The Nottebohm Smoking Gun: When Both Amnesty and HRW Made the Identical Legal "Error"

My article yesterday about Human Rights Watch's shelved report calling Israel's immigration policy a "crime against humanity" reminded me of the last time HRW and Amnesty International claimed that international law requires Israel to accept millions of Palestinian "refugees" and their descendants.

Back in 2013, I noticed something curious: both organizations pointed to the same International Court of Justice case—Nottebohm (1955)—as proof that Palestinians have a legal "right of return" based on maintaining emotional and familial ties to territory their ancestors left. (Amnesty wrote about it in 2001, HRW in 2002.)

Their logic went like this: The Nottebohm case established that nationality requires a "genuine connection of existence, interests and sentiments" between a person and a place. Palestinians who maintain ties to the land—even generations later—therefore have legal rights to return based on this genuine connection. Israel's refusal to honor this violates international law.

There was only one problem: Not only did the Nottebohm case not say what they claimed, it said the opposite.

The Nottebohm case involved a German businessman, Friedrich Nottebohm, who had lived in Guatemala for 34 years. When World War II broke out, he hastily obtained citizenship from Liechtenstein (where he had minimal ties) to avoid being treated as an enemy alien. Guatemala refused to recognize this new citizenship and seized his property. Liechtenstein sued on his behalf, claiming he was now their citizen and deserved diplomatic protection.

The ICJ ruled against Liechtenstein, finding that Nottebohm's "naturalization was not based on any real prior connection with Liechtenstein." The Court stated that nationality should reflect "a genuine connection of existence, interests and sentiments" between an individual and a STATE—not a territory.

Notice the critical distinction: The case was about which state could claim someone as a national for purposes of diplomatic protection. It was about citizenship and state sovereignty, not about territorial rights.

The key passage states: "nationality is a legal bond having as its basis a social fact of attachment, a genuine connection of existence, interests and sentiments, together with the existence of reciprocal rights and duties."

HRW and Amnesty quoted the "genuine connection" language while systematically replacing "state" with "territory" to twist a ruling about citizenship into one about land rights.

Here's what makes this particularly absurd: Nottebohm himself had genuine ties to Guatemala—34 years of residence, extensive business operations, deep roots in the community. Yet the ICJ ruled that Guatemala had no obligation to grant him citizenship or even recognize his Liechtenstein citizenship.

If anything, Nottebohm affirmed that states have absolute sovereign control over who they grant citizenship to, even when someone has genuine territorial connections. The ruling explicitly states: "it is for each State to determine under its own law who are its nationals."

This is the exact opposite of a "right of return" based on ancestral territorial ties.

When I wrote about this in 2013, I kept second-guessing myself. How could I—a non-lawyer, a blogger—have read the case so differently from two major international human rights organizations with teams of highly credentialed lawyers?

I must be missing something, I thought. Maybe there's some nuance in international law I don't understand. Maybe my layman's reading of the text was naive. These organizations have reputations to uphold. Surely they wouldn't deliberately misrepresent an ICJ decision.

So I published my analysis tentatively, always wondering if I'd gotten something wrong.

After writing about Omar Shakir and HRW's institutional bias yesterday, I decided to revisit Nottebohm with fresh eyes—and with new tools. I asked Claude (an AI system with legal analysis capabilities) to review both my 2013 article and the full text of the Nottebohm decision to identify any errors in my interpretation.

The verdict: I was right. HRW and Amnesty were wrong.

The case is explicitly about the relationship between individuals and states for citizenship purposes. It uses the word "state" throughout, not "territory." It affirms state sovereignty over nationality determinations. It provides zero support for territorial rights based on ancestral connections.

My layman's reading of the plain text was more accurate than the "expert analysis" from two major human rights organizations.

This raises a much more serious question: How could two supposedly independent human rights organizations, both staffed with professional lawyers, both look at the same ICJ case and both arrive at the same incorrect conclusion—while I, as a layman, got it right?

The odds of this being coincidental are essentially zero. When two students turn in identical wrong answers on a test, we know what happened.

This is evidence of either:

• Coordination: They're working from shared advocacy networks or talking points
• Shared ideology: They're part of the same ecosystem where the conclusion (Israel violates international law) is predetermined
• Institutional capture: Both organizations have been captured by an anti-Israel ideology that treats legal research as window dressing for predetermined conclusions

Nottebohm is not an obscure footnote. It's one of the most cited ICJ cases on nationality. The language is clear. The distinction between "state" and "territory" is fundamental to international law.

