Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News: Amnesty

Showing posts with label Amnesty. Show all posts

Thursday, August 06, 2015

Amnesty's Twitter obsession with Israel by the numbers

Yesterday I tweeted:

46 of @AmnestyOnline's last 100 tweets were about last year's Gaza war, overwhelming majority anti-Israel. Priorities.http://t.co/vmVOASrcLG
— ElderOfZiyon (@elderofziyon) August 5, 2015

That is quite an obsession with a year-old war.

And Amnesty's comparative social media silence on Yemen, Syria and other areas is not only telling, but chilling.

Although a few of the tweets mentioned Hamas rockets and execution of "collaborators," the vast majority of Amnesty's Gaza anniversary tweets were against Israel. None of the tweets about Hamas linked to any relevant stories - on the contrary, they linked to the Gaza Platform that does not have a single episode of Hamas violence mentioned among several thousand anti-Israel items in its database.

I sent a series of tweets to an Amnesty-UK's Kristyan Benedict when he said he had nothing to apologize for by retweeting Hamas:

Hillel Neuer ‏@HillelNeuer 17 hours ago

.@KreaseChan If you believe you're justified in retweeting a terrorist org, say so. Otherwise, please apologize.

kristyan benedict @KreaseChan

I'll post you a dictionary @HillelNeuer - look up 'dictionary' in a dictionary if you don't know what one is.
kristyan benedict ‏@KreaseChan 17 hours ago

There is increasing evidence of Israel's war crimes & accountability is certainly needed. Nothing for me to apologize for x @HillelNeuer
ElderOfZiyon ‏@elderofziyon 15 hours ago

Actually, @KreaseChan, there is a lot for @AmnestyOnline to apologize for http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/search/label/Gaza%20Platform … But you won't address them @HillelNeuer ElderOfZiyon ‏@elderofziyon 14 hours ago
So, @KreaseChan, why does the Gaza Platform ignore all research done by the Meir Amit Center? http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2015/07/even-more-bias-revealed-in-amnestys.html … @amnesty @HillelNeuer
ElderOfZiyon ‏@elderofziyon 14 hours ago

So, @KreaseChan, why does @amnestyonline use a researcher who admires airplane hijackers? http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2015/07/amnesty-researcher-loves-terrorists.html … @HillelNeuer
ElderOfZiyon ‏@elderofziyon 14 hours ago

So, @KreaseChan, why does @amnestyonline call terrorists "civilians" in Gaza Platform? http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2015/07/todays-amnesty-deceptions-and-lies.html … @HillelNeuer
ElderOfZiyon ‏@elderofziyon 14 hours ago

You, @KreaseChan, have the audacity to say you have nothing to apologize for? How about answering my points?@amnestyonline @HillelNeuer

Of course, Amnesty has been studiously ignoring all of my findings about how false and deceptive their tweets and articles have been.

Because they know that they cannot argue with the truth. They'd rather bury it.

Amnesty's deception of the day

Amnesty International's daily anti-Israel tweet:

Israel bombed home in #AlShati without warning & killed 6, including 4-year-old: http://t.co/MhYwhZx2gG #50Days4Gaza pic.twitter.com/Eefaf3xoAW
— AmnestyInternational (@AmnestyOnline) August 4, 2015

The truth is that two of those killed were Islamic Jihad members, one a member of the Al Bakri family that lived there and the other a top commander.

Ramadan Ahmad al-Bakri:

Ibrahim Mohammad al-Mashharawi:

The tweet doesn't mention this. Neither does the Gaza Platform that Amnesty pretends is a "research tool."

But Amnesty's own report on the war does acknowledge that these terrorists were in the house, as well as the fact that the family initially denied this:

Although family members denied it, both Ramadan Kamal al-Bakri and Ibrahim alMashharawi were members of Islamic Jihad’s al-Quds Brigades, as was confirmed when, after some weeks, their names appeared on their list of “martyrs”.

Amnesty's Gaza Platform quotes this Amnesty report but did not choose to quote this relevant section. Because the point of the Gaza Platform is not to reveal the truth to researchers, it is meant to hide the truth in the quest to accuse Israel of war crimes.

Amnesty interviewed scores of people in Gaza. Many of them lied the same way this family did, denying any militants in their vicinity - and Amnesty believed them without question. Since then, as I've documented, many of these victims have been found to be terrorists and we now know that their relatives lied to Amnesty.

