Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News: B'tselem

Showing posts with label B'tselem. Show all posts

Thursday, January 21, 2021

B'tselem's Struggle For Relevance Continues To End In Failure (Daled Amos)

B'tselem's accusation of Israeli Apartheid has been a long time coming, after cynical comment made by their then-CEO Jessica Montell in a 2003 interview:

I think the word apartheid is useful for mobilizing people because of its emotional power

She noted approvingly how Palestinian Arabs called Israel's security barrier the 'Apartheid Wall'.

Such cynicism appears widespread within B'tselem --

1.) In 2019, B'tselem hired Simone Zimmerman to be their US director. Zimmerman is one of the founders of IfNotNow, a group that avoids addressing the right of Israel to even exist:

We do not take a unified stance on BDS, Zionism or the question of statehood.

In 2016, Zimmerman was let go from her position as Jewish outreach director for Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign for a curse-laden attack on Netanyahu that she posted on Facebook.

B'tselem apparently thought that made her a good fit with their other employees --

2.) B'tselem's International Advocacy Officer, Sarit Michaeli responded to an article in Ha’aretz about a Palestinian psychologist who said that more than a third of the children in a Gazan refugee camp had been sexually abused -- tweeting that it was Israel's fault:

3.) In 2014, journalist Tuvia Tenenbom published his popular book, “Catch the Jew.” In it, he writes about a conversation with B’Tselem researcher Atef Abu Rub, who was serving as a guide to his group at Yad Vashem and told Tenenbom that the Holocaust was a "lie, I do not believe it."

B'tselem originally defended Abu Rub, who claimed the comment was made by a third party. In the end, however, B'tselem fired Abu Rub.

4.) In 2011, a B'tselem photographer, Nariman al-Tamimi providing video supposedly showing Israeli police arresting an 11-year-old Palestinian boy for stone-throwing, and deliberately putting him into a police car without his mother.

In fact, Nariman al-Tamimi staged the scene:

Yet, a careful viewing of the clip (with Hebrew and Arabic dialogue) reveals that the exact opposite was the case; the policemen invited the mother to accompany her child. At 2:07 minutes into the video, one of the policemen says to the mother, “Come, come, get in.” The cop then asks one of the people standing nearby, “Is that his mother?” When the bystander answers in the affirmative, the policeman repeats, “Get in with him” (the boy). The door is opened for her and she is about to get into the vehicle, as the policemen are saying “get into the car,” but then (2:27) the mother is pulled away from the car by the Palestinian man wearing a black jacket. After the policemen closes the van’s door, a woman wearing a pink shirt pushes the mother towards the vehicle, and then the mother bangs on the door, a heartrending scene.

5.) In April 2010, B'tselem staff member Lizi Sagie resigned under pressure for statements she made on her personal blog -- including: “The IDF Memorial Day is a pornographic circus of glorifying grief and silencing voices,” “Israel is committing Humanity’s worst atrocities…Israel is proving its devotion to Nazi values…Israel exploits the Holocaust to reap international benefits.”

6.) On January 8, 2016, the Israeli investigative news program “Uvda” (Fact) reported that B’Tselem employee Nasser Nawaja conspired with Ezra Nawi, a radical activist from the NGO “Ta’ayush,” to entrap a Palestinian man who was interested in selling land to Jews in the West Bank. They did this knowing that the sale was illegal according to Palestinian law and was punishable by death, not to mention the torture that would be likely to precede it.

B'tselem's response?

Responding to the piece with a statement on its Facebook page, B’Tselem said that while it opposed tortures and executions, reporting Palestinians interested in selling land to Israelis to the PA was “the only legitimate course of action.”

When they defended Nasser Nawaja on their Facebook page, B'tselem added a picture describing Uvdah as "Uvdah For Hire"

That is an interesting accusation, considering that B'tselem gets most of its funding from outside of Israel.

NGO Monitor reports that for the years 2012-2019, B'tselem donors include: European Union, Sweden, Switzerland, Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway, France, the United Kingdom, Ireland, the US, and Germany -- and according to annual reports, donations from foreign countries amounted to 64.7% of total donations from 2012-2016.

And there is a reason that most of B'tselem's funding comes from outside Israel.

Writing in 2016, Shmuel Rosner writes in the context of the above-mentioned Uvda report about the B'tselem employee who helped entrap a Palestinian Arab, noting that "B’Tselem is an organization that many Israelis dislike, and they have reasons to dislike it."

Rosner explains:

Why do human rights activists turn to such immoral methods? Many of them do it because of anger and because of fear. They are angry at a country that refuses to accept their political recipe for Israel. They fear that their activity of many years will be in vain as the country moves in a direction they disagree with.

The angrier they become, the more apprehensive they become – the more they lose their inhibitions. Thus they turn to immoral methods, they turn to other countries to look for the support they cannot get among Israelis, and they turn to language that makes Israel a caricature – a fascist state, an apartheid state, a villain among nations. They say that they act out of love of Israel – and some of them certainly do – but with time and frustration some are made hateful. And hate makes them lose the ability to separate right from wrong, acceptable from unacceptable, useful from not-useful.