Their lawyers are not incompetent. They knew they were misrepresenting the case. The alternative—that multiple teams of international lawyers at two different organizations all somehow failed to notice they were confusing states with territories—is simply not credible.

This means both organizations made a deliberate choice to cite a case for the opposite of what it says because it served their advocacy goals.

This isn't an isolated incident. It's the pattern:

• Amnesty invents its own definition of "genocide" to accuse Israel
• HRW claims standard immigration policy is a "crime against humanity"
• Both misrepresent Nottebohm to create a fictional "right of return"
• Both apply novel legal theories only to Israel
• Both start with the conclusion that Israel is guilty and work backwards

What I've learned over two decades of documenting this is that both Amnesty and HRW approach every Israel-related issue from the position that Israel must be violating international law. They will twist evidence, cherry-pick sources, invent new legal standards, and—as Nottebohm proves—cite cases for the opposite of what they say.

Whether this is conscious malice or unconscious bias, I cannot say. But what I can say with certainty is that it's systematic, consistent, and deliberate.

When I wrote about Nottebohm in 2013, I thought maybe I'd misunderstood something. Now I know: They're the ones who chose to lie rather than tell a truth that might support Israel's position.

And that tells you everything you need to know about whether these organizations can be trusted on anything related to Israel.

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Amnesty has never condemned "pay for slay." HRW almost did once - 23 years ago.

Human Rights Watch issued a report condemning Palestinian suicide bombings during the height of the second intifada in November 2002.  HRW created a bizarrely high bar for evidence of PA payments to terrorists, essentially discounting anything less than a signed letter from Arafat authorizing such payments directly to someone he provably knew was a murderer. 

Even so, HRW was clear: "Under international law, those who assist, aid, or abet crimes against humanity are individually responsible for the resulting crimes."

But that was the last time the supposed human rights organization addressed the issue. Even after 2004, when the PA officially created the Palestinian Authority Martyrs' Fund, HRW did not say a word.

That's over 23 years since HRW even mentioned it.

But even that is infinitely better than Amnesty International. Amnesty has never written a word about "pay for slay." 

While both groups are keen to condemn any evidence of money that might help Israel fight Hamas, or might help a Jew live in Judea, when it comes to direct financial incentives to murder Jews, these "human rights organizations" are completely silent. 

Palestinian Media Watch has proven just this week that the Palestinian Authority has never stopped pay for slay, even as they have insistred that they no longer do that.

Recipients of Palestinian Authority terror stipends residing in Jordan reported over the last three hours that their monthly payments had been deposited into their bank accounts. According to multiple firsthand accounts, the sums transferred were identical to those received previously, suggesting that the payment scale remains unchanged. Reports further indicate that dozens of transfers were processed through recognized banking institutions.

As bad as these NGOs are in what they say and their obsessive hate for Israel, often the real story is what they choose not to condemn. And the biggest incentive for Palestinians to attack Jewish civilians does not merit a negative word from HRW and Amnesty.

They must not think that Jews should have any human rights. 

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The real root cause is, and always has been, Jew-hatred. @Amnesty doesn't combat it - it encourages it.

Amnesty USA tweeted a short slideshow in the wake of the ceasefire in Gaza. Here is one particularly disgusting slide:

The three examples they give are for Amnesty reports accusing Israel of apartheid and genocide.

To Amnesty, Jews are the ones really responsible for Hamas attacking on October 7. 

Every time a group like Amnesty speaks about root causes, it is to justify Palestinian and Arab attacks on Jews. They never say that the "root cause" of Israeli defensive actions is a Palestinian action. Their interest in history always only goes back to some Jewish "root cause" and not a second beforehand. 

On November 8, 1913, the Filastin newspaper published a poem by Sheikh Sulayman al-Taji Faruqi called "The Zionist Menace" which was both antisemitic and anti-Ottoman. The poem caused the Ottoman authorities to shut down the paper for a time. 

Here, possibly for the first time in English, is a translation of the poem. The first half is addressed to Jews, and the rest to the head of the Ottoman Empire.

Sons of gold, time has exposed your deception,

For we are not ones to abandon our homelands through deceit.