And Amnesty knows that they are often lied to, but when the lies take too much effort to find, they will always give the "witnesses" the benefit of the doubt - ignoring the fact that Hamas and other groups explicitly instructed Gazans to lie and claim everyone was a civilian. In other words, every single thing that "witnesses" tell Amnesty about IDF actions cannot be trusted when the interviewees are still living in Gaza and could suffer punishment for telling the truth.

Amnesty does not talk about that very relevant fact. They know that they are being lied to but they choose to believe it unless the evidence becomes overwhelming.

Ramadan al-Bakri used his family as human shields and used his family home to protect his commander, Ibrahim al-Mashharawi. Amnesty has nothing negative to say about that.

While Amnesty is attempting to paint Israel as guilty of war crimes, it is in fact adding every day more and more evidence that Amnesty in the Middle East is little more than an anti-Israel propaganda outlet masquerading as a human rights NGO.

UPDATE: The IDF's report described the truth:

According to the factual findings collated by the FFA Mechanism and presented to the MAG, the strike in question was aimed at Omar Al-Rahim, a senior commander, at a rank equivalent to that of a deputy brigade commander, in the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terror organization. Al-Rahim was staying in the house of Ramadan Al-Bakri, a Palestinian Islamic Jihad militant. During the target planning process, it was assessed that there might be a number of civilians present in the building, but that the extent of the harm expected to these civilians would not be excessive in relation to the significant military advantage anticipated to result from the strike. It was planned that the strike on the building would be carried out using a precise munition, and in a way in which would allow achieving the aim of the strike whilst minimizing harm to the surrounding buildings.

After the event, as a result of the strike, the target, Omar Al-Rahim, was severely injured, and Ibrahim Al-Masharawi, who was a senior commander at a rank equivalent to a battalion commander in the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, was killed, along with Ramadan Al-Bakri, a Palestinian Islamic Jihad militant, and four civilians.

After reviewing the factual findings and the material collated by the FFA Mechanism, the MAG found that the targeting process in question accorded with Israeli domestic law and international law requirements. The decision to strike was taken by the competent authorities and aimed at a lawful target - a senior commander in Palestinian Islamic Jihad. The strike complied with the principle of proportionality, as at the time the decision was taken, it was considered that the collateral damage expected from the strike would not be excessive in relation to the military advantage anticipated from it. Moreover, the strike was carried out while undertaking precautionary measures which aimed to mitigate the risk of civilian harm, with an emphasis on those who were present in the surrounding buildings. Such measures included, inter alia, the choice of munition to be used, as well as the deployment of real-time visual coverage. Additionally, it was found that the provision of a specific warning prior to the attack, to the people present in the structure in which the target was located, or to those in adjacent buildings, was not required by law and was expected to result in the frustration of the strike's objective.

Amnesty and the Gaza Platform didn't report about Omar al-Rahim even though they have a broken link to the IDF report.

Amnesty lies again about Rafah school incident

Amnesty International, that respected human rights organization, continues its practice of daily anti-Israel lies.

Israeli missile hits UNRWA school in Rafah killing 9 inc women and children: http://t.co/0KBkAgvePy #50Days4Gaza pic.twitter.com/UA5p2cMsQ1
— AmnestyInternational (@AmnestyOnline) August 3, 2015

The missile didn't hit the school. It hit a motorcycle on the road outside the school.

The UN Secretary General created a board of inquiry into the various incidents involving UN facilities in Gaza. His report says "The Board found that the missile had been directed at a motorcycle carrying three individuals."

The report goes on to say

The Government of Israel stated to the Board that an examination of the incident was being undertaken at the request of the Military Advocate General. IDF had fired an aerial-launched missile at the motorcycle, which had been carrying three militants belonging to Palestinian Islamic Jihad. By the time it became apparent that the strike would coincide with the moment the motorcycle would pass by the school gate, it was no longer possible to divert the missile.

Amnesty is lying in tweeting that Israel shot at and hit the school. Yes, in this case there was a tragic miscalculation, but that is because Islamic Jihad terrorists were traveling next to the school, not because of IDF war crimes, as Amnesty wants the world to believe.

By the way, this is the incident where Gazans were seen taking the dead body of a girl and posing it next to one of the dead jihadis who was dragged inside the school gates to make it look like the incident happened there. Afterwards one man took her body and ran for the cameras down the block as if he was seeking an ambulance.

Just who is acting with impunity, Amnesty?