Speaking of the name-calling by human rights activists -- and by B'tselem in particular -- B'tselem recently came out with a report fulfilling Montell's admiration for the usefulness of the word Apartheid "for mobilizing people because of its emotional power."

The media jumped at the opportunity to spread the word about the report, with some describing B'tselem as a "leading human rights organization" -- just the shot in the arm B'tselem needed.

But CAMERA's Tamar Sternhal asks the nagging question: Is B'Tselem Israel's 'leading human rights organization'?

Progress in improving human r.ights in Israel and the West Bank is a legal battle waged in the Knesset and the courts, and in recent years B’Tselem has zero presence, activity and accomplishments in these areas. Tellingly, B’Tselem’s 2019 Activity Report mentions no action taken in the Knesset or courts...On the international level of advancing human rights, the battle is waged at the United Nations Council on Human Rights in Geneva, and B’Tselem is absent from that key venue as well.

What's left?

Social media.

That will certainly keep B'tselem in the news -- but those foreign governments may not necessarily feel they are getting their money's worth.

If those foreign governments are really interested in change, they might be better served supporting the Association for Civil Rights in Israel and Worker's Hotline. Sternthal lists their activities -- and accomplishments.

The reason for their success might have something to do with the fact that they actually have lawyers among their staff.

B'tselem does not.

The media may have noticed the incongruity of non-lawyers weighing in on the legal definition of Apartheid.

The Seventh Eye reported that while the Israeli media did have stories on the recent B'tselem report, it was covered in English -- not in the Hebrew papers.

It quoted B'tselem's Roy Yellin, who asked Haaretz why they covered B'tselem's Apartheid report in English, but not in Hebrew:

Apparently, B'tselem's attempt to have a any impact inside Israel continues to end in failure.

Will their foreign investors notice?

B'Tselem's absurd, contradictory arguments that Israel is an apartheid state

(Based on a Monday Twitter thread)

The lies of @btselem are so egregious.

Here are some screenshots from their position paper that pretends to prove that Israel is an apartheid state. Their arguments are not only weak – they are self-contradictory.

Jews cannot travel to Area A. Or Area B. Or Gaza. And severe limitations on the Temple Mount. So by B'Tselem's definition, Jews are the ones under apartheid.

In fact, the only people who can freely travel to all areas of the West Bank and Israel are Arabs in Jerusalem, who have far more freedom of movement than Jews do.

If nations giving preference to their own national group over others is apartheid, then most European countries are apartheid. Every Arab country is apartheid. Armenia, Ireland, Japan – all these nations have preferential immigration policies for people who share the ethnicity of the majority of the nation.

Worse, though, is that B'Tselem ignores why Israel has a Law of Return. it must be nice to think that 2000 years of antisemitism has disappeared, and that Nazi Germany’s Jew-hatred isn't worth remembering anymore, but the Jewish people are a nation and they have been pushed out of many countries over history.

B’Tselem, instead of acknowledging antisemitism, is hell-bent on perpetuating it.

If even B'Tselem admits that Israeli Jews and Arabs have the same freedom of movement - in fact, Israeli Arabs have MORE - then where is the apartheid and "Jewish supremacy"?

Answer: Even B’Tselem knows this is a sham. .

So Israeli Arabs have full political rights. Doesn’t that completely destroy the entire “apartheid” argument?

There is some racism in Israel. Just like in the rest of the world. If that is apartheid, then the word loses all meaning.

B'Tselem knows this. Their entire argument is hand-waving, and nothing that relates to real apartheid. They want to demonize Israel, not fight for human rights, because they can raise more funds from modern antisemites than anyone else. And when antisemites pay your salary, over the years you tend to agree with them.

Cartoon of the Day: B'Tselem embarks on a fundraiser

This cartoon is in response to B'Tselem's new initiative to call Israel an "apartheid state" complete with a brand new website with animations.

I don't know B'Tselem's full budget, its USA fundraising arm gets around $450,000 a year.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

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

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

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

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

What does the Paris Protocol say?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

Israel does something to help Palestinians - and gets condemned anyway

From AP:

The Israeli military has installed the face scanners as part a multi-million dollar upgrade of the Qalandiya crossing that now allows Palestinians from the West Bank with work permits to zip through with relative ease.

But while the high-tech upgrades may have eased entry for Palestinians going to Israel for work, critics say they are a sign of the ossification of Israel’s 52-year occupation of the West Bank and slam the military’s use of facial recognition technology as problematic.

Israel’s Defense Ministry poured over $85 million into upgrading Qalandiya and several other major checkpoints between Israel and the West Bank in recent years — part of a strategy it says is meant to maintain calm by improving conditions for Palestinians.

Thanks to the upgrades, crossing through Qalandiya takes roughly 10 minutes, even during the early morning rush hour, and has the feel of an airport terminal.

How many articles have we seen over the years about how terrible Qalandiya is? And now that Israel has spent tens of millions to fix it, how inevitable is it that people will complain anyway?

There are two supposed issues mentioned. One is that this entrenches the "occupation." This is too silly to mention - if by some miracle there is a peace, then either it will stay as a new border crossing or it will be dismantled to be replaced by another. No one is going to say, oh, sorry, we won't accept peace because it will be too expensive to replace Qalandiya.

