Wednesday, December 04, 2024
Elder of Ziyon
Throughout the report, the assumption of guilt is a given. Every piece of "evidence" that supports the lie is highlighted as true, and every piece of counter-evidence is dismissed as unimportant.
The report tries to prove that Israel has the intent of destroying the Gaza population. It bases much of this on comments made by officials in the immediate aftermath of October 7, and it pooh-pooh's any counterevidence - even when said at the same time.
So for example, President Herzog said, "We have to understand there’s a state, there’s a state, in a way, that has built a
machine of evil right at our doorstep. It’s an entire nation out there that is responsible. It’s not
true this rhetoric about civilians not aware, not involved. It’s absolutely not true. They could
have risen up. They could have fought against that evil regime which took over Gaza in a coup
d’état murdering their family members who were in Fatah." Amnesty interprets that, falsely, as Herzog calling to punish all Gaza civilians, rather than his simply pointing out that Gazans share responsibility for Hamas and are not victims of Hamas. Nothing that he said challenges their civilian status. Later in that same press conference, when a reporter asked Herzog to clarify, Herzog said explicitly that he was not saying that civilians are legitimate targets, and he later said there are many innocent civilians in Gaza.
Amnesty then says that since the first part of Herzog's statement was widely disseminated and the clarification was not, then he is responsible for how the world misinterpreted his initial, ambiguous statement and not his clear clarification.
That is only one example of Amnesty's blood libels. And it is throughout this report.
The many, many statements by Israeli leaders that they were targeting Hamas only similarly gets downplayed by Amnesty as window dressing and lies.
This paragraph is emblematic of Amnesty's antisemitism in assuming that any statement that agrees with their thesis is the truth and any that contradicts it is a lie:
Amnesty International recognizes that, at the start of the military offensive, Israeli officials defined its objectives as dismantling the military and governing capabilities of Hamas, subsequently adding to them the release of hostages and captives. Following that, Prime Minister Netanyahu, then Minister of Defense Gallant and Israeli army spokespeople publicly clarified on numerous occasions that the offensive was directed at Hamas rather than the Palestinian people. However, they appear to have intensified such clarifications only following mounting pressure from Israel’s Western allies over the scale of deaths and destruction resulting from weeks of relentless bombardment.
Amnesty is lying and it knows it. It says that the Israeli officials called for indiscriminate attacks against civilians, in this footnote:
For example, on 10 October 2023, in a meeting with Israeli soldiers deployed near Gaza, then Minister of Defense Gallant appeared to incite soldiers to indiscriminate attacks: “I released all restraints. Attack everything, take off the gloves, kill everyone who fights us, whether it is one terrorist or a hundred. From the air, from the land, with tanks, with bulldozers... all means. No compromises! Gaza will not return to what it was, and Hamas will not exist. Eliminate everything. It will take time, it won’t take a day, it won’t take a week, it will take weeks and maybe months. We will reach all places.”
Clearly Gallant is referring to Hamas. he says so. But Amnesty wants to interpret this as calling for indiscriminate attacks, because they can read his mind and understand his intent, his actual words being irrelevant.
This is the pattern throughout the document for pretending to prove intent. COGAT, which spends thousands of man hours coordinating aid delivery, but Amnesty frames them as deliberately withholding aid and frustrating NGOs for arbitrary reasons. When COGAT's statistics contradict those of the UN, the UN is assumed to be correct and COGAT is lying, and therefore everything COGAT does to bring in aid is again just a giant misdirection to cover up its genocidal intent.
This is the "pinkwashing" antisemitic mindset: when Israel seems to do something it shouldn't, that is the truth. When Israel does things that it should, that is simply a coverup to its true intent of doing evil. When Israel says that it has killed over 17,000 militants, Amnesty casts doubt on anything the IDF says, while accepting the Gaza Health Ministry numbers without question.
This constant assumption that Jews intend evil is Amnesty's antisemitism in a nutshell. When they drop bombs, it is not because they want to destroy Hamas or that they have intelligence information that they have a legitimate target. It is because they want to kill Gaza civilians.
That's the theme of the report: Jews lie.