Another day, another Amnesty tweet that shows that it is anything but objective:

Evidence #Israel killed civilians in #Rafah in direct or indiscriminate attacks. End the impunity NOW: http://t.co/3GKbln9lhs #50Days4Gaza
— AmnestyInternational (@AmnestyOnline) July 31, 2015

Israel doesn't act with impunity. It has an army with a large number of checks and balances. Israel's conduct in the Gaza war that Amnesty claims shows Israeli war crimes has been praised by the real experts in Western armies.. When a mistake happens the IDF investigates it and prosecutes the relatively rare number of times that crimes are committed. Every single bomb dropped by a plane is checked by teams of people to ensure that the target is of high enough military value and that there is a low likelihood of innocent casualties relative to its value.

Amnesty International, however, does act with impunity. It writes reports and creates online "resources' that are filled with sloppy research, clear errors and evidence of knowing lies. I've written some 19 articles in the past three weeks showing how Amnesty utterly disregards truth, context and fairness.

Israel has to answer to international law. Israel gets pressured from its friends about its actions. Israel is under withering attack from news organizations and from NGOs like Amnesty which regularly generate reports that are covered admiringly in the media. And all of these facts affect how Israel acts, to the point that the IDF will put soldiers and citizens at risk unnecessarily in order to forestall criticism.

Amnesty, on the other hand, has no concerns about criticism. It completely ignores the issues leveled against it by organizations like NGO Monitor or blogs like mine, no matter how well documented those criticisms are.

Amnesty, HRW and other NGOs have no independent oversight. They have no regulations. They have no auditors for their reports. They have no objective third party standards. They have no professional association that can ensure that they adhere to consistent standards of objectivity. They don't have to report to anyone outside their own organizations. They emphatically reject international fact-finding standards that would all but eliminate bias. They misinterpret international law. They do not hire any experts who might contradict their pre-ordained conclusions. They do not have to issue corrections.

In other words, these NGOs can publish reports filled with lies with complete impunity.

So when Amnesty and HRW accuse Israel of acting with impunity, they are nothing but hypocrites.

Amnesty ignores Amnesty's own research in anti-Israel tweets

This morning, Amnesty tweeted:

#alNuseirat: Israeli warplane bombed house without warning, 14 civilians killed http://t.co/1CbnwsDVBO #50Days4Gaza pic.twitter.com/Q45OkqxOso
— AmnestyInternational (@AmnestyOnline) July 31, 2015

Looking at the episode in Amnesty's Gaza Platform, we see that Amnesty researched the incident itself, and while it reached a biased conclusion, the most relevant facts were purposely excluded from the tweet:

Alaa al-Assar told Amnesty International’s fieldworker that there was no fighting in the area on the day of the attack and that no one living in the al-Bayoumi building was involved in any military activities, nor affiliated politically with any faction.

However, two neighbours maintained that, following the attack, they found out that at least four members of the al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, including a battalion commander and a communications officer, were apparently using the empty apartment in the building for some time prior to the attack. One of them was said to have been killed in the attack on the al-Bayoumi home, but his name is not known to Amnesty International and does not appear in the list of named individuals killed below. It was said that another was injured in the attack, while two others escaped and were killed in an attack on a nearby mosque. Amnesty International has been unable to verify this information.

However, even if the empty flat in the al-Bayoumi building was used by the al-Qassam Brigades, the loss of civilian life in this attack was clearly disproportionate. The survivors of the attack said that they received no warning and the Israeli army has made no statement concerning either the intended target or any warning given. The Israeli forces were under an obligation to take all feasible precautions, including – given the large number of civilians present – calling off the attack or issuing a warning to the building’s residents and those of neighbouring buildings to evacuate, before carrying out the attack.

This terrorist, Shadi Muhammad Jumaa Abu Zaher, seems to be one of the Hamas members killed in the attack. His name was not released in any list of fatalities, making him one of many Hamas militants whom Hamas hid from researchers like Amnesty to make attacks like this one appear to be purely against civilians. 100 such Hamas members have been identified so far by the Meir Amit ITIC. This research is available to everyone, including Amnesty International.

Notice how Amnesty puts in caveats around two independent testimonies saying that this was a Hamas command and control center, while most of its reporting in the same document quotes Gazans who accuse Israel of crimes without any questioning of their facts.

Amnesty here is knowingly lying about the laws of armed conflict. By saying that "the loss of civilian life in this attack was clearly disproportionate" in relation to the military value of the building, without knowing what the military value was, is simply libel.