The other comes from B'Tselem:

B’Tselem, an Israeli human rights group, said it was unacceptable that the Palestinian laborers have no ability to object to the use of facial recognition technology. Roy Yellin, a spokesman for the group, called the company’s development of its product through “unwilling subjects” immoral.

Aren't there lots of other checkpoints, according to B'Tselem? If Palestinian workers want to avoid facial recognition and instead wait in hours-long lines, they have that choice.

By any measure, this is a victory for Palestinian human rights. It saves tens of thousands of man hours every single day. But Israeli "human rights groups" like B'Tselem aren't interested in human rights, but in bashing Israel on whatever flimsy pretext they choose.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

B'Tselem continues its dishonesty in attacking the IDF

B'Tselem was always an anomaly among human rights NGOs.

Unlike HRW, Amnesty, Oxfam, DCI-P and others, B'Tselem doesn't lie outright. It grounds its opinions on some semblance of reality, although it shares the same problem that the other NGOs have in that it decides on its anti-Israel opinions before it starts its investigations and skews the results to fit its foregone conclusion.

B'Tselem just released a major new report, called "Whitewash Protocol: The So-Called Investigation of Operation Protective Edge." It makes a number of major charges.

One is that the Military Advocate General of the IDF faces an inherent conflict of interest:

The MAG – who is in charge of investigations within the military – is faced with an inherent conflict of interests when it comes to the investigation of these acts. On the one hand, he was responsible for providing the military with legal counsel before the fighting, worked closely with military personnel on the ground throughout the fighting and signed off on their policies. On the other hand, he is now tasked with deciding what cases merit an investigation and what measures will be taken upon its completion. In cases in which suspected breaches of law relate to orders he personally approved, the MAG would have to order an investigation of acts he is responsible for, and, should senior officers be investigated, an investigation against himself, or his direct subordinates.

I would argue that this is in fact not true. The MAG sets the policy that the IDF must adhere to, and the officers and soldiers are then tasked with adhering to the policy. It is not unreasonable for the entity that creates the policy to be the one to audit the actions of the army against that same policy. (The command structure of the MAG is completely independent of the rest of the IDF.)

B'Tselem argues that the MAG was asked specific questions during Operation Protective Edge about activities that the MAG would later have to decide on the legality of the actual proposed operation, and therefore it would be a conflict of interest for the MAG to investigate an issue if the soldiers followed its specific advice in a certain case. However, the MAG is not tasked with deciding whether IDF policies adhere to international law, but whether its actions do. If the MAG was tasked to investigate the legality of the policies themselves, yes, that would be a conflict of interest.

The bizarre thing is that after making the accusations of conflict of interest, B'Tselem sort of agrees that it has no proof for this charge, in a section that few people will actually read:

Since in any case the investigations carried out by the MAG Corps do not address policy or directives, the MAG’s conflict of interest with respect to his involvement in these issues remains theoretical. However, a conflict of interest may arise if there is a suspected IHL violation in a case that was defined as “exceptional”, and if the MAG or his representatives were involved in approving it. B’Tselem has no information as to whether there are any such cases.

So B'Tselem is accusing MAG of impropriety and a conflict of interest, but only on a theoretical level.

How devastating!

Another of B'Tselem's major issues is that the IDF is violating the international humanitarian law of proportionality. Yet it devises an entirely new definition of the concept:

The MAG’s conclusion that all the attacks he examined were lawful in that those responsible for them could disregard the harsh outcomes of dozens of other attacks that took place during the fighting has a far reaching implication that applies to all strikes carried out during the operation: It absolves every level of officials involved in the attacks – from the prime minister, through the MAG himself through to the soldiers who ultimately fired – of the duty to do everything in their power to minimize harm to civilians. In fact, the MAG sets the bar very low in terms of what is required of those responsible for the attacks – including senior military officers and the MAG (who are not under investigation in any case) – by doing no more than examining what they knew in practice, while entirely disregarding the question of what they should have known, including the obligation to learn from their own experience.

Consequently, the MAG’s determination that the attacks he examined did, in fact, meet the proportionality requirement is also cast into doubt. This principle is based on balancing the assessment by those responsible as to the anticipated military advantage against their assessment as to the anticipated harm to civilians. Yet when the projection as to harm is made while knowingly disregarding the result of nearly identical strikes carried out in the days prior to the making of the assessment, namely that dropping a bomb in the middle of a residential neighborhood could result in many more civilian deaths than anticipated; that the warnings the military gives are not always efficient and that the intelligence information is sometimes incomplete or inaccurate – then their assessments of anticipated harm to civilians become hollow and worthless.

This is not what international law requires. The military commander, in the heat of the battle, makes the decision based on the information he or she has available to him or her at the time. B'Tselem is demanding that the commander to also anticipate what he doesn't know!

If military intelligence says that a building is empty or almost empty, that is a major factor that the commander has in making decisions. It cannot be otherwise in a battle. The fact that sometimes the intelligence was wrong is not a reason to mistrust intelligence which is objectively pretty accurate most of the time. Even B'Tselem's own analysis of the people killed in buildings during the war shows that in nearly all the cases of many casualties, there was a valid military target inside. That's pretty good intel!

