Amnesty and other NGOs actually want Palestinians to die - as long as Israel will be blamed. (And they consider Palestinians to be too stupid to make their own decisions.)

A couple of weeks ago, a series of NGOs including the Amnesty, Physicians for Human Rights-Israel, B'Tselem and even two Palestinian human rights organizations issued a press release demanding that Israel provide vaccines for Palestinians. 

They use poor arguments, most of which I debunked in last night's webcast, but one of them deserves more attention - because it shows how bigoted these groups are against Palestinians.

We express grave concerns about media reports that the Russian-developed vaccine will be delivered to the Palestinian Authority (PA). The PA has not fully indicated which vaccines it aims to purchase and distribute, although it has made clear that it does not have sufficient funds and capabilities to purchase the necessary vaccinations. Israel cannot transfer a vaccine which is not approved for its own citizens. Such a step would violate the Paris Protocol on Economic Relations and the long-standing policy of the Israeli Ministry of Health to only allow the distribution of medicines in the OPT which have undergone the necessary scientific and regulatory procedures. Although the Paris Protocol has come under criticism in the past for, inter alia, obliging the PA to import medications that are beyond its financial reach, as long as it is binding, Israel cannot import a vaccine that it has not approved for its own population and send it to the occupied population. Israel must ensure that the vaccines delivered to Palestinians in the OPT, also meet the approvals of the Israeli health system, and that these vaccines be purchased and delivered as soon as possible.

What does the Paris Protocol say?

...Both sides will maintain the same import policy (various exceptions) and regulations including classification, valuation and other customs procedures, which are based on the principles governing international codes, and the same policies of import licensing and of standards for imported goods, all as applied by Israel with respect to its importation. Israel may from time to time introduce changes in any of the above, provided that changes in standard requirements will not constitute a non-tariff-barrier and will be based on considerations of health, safety and the protection of the environment in conformity with Article 2.2. of the Agreement on Technical Barriers to trade of the Final Act of the Uruguay Round of Trade Negotiations. 

So even if this paragraph applies to importing medicines (which is not at all obvious) Israel can change the policy for maintaining public health!

And what does the Agreement on Technical Barriers Article 2.2 say?

Members shall ensure that technical regulations are not prepared, adopted or applied with a view to or with the effect of creating unnecessary obstacles to international trade. For this purpose, technical regulations shall not be more trade-restrictive than necessary to fulfil a legitimate objective, taking account of the risks non-fulfilment would create. Such legitimate objectives are, inter alia: national security requirements; the prevention of deceptive practices; protection of human health or safety, animal or plant life or health, or the environment. In assessing such risks, relevant elements of consideration are, inter alia: available scientific and technical information, related processing technology or intended end-uses of products. 

These very regulations referred to in the Paris Protocols say that Israel should not place any barriers in place to stop Palestinians from getting the medicines they need!

Clearly, when the Palestinians don't have ultra-cold freezers needed to stockpile the Pfizer vaccine , the Russian Sputnik vaccine seems like a viable alternative to help millions of their citizens. The Palestinian Authority has scientists and doctors that can look at the literature and see whether it makes sense to accept the Russian vaccine. Other countries like India have decided that the Russian vaccine is safe enough to rely on. One can argue about the decision, but is hardly irresponsible for leaders to choose the Russian vaccine in the interests of protecting the largest number of people in the shortest amount of time. 

But Amnesty and these other NGOs disagree with this. They want to take away Palestinian choice as to how to treat their own people!

If anyone else would say that Palestinians are too immature or too ignorant to decide on how their own health programs should work, they would be rightly considered to be bigots. 

Beyond that, Amnesty and the other NGOs are saying that it is better for Palestinians to wait for Israel to build an entire infrastructure to distribute the Pfizer vaccine, or to wait to receive the Moderna vaccine, than to import the Sputnik vaccine today. Every day a couple of dozen Palestinians are dying of COVID-19 and Amnesty is saying that time is not of the essence to provide vaccines to them, even though the logistics of Israel providing the vaccines in Palestinian areas is enormously expensive and time consuming.

The NGOs even say it is Israel's responsibility to keep the medicines cold:

Ensuring smooth entry of vaccines and other medical equipment to the oPt, including preserving a 'cold chain’ to keep vaccines refrigerated during transit if necessary. 

Ultra-cold freezers aren't exactly available at Best Buy. There are only a couple of manufacturers and they are swamped. It would take months to acquire an adequate supply of this equipment to bring into the territories, by which time there will be other vaccines available that do not require anything colder than a refrigerator. 

This demand, by itself, shows how out of touch these NGOs are - and how willing they are to sacrifice Palestinians as long as they can blame Israel for their deaths.

There is only one conclusion that can be drawn: Amnesty and the other NGOs hate Israel more than they care about Palestinian lives. This demand, by itself, proves how hateful they are both towards Israel and towards Palestinians themselves. 

To call these "human rights "organizations is a sick joke. 

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Are Amnesty, HRW and Oxfam antisemitic?

From Politico:

The Trump administration is considering declaring that several prominent international NGOs — including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and Oxfam — are anti-Semitic and that governments should not support them, two people familiar with the issue said.

The proposed declaration could come from the State Department as soon as this week. If the declaration happens, it is likely to cause an uproar among civil society groups and might spur litigation. Critics of the possible move also worry it could lead other governments to further crack down on such groups. The groups named, meanwhile, deny any allegations that they are anti-Semitic.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is pushing for the declaration, according to a congressional aide with contacts inside the State Department. 

The declaration is expected to take the form of a report from the office of Elan Carr, the U.S. special envoy to monitor and combat anti-Semitism. The report would mention organizations including Oxfam, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. It would declare that it is U.S. policy not to support such groups, including financially, and urge other governments to cease their support.

The report would cite such groups’ alleged or perceived support for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, which has targeted Israel over its construction of settlements on land Palestinians claim for a future state.

It’s also expected to point to reports and press statements such groups have released about the impact of Israeli settlements, as well as their involvement or perceived support for a United Nations database of businesses that operate in disputed territories.

There is absolutely no doubt that these groups are structurally and systematically biased against Israel. They hire people to "research" Israel with a history of anti-Israel advocacy. 

One example is Amnesty's Saleh Hijazi, Deputy Regional Director of the MENA Region, whose Facebook pages include support for terrorists Leila Khaled and Khader Adnan, a glaring piece of hypocrisy for a supposed human rights advocate. 

Similarly, Omar Shakir had a well-documented history of supporting BDS against all of Israel (not just "settlements") and of being obsessively anti-Israel when he was hired by HRW - and that continued even as he was employed by them.

This results in these NGOs issuing anti-Israel reports that are longer, more numerous and more detailed than their reports on virtually any other nation, with only a smattering of reports about Palestinian human rights or Arab human rights abuses against Palestinians (which only exist when their anti-Israel obsessions were revealed so they wrote token reports for "balance.") In fact, in some cases these groups have supported terror-linked NGOs.

Israel is routinely accused of "apartheid" by these NGOs. There is literally no other nation in the world that they make similar accusations of.

These NGOs become obsessed about companies like TripAdvisor and AirBnB that operate in disputed territories. There is literally no other nation in the world that they make similar accusations of, let alone participate in huge funded campaigns against international companies.

Amnesty and HRW knowingly twist international law to pretend that Palestinians have a "right to return." As many as 60 million Europeans became refugees after World War II, but none of them have the same "right to return" that the 700,000 Palestinian refugees and their millions of descendants are considered to have today by these NGOs. The only purpose of this demand is to destroy the Jewish state demographically. 