You have unleashed your arrogance, but within us remains

A spirit that declares: we shall act and respond.

The most insignificant of nations, without a true identity,

Now dares to bargain with us over our land—how could we allow this?

The Jews—oh, how well we know the ways of the Jews,

For they are a people united in misguidance.

Our laws—what has struck you that you do not heed them?

Do you not see that aiding the motherland requires uprooting you?

Our judgments are clear: leave this world and take refuge elsewhere.

But after this day, patience has no place.

You have obeyed the enemies in their schemes against us—

But will all of you now yield and retreat?

This is the terrible danger of those who oppose us.

Have you not seen how the eye of the homeland is torn apart,

Except to send a message to the rulers:

That the heart of the courageous shall falter and be severed?

If they do not give leadership its due right,

Then its enemies shall rise and settle in their place.

And you, O Commander of the Faithful, show kindness

To us, for we are the shield of the Caliphate.

And lands that God has blessed around them,

And a people who are the pride of all religions,

Are weakened by the frailty you embody—

Unless they fall in ruin and are utterly destroyed.

Does it please you, O successful one, that our lands

Are sold and snatched away while witnesses remain?

It is filled with antisemitic imagery, of rich Jews who aren't a real people anyway and who are hated by Muslims for centuries. It calls for ethnically cleansing Jews from the region. 

This is before "apartheid," before "occupation," before the "nakba," before Balfour. Anyone who looks at root causes must conclude that the root cause is Arab antisemitism. 

You might argue that this was a single poem in a single newspaper and not representative of Arab feelings towards Jews. 

So let us look at the 1921 Jaffa riots. The British Haycraft Commission wrote a report on the 1921 riots where Arabs killed dozens of Jews in Jaffa and elsewhere, which was sparked by a May Day demonstration by a small number of Jewish communists.

Ironically, the communists supported Arab workers as much as Jews; their chants during the demonstration included "Long live the international solidarity of the Jewish and Arab proletariat!"

The commission did not blame the riots on the demonstration. They said they fully expect the Arabs to attack Jews in a situation like that. Here, however, the Arabs turned it into a "race conflict" - meaning, attacking Jews as Jews. It wasn't self-defense and it wasn't a reaction,  it wasn't aimed at only the demonstrators. It was the deliberate attacking of Jews, including murdering children and raping women, sadistically splitting open Jewish skulls.  One of their first targets was the "Immigration House" where a hundred Jewish men, women and children lived. Arab policemen also joined in the attacks on Jews, shooting at and killing Jews in the building.  his was followed by "an orgy of pillage" of Jewish homes and shops.

In many ways, it was a miniature October 7. 

The commission noted that the violence towards Jews was not at all proportionate to this supposed excuse of an illegal gathering. It was a "race conflict" - meaning, attacks on Jews because they are Jews. Unlike Amnesty, they didn't automatically blame the Jews for every violent act by the Arabs. 

Amnesty keeps blaming Jews as the "root cause" for Arab outrages,  but when you go back through the "cycle of violence," the first attackers are always Arabs towards Jews. The Amnesty slide shown above proves that it is Amnesty's own antisemitism that pours gasoline on the fires of Arab Jew-hatred. 

Another point worth mentioning is that the Arabs in 1921 were often motivated to kill by unfounded rumors of Jews attacking Arabs and doing heinous crimes.  This is what prompted them to attack Hadera and Petah Tikva in the days after the May 1 attacks. The British investigators found that the rumors were baseless. Compare that to today where researchers from NGOs and the media are likely to believe anything Hamas says and not believe the Jews;  they themselves are fueling the terrorism by spreading the false rumors and Hamas statements as truth. Blatant lies get laundered through UN agencies and become presumed truth and justifications for murder.

Despite the fact that Amnesty claims to be against antisemitism, and despite the tsunami of antisemitic incitement published today in Arabic media that would make Sheikh Faruqi, blush, Amnesty has not written a word about Arab Jew-hatred which is the real root cause of the conflict and of Arab violence. Amnesty's own contempt of Jews poisons its own analyses. 

The 1921 riots and 1913 poetic incitement came decades before "apartheid" and "genocide" and "occupation" and "nakba." How can anyone not infected with antisemitism blame Jews as the "root cause" of the violence?

Amnesty is a sick joke. it doesn't want to talk about root causes. it wants to ensure that every dead or kidnapped or raped Jew is blamed on Jews themselves.