To demand that a military commander second guess his intelligence reports is beyond absurd. There was not a pattern of mistakes, as B'Tselem implies. There were some, and there will be some in any war.

Again, B'Tselem shows a tiny bit of honesty:

Like any other legal rule, IHL is also up for interpretation. Interpretation is also obviously influenced by the worldview of the person offering it, including the MAG, yet as longs [sic] as it is reasonable and reflects the purpose of the law it is considered legitimate.

But then it goes beyond international law and even morality into its own universe:

However, an interpretation whereby such extreme harm to civilians (as was seen in Operation Protective Edge) is lawful and is not considered “excessive” – as the MAG argues – is unreasonable, legally wrong, and founded on a morally repugnant worldview.

One only has to read the MAG reports to see that calling their worldview "morally repugnant" is itself morally repugnant. The MAG spends thousands of hours looking at individual cases, prioritizing the ones where there were the highest number of casualties. It finds, based on actual research, that in most cases the actions of the IDF were legal. B'Tselem wants to ignore the specific cases - because it has no evidence to contradict any one of them - and instead does some hand-waving and spews out "But look at how many people died! It must be illegal, even if we can't show why!"

Ironically, B'Tselem's own statistics prove that the IDF targeted terrorists and show that most of the civilians who were killed lost their lives because of Hamas' human shield policy, not Israel's disregarding international law.

B'Tselem pretends to be honest - and compared to HRW and Amnesty, it is - but in the end, it still bases its analysis on bias, not on facts.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

B'Tselem Won't Call Hamas a Terrorist Organization (Judean Rose)

Varda Meyers Epstein's weekly column:

It's hard to understand why someone like Sarit Michaeli, the spokesperson for B'Tselem, the so-called human rights organization, continues to live in Israel, considering the fact that she sees Israel as an "occupier" of its Arab minority. I mean, if she thinks she's guilty of a crime, why doesn't she leave?

At the same time, it's even more difficult to understand why anyone gives her a platform to spew her nonsense. Still, Alan Mendoza of JTV acquitted himself well in his interview of Michaeli.

He at least tried to pin her down, to make her admit that, for instance, Hamas, the ruling power in Gaza, is a terrorist organization. He asks her once, twice, three times. But that comes later.

The interview begins with an overview of B'Tselem history and how the org has morphed from being all about the "occupation," all the time, to sometimes noticing that the other side isn't exactly playing fair. You know how it goes: gotta look balanced or no one takes you seriously. Especially since you got caught giving out cameras to people in Hebron to take that little film clip of Elor Azaria in which you MUTED THE SOUND.

Soon enough, thank God, Mendoza cuts off her blather:

Alan Mendoza: Okay, so the original goal was informational, and to bring to light human rights abuses. What's the goal today?

Sarit Michaeli: So I think over the years, the situation has changed on the ground and I think our understanding as well of the inflation of our role in the broader picture is also evolved.

(Take a deep breath. Not really, but this is going to be long.)

Sarit Michaeli: If in the past, it seemed like information is enough in order to spur Israelis on to action, to get them to oppose the Israeli occupation—which we do as the pure problem of human rights violations of Palestinians living under it—now of course we're much more nuanced I think in our understanding and we know that this isn't simply going to change purely by providing this information, but information and research is still, for the basic building block of our work but on top of that we do a lot of advocacy with Israel, with the international community, with the Israeli public, talking about the reality on the ground, talking about what it means, you know, we're actually only just a week following the 49th anniversary of the occupation, actually half a century, entering a 50th year of the occupation, and one of the key things for us is trying to explain the reality on the ground all Palestinians living under the occupation today. . .

(Someone, anyone, please write the McWhirter brothers. Surely that's a sentence worthy of a Guinness record?)

Alan Mendoza: I get you want to explain what's happening on the ground. Where do you want that to go to? What's your end point in this?

Sarit Michaeli: I mean, for us I think the key issue is that the Israeli occupation needs to end. B'Tselem doesn't say. . .

Alan Mendoza: Is that a two-state solution or a one-state solution?

Sarit Michaeli: B'Tselem doesn't provide a blueprint as to how to end the conflict. It's far beyond the limits of our mandate. Our mandate is to look at the current situation and to you know, influence Israelis and Palestinians to reach a decision on how to end the conflict between them and how to resolve it, you know, in whatever way that of course, appears to work for both sides, but also to force it to benchmarks, to human rights benchmarks.

Alan Mendoza: I understand that. You speak of human rights benchmarks. Of course it's important those are kept to. What about benchmarks on the Palestinian side? It doesn't appear you have any interest in Palestinian rights and we know, we've had many reports from Palestinian human rights activists about what happens under the Palestinian Authority. Torture, murder, things like that. Where's your comment on that?

Ooh. SNAP.