Do these obsessions cross the line into antisemitism? 

By the IHRA working definition of antisemitism, there is no doubt that these groups are antisemitic because they hold Israel to standards that they do not apply to any other country.  

Even if you do not accept the IHRA definition these NGOs seems to have a problem with Jews. 

For example,  this report from HRW denigrating religious Jews:

Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef, who holds the state-funded, statutory position of Israel’s Chief Sephardic Rabbi, said in a March 12, 2016 sermon, partly in response to Eisenkot’s admonition to limit the use of lethal force, that the Bible authorizes a shoot-to-kill policy: “‘Whoever comes to kill you, rise up and kill him first.’ … let them afterward take you to the High Court of Justice or bring some military chief of staff who will say something else … As soon as an attacker knows that if he comes with a knife, he won’t return alive, it will deter them. That’s why it’s a religious commandment to kill him.”

The Sephardic Chief Rabbi does not command police or soldiers, but he heads the Supreme Rabbinical Tribunal and is tasked with advising on the interpretation of religious law. 

...

According to Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics, about half of Jewish Israelis define themselves as religious or traditional, not including ultra-Orthodox Jews, who usually do not serve in the army. Conscription for non-ultra-Orthodox Jewish men is universal. Most soldiers are in their teens or early 20s, and after a few months of basic training, they can be sent to serve in the occupied West Bank.

This is an accusation that religious (and traditional) Jews are bloodthirsty fanatics who would kill Arabs at a drop of a hat - and against army regulations. That is antisemitic slander. 

Or Amnesty-USA sponsoring a tour by Bassem Tamimi, who accuses Jews of stealing the organs of Palestinians.

Or this Amnesty employee that denied Egypt's expulsion of its Jews - meaning that Jews are the only group whose human rights are not to be defended.

Or these groups pushing to expel Jews - and only Jews - from their homes in disputed territories when there are also thousands of Israeli Arabs who live across the Green Line but are never called "settlers."

Or Ken Roth of HRW practically justifying European antisemitism as simply a response to Israeli actions.

Or Amnesty-UK which has hosted antisemites and BDSers at its headquarters but denied hosting Jewish Zionist groups.

Or when Amnesty's members voted against a resolution condemning antisemitism - a resolution that had nothing to do with Israel, and the only resolution that was defeated at that conference.

Or when Amnesty praised the "Youth Against Settlements" group - which is explicitly antisemitic.

Or Oxfam selling antisemitic literature on its site - copies of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and other antisemitic books that Oxfam members owned, photographed and blurbed on their website without even considering this to be a problem.

Or Oxfam excusing and supporting Miftah when the latter published the blood libel.

There are dozens of such examples.

In total, it is obvious that these NGOs have a problem not just with Israel, but many of their members have problems with Jews. 

Even so, it is unclear whether it is wise for the State Department to declare them antisemitic. Outside the Middle East, the groups seem to do some excellent work and have dedicated employees who really care about human rights. (If the NGOs really wanted to be objective, they would rotate their researchers to different areas of the world instead of allowing obsessive haters of Israel to choose to demonize Israel.)

Declaring the entire organizations themselves to be antisemitic could be counterproductive. But they do have an crazed focus on attacking the Jewish state, and that needs to be publicized.

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.@Amnesty remains obsessed with Israel in fact-challenged video on "occupation."

Hey, Amnesty hasn't come out with a new video demonizing Israel for at least three weeks, so of course they are overdue.

Off the top of my head, here are only some of the lies and misrepresentations in the video:

1. Israel doesn't "transfer" people to the territories. People move there voluntarily. This is not a violation of the Geneva Conventions routinely invoked to target Israel that says "The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies."

2. Israel haters knew that invoking Geneva wasn't nearly as clear cut as they pretended, so the Arab states specifically  wrote the Rome statute to mention "indirect" transfer - a law written only for Israel. European powers went along with this hijacking of international law to target a single state. This makes the Rome Statute a travesty of international law.

3. Even that travesty doesn't extend to travel companies working wherever they want to. That is Amnesty's own obsession. There is nothing illegal there, and in fact to demand that travel companies discriminate against Jews is far more immoral. (Israeli Arabs who live across the Green Line aren't considered "settlers" and there are thousands of them.)

4. Amnesty implies that Jewish settlements displace Arabs. Outside of Hebron, every settlement is in areas Arabs never lived. In Hebron, every single house that Jews live in was purchased legally.

Any displacement of Arabs because of them building houses illegally is done with permission of Israel's Supreme Court. I've never seen Amnesty (or anyone, for that matter) seriously counter the legal arguments that are in Supreme Court decisions.

5. Jews live under fear as well. Ever hear of suicide bombers? Amnesty never spent nearly as much time on Palestinian terror as on Jews building houses.

6. Gaza, and Area A, are not under military occupation in any legal sense. Occupation requires "boots on the ground" in every legal definition before people started making up new rules for Israel and Israel alone. Even Amnesty has admitted that the definition of occupation is only  "as long as the occupying forces are still present in that territory and exercise final control over the acts of the local authorities." This does not at all apply to Gaza or Area A, which have their own local authorities who do not answer to Israeli military officials.

7. Amnesty's obsession with Israel means fewer resources on real human rights issues worldwide. It does not have unlimited resources, which means that Amnesty makes the conscious decision every day to divert money and time from the millions of people worldwide who actually have their lived threatened every day towards demonizing Israel.  In short, Amnesty's obsession with Israel endangers untold numbers of other people worldwide who need the political support from a major human rights organization.

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The "objectivity" of @HRW and @Amnesty

Yesterday, Kenneth Roth of Human Right Watch told Haaretz, in context of Israeli courts looking at the legality of not renewing the work permit of anti-Israel activist and HRW researcher Omar Shakir, that “This is a campaign by the Israeli government not only to shut down human rights activity, including by our Israeli partners, but also to deprive Israelis of information about what is happening around them. Whatever happens, we will continue to report objectively on human rights violations here and elsewhere.”

Omar Shakir is objective?

Even if we ignore his pro-BDS activities before joining HRW (and he was obviously hired because of them, not in spite of them,) since he joined he tweeted this antisemitic cartoon about ISIS in Syria attacking Palestinians that claims that Jews are behind the terror group, and called the cartoon "powerful:"

OK, so Shakir is not very objective, even when he is supposedly tweeting against Hamas.

But what about HRW (and Amnesty International) as a whole? Are they objective when it comes to Israel and Palestinians?

Today, the top stories at both Human Rights Watch and Amnesty websites are both about Israel. 

HRW's is about this court case:

Amnesty is still pushing its months-old campaign against TripAdvisor allowing Jewish-owned tourist spots to be mentioned, clearly the top human rights issue of our time based on its website:

What a coincidence that while there are still human rights crises worldwide, both of the major human rights organizations are obsessing over Israel!

Amnesty's headline, "Stand With Palestinians," implies that these groups are not so much interested in bashing Israel as in protecting the human rights of Palestinians. Is this true?

No.

For the past few weeks, Palestinians in Lebanon have been loudly protesting laws that penalize any businesses that either employ Palestinians or are owned by Palestinians, making their already precarious existence in Lebanon even worse.

Yet the Lebanon pages at Amnesty and HRW still don't mention a word about it.

Their purported concern for Palestinian human rights seems to end where Arab country borders begin.

I'm not even mentioning the hundreds of examples of anti-Israel bias by Amnesty and HRW in the past. This is bias you can see today by just going to their websites.

