Tuesday, October 25, 2022
Elder of Ziyon
Amnesty investigated three incidents, two of which are from Israeli fire. The first one:
Amnesty International has examined in detail two Israeli attacks that must be investigated as possible war crimes because they appear either to have deliberately targeted civilians or civilian objects or to have been indiscriminate attacks. On 5 August 2022, an Israeli tank round struck the house of the alAmour family in Khan Yunis, where 11 civilians were staying, killing Duniana al-Amour, aged 22, and wounding her mother and her sister. Based on its identification of the projectile that struck the house as a “highly accurate” 120mm M339 tank round, and its calculation of the distance between the house and the closest military objects using satellite imagery, Amnesty International believes that the al-Amour family’s house was the intended target of the attack. The killing of Duniana al-Amour and the apparently deliberate targeting of her house must therefore be investigated as a possible war crime.
It does appear that Israel targeted a house. Amnesty says it "found no evidence that any members of the al-Amour family could reasonably be believed to be involved in armed combat. "
This is true. But Amnesty is hiding something - something that they certainly reviewed before writing this report. They are hiding what the ITIC wrote about this attack, that one of the "civilians" in the house was Islamic Jihad's commander of the southern Gaza Strip.
The ITIC is close to the Israeli military. It said that the fatal attack on the Falluja cemetery was from the IDF when even Haaretz assumed it was an errant Islamic Jihad rocket, so it cannot be accused of lying. It is the closest thing we have to an official IDF comment on the incident.
If a senior commander was in the house, it was a valid military target. It is a tragedy but certainly not a war crime.
Amnesty doesn't want you to know that, so they simply don't report it.
The second incident:
In another instance, on 7 August 2022, a missile apparently fired from a drone hit Al-Falluja cemetery in Jabalia, killing five children and seriously injuring another. Based on a review of pictures of the weapon’s remnants, Amnesty International determined that they were consistent with an Israeli guided missile. Unnamed sources from the Israeli army told an Israeli newspaper that a preliminary internal probe conducted by the army into the attack showed that neither Palestinian Islamic Jihad nor the AlQuds Brigades were firing rockets at the time of the attack and that Israel was carrying out attacks on “targets” near the area. Satellite imagery showed that there were no military targets visible in the area 10 days before the attack and residents interviewed by Amnesty International said that none appeared in the intervening period. There are strong indications that the strike on Al-Falluja cemetery was either a direct attack on civilians or an indiscriminate attack where Israel failed to comply with the obligation to take all feasible precautions to distinguish between civilians and fighters.Notice how Amnesty assumes that the Israeli sources are simply lying when they say there were targets in the area. A "target" is likely a member or leader of Islamic Jihad. 10-day old satellite imagery will not find such a target, and residents being interviewed sure as hell will not admit they saw a militant even if they did. Amnesty simply assumes Israel either targeted kids for fun, or didn't check for civilians. It does not even consider that the laws of war say that a military commander can act based on the best intelligence information available at the time - he or she does not have to wait for 100% accuracy. Sometimes, as in this case, the information was not accurate enough and there is a tragedy.
And while Amnesty investigated only one (of several) Islamic Jihad rockets that fell short and killed people, it emphasizes that everything ends up being Israel's fault: "Israel’s apartheid remains the root cause of Palestinians’ suffering and the recurring violations against them and must be dismantled." Even though the August hostilities had nothing to do with the scurrilous "apartheid" accusation, to Amnesty, Israel's existence is the original sin.
And one that it is doing everything it can to destroy.
UPDATE: The Amnesty video accompanying the report mentions the Islamic Jihad rocket that killed 7 children - but then blames that on Israel as well.
