We know where this is headed. we've seen it before. Amnesty will assume anything Israel says is a lie, anything Gaza residents say is the truth, cherry pick Israeli statements to imply wanton destruction is the goal, and base its legal analysis on this set of false evidence.
The Katz tweet problem
Amnesty leans heavily on social media posts by Defense Minister Israel Katz as evidence that the strikes served no legitimate military purpose. The report quotes his September 8 post — "Today, a massive hurricane will hit the skies of Gaza City and the roofs of the terror towers will tremble" — and his September 14 post about the Islamic University going "soaring to the heavens," characterizing their tone as "celebratory and gleeful" proof of punitive rather than military intent.
The problem is what Amnesty chose to quote and what it chose not to. Katz's September 8 statement also included a direct warning to Hamas: "This is a final warning to the Hamas murderers and rapists in Gaza and in luxury hotels abroad: Release the hostages and put down your weapons – or Gaza will be destroyed and you will be annihilated." That's not proof of wanton destruction. That's wartime rhetoric, the kind of ultimatum issued in every modern conflict. More importantly, Amnesty consistently omits a word Katz used repeatedly: terror. He called these "terror towers," not apartment blocks. On September 5, he said "the first evacuation notice has been delivered to a high-rise terror building in Gaza City before an attack." On September 13, Katz described the Burj al-Nur as a "terror tower." After a single day's operations he announced "25 terror towers destroyed." Amnesty quotes the theatrical language while systematically excising the substantive claim embedded in it that these towers housed terror infrastructure.
A social media post is not legal documentation of military intent, and Amnesty knows this — which is why, when the rhetoric serves their argument, they treat it as evidence, and when it undermines their argument, they omit it. The IDF's own statement before the campaign began said it "conducted comprehensive intelligence research and identified significant Hamas terrorist activity within a wide range of infrastructure in Gaza City particularly in high-rise buildings." Amnesty dismisses this as unsubstantiated without engaging its substance. Because Amnesty assumes Jews are liars.
The Islamic University case
Amnesty cites Katz's September 14 tweet about the Islamic University of Gaza (IUG) as paradigmatic evidence of ideological rather than military motivation. This is interesting, because the evidentiary record on the IUG is not in dispute — it's publicly documented across decades.
The IUG was founded under the direct influence of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, Hamas's founder. Senior Hamas figures have held teaching and administrative positions at the university throughout its history — Ismail Haniyeh served as secretary of its board of trustees and chairman of the student council, while Mahmoud al-Zahar, one of Hamas's founders, taught medicine there. The university has publicly stated it was proud that its employees were also Hamas military operatives, and even published obituaries for graduate students and lecturers who died as fighters. After the 2021 conflict, Yahya al-Sinwar told IUG academics that thanks to them and their colleagues with academic degrees who worked in the resistance, Hamas's rockets had achieved "unprecedented precision and capabilities."
This is a public declaration by the head of Hamas that the university's faculty had improved weapons systems. After October 7, the IDF stated Hamas had used the IUG as "a training camp for weapons development and military intelligence." In June 2024, Hamas terrorists gathered at a building on the IUG campus to launch anti-tank missiles at Israeli troops — the IDF struck it after conducting aerial surveillance. An Israeli army spokeswoman told the Chronicle of Higher Education that university facilities were used by Hamas to develop and store weapons, including Qassam rockets. FDDWikipedia
Amnesty's report presents Katz's September 14 tweet about the IUG as evidence of "eliminating incitement" — a legally insufficient rationale — while offering no engagement with any of the above. Amnesty's characterization of the IUG evidence is not a research failure. It is a selection failure.
The methodology conceals a category error
Amnesty's Crisis Evidence Lab "analysed satellite imagery and verified more than 25 videos" and found "no evidence of military use" at the buildings it examined. This is the core of their claim, and it contains a fundamental methodological problem.
Amnesty's methodology, in other words, is structured to produce the conclusion it publishes. Absence of visible fighters in verified video does not mean absence of military use. It is idiotic to even make that claim. An organization with Amnesty's resources and legal expertise understands this distinction. They write up their faux legal analysis anyway.
The Hamas baseline problem
What Amnesty's report omits is as significant as what it includes. The phrase "Hamas embeds military infrastructure in civilian buildings" appears nowhere in its analysis as a structural consideration. Yet this is not a contested claim — it is a documented operational doctrine, confirmed by finds across hospitals, mosques, schools, and universities throughout the war. Hamas has exploited universities for terrorist purposes throughout the conflict: Israeli forces found a tunnel under Israa University, discovered weapons and a tunnel at Al-Azhar University, and Hamas repeatedly returned to the Islamic University to reconstitute itself after prior strikes.
An honest investigation of Israeli strikes on high-rise buildings would ask: given Hamas's established pattern of militarizing civilian infrastructure, what standard of evidence should be required before concluding that a building had no military use? Amnesty's answer, operationally, appears to be: it is impossible. Sinwar's praising IUG for its military contributions are apparently not enough evidence for Amnesty. Since open-source imagery doesn't include a big sign saying "HERE IS A HAMAS WEAPONS LAB" with an arrow pointing to it, Amnesty's methodology will always produce the same finding regardless of actual facts on the ground: Israel is guilty and Hamas is innocent of using human shields.
The report isn't proof of Israeli war crimes. It is clear proof that Amnesty wrote its conclusion before the report was written, and then wrote the report to only include facts or half truths that support their conclusions.
|
Reclaiming the Covenant on America's 250th (May 2026) "He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024) PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022) |
 |
Buy