As we have shown, under international law, an attack on a communications hub in Serbia that was only knocked out for a single day was not considered a violation of the laws of armed conflict even though the number of fatalities were higher than this instance. Amnesty's claim of "clearly disproportionate" is flatly wrong. The entire reason Israel did not give warning in this case - as opposed to hundreds of other cases - was obviously because this was a high-value military target.

There was a violation of international law here, though.

Hamas was using the Bayoumi family and others as human shields. Amnesty gathered the evidence proving that Hamas chose a residential building to build a command center and station at least four militants there. Yet instead of blaming Hamas for putting the families at risk- precisely because international law does not tie the hands of an army when the value of a valid military target is high - Amnesty makes up its own international law and accuses Israel of violating it.

Amnesty could have at least mentioned that two witnesses said that this was a Hamas military center. Instead, its tweet was designed to castigate Israel even though Amnesty knows the facts are being badly misrepresented by this tweet. And they assume, correctly, that few will research the actual incident.

Which proves, yet again, how little Amnesty shows regard for the truth when it comes to Israel.

How Amnesty lies and twists the truth

Right after I posted my last article on Amnesty's latest report based on its executive summary, the actual Amnesty report about the fighting in Rafah last year was released. It took me about two minutes to identify the first lie.

An engineer corps soldier who took part in the incursion told Breaking the Silence that his orders were “to make a big boom before the ceasefire”, without being given any specific targets

The Breaking the Silence quote shows that this soldier was not in Rafah to begin with! He was talking about a completely different battle in northern Gaza.

And even his testimony shows the exact opposite of Amnesty's thesis of a bloodthirsty, vengeful IDF:

Before the first ceasefire they told us we were going in [to the Gaza Strip] to take down a house. We went down quick and got the gear we needed ready and then we asked, “Which house are we taking down?” And they said, “We want to make a big boom before the ceasefire.” Like that, those were the words the officer used, and it made everyone mad. I mean, whose house? They hadn’t picked a specific one – just ‘a’ house. That’s when everyone got uneasy. At that moment we decided pretty unanimously that we would go speak with the team commander and tell him we simply aren’t going to do it, that we aren’t willing to put ourselves at risk for no reason. He chose the most inappropriate words to describe to us what we were being asked to do. I guess that’s how it was conveyed to him. “We’re not willing to do it,” we told him. It was a very difficult conversation. Him being an officer, he said, “First of all, so it’s clear to everyone, we will be carrying this thing out tonight, and second, I’m going to go find out more details about the mission for you.” He returned a few hours later and said, “It’s an ‘active house' (being used by combatants for military purposes) and it’s necessary you take it down, and not someone else, because we can’t do it with jets – that would endanger other houses in the area, and that’s why you’re needed.” In the end the mission was miraculously transferred to a battalion with which we were supposed to go in, and we were let off the hook. After the ceasefire a bulldozer and emulsion trucks (transporting the explosive liquid) and the driller (a drilling system for identifying tunnels) came to our area, and work started on the tunnels in our zone.

All Amnesty wants you to get out of this is that some IDF officer said he wanted to make a big boom on a random house, and it is clear that this was not the mission at all. And the very idea of such a mission is so anomalous and disgusting to IDF soldiers that even when they think their commander is ordering them to do so, they refuse!

Amnesty, of course, has no problem lying and claiming that this is proof of Israeli war crimes miles away.

Meanwhile, I am looking in the full report for quotes to support Amnesty's claim in their executive summary that

Public statements by Israeli army commanders and soldiers after the conflict provide compelling reasons to conclude that some attacks that killed civilians and destroyed homes and property were intentionally carried out and motivated by a desire for revenge – to teach a lesson to, or punish, the population of Rafah for the capture of Lieutenant Goldin.

What public statements support that conclusion? Amnesty's full report supplies exactly one that does no such thing:

Israeli army spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Peter Lerner said Israel’s assaults were mostly aimed at convincing Hamas never to try it again: “When they come out of their bunkers and they look around, they are going to have to make a serious estimation of whether what they have done was worth it.” These statements indicate an intention to generate material damage as a deterrent.

Lerner's statement does not in any way indicate that the IDF intended to inflict damage as a deterrent. He was talking about damage that occurs during the course of a war where Hamas chooses to hide among civilians, necessitating the destruction of civilian buildings that Hamas turned into military targets. Amnesty has no shred of evidence that the IDF chose a single target for non-military reasons.