Sarit Michaeli: Well absolutely, so our website of course includes critique, not just theoretical critiques, but also information and data on the most egregious human rights violations under the Palestinian Authority but also under the Hamas regime in Gaza. We certainly view human rights as a universal issue and of course it would be completely absurd not to relate to these kinds of violations. What we try to also do is we work out what we would be effective in doing, so when it comes to the recent, for example, execution in Gaza by Hamas, to torture and various forms of denial of freedom of speech by the PA, of course we've made very clear statements about this. We've also made statements and we denounce in very categorical terms Palestinian attacks against Israeli civilians are not just a violation of the rights of the Palestinians by other Palestinians, but also a violation of Israelis by Palestinians.

Say what?

Sarit Michaeli: However, as it is really an Israeli organization, the bulk of our research and our work and our effort goes at self-criticism so looking at our own government, our own army. . .

Here it comes. The big question. First time:

Alan Mendoza: Let's look at one issue. Is Hamas a terrorist organization?

Sarit Michaeli: Hamas engages in clear terrorist acts when it bombs Israeli civilians. We have denounced these actions clearly, I mean if you're referring to the attempt by a former Israeli Member of Knesset to basically smear B'Tselem's director, in order to place us in a position, to present a false image, as if B'Tselem is somehow, in any way, in support of attacks against civilians, it's simply incorrect and it is simply, basically a form of political attack against us then what can we do. . .

Second time:

Alan Mendoza: Are you prepared to call Hamas a terrorist organization? That's what I'm asking you.

Third time:

Alan Mendoza: Are you prepared to call Hamas a terrorist organization?

Sarit Michaeli: As I said, we denounce the terrorist acts perpetrated by Hamas military. We have stated that again and again. Again what you're referring to is a clear attempt by Israeli politicians, to try and present us as if we are terrorists . . .

Alan Mendoza: It's a very simple question. . .

Sarit Michaeli: . . . and of course this is simply unacceptable. . .

Alan Mendoza: . . . and you're not answering it.

Sarit Mendoza: I answered it.

Alan Mendoza: Well, it seems that you believe that Hamas is not a terrorist organization. . .

Sarit Mendoza: We have said that Hamas attacks Israelis, attacks Israeli civilians, and it bombs Israeli civilians. We've denounced these acts, clearly.

Alan Mendoza: It's a terrorist organization part of the time.

Sarit Michaeli: I've answered your question.

Actually, no. You haven't.

Sarit Michaeli: You're trying to basically present our, you know, our attitude and approach to this issue based on the framing of you know, presented by an Israeli extremist right-wing Member of Knesset when he was a radio reporter. This is the backdrop to what we're talking about. I think this notion of somehow like smearing us as like terrorist sympathizers, it's just simply unacceptable. B'Tselem has a very clear record of condemning this type of violence.

Alan Mendoza: I'm afraid that's all we've got time for. Thank you for joining us.

So as a mother of 12 kids, what this reminded me of most is the theory that you never call a child "bad." Rather, you say his actions are bad. "Jimmy, it is a bad thing to bite Susie" but never , "Jimmy, you are a bad boy for biting Susie."

In other words, B'Tselem views Hamas as an unruly child to be tamed with psychobabble. Michaeli won't characterize Hamas as a terrorist organization. She has no compunction, on the other hand, about characterizing Israel as an "occupier."

Just another example of the soft bigotry of low expectations, brought to you by B'Tselem.

(h/t Natan Epstein)

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

B'Tselem accidentally reveals how careful the IDF is in targeting

B'Tselem's Gaza war site lets you filter deaths by many criteria. Even though they tend to avoid labeling people as militants if they can, something interesting can be seen when you look at men between 20 and 30 killed during Protective Edge:

A total of 771 men in that age group were killed during the war, according to B'Tselem. Of those, the site says, only 184 did not participate in hostilities. About 3 out of 4 of all men killed in that category were terrorists.

Now, Gaza has about 200,000 men between 20 and 30. Perhaps 10% of those men are members of terror groups. So Israel did an excellent job in targeting terrorists in that age group - even though terrorists generally wouldn't wear uniforms during the war.

Some of the "civilians" in that age group appear to be miscategorized:

'Abd a-Rahman Muhammad 'Odeh Barrak. 24 years old, resident of Wadi a-Salqa, Deir al-Balah district. Killed on 19 Jul 2014, in Deir al-Balah, by gunfire. Did not participate in hostilities. Additional information: Killed along with three other operatives in a military branch in the bombing of farmland in the east of the city of Deir al-Balah.

Some of the "civilians" were probably not so innocent, as B'Tselem's description of this man shows:

'Udai Rafiq Sa'id a-Sultan. 21 years old, resident of Beit Lahiya, North Gaza district. Killed on 10 Jul 2014, in Jabalya, North Gaza district, by missile fired from an aircraft, during the course of a targeted killing. Did not participate in hostilities. Additional information: Killed along with two people he was driving in his car, one of them an operative in the Islamic Jihad's military branch.

If you are driving terrorists around during wartime, that pretty much makes you a combatant under international law.

Many others of the Gazans between 20-30 who were killed happened to be nearby when Israel targeted terrorists, such as this guy:

Saleh a-Zgheibi, 21 years old
Killed on 18 Jul 2014, in Rafah, by gunfire from a tank.
Saleh Suliman Muhammad a-Zgheibi. 21 years old, resident of Rafah. Killed on 18 Jul 2014, in Rafah, by gunfire from a tank. Did not participate in hostilities. Additional information: Killed in the Bahraini neighborhood together with an operative in the military branch of Fatah.