When Ken Roth claims that human rights NGOs report "objectively" from the Middle East, he is either delusional or knowingly lying.

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#TerroristsInSuits, part one: Amnesty's favorite Palestinian NGO has terrorist members

In February, the Israeli Ministry of Strategic Affairs released a truly damning report, detailing the huge number of ties between terrorist organizations and "peaceful" groups that support BDS.

By far the terror group that does this most is the PFLP, the Marxist terror group that was not only active in the 1960s and 70s with several high profile airplane hijackings but also in the 2010s with the Jerusalem synagogue massacre of 2014, which the PFLP claimed responsibility for, and a drive-by shooting in 2015, killing one.

The Marxist background of PFLP makes one wonder if this strategy of laundering terrorists as leaders in "non-violent" NGOs was part of an old Soviet plot to destroy Israel from many angles.

The Palestinian Center for Human Rights is regarded as a reliable and fair NGO by the world. Amnesty has used it for much of the information in their (discredited) Gaza Platform.

But Jaber Wishah, Deputy Director of the PCHR Board until 2017, was in charge of
the PFLP military wing. He was sentenced to two life sentences and served 15 years in
prison (1985-1999).

Wishah - again, in a major position for a human rights NGO- eulogized Samir Kuntar, the child murderer who is one of Israel's most reviled terrorists.  Wishah wrote that Kuntar “was an example for all the world’s dignitaries in the struggle against evil, and that there are thousands following in Samir’s footsteps today.”

Wishah isn't the only problematic person at PCHR.

PCHR Director-General Raji Sourani and Director of the Legal Department and Legal Aid Program, Iyad al-Alami, both maintained ties with Hamas (as of 2017). The two provided legal aid and consultation to Hamas, collecting materials and writing documents for the terror group’s use in legal proceedings against the State of Israel.

Aiding a terror group? Not exactly peaceful.

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People who "speak truth to power" like @btselem @hrw @amnesty will never speak truth to Palestinians

Amnesty tried to get some more interest in the Nakba site they created that apparently didn't get enough traffic to justify its expense, and I responded:

57+ years since @Amnesty was founded, and it has not yet demanded that Palestinians have the right to citizenship in the Arab countries that most have been born in.https://t.co/hgG2vfhOuD https://t.co/xhYyDI4AjH

— Elder Of Ziyon  ҉ (@elderofziyon) May 21, 2019

Of course, Amnesty didn't respond.

Gerald Steinberg of NGO Monitor chimed in:

Of course @amnesty isn't interested in helping #Palestinians. They're a radical political #NGO more on demonizing democracies, #Israel.

— (((Gerald M Steinberg))) (@GeraldNGOM) May 21, 2019

Sarit Michaeli of B'Tselem responded to him:

Your sudden expressed concern for Palestinians would appear far less disingenuous had you not denied the existence of the Israeli military occupation they live under.

— Sarit Michaeli (@saritm0) May 21, 2019

Once she joined the thread, I decided to ask her directly if B'Tselem supports the basic human rights of Palestinians born in Arab countries to become citizens, as enshrined in the Convention on the Rights of the Child:

Do you agree that Palestinians should be allowed to have full citizenship in their Arab host countries if they so desire? Let's have it for the record.

— Elder Of Ziyon ҉ (@elderofziyon) May 21, 2019

Michaeli didn't respond. Because she can't.

The unofficial position of B'Tselem, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty and other NGOs is that the nonexistent "Right of Return" for all future generations of Palestinians is more important than the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness. There is no legal or moral justification for that position, and they don't apply it to any other group of people in the world. They know it is indefensible, and their position helps prolong the suffering of stateless Palestinians.

Yet these NGOs, who pretend to "speak truth to power," cannot admit the truth - that Palestinians should be covered by these conventions and their Arab hosts should offer them citizenship after being in their countries for decades. This is the only defensible position for a human rights organization to take - but if they said it, Palestinian "leaders" (as well as Lebanese and others) would angrily retaliate, possibly kick them out of their areas, and threaten them.

So they must go along with the Palestinian position to keep Palestinians miserable and stateless. And they will refuse to answer any questions about it because it reveals that they care more about politics than Palestinian human rights.

It is pretty embarrassing, when you think about it. If only a major reporter would ask these questions from these NGOs that they can't ignore, we can learn a great deal about the hypocrisy of "human rights" NGOs.

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Amnesty creates an absurd, biased website for the "nakba"

Amnesty International has created, as far as I can tell, four special websites under its Amnesty.org domain.

One of them is about Syrian prisons.

The other three are dedicated to bashing Israel - the Gaza Platform which I have extensively debunked, "Black Friday" about IDF reaction to the kidnapping of soldiers in the 2014 war, and now the latest, on "Nakba."

Amnesty's obsession with Israel is unabated.

The new Nakba site, released yesterday, is professional, but very uneven.

It has three sections, on Palestinians in Jordan, Lebanon and West Bank/Gaza. Nothing about Palestinians in Syria, where thousands have been killed in recent years; nothing about how they live in Gulf states.

The Jordan and Lebanon sections mostly accurately portray how they are mistreated in those countries, and it notes that while the majority of Jordanian Palestinians are citizens, the ones from Gaza are not and have severe restrictions. It even lightly suggests (but doesn't demand) that they should be naturalized.

But the Lebanon section says no such thing. If Lebanon doesn't want them to be citizens and keep them all in crowded, dirty camps forever, that's fine.

The Gaza/West Bank section is completely different and much more extensive - but it only talks about one topic, Israel's use of tear gas and how terrible that supposedly is. It looks like that was meant to be the main report but at the last minute Amnesty decided that tear gas isn't really the biggest human rights issue to dedicate an entire website to so they expanded it to "Nakba".

Yet Amnesty continues to push the false idea that the Right of Return exists. I wrote a long Twitter thread last night debunking that idea:

______________________________

Amnesty doesn't understand international law.

#UNResolution194 does NOT provide a "right to return" for a number of reasons.

First of all, it is not international law. It is a General Assembly resolution. That's sort of basic.

Secondly, the word "right" was deliberately excluded from the resolution - because there is no such right.

It only says "refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so..."

If it was a "right" it would apply whether they want to live in peace with Israel or not.

And, of course, most of them are not interested in living at peace in a Jewish state, which they reject. (In fact, the Arab states rejected Resolution 194 altogether, making it ironic that they now claim that it is the basis for "return.")

In 1950, the UN Conciliation Commission interpreted the words "to their homes" to mean their actual houses, not their "homeland." Which implies that if the homes don't exist anymore, then the OTHER parts of 194 should apply- the parts Amnesty ignores.

The other parts say "the Conciliation Commission [should] facilitate the repatriation, resettlement and economic and social rehabilitation of the refugees and the payment of compensation." Meaning that according to 194, Arab states should also do their parts to resettle Pals.

Why does everyone emphasize the supposed obligations of Israel under this resolution, but ignore the obligations of the Arabs? If 194 is so sacrosanct, then ALL of it is operative, not just "return."

Yet the Arab obligations to resettle Palestinian Arabs are never mentioned.

This selective interpretation of 194, where it is given huge importance when it supposedly gives Israel obligations but the other sections are ignored, shows that there is a political dimension to those who claim it provides a "right to return."

Of course, 194 does not say that the descendants of 1948 refugees maintain the supposed right to return. The idea is absurd, yet @Amnesty claims that it exists. They go so far beyond the (non-binding) resolution to make themselves look like fools.

If Amnesty's interpretation was correct, then every human being can claim the legal right to "return" to the land of any of their ancestors going back to prehistoric times. For free.