And this is the quote that Amnesty is using as proof of Israeli war crimes. It betrays not only their willingness to twist the facts to reach their pre-conceived notions, but also a willful ignorance of how modern armies make their decisions.

Amnesty chooses to anthropomorphize the IDF as a vindictive person, not as an organization with multiple layers of checks and balances - and there is plenty of documentation that shows every step that goes into IDF decision making that contradicts Amnesty's blanket statements.

The organization is beneath contempt.

Amnesty International today is releasing yet another report that tries to prove Israel committed war crimes in last year's Gaza war, this time regarding the events surrounding the kidnapping of Lt. Hadar Goldin in Rafah - who was abducted during a ceasefire.

Just like the Gaza Platform, the upcoming report uses the services of the anti-Zionist "Forensics Architecture" team to take one-sided evidence and twist it to make it look like an impartial investigation.

At the moment, only the executive summary is available. Yet even its use of sources proves its bias.

It quotes two IDF soldiers who were interviewed by "Breaking the Silence" to prove purposeful Israeli fire into civilian areas.

An Israeli infantry officer described to Israeli NGO Breaking the Silence the events that
ensued after the Hannibal Directive was announced on the radio:

“The minute ‘Hannibal Directive’ is declared on the radio, there are consequences. There’s a fire procedure called the ‘Hannibal fire procedure’ – you fire at every suspicious place that merges with a central route. You don’t spare any means.”

Here's the entire testimony:

So I heard that the reconnaissance platoon got into a confrontation, and that it looked like we were talking about two [IDF soldiers] dead and one captured. That’s when the mess got started. The minute ‘Hannibal Directive’ is declared on the radio, there are consequences. There’s a fire procedure called the ‘Hannibal fire procedure’ – you fire at every suspicious place that merges with a central route. You don’t spare any means. A thousand shells were fired that Friday morning, at all the central intersections. The entire Tancher [Route] (the continuation of Highway 4 in Gaza) was bombed. The air force attacked places inside Rafah City, places in which we knew there were Hamas militants. Was there collateral damage to houses? I’m sure there was. It was very intense, that incident. After the area was hit by 1,000 shells that Friday morning, I saw Tancher in ruins. Everything totally wrecked.

Even the BtS soldier says that there was no intent to hurt civilians and that no civilian structures were directly targeted..

Here's Amnesty's second quote:

An artillery soldier said his battery was “firing at a maximum fire rate” right into inhabited areas.

The full testimony:

During occasions when there was a significant amount of fire [directed at our forces], or during the ground incursion to Gaza – to Shuja’iyya – I know my unit fired a lot. One of the senior officers in my unit talked about how we had fired [at targets] that were in very close proximity to our forces, how we had really saved them. He said it was an important mission and that apparently during it we had also killed a number of civilians. They said that tragically, some uninvolved civilians were apparently hit, but that it was a situation where it would either be our troops or civilians [being harmed]. He said that it wasn’t even a question, that it was obvious that our troops [came first]. They emphasized the fact that that was obviously not done on purpose.

Did he say what the mission itself was, what the role of the [artillery] battery was?

To assist them with artillery fire. If they need flare shells, or if they need smoke to conceal themselves, or, of course, if they need explosive shells to evacuate [forces from the field]. The battery fired 900 shells [that night], and the battalion fired about 1,200 or 1,500, I think. There were certain stages during which we were firing at a maximum fire rate – after Goldin was kidnapped, (an IDF soldier captured near Rafah) and in Shuja’iyya.

Keep in mind that breaking the Silence itself cherry picks IDF soldiers' testimonies already to make the IDF look as bad as possible. Amnesty is further taking the BtS quotes out of context as evidence of war crimes.

It is not a war crime, or a violation of international law, to prioritize soldier's lives higher than unintended civilian casualties. On the contrary - it is what a normal military commander is supposed to do in every army on Earth. But Amnesty does not like to tel its readers what actual international law is.

Other quotes that Amnesty supposedly claims as evidence of "war crimes" are not directly quoted in the executive summary - we just have to trust Amnesty that these quotes exist and mean what they claim they mean:

Public statements by Israeli army commanders and soldiers after the conflict provide compelling reasons to conclude that some attacks that killed civilians and destroyed homes and property were intentionally carried out and motivated by a desire for revenge – to teach a lesson to, or punish, the population of Rafah for the capture of Lieutenant Goldin.