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Perfect: @Amnesty "human rights group" punishes employee free speech - but only from Jews

Amnesty International writes on its "Freedom of Expression" webpage:

Your voice matters. You have the right to say what you think, share information and demand a better world. You also have the right to agree or disagree with those in power, and to express these opinions in peaceful protests.

Amnesty International supports people who speak out peacefully for themselves and for others – whether a journalist reporting on violence by security forces, a trade unionist exposing poor working conditions or an indigenous leader defending their land rights against big business. We would similarly defend the right of those who support the positions of big business, the security forces and employers to express their views peacefully.

As usual, there is a Jewish exception.

The Jerusalem Post reports that Amnesty International has suspended its Israeli branch for two years, saying it was because of supposed "anti-Palestinian racism" - but mainly because it publicly criticized two of Amnesty's reports about Israel.

"We take this action in response to evidence of endemic anti-Palestinian racism within AI Israel, which violates core human rights principles and Amnesty values, and evidence of AI Israel’s misalignment with and hostility to Amnesty positions," Amnesty International interim chair Tiumalu Lauvale Peter Fa’afiu wrote in an email.

"AI Israel has sought to publicly discredit Amnesty’s human rights research and positions. Its efforts to publicly undermine the findings and recommendations of Amnesty’s 2022 report on Israel’s Apartheid against Palestinians and, more recently, Amnesty’s 2024 report on Israel’s genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, have been deeply prejudicial to Amnesty’s human rights mission, threatening our credibility, integrity and operational coherence," Fa'afiu wrote.

"This action is taken under the authority of Article 34 of the Statute of Amnesty International (POL 20/8464/2024) and is necessary to protect the reputation, integrity and operational coherence of the Amnesty Movement at large," Fa’afiu said in the Monday email.

Fa'afiu's email twice mentions protecting Amnesty's "operational coherence" as the reason to suspend AI Israel for publicly disagreeing with Amnesty's reports. However, that phrase does not appear in Article 34 of the Amnesty statute; instead it says the International Board may suspend membership of an entity  if it "considers such action necessary to protect the reputation, integrity or operation of the movement." 

There is a big difference between "operation" and "operational coherence." The latter phrase means that no one within the movement is allowed to publicly criticize Amnesty. Internal debate is evidence of a culture of free speech; a demand for "operational coherence" is the opposite.

The phrase "operational coherence" does not appear anywhere in Amnesty's site. This is a brand new rule that Amnesty made up just for its Israeli branch.

Amnesty's report made up and justified a new definition of "genocide" just for Israel, as well as previously making up new definitions of "apartheid" and "occupation" solely for Israel. Here they made up a new policy just to silence criticism within the organization. 

This is Soviet-level newspeak from a supposed human rights organization.

Moreover, we've seen numerous instances where Amnesty does not consider supporting literal antisemites to harm its "reputation and integrity." 

Amnesty-UK has refused to allow a Jewish - not Israeli, Jewish - group from renting its premises while it has allowed clear Jew-haters to use their space. 

Amnesty has praised a Palestinian group, "Youth Against Settlements," which has posted antisemitic fake Talmud quotes. 

Amnesty-USA has sponsored a speaking tour of Bassem Tamimi, who has posted that Israel details Palestinian children to steal their organs and then the Zionist-controlled media blocks reporting of the story.

In 2015, the only resolution rejected by Amnesty at its annual conference was one condemning antisemitic attacks in Britain.

In 2012, an Amnesty researcher tweeted a "joke" saying that England's Jewish MKs support bombing civilians in Gaza.

None of these antisemitic incidents resulted in Amnesty suspending anyone for damaging its reputation or integrity. Amnesty proudly supports its antipathy towards Jews, and it writes its reports to appeal to antisemites who support that reputation.

Because antisemitism is part of Amnesty's "operational coherence."

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Amnesty's "genocide" report: a blood libel against Israel

Amnesty International has issued a 296 page report that attempts to prove that Israel is engaging in genocide in Gaza.

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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Egypt denies more Gaza medical permits than Israel ever did. NGOs who issued reports condemning Israel are silent.

The hypocrisy of so-called human rights groups is more apparent every day of this war. 

In 2017, five of those NGOs released yet another statement condemning Israel for denying or delaying medical treatment for many Gazans.