It is insane, yet this is what Amnesty is claiming.

Taking the broader picture, even if Israel was responsible for the displacement of 600,000 Palestinians in 1948, who is responsible for them being stateless and miserable for seven decades since? Shouldn't a human rights organization try to help people, today?

The Convention on the Rights of the Child states "The child shall be registered immediately after birth and shall have the right from birth to a name, the right to acquire a nationality...."

Why doesn't Amnesty insist that Pals born in Arab countries be citizens? Isn't that what human rights organizations are supposed to do? Try to end statelessness and provide protection for children when they are born?

Yet Amnesty and @HRW have an "Israeli exception" to this idea, as with so many other human rights concepts.

Similarly, the UN Human Rights Commission says "States shall introduce safeguards to prevent statelessness by granting their nationality to persons who would otherwise be stateless and are ...born in their territory..." 

For some reason, no NGO tells Arabs to do this.

So we have an incredible irony here: Human rights NGOs, and the UN Human Rights Commission, are actively working AGAINST providing basic human rights to Palestinians who have been in Arab countries since 1948.

All while pretending that they support Palestinians.

There was never a poll done of Palestinian Arabs asking if they would like to become citizens of their host countries in the Arab world (including Gulf states.) They were never given a choice. Their self declared leaders, and the Arab leaders, insisted they would prefer not.

This was a cynical attempt to use them as pawns to hurt Israel. They insisted on "return" - the Palestinian leaders to sound strong, the Arab leaders to get rid of them.

The UN, Amnesty and HRW are going along with this cynical plan from the 1950s and insisting that Palestinians remain in stateless limbo forever, or until Israel agrees to commit suicide.

By not using their influence to pressure Arab countries, they are complicit in Pal misery.

The lack of insistence by NGOs on Arab nations finally taking on the responsibility for their Palestinian refugees - which every nation does, which even Arabs did for Syrian and Iraqi refugees - damns them. They cannot credibly claim to care about human rights.

There is no reason that a population should be considered, and treated as, "refugees" for 71 years. If return isn't an option - and it isn't, unless Israel wants to commit suicide - any real human rights NGO would go to plan B, or plan C.

Instead they parrot 1950s Arab leaders. the ones who admitted that they were using the refugees in order to eventually destroy Israel.

Amnesty's "Nakba" website is only the latest example of using the language of human rights to LIMIT the human rights of Palestinians to be citizens of their host countries.

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The lesson from the @Airbnb episode? Ignore @Amnesty's attempts at blackmail

Last week, Airbnb backtracked on its November decision to de-list Jewish-owned homes in Judea and Samaria, causing lots of headlines and a new lawsuit by Palestinian Arabs against them.

How could Airbnb have avoided the controversy? By not caving to the blackmail by Amnesty International to begin with.

(Yes, it is blackmail - claiming that their business model was illegal and that they would be subject to international law sanctions if they don't do what Amnesty demands.)

The original Amnesty report targeted Tripadvisor, Booking.com and Expedia, besides Airbnb. Those other three companies politely told Amnesty that they provide travel information to everyone about everywhere, that they are transparent about where the attractions are and that they don't think they are doing anything illegal, which is a polite way of telling Amnesty that they were wasting their time.

As Booking.com told Amnesty (in the annex to their report):

Everything we do in terms of how we display information on Booking.com is focused on the customer and always in accordance with applicable law. Our geographic labeling of properties gives full transparency to customers about where an accommodation is located and we continuously update and optimise this information. By marking properties concerned as being in 'Israeli settlements' we provide transparency to anybody looking (or not looking) for accommodations in  these territories.

In other words, don't try to tell or customer where they can or cannot go.

Only Airbnb caved to the Amnesty campaign - and now only Airbnb is subject to the hate mail and controversy.

Do the right thing to begin with and don't let others meddle with your business model. It seems obvious, and three out of the four companies targeted by Amnesty did exactly that. The fourth is paying a dear price for not following that rule.

Personally, I would like to see TripAdvisor threaten a lawsuit against Amnesty for modifying their logo to defame them:

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The biggest victims of AirBnB's not discriminating against Jews in Judea/Samaria aren't Palestinians - but @Amnesty anti-Israel activists

Amnesty International's press release about AirBnB's decision to not discriminate against Jews in Judea and Samaria is unintentionally hilarious:

Airbnb’s decision to continue to allow accommodation listings in illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank is a reprehensible and cowardly move that will be another devastating blow for the human rights of Palestinians.

This decision is a deeply shameful abdication of Airbnb’s responsibility as  a company to respect international humanitarian and human rights law wherever they operate in the world. This includes Israel’s illegal settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. It also exposes the hollowness of their claims to be a company that values human rights.

Airbnb had a clear opportunity to make the right decision to uphold human rights and use their influence to set a precedent in the tourism industry. Instead, they have chosen to bury their heads in the sand - ignoring blatant evidence that they are helping to fuel violations that cause immense suffering to Palestinians.

I want to see an interview of a shopkeeper in Nablus or an artisan in Bethlehem saying how "devastated" they are that a website advertises homes to rent to Jews a few kilometers away.

Looking through Arabic media, this is a non-story, with a couple of sites publishing a Reuters article about it. No one cares. it doesn't affect Palestinians at all.

The only Palestinian I can find complaining about this is perennial kvetcher Saeb Erakat, whose denunciation is reported in Haaretz, not in Arabic, as of this writing.

One would think that if this decision is "devastating," the purported victims would be a little more interested in it.

Palestinians don't care. But Amnesty does.

Amnesty spent considerable time and money creating logos and videos, case studies and maps in its campaign to pressure Airbnb along with Tripadvisor and others companies to stop advertising Jewish-owned tourism destinations in the historic Jewish homeland.

It issued a 96 page report on the issue in January. Most of its campaigns include reports of only two pages.

Palestinians aren't devastated. Amnesty is. (As are the Israel haters who started the campaign in 2016 that Amnesty copied.)

Amnesty spent a great deal of its political capital and its prestige to pressure US companies to discriminate against Jews, and its loss is not only a loss for its campaign but also for its influence as a human rights NGO. It isn't fighting for human rights - it is upset that it wasted so much money and time for nothing.

Needless to say, Amnesty's decision to spend hundreds of man hours attacking Airbnb and Tripadvisor came at the expense of its ability to actually do critical human rights work that can save lives and free political prisoners. Its hate for Israel has perverted its very reason for existence from helping people who are unjustly persecuted into attacking not only Israel but even businesses that work in Israel. It may do great work elsewhere, but its Middle East section is pretty much parroting BDS talking points.

Amnesty's obsession with Israel has nothing to do with human rights - and this episode proves it.

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Amnesty's obsession with Jews continues

Ever since Amnesty International released its truly antisemitic report last week on how TripAdvisor dares to list Jewish-owned properties in Judea and Samaria, it is been pushing this report incessantly on Twitter.

19 out of 30 tweets since then, spread over nearly a week, have been about that topic, and all the other human rights topics of the world have been put on the back burner.

Here is a chart showing the topic of Amnesty's tweets since January 30:

What do you call it when someone is obsessed with the idea that Jews, and only Jews, living in their historic homeland, do not have the same rights as every other human being on the planet?

It sure isn't "human rights."

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Absurd @Amnesty doesn't just hate Israel, but Jewish history, tourists who care about the Bible and TripAdvisor reviewers who visit Jewish historic sites

Today, Amnesty International released another incredibly biased report, about how Israeli tourism to Judea and Samaria is somehow a war crime..