There is consequently strong evidence that many such attacks in Rafah between 1 and 4 August were serious violations of international humanitarian law and constituted grave breaches of the Fourth Geneva Convention or other war crimes.

If they have quotes like that, why not use them in this summary? Because the quotes are not nearly as clear-cut as Amnesty wants the world to believe, and they know that reporters will trust their analysis of the quotes rather than evaluate them directly.

Interestingly, the executive summary doesn't mention the number of civilians killed in this operation. BtS said "between 41-150 Palestinians were killed, many of them civilians." That is a very imprecise number. It will be interesting to see if the Forensics Architecture team, supposedly committed to unbiased research, bothered during the past year to determine exactly how many civilians were actually killed during these three days of unbridled firepower in an urban battlefield where Hamas is purposefully hiding among civilians.

Civilians were killed in Rafah. It was tragic. Amnesty wants the world to believe that it was deliberate and they are willing to spend lots of money and effort to twist the truth to reach their pre-determined conclusions.

UPDATE: The final report does not contain a single quote that indicates that IDF soldiers intended to "take revenge." The only quote from a soldier that mentions "revenge" says the exact opposite: '“Anyone who abducts should know that he will pay a price. This was not revenge. "

Amnesty is lying.

Today's absurd Amnesty claim against Israel

Amnesty's Gaza Platform keeps revealing more and more bias. Here is their event #2668:

At approximately 08:00 [July 26, 2014], the body of Anwar ‘Abdul Qader Hassan Yousef, 2, was evacuated to the hospital. He died from a heart attack when Israeli forces shelled the vicinity of his family’s home in al-Nussairat refugee camp.

Now, there had been (according to the same tool) well over 50 airstrikes in the same area of the Nusseirat camp by that point. Yet PCHR, and Amnesty, knows for certain that one of the ones from that day caused the child to have a fatal heart attack.

Pediatric sudden cardiac arrest is a real problem that kills thousands of children a year, including - statistically speaking - between 5 and 30 in Gaza children every year.

But Amnesty has a rule that is sacrosanct: if Israel can be blamed, it must be blamed.

Amnesty, hell-bent on demonizing Israel, is planning to release another tool (together with the same haters at Forensics Architecture) this coming Wednesday that claims to document events in Rafah last year following the kidnapping of an Israeli soldier. (received via email)

Amnesty International, will host a press conference in Jerusalem to mark the launch of a new online report, ‘Black Friday’: Carnage in Rafah during the 2014 Israel/Gaza conflict, on Wednesday 29 July 2015. The online report, produced in cooperation with Forensic Architecture, will present cutting edge new analysis featuring photos, videos and satellite imagery to reconstruct the events in Rafah between 1 and 4 August 2014. The report sheds new light on violations of international law committed and the vast level of destruction and killing in the days following ‘Black Friday’ after the capture of Israeli soldier Lieutenant Hadar Goldin. Speakers at the press conference will include spokespeople from Amnesty International and Forensic Architecture.

Based on what we have seen so far from these two organizations, this "cutting edge new analysis " will be another slick interface on top of one-sided, unverifiable and outdated data.

Someone should really ask Amnesty how much money they are pouring into these anti-Israel campaigns, and how many actual lives could have been saved if they decided that, say, Africa is as much of a priority for their "human rights researchers."

Here's an incident that Amnesty won't report in its "Gaza Platform" (update)

As we have seen, Amnesty is slavishly copying every incident mentioned in daily Al Mezan and PCHR reports from the war last summer, including incorrect snap judgments as to whether victims were civilian, and adding that often wrong information into its database to damn Israel.

In fact, today's tweet, about an incident where they each accused Israel of shooting into a hospital, was counted twice in this database, so the same people were counted as victims more than once in Amnesty's database that they plan to use to prove Israeli "war crimes." (Event IDs 2422 and 2345.) UPDATE: Also, they fail to mention that the hospital wasn't targeted, but a cache of anti-tank missiles that Hamas had hidden nearby - and which may have been what caused the damage.

What's wrong with a little victim inflation in a research tool, anyway?

But there is one incident that PCHR reported that Amnesty didn't mention, and it shows both PCHR's bias and Amnesty's.