While there are certainly some who cannot be identified as having done anything wrong, the statistics within that age group show very clearly that Israel was targeting only militants among a much larger population.

Which strongly indicates that the children and women and elderly who were killed were also the victims of Hamas' human shield policy far more than of any sort of carelessness on the IDF's part. It makes no sense to assert that Israel would be so efficient at targeting terrorists out of the young adult male group and at the same time randomly tossing bombs at houses filled with innocent people, as the NGOs are trying very hard to imply.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

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

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

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

Excerpts:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here are excerpts of the conclusion from that paper:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

B'Tselem and Amnesty's Gaza websites are aimed at fooling the ICC prosecutor

Over the past couple of days I have documented some clear errors and missing context in B'Tselem's new, supposedly exhaustive report on casualties Operation Protective Edge. I have other examples of B'Tselem's inaccuracy, for example claiming that four of the nine people killed in a July 19 airstrike were civilians, when the Abu Rish Brigades claimed all of them - including a 15 and 16 year old - as members:

Never have any NGOs spent as much time and effort to document a single war - a war whose casualties are far fewer than most wars - as Amnesty and B'Tselem are spending on Protective Edge, even two years afterwards. What are they trying to accomplish and why are they trying to claim that so many terrorists were civilian?

The answer perhaps may be seen in the International Criminal Court Office of the Prosecutor Strategic Plan for 2016-2018.

The ICC now looks at NGOs as partners in determining whether war crimes were committed - and some NGOs are salivating at the idea of prosecuting Israel.

The Office of the Prosecutor (OPT) writes:

[T]here are also the first responders—international forces, human rights organisations, non-governmental organisations (“NGOs”), media, etc.—who deploy into areas where the OTP has not been able to be present (e.g. due to jurisdiction, required agreements, or security implications for staff or witnesses). While respecting each other’s mandate and independence, the Office has begun to discuss with the NGO community how first responders could support the Office in its work and what support could be expected from the Office.

In relation to investigations, the Office will continue to implement the present strategy. It will focus, in particular, on the following priority areas:
 Closing the time gap between events on the ground and the Office’s investigations by creating partnerships with first responders, creating a gateway for crime reporting and working with partners to preserve relevant information on the internet.
 Increasing its ability to collect different forms of evidence other than witness statements through continually enhancing its scientific and technology-related capabilities. Additionally, it will develop further partnerships to support this strategic need, so that in-house capacity is only developed where it is justified.
 Continuing to strengthen the Office’s analysis function through the further roll-out of the Factual Analytical Database, the upgrade of analytical software, the roll-out of the Gender Analysis, and through strengthening the use of analytical products in investigative decision-making for planning, case selection and case review.

[T]echnology is evolving so rapidly that it will be impossible for the Office to keep current if it does not combine investing in its own expertise with developing strategic partnerships for the purposes of outsourcing, when needed, and for understanding and shaping how future technology can assist it to execute its mandate. The Office has been working with the law enforcement community, NGOs and academic institutions to explore new possibilities to support the identification, collection and presentation of evidence through technology.

The ICC is overwhelmed and need help to determine what to prosecute. But the fatal mistake it is making is that it is appearing to assume that the NGOs it chooses to partner with are unbiased.

In these cases, nothing could be further from the truth. In respect to Israel, we have documented exhaustively how each of these NGOs are advocates against the State of Israel, not objective gatherers of data that can be trusted.

But the ICC OTP document indicates that there have been talks for a while between the ICC and NGOs regarding the "help" they can give. Amnesty and B'Tselem are putting together very professional websites where their ability to present data in new and attractive ways mask the fundamental problem, known to all computer science students: garbage in, garbage out.

The ICC prosecutor, who freely admits that she does not have adequate technical expertise, can easily be fooled into mistaking flash for accuracy. Just because the B'Tselem and Amnesty sites have lots of information does not mean that the information is accurate. Their methodologies range from flawed to outright dishonesty and flagrant malice. They are hiring people to gather statistics who are themselves biased, or basing their information on questionable sources. They do not use any known methodology for fact-finding that can eliminate bias. And their data shows that they are ignoring any facts that do not conform to their pre-existing biases.

In short, biased and anti-Israel NGOs are taking advantage of an overworked, under-teched ICC to "help" it come to the conclusions that they have already decided on before they started their Gaza projects: that Israel is guilty of war crimes. Both Amnesty and B'Tselem say this or broadly imply this in their literature.

Dead children are not evidence of war crimes. Without knowing the targets and what the commanders knew at the time of the strikes, one cannot come to that conclusion. That is what international law says. But the Amnesty and B'Tselem websites hide or mis-state relevant information that could exonerate Israel. They cynically parade an army of dead Palestinian children to overwhelm the person looking at the data while purposefully hiding evidence that shows that it is Hamas, not Israel, that is responsible for their deaths. These NGOs are representing themselves as honest fact-finders to the ICC at the same time that they are falsely telling the world that Israel is guilty.