The hate that Amnesty has for Jews who choose to live where their forefathers lived, and for the Jewish history that nearly all occurred there, is palpable.

This Amnesty report sheds no new light. NGOs keep trying to find new ways to demonize the Jews of Judea and Samaria and the flavor of the year is tourism.

Most of the report doesn't even mention tourism but is a rehashed litany of old, ridiculous accusations, such as Israel is violating "the right to adequate housing" -  in an area where anyone can drive around and see opulent mansions belonging to Arabs.

Examples of the hate in this report:

Within East Jerusalem, the government is developing ambitious plans to build tourism infrastructure in Palestinian parts of the city.

Which were Jewish parts of the city 3000 years anyone ever heard of Palestinian Arabs.

In 2017, tourist arrivals grew by 25% to a record 3.6 million visitors, bringing in US$5.8 billion. This growth has brought financial benefits both to Israel and to businesses operating in occupied territory. This is because most foreign visitors also enter the OPT. The top three most visited places by foreign tourists in 2017 were all in Jerusalem’s Old City, which Israel annexed in 1967 along with the rest of East Jerusalem.

The footnote says that these three places are the Western Wall, the Jewish Quarter and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Yes, two of them are Jewish and one Christian. Apparently visiting these places is a terrible crime because it supports Israel's "occupation" of the areas - even in Jerusalem.

Did anyone visit the Jewish Quarter or the Western Wall before "occupation"? No - Jordan demolished the old Jewish Quarter and did not let any Jews visit the Western Wall.

But why should Amnesty bring that up? They'd rather blame Israel for allowing Jews to visit their own holy sites! Amnesty is saying that they prefer a world where Palestinians will bar Jews from visiting their holiest sites in Jerusalem, Hebron, Bethlehem, Shiloh, Bet El et. al. to a world where Jews have indigenous rights in their historic lands.

In addition, gift shops and visitor centres at tourist sites in the OPT sell produce grown and manufactured by Israeli settlers, such as wine, olive oil, handicrafts and cosmetics.Tourists visiting these attractions and spending money in the restaurants and other sites directly contribute to the maintenance and growth of settlements, since businesses are owned or managed by settlers.

Oh. My. God. How dare Jews who live in Judea actually make and sell products?

Tourists to Jewish holy places must, according to Amnesty, avoid buying a Coke from a Jewish-owned store and instead try to find an Arab-owned store. Sure, the tourists - especially the Jewish ones - might be stabbed for walking into the store, but at least they won't be drinking cola contaminated with Jew cooties.

Settler groups supported by the Israeli government emphasize the Jewish people’s historic connections to the region. 

Egads! Settlers are so evil that they actually have the chutzpah to tell visitors that the Bible mentions their history!

Is Amnesty saying the Jewish people do not have a historic connection to the region? It sure seems like they would prefer that this information is buried, because when Jews actually have a connection to their heritage, it makes other Jews and Christians want to visit. And that helps out settlers! The inhumanity!

By the way, do tourists in Palestinian Arab areas hear anything about the Jewish history in the land? Would Amnesty ever complain about it if they don't?

Of course not. Because the subtext of this report is that the Jewish connection to the land is the real problem. It brings tourists. It is suspect. It is one-sided. The Palestinians are the only legitimate residents and the Jews really don't belong. Amnesty is thisclose to saying that Jews are Khazars and imposters.

It is the same message that Hamas and all the other antisemites give.

Israel has constructed many of its settlements close to archaeological sites to make the link between the modern State of Israel and its Jewish history explicit.

Um, no. Jews moved to these areas to be close to where Biblical events occurred.  You can find this secret information out by - gasp - asking them.

Amnesty is saying that such connections are nefarious, when they are natural - if you actually give any credence to Jewish history.

In addition, websites and visitor maps issued by the Israel Nature and Parks Authority and Israel’s Ministry of Tourism do not show the West Bank’s borders. Instead, the area is marked as “Judea and Samaria”, a term for the West Bank used by the government and settlers and not by Palestinians. This suggests a deliberate attempt to conceal from tourists that these places are in the OPT.

How dare Israel use Biblical names instead of the name that Jordanians made up in 1949? Clearly, they aren't interested in preserving Jewish history, but in destroying Palestinian history!

 Amnesty knows that the tourists in Judea and Samaria are primarily Christians and Jews who are attached to the Bible. But it still quotes a Palestinian approvingly, saying:

“Tourists coming here are brainwashed, they are lied to, they do not know this is our land.”

Can Amnesty list a single lie that the tour guides are saying? If not, why does it quote someone calling them a liars?

The Bedouin in the OPT self-identify as Indigenous Peoples.As such, they enjoy certain special rights over the land they occupy and the natural resources they use to sustain their traditional livelihoods and way of life.

Ooooh, they self identify as indigenous?

Guess what, Amnesty? - So do the Jews who live there!

Amnesty knows its audience would be horrified to know that Airbnb, Booking.com and others list rentals in these areas:

TripAdvisor also had several listings in Kfar Adumim and the surrounding area. These included two properties that can be rented through its website. The first is a one-bedroom apartment, which boasts a jacuzzi. The second is a two-bedroom family home, with views of Jerusalem and the Jordan Valley. In addition, TripAdvisor provided details and reviews of a hotel, two restaurants and five “things to do”, including the Ein Prat park.

Anywhere else in the world, this news would hardly be expected to be featured in a human rights report. Indeed, it is difficult to know exactly how Jews renting out apartments is a human rights violation. But Amnesty knows it is, and it lists dozens of specific places that are tourist spots or apartment rentals - as if it is revealing major crimes against humanity.

Amnesty hates Israel and Jews so much that it is even upset at people who give positive reviews to visits in Judea and Samaria in TripAdvisor! Here are three quotes in the Amnesty report:

“For those interested in Israel and Judaism, this is a really phenomenal & highly recommended day trip. I thoroughly enjoyed it!” - Hebron tour TripAdvisor review
“A must see with a good, knowledgeable guide. Try to go when the Muezzin is not calling for prayers or you won’t be able to enjoy as much.” - City of David TripAdvisor review
“Every visitor of the land of Israel should definitely come visit this site. It can give you a better perspective of Israel. Fun place!” - Susya Tripadvisor review

This, ladies and gentlemen, is antisemitism. Amnesty hates Jews and Jewish history so much  that they cannot even stomach the idea that visitors enjoy going to historic Jewish sites.  It reveals far more about Amnesty and its supporters than it does about how evil these Jewish "settlers" are for welcoming guests, of all the terrible things they do.

Perhaps the most absurd section of all the inanities in this report is this:

The City of David National Park is already one of the most visited attractions in Israel. In 2017, it received 17.5% of all foreign visitors (some 630,000 people).205 Hundreds of thousands of Israelis also visit the site each year, including many groups of school children, students and soldiers,helping to entrench the settlers’ presence in the area. As with the other sites managed by settlers described above, Elad presents a distorted historical narrative of the area, emphasizing the Jewish people’s roots in the area while excluding those of Palestinian residents.

Let's talk about the "Palestinian residents" of Silwan that the tour guides don't mention. From Wikipedia:

In the mid-1850s, the villagers of Silwan were paid £100 annually by the Jews in an effort to prevent the desecration of graves on the Mount of Olives. Jewish visitors to the Western Wall were also required to pay a tax to the inhabitants of Silwan, which by 1863 was 10,000 Piastres. Nineteenth-century travelers described the village as a robbers' lair.Charles Wilson wrote that "the houses and the streets of Siloam, if such they may be called, are filthy in the extreme.” Charles Warren depicted the population as a lawless set, credited with being "the most unscrupulous ruffians in Palestine.”