 The record-low rate of permits issued by Israel for Palestinians seeking vital medical treatment outside Gaza underlines the urgent need for Israel to end its decade-long closure of the Gaza Strip, Al Mezan Center for Human Rights, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP), and Physicians for Human Rights Israel (PHRI) said today in a joint statement. 

Israeli authorities approved permits for medical appointments for only 54 percent of those who applied in 2017, the lowest rate since the World Health Organization (WHO) began collecting figures in 2008. WHO reported that 54 Palestinians, 46 of whom had cancer, died in 2017 following denial or delay of their permits.

Now, when Gaza's health crisis is far more acute, how many medical permits are being approved by Egypt for travel and treatment?

According to the latest Gaza health ministry report, Egypt has a far worse approval rate than Israel ever had. (They don't say "Egypt" - only "abroad.")

They count 8,120 patients applying to be treated abroad (most of them multiple times) but only 3,283 have been approved to travel.

That is a 40% approval rate - far lower than Israel even did in 2017, and half of the 80% Israel was approving every month of 2023 before the October 7 massacre.

The Gaza-based Al Mezan Center for Human Rights issued a report yesterday about how kidney dialysis patients in Gaza are having a difficult time getting treatment. Not one of its recommendations mentioned urging Egypt to allow more dialysis patients to travel there to be treated.  As with the MoH, the word "Egypt" is not even mentioned in their report. But according to the ministry of health, only 20% of the applications for kidney patients have been approved by Egypt for travel and treatment.

The "human rights organizations" refusal to say anything negative about Egypt's denial of Gazans to take refuge even extends to not saying a word when Egypt refuses most Gazans who need lifesaving medical help!

The conclusion is inescapable: all these NGOs that issue report after report on Palestinian suffering lose all interest in the topic if someone besides Israel is to blame. They don't care about Palestinians - they only want to do their part to deny the human rights of Jews. 

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Amnesty's absurd report on Israeli airstrikes proves its antisemitism

How do we know Amnesty International is antisemitic?

I once listed 15 separate reasons, examples of egregious Amnesty bias and lies about Israel.  And I could have listed dozens more. 

Here's yet another.

Amnesty released a report on the early part of Israel's bombing campaign against Hamas. 

The Israeli army claims it only attacks military targets, but in a number of cases Amnesty International found no evidence of the presence of fighters or other military objectives in the vicinity at the time of the attacks. Amnesty International also found that the Israeli military failed to take all feasible precautions ahead of attacks including by not giving Palestinian civilians effective prior warnings – in some cases they did not warn civilians at all and in others they issued inadequate warnings.

“Our research points to damning evidence of war crimes in Israel’s bombing campaign that must be urgently investigated. Decades of impunity and injustice and the unprecedented level of death and destruction of the current offensive will only result in further violence and instability in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories,” said Agnès Callamard.

“It is vital that the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court urgently expedites its ongoing investigation into evidence of war crimes and other crimes under international law by all parties. Without justice and the dismantlement of Israel’s system of apartheid against Palestinians, there can be no end to the horrifying civilian suffering we are witnessing.”

These three paragraphs show that culminate in the "apartheid" libel which has nothing to do with Gaza proves that Amnesty's aim is dismantling Israel, not justice for Gazans.

If Amnesty does not know the targets of the attack, then it cannot call the attacks unlawful. In the past I've documented scores of cases where Amnesty claims that only civilians were killed and weeks later terror groups published the names of their members killed in the same attacks. 

The fact is that Amnesty is clueless as to what the real targets were. If the targets were senior Hamas members, then no warnings could or should have been given. 

That is real international law, not the fabricated version Amnesty pretends exists.

Amnesty's methodology is to interview survivors who claim that there were no terrorists around,. Often these people are lying, and sometimes these people are themselves members of terror groups!

Moreover, when Amnesty publishes these reports, it doesn't even consider that a professional army would not shoot expensive  precision weapons at civilians for no reason. No, Amnesty thinks it can read the IDF's minds, and knows that there was no possible reason for the attack. To Amnesty, the IDF - with multiple layers of checks and balances, lawyers reviewing every target and every airstrike, and approvals needed at all levels - is just randomly attacking civilians. 

Amnesty's track record of investigating these types of events is beyond awful. It shows a pattern where Palestinians are believed without question without even Googling their names, and where Israeli denials are assumed to be lies. 