They should not be trusted partners to an organization that is dedicated to impartiality.

This is a cynical attempt to twist international law into a weapon against Israel. And the ICC prosecutor does not seem to realize - indeed, she simply does not have the tools to understand - that her "partners" are biased as hell. They are respected, they are praised, and one has to dig to see that there is rot in the foundation of their beautiful castles.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

The strange case of the 112-year old Gaza victim

B'Tselem's Gaza application lists one outrageous case:

'Aliyyah Hussein Muhammad Qanan. 112 years old, resident of Khuza'a, Khan Yunis district. Injured on 29 Jul 2014, in Khuza'ah, Khan Yunis district, by gunfire from an aircraft, and died on 02 Aug 2014. Did not participate in hostilities. Additional information: Injured while searching for his brother how [sic] had been injured earlier. Died of his wounds on 10 October 2014.

112 years old? Looking for his brother?

If he was 112, he was one of the top three oldest men in the world. Such a death would have been all over the Palestinian - and Israeli - media.

Yet independent information about the late Mr. Qanan is hard to find. He is listed as having died on a list compiled on July 23 here. At the very least B'Tselem has the date wrong.

This list says that "he" is a woman. Nothing about her age.

Someone with that name apparently died. That's all we know. Certaainly B'Tselem is wrong on the date, and probably on the gender. Which means that the details about how "he" was injured while searching for "his" brother came only from quite unreliable Palestinian sources - the same sources that now claim, two years later, that this person was 112 years old.

The specifics are important, because B'Tselem is telling the world that it has the detailed circumstances on every death in the Gaza war, based on that information it is claiming that a certain number of people were uninvolved in hostilities, another number was over 70, and so on. If the details are shown to be wrong then how can we trust anything that B'Tselem is saying?

If it wanted to be accurate it would add the proper caveats both in each individual case and in the aggregate numbers. It doesn't. That lack of transparency indicates that the purpose of this data gathering is not to uncover truth, but to push anti-Israel propaganda.

And tomorrow I will give a possible reason why.

(h/t Bob Knot)

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

Looking further at how B'Tselem reported on some specific incidents that it covered in its new website dedicated to exhaustively documenting the 2014 Gaza war, we see a curious omission.

B'Tselem's goal is to make it look like the IDF was guilty of war crimes. It does this by documenting civilians killed with no apparent militants in the area.

In the tragic case of the Abu Itta family, B'Tselem seems to be going out of its way to say that the IDF is lying.

The IDF writes:

Allegation Concerning the Deaths of Members of the Abu Itta Family in Tel Al-Za'atar (24 July 2014) –

In media reports, as well as complaints received by the MAG Corps from NGOs, it was alleged that on 24 July 2014, as a result of an air strike on the house of the Al-Ajrami family in Tel Al-Za'atar, five members of the Abu Itta family who were in an adjoining building were killed. Subsequently, and in accordance with the MAG's investigation policy, the incident was referred to the FFA Mechanism for examination.

According to the factual findings collated by the FFA Mechanism and presented to the MAG, at the time in question, a weapons cache was struck that was located in the house of a senior military operative in Hamas, Ahmad Al-Ajrami. Prior to the strike on the cache, the IDF issued a number of detailed warnings over the telephone, wherein the residents of the building in which the weapons cache was located, and the residents of a number of surrounding buildings that were expected to be damaged as a result of the strike, were asked to vacate the premises. Additionally, a warning strike was executed on the roof of the building in which the weapons cache was located, as well as on the roof of the adjoining building which was expected to be significantly impacted as a result of the strike, as part of the "knock on the roof" procedure. During this time, many people were seen leaving these buildings. The strike was carried out after it was assessed that it was possible to conclude that civilians were not expected to be harmed in the building targeted and the adjoining buildings, as a result of the strike.

After the event, it appears that as a result of the strike, five civilians, members of the Abu Itta family, were killed, and others were injured. It was not fully determined whether those deceased had been present in an adjoining building whose evacuation was specifically asked for, or whether they were in another adjoining building that had been damaged more significantly than had been expected.

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 was aimed at a military objective – a weapons cache. 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, and it appears that this estimation was not unreasonable under the circumstances. Moreover, the strike was carried out while undertaking a series of precautionary measures which aimed to minimize civilian harm. Inter alia, a specific warning was provided to the residents of the buildings which were expected to be impacted as a result of the strike, and ongoing visual surveillance of the event was used to confirm their evacuation.

B'Tselem reports on each of the family members killed in this way:

Ahmad Ibrahim 'Abdallah Abu 'Aytah. 31 years old, resident of Jabalya R.C., North Gaza district. Killed on 24 Jul 2014, in Jabalya R.C., North Gaza district, by gunfire from an aircraft. Did not participate in hostilities. Additional information: Killed together with his parents, son, and brother in their home in a strike on the neighboring house, which was empty.

B'Tselem seems to be saying that it is quite aware of the IDF report that there was a weapons cache in the house of the Hamas operative next door, and instead of reporting about it - which is what an ethical fact-finding organization should do - it chooses to pretend that there is no counter-evidence to its conclusions.