Does Amnesty want the tour guides to describe the extortionists, robbers, and filthy ruffians who were the historical Palestinian Arab residents of the area? OK, let's tell the City of David to emphasize this history.

This report is all the proof you need - as if you needed more proof - that Amnesty is not interested in human rights of Arabs so much as they want to strip Jews of their own human rights to even visit the lands of their ancestors, let alone live there.

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Amnesty misses the good old times when Jews were defenseless (Petra Marquardt-Bigman)

By Petra Marquardt-Bigman

No matter how many atrocities are perpetrated all over the world, there is no worse atrocity than Israel defending its citizens – at least as far as Amnesty International is concerned. It seems that the “human rights” organization really misses the good old times when Jews were defenseless: last Friday, Amnesty told its more than one million Twitter followers:

“#Israel must stop the murderous assault on protesters in #Gaza, including killing and maiming 'Great March of Return' demonstrators who pose no imminent threat to soldiers. Countries must stop all military aid to Israel until this assault ends.”

To make sure everyone understood that the world’s only Jewish state behaved in ways that Jew-haters have always seen as characteristically evil, Amnesty posted another tweet echoing the medieval blood libel:

“Malicious tactics are being employed by the Israeli military who are deliberately using weapons of war to cause life-changing injuries to Palestinian protesters. Why are weapons still being sold to #Israel?”

On Facebook, where Amnesty has about two million followers, the organization shared the same posts.

And needless to say, there were not just social media posts, but also a lengthy statement under the title: “Israel: Arms embargo needed as military unlawfully kills and maims Gaza protesters.”

Just in case you were wondering: no, Amnesty doesn’t mention that Gaza’s Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar told a crowd of protesters near the border with Israel: “We will uproot the borders, we will pluck out their hearts, and we will pray in Jerusalem.” No word either about the fact that many of those killed were members of terror organizations; no word about the displays of swastikas (on Hitler’s birthday) or about the successful attempts to start fires across the border in Israel by releasing kites carrying burning rags or fire bombs.

Instead, Magdalena Mughrabi, Deputy Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa at Amnesty International, sounded as if she was a deputy Hamas spokesperson – according to her, the riots at Israel’s borders are just the peace-loving people of Gaza “demanding the right to return to their homes and towns in what is now Israel.”

Right, Ms. Mughrabi: now it’s Israel, but you can always hope it will eventually be Hamastan if Amnesty keeps working as hard as it can to rid the world of its only Jewish state.

So let’s conclude with a picture worth a thousand words to illustrate what Amnesty is cheering on.

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Where is @Amnesty's Mosul Platform?

In 2015, Amnesty International spent who knows how many thousands of dollars to create an online database that purported, very falsely, to document every single death and injury (to Palestinians) from the 2014 Gaza war.

Despite my proving how wrong it was (and Amnesty read my posts), they refused to correct their data, which is still online, and still claiming hundreds more civilians killed than any other source including the UN and B'Tselem.

At the time, Amnesty justified its use of this massive amount of (flawed) research and programming by saying "Ultimately, the vision is to create a tool that could be used during future conflicts, whether in Gaza or elsewhere, to report on research findings and reveal emerging patterns that could be used to pressure those with influence over the warring parties to take action to stop violations of international humanitarian law in real time."

And yet, for some reason, Amnesty has not found any reason to spend this much effort in any other conflict. Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Libya, Afghanistan - none of those conflicts are worth Amnesty's efforts.

For example:

More than 40,000 civilians were killed in the devastating battle to retake Mosul from Isis, according to intelligence reports revealed exclusively to The Independent – a death toll far higher than previous estimates.

Residents of the besieged city were killed by Iraqi ground forces attempting to force out militants, as well as by air strikes and Isis fighters, according to Kurdish intelligence services.

Hoshyar Zebari, until recently a senior minister in Baghdad, told The Independent that many bodies “are still buried under the rubble”. “The level of human suffering is immense,” he said.

This is far more causualties, in a much smaller area, with far more civilians killed by both sides.

Wouldn't this be a perfect vehicle for Amnesty to use its platform?

But there is another rule that Amnesty has for these sorts of initiatives. If Israel cannot be blamed, then it really isn't that important to spend much time and money into documenting it.

(h/t Reuben)

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Amnesty says Israel "attacked peaceful crowds" at Al Aqsa

Amnesty International continued its anti-Israel bias, contradicting every non-Arab eyewitness account on the events on Thursday:

Israeli forces attacked peaceful crowds of Palestinians as they gathered at al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem this afternoon for the first time since Israel lifted recent security measures imposed at the site, according to Amnesty International staff at the scene.
“Israeli forces started firing stun grenades, tear gas and sponge-tipped bullets into a peaceful crowd as they stood at the entrance of the al-Aqsa mosque compound and inside. It appeared to be an entirely unprovoked attack. Some Palestinians threw empty water bottles in return. Others, began to throw stones as well,” said Magdalena Mughrabi, Deputy Middle East and North Africa Director at Amnesty International.

Freelance journalist Jake Hanrahan tweeted in response:

I was there. There wasn't one single vantage point where you could tell either way who started it.

— Jake Hanrahan (@Jake_Hanrahan) July 27, 2017

Even Asaf Ronel, Haaretz' World News editor and  an avowed anti-Zionist, took issue with this description:

It's a complex scene. Fact that from point of view of @amnesty staff it seemed unprovoked doesn't mean nothing happened somewhere else https://t.co/uFWbybjY1z

— Asaf Ronel (@AsafRonel) July 27, 2017

Amnesty's bias is even more egregious when you consider that for the past two weeks Israel has done everything it could to calm things down while the Palestinian leadership has done everything it could to inflame and incite.

Such background is irrelevant to Amnesty, which is wedded to its own anti-Israel narrative that trumps facts, so much so that it ignores proof that it is wrong.

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Amnesty implies that prisoners' relatives are being tortured by Israel

Amnesty International has a report that was released to coincide with this hunger strike, yet not one of the prisoners' demands are listed by Amnesty as being a violation of international law. (Amnesty does claim that having the prisons in Israel instead of the territories is a violation of the Geneva Conventions, but relocating the prisons is not one of the prisoner demands. One can imagine the outcry if Israel would build prisons in the territories!)

What may be more interesting was  Amnesty's choice to highlight this pull quote in their report:

Since the title of the report is "Israel must end ‘unlawful and cruel’ policies towards Palestinian prisoners," anyone glancing at this page and this featured quote would assume that a prisoner is claiming that Israel is torturing them. An unsubstantiated quote of that sort would be egregious enough if that is what this was.

But if you bother to look at the nearly unreadable grayed-out source, you see that this accusation of "torture" is not by a prisoner, but from a prisoner's sister, saying that Israeli restrictions on her visiting her brother is "torture" and punishment.

It is obvious that calling restrictions on unlimited visits "torture" is ludicrous. To highlight that accusation as a key takeaway in the report is massively deceptive.

Clearly, Amnesty had next to nothing to accuse Israel of, and instead it went to its usual Plan B, to quote anonymous people who accuse Israel of horrible things without Amnesty having to actually verify anything. It pushes lies and propaganda while avoiding lying outright.

Just another reason that Amnesty has no credibility as a moral force.

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Amnesty and Reuters got me! Which ironically proves their bias....

Twice in the past couple of days I received gloating responses from people I communicated with on Twitter.