Even worse, an Amnesty researcher has admitted that Palestinian "eyewitnesses" often lie.  But they haven't changed their methodology of believing their lies implicitly. 

Beyond that, Amnesty never mentions that Gazans would be punished by Hamas if they were known to be saying anything Hamas doesn't like. That is a salient fact when they quote Gazans but Amnesty doesn't want anyone to know that. 

That, ladies and gentlemen, is beyond sloppiness and beyond ignorance of how modern warfare works. That is antisemitism - assuming malicious intent from Jews and nothing but the truth from those with  a long track record of lying to Amnesty. 

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Terror groups support UN Rapporteur. That's all you need to know.

The Hamas website says:

The Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement Hamas has hailed the position of the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories Francesca Albanese condemning the flagrant Israeli violations against the Palestinian people, especially the collective punishment policy.

Hamas spokesperson Abdel Latif al-Qanoa called on the international community and UN and human rights organisations to put this condemnation into action and to take practical steps towards holding the Israeli occupation leaders accountable for their crimes and violations against the Palestinian people.

Now, there is a ringing endorsement!

Oh, and Hamas is also a fan of a Belgian minister who accused Israel of "wiping entire Palestinian villages off the map." And in the past it has loved Human Rights Watch and Amnesty reports. 

Terror groups have lots of allies in the West, none of whom ever seem to want to dissociate themselves from them.

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Let's see how "human rights" groups discuss this morning's deadly PA raid in Tulkarm - if at all

This morning, the Palestinian Authority clashed with terror groups in Tulkarm, leaving one person dead.

The specifics are disputed depending on whether one is reading  PA-affiliated or terror-affiliated media.

According to the PA:

The Political Commissioner General and the official spokesperson for the security establishment, Major General Talal Dweikat, said today, Wednesday, that the security services removed dangerous materials and barriers from inside the Tulkarem camp.

Dweikat added, in a telephone conversation with WAFA, that the Palestinian security forces had received several complaints from institutions and individuals in Tulkarm governorate, about the presence of dangerous materials and barriers in front of children's schools and on the roads inside the Tulkarm camp. Accordingly, the security services moved and removed them, to prevent any risks that might arise. about its existence.

He pointed out that after the security force finished its mission, some armed youths opened fire in front of the governorate building, which necessitated the intervention of the security forces to take the necessary measures and measures to control the security situation and prevent any manifestations that threaten civil peace in Tulkarm governorate.

"Dangerous materials" appears to be a euphemism for explosives - IEDs that terrorists bury in the road, that are meant to slow down Israeli forces when they conduct arrests and raids. We already know that these IEDs are a danger to children - even the UN reluctantly admits this. (Update: Other media confirm explosives near schools.)

 It appears that the PA, perhaps for the first time and ahead of the beginning of the school year, decided that IEDs and iron barriers in front of schools is already a step too far when it puts children at risk. 

And the terrorists were not happy about their hard work of risking the lives of their neighbors to be able to possibly damage an Israeli vehicle being removed, so they naturally started shooting at the PA forces.

Hamas media says that the PA used bulldozers to remove the barricades. 

One person died - the accounts differ as of this writing but it appears that the gunmen killed an innocent bystander while shooting at the PA forces. Terror media says the PA killed the man. 

.This video shows some of the tear gas, and apparently one older man - a father of a "martyr" so he may have been one of the protesters - was injured.

Will "human rights groups" side with the terrorists in this case? The PA did what Israel does - employed bulldozers and shot tear gas to quell a violent demonstration, and possibly used live fire. NGOs usually adopt the narrative that the PA is almost as bloodthirsty as the IDF.

On the other hand it is hard for them to say that the PA should allow IEDs and barricades to be placed in the middle of public areas and near schools. Amnesty and HRW have never, to my knowledge, berated the local armed groups for putting their own people at risk, and they are loathe to start a new complicating narrative that might indirectly exonerate the IDF for its own similar raids. 

So chances are that they will remain silent, and the dead Palestinian bystander will not be mentioned at all. 