At approximately 16:45 on Monday, 28 July 2014, a projectile landed near a number of Palestinian children were playing and celebrating the Eid al-Futur in the northern part of al-Shati refugee camp, west of Gaza City. As a result, 10 children and a passing old man were killed: Yousef 'Abdul Rahman Hassouna, 11; Mahmoud Hazem Shubair, 12; Ahmed Hazem Shubair, 10; Jamal Saleh 'Olayan, 8; Baraa' Akram Miqdad, 7; Mohammed Nahidh Miqdad, 13; Mohammed Mahmoud Abu Shaqfa, 7; Mohammed 'Emad Baroud, 10; Ahmed Jaberr Wishah, 10; Mansour Rami Hajjaj, 14; and Subhi 'Awadh al-Hilu, 63. A PCHR field worker arrived at the scene 20 minutes following this incidents, while ambulances were completing the evacuation of the wounded persons and the bodies of victims. She reported that the projectile landed on the street near a grocery shop as a number of children were playing in the area. She further reported that the high number of casualties and the extensive destruction in the area are not different from the outcomes of Israeli attacks over the past days.

Of course, this was an Islamic Jihad rocket that killed those kids.

As the Davis Report admitted:

The commission received information from NGO’s who conducted field research and a UN source who collected information indicating that the explosion had been caused by a misfired Palestinian rocket. One of them inspected the site after the attack and concluded that the impact of the explosion on the ground could not have been caused by an Israeli missile or artillery shell; the NGO also indicated that eyewitnesses had reported seeing a rescue team go to the place just after the attack, whose members did not collect the wounded but cleared and collected the remnants of the weapons. In addition, two journalists who spoke to the commission also suggested the attacks had been caused by Palestinian rockets misfiring. One of them said that Hamas members had gone to the site immediately after the events and cleared away the debris. The other said he had been prevented by local authorities from going to the site of the attack.

The commission found there was credible information pointing to the conclusion that a misfired Palestinian rocket was the source of this explosion. Given the gravity of the case, in which 11 children and 2 adults were killed in a place crowded with civilians, and the allegations that local authorities may have attempted to hide evidence of the cause of the incident, all relevant Palestinian authorities should conduct a thorough investigation of the case to determine the origin and circumstances of the attack.

So, naturally, this incident where 11 children were killed in Gaza during the war must be excluded from the Gaza Platform - because their deaths don't further Amnesty's goal of vilifying Israel.

(h/t Bob Knot)

Amnesty outdoes Hamas in calling Gazans "civilians"

Amnesty International's Gaza Platform allows one to see, quite easily, that its database is worthless.

Here is the sum total of the number of people Amnesty says it has documented as being killed in their "research" and how many of them are civilian.

Amnesty is claiming that they have documentation from PCHR and Al Mezan of 1,991 deaths, of whom 1,667 are civilian - and only 324 militants.

Yet Amnesty knows this is a lie. They themselves tweet the (still wrong) UN figures as authoritative:

That's 205 people that this "research tool" claims as civilian who are actually militants, even according to the UN!

That is one large discrepancy, made even larger by the fact that Amnesty was only able to document 1991 deaths (although some of them are duplicates). In the end, the UN says that 65% of the casualties were civilian (out of 2251 total) while Amnesty's tool bizarrely claims 84%!

Even more incredible is that Hamas has admitted that 400 of their members were killed. Islamic Jihad admitted 135 more. That's 200 more militants admitted killed than Amnesty's application confidently reports. (Both those numbers are way too low.) The Gaza Platform is more biased in its casualty figures than terror groups are.

The reality, as documented by the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center, is that (based on their latest figures) about 51% of those killed were civilian, a spectacularly low number for urban fighting where the terrorists hide in and fight from civilian houses and mosques and schools.

This is yet more proof, as if more were needed, that the Gaza Platform is based on flawed, biased data.

Amnesty International and Forensic Architecture Team Members are Biased as Hell

(written by Bob Knot, edited by EoZ)

As we've seen over the past couple of weeks, Amnesty International is at the forefront of a coordinated political warfare against the state of Israel by numerous NGOs who want to see Israel investigated and brought before the International Criminal Court (ICC) for alleged “war crimes”.

Amnesty’s current campaign started almost as soon as Israel responded to the massive rocket and missile attacks from Gaza with air strikes and ground invasion, accusing Israel of “war crimes” in Gaza during and a short while after last year’s war in Gaza and even calling for UN and international investigation against Israel for violations of international humanitarian law and promoting arms embargo on Israel .