One was Amnesty UK:

2600+ civilians killed by police in #Rio since city was awarded #Rio2016 Olympics. Support our calls for justice https://t.co/GpR6A1gSlC

— Amnesty UK (@AmnestyUK) August 5, 2016

I tweaked them, wondering whether they were documenting the deaths with as much tenacity as they pretended to do for Gaza:

I'm looking forward to your #RioPlatform to document every one, @amnestyuk.

What, you mean it is not planned? https://t.co/nahMFI8DDA

— ElderOfZiyon (@elderofziyon) August 5, 2016

But a few days later, they had a response:

@elderofziyon Hi, do you mean the crossfire app? https://t.co/TkeHsKfsny User-generated documenting of shootings at https://t.co/OY3fr631G8

— Amnesty UK (@AmnestyUK) August 9, 2016

Indeed they created an app for people to report violence in Rio and it allows drilling down into each alleged incident. 

So they got me.

But, as I responded, why won't they fix the many mistakes and lies in the Gaza Platform?

They ignored that tweet, as they ignored many others about the propaganda site that they pretend documents Israeli war crimes.

Clearly they read my tweets. And clearly they have no intention to correct themselves when they are found to be wrong - or lying.

A similar thing seems to have happened with my assertion that the West Bank has Olympic-sized pools (which normally means 50 meters, a certain depth and other technical details.)

I am no longer convinced that there are true Olympic sized pools in the West Bank suitable for training (although I think there is one in Gaza.) And I was happy to admit my doubts to  Luke Baker from Reuters, who happily gloated that I was not being fair and balanced.

But I responded to him about the story that I wrote that started the entire discussion:

.@LukeReuters Didn't @Reuters do the same when you reported that #Israel wouldn't allow swimmer to train? Didn't see any mea culpas from you

— ElderOfZiyon (@elderofziyon) August 9, 2016

And, of course, as with Amnesty, no response. 

This is the difference between those who care about the truth and those who only pretend. I am happy to admit I'm wrong - it does happen, sometimes - because the truth is of supreme importance. But the people at Amnesty and Reuters only pay lip service to the truth. When they are shown to be wrong, they rarely correct themselves unless they would be more embarrassed by their refusal to correct than by the correction itself. 

Which means that you cannot rely on Reuters or NGOs like Amnesty to say anything truthful. It is propaganda, adhering to their pre-existing biases, and anything that contradicts their false assumptions is not worthy of being addressed. 

These two episodes shows that they read the criticism and they read the proof that they are wrong or lying - and they actively choose not to correct themselves. 

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Legal experts show Amnesty doesn't know what it is talking about on Laws of Armed Conflict

Law professor Peter Margulies has written a detailed explanation, based on his own interviews with relevant Israeli officials, on the quality of IDF investigations of incidents that occur during war. He concludes that the IDF is doing quite a good job at maintaining the independence and quality of investigations, which is opposite of the constant charges hurled at Israel by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.

It is a long and somewhat technical paper, but it is instructive to compare the quality and detail of his observations with the amateurish and simplistic attacks by Amnesty and other NGOs on Israel's military judicial process.

Excerpts:

Critics of state investigations of alleged violations of the law of armed conflict (LOAC) often accuse those inquiries of being insufficiently independent from the chain of command. Medicins Sans (MSF, also known as Doctors Without Borders) raised this argument about the recently completed—and exhaustive—U.S. investigation into the October 2015 bombing of a MSF facility in Kunduz, Afghanistan. And earlier in July, Amnesty International leveled a similar charge against Israel’s efforts to investigate LOAC violations during 2014’s Operation Protective Edge in Gaza. But a careful review of LOAC suggests that the situation is more complex than Amnesty’s rhetoric reveals.

Israel has taken substantial structural steps toward independence in LOAC investigations. Independence in investigations is not an end itself—its primary purpose under LOAC is the promotion of effective, timely, and accurate investigation of war crimes allegations.

To assess the independence of an investigation, it is necessary to define independence. Mike Schmitt has suggested that, under LOAC, independence is narrowly defined as standing outside a particular operation’s chain of command. The principle of independence under LOAC does not disqualify a state from reviewing allegations about the misconduct of that state’s forces. In the Kunduz case, MSF argued that the U.S. should have relinquished control to a little-known, never used transnational mechanism, the International Humanitarian Fact-Finding Commission. However, international law assumes that states are competent to investigate alleged abuses involving their own forces. The principle of complementarity holds that states, which after all make international law, should have the authority to address their own LOAC violations unless such states default in their duties. That authority is an incident of state sovereignty. Moreover, a contrary view would let states off the hook, inhibiting the development of robust state investigatory capabilities. The world has turned to ad hoc tribunals like the Nuremberg Tribunals and the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) when the volume and scale of widely acknowledged atrocities and the absence of a state response called out for such a forum. And the International Criminal Court (ICC) can step in today to prosecute matters when a state brought within the ambit of the ICC’s governing Rome Statute has failed to fulfill its own responsibilities. However, state investigations are the default setting for LOAC violations.

As Schmitt observes, the LOAC principle of independence also does not require civilian investigations of alleged military abuses. Civilian conduct of investigations may hinder their efficiency and accuracy, since civilians lack a firm background in tactics, munitions, personnel, and the exigencies of combat. Rather, LOAC merely requires that an investigative team is free from the operational chain of command for the action at issue.

Contrary to the recent Amnesty International report, Israel reinforces independence far more concretely than most other states. Israel has repeatedly welcomed outside scrutiny, including the Turkel Commission, a group of prominent Israeli jurists and scholars including a former Supreme Court justice, aided by international experts such as Australia’s Tim McCormack and Canada’s Ken Watkin. Israel invited this group to study its investigative process after the ill-fated Gaza flotilla raid of 2010. The Turkel Commission found that in most material respects, Israel’s process met the independence criterion. For example, as Israel’s 2014 report indicated, the investigative decisions made by the IDF’s Military Advocate General (MAG) are reviewable by the Attorney General (AG), a cabinet official outside the chain of command. Moreover, the AG’s decisions are in turn reviewable by the Israeli Supreme Court, a vigorous body that has forthrightly stated that “the combat operations of the IDF do not take place in a normative vacuum.” (Physicians for Human Rights v. Prime Minister, Para. 11 (2009)). Israel’s Supreme Court has followed up on this observation with concrete interventions that would be unthinkable under the U.S. Supreme Court’s far more deferential regime. For example, Israel’s Supreme Court has imposed constraints on the IDF’s criteria for targeting suspected terrorists (see Schmitt and John Merriam on IDF extensive targeting protocols). The prospect of the Israeli Supreme Court’s robust review, facilitated by the Court’s broad grants of standing to residents of the West Bank or Gaza as well as Israel proper, acts as an additional ex ante check on military discretion.

Following publication of the Turkel Report, an Israeli interagency team, headed by Dr. Joseph Ciechanover (who had served as General Counsel to the Ministry of Defense and Director General of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs) and comprised of representatives from the IDF and Ministry of Justice, recommended further safeguards. All of the Ciechanover team’s recommendations were approved by Israel’s cabinet earlier in July. A central change was provision for a Fact-Finding Assessment (FFA) of “exceptional incidents” involving alleged loss of civilian life. (See the interagency report here.) The IDF started using the FFA Mechanism during the 2014 Gaza campaign, before issuance of the Ciechanover report. Teams of active duty and reserve military personnel from a variety of disciplines, including law, conduct the FFA. Each FFA works outside the chain of command for the operation under review.