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Amnesty campaigning on behalf of a despicable terrorist (update)

From Amnesty International:

The Israeli authorities should release Walid Daqqah, a terminally ill Palestinian prisoner, so he can access specialist medical care and spend his remaining time with his family, Amnesty International said today. Walid Daqqah, 62, suffers from chronic lung disease and bone marrow cancer, and the clinic at Israel’s Ayalon Prison is ill-equipped to deal with his conditions. Following his cancer diagnosis last year, the Israeli Prison Service (IPS) denied Walid Daqqah access to a potentially life-saving bone marrow transplant by refusing to transfer him to a civilian hospital.   

Amnesty doesn't even hint at his crime until paragraph 13, and even then downplays it:

Walid Daqqah, a Palestinian citizen of Israel, was arrested in March 1986. A year later, a military court convicted him of commanding a group affiliated with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), which had abducted and killed Israeli soldier Moshe Tamam in 1984. He was not convicted of carrying out the murder himself, but of ordering other members of the group to kill Moshe Tamam. 

Amnesty doesn't mention that Tamam was brutally tortured, disfigured, and sexually mutilated  by the terror cell led by Daqqa. 

Why should their readers know about that? The only torture they mention are Daqqa's own false allegations of being tortured by Israel.

When Daqqa was up for parole, the special committee ruled that his medical condition was not reason enough to violate Israeli anti-terror legislation that forbids early release for prisoners convicted of terrorist acts.

Amnesty didn't mention that either.

It does everything it can to humanize a disgusting murderer while demonizing the country that is attempting to carry out justice for his victim. Any information that shows what a monster Daqqa is, or why his parole was denied, is simply not to be reported.

Not coincidentally, as Daqqa is a member of the PFLP,  the PFLP and its associated NGOs have been heavily campaigning to free Daqqa, and Amnesty is quite friendly with many PFLP officials in other "human rights" NGOs. 

There is one delicious irony here, though. Daqqa was supposed to be released earlier this year, but two years were added onto his sentence because he smuggled cell phones into prison. 

Which means that the likelihood of his dying in prison is his own damn fault. 

UPDATE (4/9/24): The mutilation accusation seems to be a rumor.

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Amnesty's position on "freedom of expression" in films is curiously one-sided

Today, Amnesty International tweeted this:

Amnesty is saying that banning a movie is a violation of freedom of expression. Amnesty is against all forms of censorship - the allegation that the movie promotes homosexuality does not seem to be the issue at all, just freedom of expression.

However, when Lebanon bans movies for having Israeli actors or producers, Amnesty has not said a word. Isn't that the exact same violation of freedom of expression?

Perhaps not according to Amnesty. Because they do support some boycotts - boycotts against Israel. 

Amnesty says, "Advocating for boycotts, divestment and sanctions is a form of non-violent advocacy and of free expression that must be protected."

BDS advocates boycotting the free speech of Israelis on college campuses, and its boycotters do all they can to get venues outside Israel to cancel any talk by an Israeli. Similarly, they threaten artists not to play in Israel , which is another violation of freedom of expression. 

How, exactly, is Algeria and Kuwait's boycotts of a movie for religious reasons (whether or not their objections are accurate) a violation of free speech, while Israel-haters' boycotts of movies with Israelis are an example of free speech?

In both cases, the boycotters are the ones that are trying to shut down free speech. You cannot have it both ways.  

The analogy isn't perfect - government censorship is different than people deciding to boycott on their own, which of course is their right. But Amnesty has condemned a number of countries for censoring films with LGBTQ themes, and not one word for censoring films with Israeli links. 

They are both equally guilty of violating freedom of expression, but only one upsets Amnesty. 

It sure sounds like Amnesty's concern for freedom of expression only extends to expression that they agree with. 

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Nasrallah threatens to kill tens of thousands of Israeli civilians. No one condemns him.

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah threatened Israel on Monday evening in an address marking the 17th anniversary of the 2006 Lebanon war.

During the speech, he said that Hezbollah needed "a few precision missiles" to destroy a list of targets in Israel that included civilian airports, electricity generation and distribution stations, water distribution, main communication centers, infrastructure, oil and gasoline refineries, ammonia depots and the Dimona nuclear reactor.

His mention of the ammonia plants echo a 2016 threat he made where he said that a rocket strike on Haifa's ammonia storage tanks would cause tens of thousands of deaths. “This would be exactly as a nuclear bomb, and we can say that Lebanon today has a nuclear bomb, seeing as any rocket that might hit these tanks is capable of creating a nuclear bomb effect,” Nasrallah said then.