UPDATE: B'Tselem, in an earlier report, actually mentioned a legitimate military target in this case that it ignored in the application: (h/t Bob Knot)

At around 1:30 A.M. on 24 July 2014, the air force attacked a house in Jabaliya R.C. in the northern Gaza Strip. One of the sons of the man who owned the targeted building is a member of Hamas’ military branch.

There is a reason why Amnesty and B'Tselem are choosing to do these exhaustive and misleading or false investigations into Protective Edge. I hope to discuss this tomorrow.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

B'Tselem says that they were civilians. The IDF says they were Hamas. (UPDATE)

Looking a little closer at the B'Tselem website that claims to catalogue the civilian status of all people killed in Gaza two years ago, we see this:

'Issam Muhammad 'Ata a-Najar. 23 years old, resident of Qizan a-Najar, Khan Yunis district. Killed on 29 Jul 2014, in Qizan a-Najar, Khan Yunis district, by gunfire from an aircraft. Did not participate in hostilities. Additional information: Killed in his home together with 15 other members of his family in a strike on the homes of the a-Najar extended family. The strike destroyed two of the family's homes, in each of which eight people were killed. Other houses were damaged.

Ata Muhammad 'Ata a-Najar. 28 years old, resident of Qizan a-Najar, Khan Yunis district. Killed on 29 Jul 2014, in Qizan a-Najar, Khan Yunis district, by gunfire from an aircraft. Did not participate in hostilities.

The IDF, in a report released last year, disagrees in a couple of aspects of this categorization:

According to the factual findings collated by the FFA Mechanism and presented to the MAG, at the time in question the IDF had attacked a Hamas military command and control center located in a building in Khan Younis, as well as senior Hamas operatives who were manning the center at that time. During the attack planning process, it was assessed that there might be a number of civilians present in the building, but that the potential harm to them would not be excessive in relation to the significant military advantage anticipated to result from the attack. The attack on the building was planned for execution by means of a precise munition, and in a manner that would allow the operational purpose of the attack to be achieved, whilst minimizing the potential harm to the surrounding buildings. As a result of the attack, eight individuals were killed, among them two Hamas operatives, Asam Mohammad Ata Al Najjar and Ata Mohammad Ata Al Najjar.

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 attack was taken by the competent authorities, and was aimed at lawful targets. The attack complied with the principle of proportionality, as at the time the decision to attack was made, it was considered that the collateral damage expected from the attack would not be excessive in relation to the military advantage anticipated from it, and this estimation was not unreasonable under the circumstances. Moreover, the attack was carried out after a number of precautionary measures had been undertaken, which aimed to minimize the potential for civilian harm, particularly with regard to any civilians present in adjoining buildings. It was also found that the provision of a specific warning prior to the attack, to the persons present in the structure, was not required by law and would have been expected to result in the frustration of the attack's objective.

In light of these findings, the MAG did not find that the actions of IDF forces gave rise to reasonable grounds for suspicion of criminal misconduct. As a result, the MAG ordered the case to be closed, without opening a criminal investigation or ordering further action against those involved in the incident. Nonetheless, the MAG found it appropriate to recommend to the command authorities that a number of aspects relating to the implementation of the relevant operational instructions be clarified, with an emphasis on improving the documentation of planning procedures for attacks on targets of this type.

Interestingly, the Meir Amit center identified both Issam and Ata as members of Hamas, but could not identify them as militants.

(UPDATE): However, amazing researcher Bob Knot could. Here is Issam:

Here is Ata:

Were they legitimate targets?

The IDF says it was not only targeting the two Hamas members, but also their command and control center that they were running in their house, effectively making their civilian family members human shields. There is no way B'Tselem (or any other NGO) could know whether the house was a command center. Nevertheless, the IDF clearly was targeting Ata and Issam, or else they could not say that a warning "would have been expected to result in the frustration of the attack's objective."

It sure seems like the IDF is correct and B'Tselem is wrong in identifying whether this was a legitimate target.

This is one of the cases where NGOs who confidently publish what seem to be exact figures could easily be wrong, since they cannot possibly know all the details. The media reports the NGO figures without question. Of course any survivors would claim that the victims were all innocent, but interviews seem to be B'Tselem's main method of determining whether a target was legitimate or not.

What is clear is that B'Tselem had read the IDF account of the incident from a full year ago and chose not to even mention it as a possibility when they were writing up their data claiming that Ata and Issam were certainly civilians. B'Tselem simply decided that the IDF account is wrong and their investigation, almost certainly based on interviews, is more accurate.

It is unethical to not even mention the results of the IDF investigation into the incident. If this is B'Tselem's methodology, then the methodology is proven to be flawed from just this case. It should at the very least put these two Hamas members in their "Unknown" category for those that they were unsure about.

There is another major discrepancy between the IDF and B'Tselem accounts: the number of victims. It is possible that both are telling the truth; the IDF only referring to the specific family home that the two Najjar Hamas operatives were in, and B'Tselem including the neighboring home that was also destroyed. Yet there is a third possibility - that B'Tselem is wrong about the number of victims, since it seems to be at the mercy of Palestinian records, and we have seen exaggerations (even with names) of the number of victims of previous attacks.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.