Critics of military LOAC investigations seriously underestimate the difficulties inherent in investigating alleged war crimes. Preserving evidence under battlefield conditions is an arduous task, while witnesses in locations such as Gaza may be subject to intimidation by Hamas and other terrorist groups. Outside observers have a troubled track record when it comes to Israel’s Gaza campaigns. For example, the notoriously flawed Goldstone Commission investigation has drawn much critical commentary. All too often, these outside reports, such as the McGowan Davis report for the U.N. Human Rights Council, have failed to adequately acknowledge the challenges that Israel faces in fighting terrorist entities such as Hamas.

Israel’s critics are right on one point. Given the sheer number of military decisions in the 2014 Gaza campaign, common sense strongly suggests that the IDF’s performance was not perfect. As human beings, IDF personnel are not immune from the pull of anger, fear, and haste.

However, neither imperfections nor grievous mistakes such as the U.S. Kunduz attack necessarily translate into war crimes. For commission of a war crime, a culpable state of mind is an essential element. Article 8 of the ICC’s Rome Statute requires a showing of either intent to harm civilians or recklessness: ordering an attack with the knowledge that the resulting harm to civilians would be “clearly excessive in relation to the … military advantage anticipated.” The high threshold for proof of a culpable state of mind is no accident. Rather, it is a recognition that a less demanding test would not adequately acknowledge the risk of harm that inevitably flows from the fog of war.

Because of the exigencies of armed conflict, assessing the adequacy of a state’s efforts to investigate alleged LOAC violations cannot be reduced to a mere statistical compilation of indictments. A responsible, professional military organization such as the IDF has a range of remedies available for its soldiers’ mistakes, including the promulgation of “lessons learned” from wartime tragedies. A case in point: the MAG’s acknowledgment of the need to improve technological and intelligence capabilities to avoid a repetition of the deaths of four boys on the beach during the 2014 Gaza campaign. One hopes that the U.S. will similarly refine its own systems to avoid a recurrence of the catastrophic Kunduz attack. Any balanced assessment of Israel’s compliance with its international obligations should also take into account its readiness to prosecute IDF personnel serving in the West Bank (for example in this manslaughter prosecution based on killing of a wounded Palestinian). That willingness and reforms such as the FFA process that safeguard the MAG’s independence furnish strong evidence of Israel’s adherence to LOAC norms.

One of the referenced articles is a hugely detailed overview by two American military law experts on Israel's targeting practices in law. Again, the quality of this paper is in marked contrast to NGOs' simplistic and ignorant attacks on the IDF based on nothing more than a predetermined verdict.

Here are excerpts of the conclusion from that paper:

The central finding of this project is that the unique Israeli operational context described in Part I exerts an almost tyrannical influence over the IDF’s legal organization and Israel’s understanding and application of the LOAC. The driving forces in this context are 1) the risk of direct attack faced by the Israeli civilian population due to geography and enemy strategy and 2) the extremely high value Israel places on the safety of its soldiers. Israel’s enemies clearly understand the extent to which these two factors loom large for Israel and exploit them to offset the qualitative and technical advantages that Israel enjoys in conventional warfare. They do this by directly targeting the Israeli population, seeking to capture individual Israeli soldiers and engaging in lawfare tactics. IDF operations are clearly well-regulated and subject to the rule of law. The IDF has extremely robust systems of examination and investigation of operational incidents, and there is significant civilian oversight, both by the Attorney General and the Supreme Court. With respect to the MAG Corps, the Authors found its officers to be exceptionally competent, highly professional, and well-trained. The extent to which MAG officers are independent of commanders, especially when providing legal advice during ongoing operations, is striking.

The operational context in which Israel finds itself also drives the IDF's approach to targeting. Given the geography of Israel and the multiple potential enemies it faces, centralizing air targeting and decentralizing ground attacks makes sense. Moreover, the operational tempo of the operations merits close legal supervision, which the Operational Law Apparatus is designed to provide. It is clear that the deliberate targeting cycle process employed by the Israeli Air Force is constructed so as to identify legal issues as they crop up and to facilitate compliance with LOAC as operations are being planned, approved and executed. Doing so is, as discussed, essential to countering the specific tactics employed by Israel's opponents.

Although the Israeli positions on the LOAC principles and rules governing targeting are rather orthodox, the unique operational environment in which Israel finds itself clearly affects interpretation and application. As an example, given the propensity of Israel’s enemies to use human shields, it is unsurprising that Israel has taken the position that individuals voluntarily acting in this manner are to be treated as direct participants in hostilities. In light of its enemies’ frequent failure to distinguish itself from the civilian population, it is equally unsurprising that Israel has embraced the principle of reasonableness with respect to target identification. Perhaps most noteworthy is the high value Israel places on the safety of its soldiers and its civilian population. Although impossible to quantify, both Authors were convinced these concerns significantly influenced the value judgments made by Israeli commanders as they plan and execute military operations, value judgments that often come into play in the application of such LOAC concepts as proportionality.

In the Authors’ opinion, use of lawfare by Israel’s enemies likewise shapes, whether consciously or not, Israel’s interpretation and application of the LOAC. In particular, Israel has adopted an inclusive approach to the entitlement to protected status, particularly civilian status. Examples include Israel’s positions on doubt, its treatment of involuntary shields as civilians who are not directly participating and its view that individuals who ignore warnings retain their civilian status. Although these positions might seem counterintuitive for a State that faces foes who exploit protected status for military and other gain, such positions are well suited to counter the enemy’s reliance on lawfare. In this regard, Israel’s LOAC interpretations actually enhance its operational and strategic level position despite any tactical loss. Along the same lines, in many cases, the IDF imposes policy restrictions that go above and beyond the requirements of LOAC.

Actual military law experts agree that Israel is meeting and exceeding its legal requirements in how it conducts war. The disagreements that these authors show to specific IDF operational details proves that these papers aren't cheerleading, but sober and detailed analyses based on the specific military (and political) environment that Israel finds itself in. The contrast in quality between these papers written by experts and the armchair pseudo-analysis in NGO reports is obvious to anyone who cares to look.

Predictably, Amnesty's Jacob Burns responded to Peter Margulies' paper on Twitter with its characteristic inability to counter any specific point but rather to engage in handwaving and pointing out that the research trip was sponsored by Israel (which Margulies freely admitted in his disclaimer):

That is Amnesty's argument in a nutshell. We can't find anything wrong with what Israel is doing but we feel that it is wrong because there are relatively few successful prosecutions. The actual reason is because most IDF soldiers know the laws of armed conflict far better than Amnesty's "experts."

Jacob Burns makes one good point, that indirectly damns his own organization:

He didn't ask that Margulies talk to Amnesty's own "experts" on the laws of armed conflict, because he knows quite well that a real law expert would expose Amnesty as hopelessly naive in its analysis.

And I, for one, would welcome legal experts like Margulies to interview B'Tselem experts about their opinion of the deficiencies of Israel's military justice system. In the end, the IDF must adhere to the laws of war, and if B'Tselem knows something that the IDF doesn't about those laws, then by all means, enlighten us.

In the end, it would expose the truth that the arguments from Amnesty and B'Tselem and HRW are not based on international law but on a different, unstated standard that is not reproducible in other contexts and designed to damn Israel ab initio and only then try to justify it.  The laws of armed conflict are meant not only to protect civilians on the opposing side but also soldiers and civilians on the same side. That means that there is far more latitude in interpretation than these NGOs are willing to admit.

In many ways these NGOs are trying to rip apart international law in order to give the side that employs human shields a military advantage. That is neither international law, nor is it even "human rights."

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