Think about this for a moment. A person who has some 150,000 missiles,  including thousands of precision missiles, and who answers to Iran, is directly threatening to attack Israeli civilians and civilian infrastructure and murdering tens of thousands. His threats check all the boxes of what terrorism is. 

Yet (as of  this writing)  there has not been a word of condemnation from human rights groups over a direct, credible threat to millions of Israeli civilians. And when Nasrallah threatened Haifa with tens of thousands of casualties in 2016, neither Human Rights Watch nor Amnesty International even mentioned it in their press releases. 

Their interest in human rights always ends when the humans are Jewish. 

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Ein al-Hilweh camp: Terrorists still control schools, 200-400 homes destroyed - and human rights groups silent

On Friday, UNRWA issued a situation report on the Lebanese Ein el-Hilweh camp where there had been fierce fighting at the start of the month. 

While the media has largely lost interest as the cease fire took hold, the camp is still largely controlled by terror groups:

 Reports indicate that armed fighters are allegedly still deployed in some areas and continue to be intermittently present in UNRWA schools in the northern schools compound, along with the nearby UNRWA camp services office – a serious violation of the neutrality of UNRWA installations. The reported presence of fighters in areas around the school compound has prevented UNRWA staff from accessing these installations. Reports indicate that the ongoing presence of armed fighters in some areas is also preventing the return of some residents to their homes.  

At a Thursday press conference,  Director of UNRWA affairs in Lebanon Dorothee Klaus added more information, saying that between 200-400 houses were completely destroyed. A UNRWA school complex for over 3,000 children had been “violated"  and other schools and a health center were also damaged.

She noted that “it is s not safe for any UN personnel to access (some) areas currently, we’re also not having clearance from the Lebanese military to go inside those areas on the Lebanese military being in control of access to the Ein El-Hilweh camp.”

Far more houses were destroyed by the fighters in Ein el Hilweh than were destroyed by Israel in Gaza in May - but unlike for Gaza, there are no news articles about these destroyed homes with interviews of distraught homeless Palestinians. 

Amnesty has not issued a single press release about the fighting and damage. Neither has Human Rights Watch. 

If they cared so much about the welfare of Palestinians, then why haven't they condemned the fighting and ongoing militant control of large swaths of the camp?

This is again more proof that human rights is not what drives obsessive NGO and media coverage of Israeli actions, but old fashioned antisemitism.

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Horrifying: Palestinian terror groups use children to build and plant their explosives

PCHR reported on July 3 that Israeli forces shot Ali Hani Al-Ghoul in the chest, killing him. It admitted that he was a member of an armed group and said he was 20 years old.

Later, the Israel/Palestine Timeline site said that al-Ghoul was shot in the head, and that he was 17 years old.

His mother was interviewed:

His mother brought back some of her memories with her little Ali, which she will never forget; She says, "About two years ago, Ali used to come home at night, with his clothes dusty and his eyes red, and he was suffering from severe pain, which was caused by the explosive materials he was using."

"Ali was one of the resistance fighters who made explosive devices in the Jenin camp from primitive materials, but their impact was great and effective by damaging many Israeli military vehicles," according to his mother, who expressed her pride in what her son did and what his friends say about his actions that are beyond his age.

That means that Ali al-Ghoul had been building bombs since he was 15 years old.

Now, the Jenin Brigades division of Islamic Jihad have issued a video celebrating Al-Ghoul's "martyrdom" - showing him building IEDs together with other children. 

It doesn't show anyone else's faces, but you can see that the hands that are stuffing explosive powder into IEDs are not those of full grown adults. 

Jenin's bomb-makers are children.

Ali's mother continues: “Before Ali left the house, he carried a sack full of explosive devices on his shoulder, and later he planted them in the streets and alleys of Jenin camp with the help of his friends, who confirmed that Ali participated with them in a confrontation with the occupation from zero distance."

Palestinian terror groups recruit children to build bombs.

They encourage kids to turn their homes into bomb depots.

They instruct children to plant these bombs in the roads of Jenin where they can kill not only the children but anyone who happens to come by.

And they freely and proudly admit this.

This is not just child abuse: this is systemic and widespread child abuse that is a source of pride to Palestinians.

Now listen to the silence from UNICEF, the UN Human Rights Council, Defense for Children-International, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International.  

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Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon! Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.  Read all about it here!

 

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