Amnesty also plays fast and loose with the level of evidence necessary to prove genocidal intent. it quotes the ICJ:
The ICJ has held that “in order to infer the existence of dolus specialis from a pattern of conduct, it is necessary and sufficient that this is the only inference that could reasonably be drawn from the acts in question”,385 meaning that “intent to destroy the group, in whole or in part, must be the only reasonable inference which can be drawn from the pattern of conduct.”
Obviously, there are plenty of other inferences that would explain Israel's conduct in the war that are not genocidal. But since this undercuts Amnesty's entire legal argument, they highlight a dissenting opinion on the case quoted:
In his dissenting opinion in Croatia v. Serbia, Judge Cançado Trindade argued that the ICJ “seems to have imposed too high a threshold for the determination of mens rea of genocide” and that the standard of proof adopted by the majority is “entirely inadequate for the determination of State responsibility”.
Suddenly, the ICJ is not enough for Amnesty to prove its case. Suddenly a dissenting opinion becomes the basis for Amnesty's determination of international law!
One other critical point must be made: In building its case that Israel is guilty of genocide, Amnesty has to prove not only an intent to wipe out Gaza but also that the IDF is following through on that intent. Of course, it thinks it has plenty of proof, but most of it is examining social media videos of 18 year old soldiers who are saying stupid things about Gazans.
Amnesty has no idea how an army is run.
Soldiers do not have carte blanche on choosing targets or on anything strategic. The IDF took a full month to build its Gaza strategy, and it has been refining it almost weekly as it learns more about how Hamas operates and receives intelligence from captured fighters and computers. The IDF strategy does not come from statements by Ben Gvir, as Amnesty wants its readers to believe. Netanyahu and the war cabinet helps decide the general outlines of the war goals and the IDF puts those into practice.
Claiming that an IDF war goal is to commit genocide is simply insane. The army does not have an unlimited number of bullets or bombs, and what it has is often very expensive. The IDF has policies, manuals, ethics publications, lectures, all on how to follow international law and how to deal with new situations like an enemy that deliberately hides among civilians as strategy. The idea that Israel diverts some of its military budget to murder civilians - which is fundamentally Amnesty's thesis - is pure, unadulterated antisemitism.
IDF soldiers are taught more about actual laws of armed conflict than anyone who wrote this report.
Absence of evidence is evidence of absence:
Amnesty International found a pattern of direct attacks on civilians with no apparent military objective present, indiscriminate attacks and intentional destruction of cultural and religious sites with no apparent imperative military necessity.
If there is no evidence that Hamas was hiding in an area - something that by definition would not be admitted by the people - Amnesty assumes that the IDF is wasting expensive smart bombs to hit mosques or other cultural sites in the middle of a war. Again, this is an assumption of Zionist evil that pervades the entire report.
Every page shows Amnesty's clear bias. Israel is faulted for not opening up more passages into Gaza for aid, but also for not protecting the aid convoys adequately - even though safety is the main reason for not providing unfettered access. Damned if it does, damned if it doesn't. Either way, it is evidence of Israel's mendacity, and when even contradictory evidence is used to prove the same thesis, the problem is with the underlying theory, not the evidence.
Humanitarian workers are quoted extensively and anonymously about their difficulty in receiving medical supplies. They claim that Israeli restrictions are arbitrary and capricious. Yet hundreds of trucks of medical supplies, and tens of thousands of pallets, were imported into Gaza during the time period they cover. Amnesty eagerly quotes these workers - who all live in Gaza and most of whom support Hamas - without verification or checks.
Amnesty quotes a Gazan saying “To get a tent, you have to pay NIS 3,000 [approximately USD 827]" for his family. But it doesn't ask why exactly, tents thar are donated to Gaza are being charged for. Hamas is using aid to enrich itself and Amnesty doesn't say a word about it except to cast doubt on Israel's claims that Hamas steals aid.
Previous lies (like saying Gaza is "occupied" or that Israel is guilty of "apartheid") are building blocks for proving Israel is guilty of genocide. It is all a house of cards that Israel haters have built to come to this point.
Anything said against Israel is assumed to be correct, anything said in defense of Israel is assumed to be false unless verified by people who hate Israel.
I could spend days tearing this report apart, page by page. But this is enough to prove Amnesty is knowingly lying and twisting facts, that it started its "research" not to examine the evidence but to find Israel guilty at the outset and that it only accepts evidence that supports that conclusion.
This report isn't an "investigation." It is a blood libel.
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