Amnesty teamed up with Forensic Architecture to create what I called the “ bash Israel app ”, recycling provably wrong information by the biased Gaza based Al Mezan and Palestinian Center for Human Rights .

To put it simply, the “Gaza Platform” was created to make up for the lack of credibility on the part of the Arab political NGOs and for the lack of evidence to support the “war crimes” allegations.

That is also the case with the “Forensic” team; there is nothing such as fact-finding methodologies or technical tests in their scope of work, it is just a bombastic name and the end product is just an online data visualization app fed with unreliable data sources.

And that brings us to the Forensic Architecture team members:

Eyal Weizman is the project’s Principal Investigator.

Weizman is a former board member of B’Tselem. His anti-Israel agenda is well documented in a 2013 IsraCampus op-ed and in Goldsmiths College - Eyal Weizman Attacks Israel with 'Forensic Architecture' .

Weizman also signed a petition during Operation Cast Lead (2009), “ calling for the UN Security Council and the EU to impose sanctions on Israel ”. He is a signatory for “ Jews for Justice for Palestinians ” and for a Pro-Hamas Petition in the Jew-hating Counterpunch Magazine as well:

We the undersigned watch with horror yet another ruthless and criminal Israeli assault on the defenceless [Sic] people of the Gaza Strip. The assassination of the Hamas’ military commander, Ahmad al-Jabari, by Israel was intended to disrupt any chance for a permanent cease fire between the two sides and caused the current cycle of violence. For the last five years al-Jabari had been responsible for limiting rocket attacks on Israel.

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And just in case anyone has doubt about his bias, Weizmann supports the BDS movement as well; Weizman is one of 65 academics, cultural and political figures backing the RIBA’s stance on the motion calling for the suspension of Israeli architects from the International Architects Union (UIA) .

Other examples of his anti-Israel political agenda can be found by his speaking at conferences ":
"Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine" and "The Power of Inclusive Exclusion: Anatomy of Israeli Rule in the Occupied Palestinian Territories."

Francesco Sebregondi is the Project Coordinator.

His tweets and re-tweets from organizations such as "Free Gaza Movement", " Al-Haq", “Breaking the Silence”, "Electronic Intifada", "Palestine Solidarity Campaign", "Yesh Din", and "Palestine Legal" demonstrate his heavy bias against Israel. Some examples of the lies that he disseminates on Twitter and the animosity towards Israel that he stirs up include:

Palestine Shrinking Expanding Israel | new interactive visualisation https://t.co/A3y8S1gSqD
— Francesco Sebregondi (@FSBRG) May 15, 2015

Jacob Burns is the Research and Campaign Assistant at @Amnestyonline.

His Twitter profile is at https://twitter.com/JacobTBurns, an Instagram one is at https://instagram.com/jacobtburns. He “supports the Palestinian struggle for justice” as evident from a piece he published on anti-Israel Website Mondoweiss .

Jacob, just like his colleague, tweets and re-tweets the “Palestinian” narrative. Apparently, when it comes to Israel, fact-checking and giving audience to the Israeli side is not needed,

His bias against Israel is manifested in some of the photos he uploaded to Instagram, the captions are telling. To him, Palestinians have houses, Jews have colonies:

Because they are "colonists":

Jerusalem, of course, is not in Israel but in "Palestine" according to this "researcher":

And Jews asking for equal rights are a "source of tension" for this human rights advocate:

Apparently, this “great” researcher never heard of the Cave of the Patriarchs or maybe he believes that Jews have no connection to Hebron and have no right to pray there?

Impartial he is not and he seems to be suffering from an ICC for Israel obsession too. On 4 May 2015, he tweeted tens if not over a hundred “Breaking the Silence” “testimonies”.

I found this tweet of his unintentionally ironic and typical of Burns' bias:

Prompt & transparent investigation needed into killing of #Jenin man. IDF says he was throwing bomb, but initial reports often wrong in past
— Jacob Burns (@JacobTBurns) June 10, 2015

The entire Gaza Platform that he is working on is based on initial reports from biased sources that in many cases have been proven wrong!

These are the people who were behind Amnesty's Gaza Platform. They have an agenda, and it has nothing to do with objectivity.

I had thought that Forensic Architecture wrote the code for this tool. They didn't - it was written by a group called Tekja Data Visualization. So Amnesty didn't choose Forensics Architecture for its coding skills - they chose Forensic Architecture for their ability to come up with new, innovative ways to demonize Israel.