never apologised for playing a role in selling an American
war.
- See: https://www.amnesty.org/en/who-we-are/ And notice
that in the page after title page of Amnesty International's reports the
number of supporters increases from one report to the next.
- Kirsten Sellars, The Rise and Rise of Human Rights,
Sutton Publishing, 29 April 2002. Herein she discusses the origin of Human
Rights Watch.
- Malcolm Smart, Letter: Amnesty International's Prisoner
of Conscience lists and the reason for double standards, 9 August 2010
http://www.corkpsc.org/db.php?aid=133223.
- Ibid.
- Another technique to rule out sympathetic treatment of
Palestinians is to suggest that they are members of a banned organisation.
NB: it is Israel which does the banning. Any organisation seeking liberation
or to confront the Israeli dispossession or violence is deemed by the
Israelis to be a "terrorist organisation". Currently, Amnesty plays along
with this charade, and also ignores Palestinians belonging to "political"
organisations.
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