Amnesty’s disgraceful ‘genocide’ slander against Israel disqualifies the group
From its first sentence, the Amnesty International report lies and omits crucial information.
By James Sinkinson
JNS
Dec 18, 2024
An Israeli soldier treats an elderly Palestinian woman injured in
Gaza due to the human-shield strategy of the Hamas
rulers. Despite all the evidence to the contrary, Amnesty International still accuses
Israel of genocide.
Two weeks ago, Amnesty International issued a 300-page blood libel accusing Israel of committing genocide. Titled “‘You Feel Like You Are Subhuman’: Israel’s Genocide Against Palestinians in Gaza,” the report promotes the false narrative that Israel is brutally destroying the Palestinian people. It supports the contention with poisonous lies, disinformation and blatant omissions so numerous as to be a disgrace.
Above all, by the authors’ own admission, Amnesty invents a new definition to make a desperate case for Israel’s “genocide” since proving the actual definition would be impossible.
From its first sentence, the report lies and omits crucial information, asserting that “On 7 October 2023, Israel embarked on a military offensive on the occupied Gaza Strip (Gaza) of unprecedented magnitude, scale and duration.” Apparently, the war was completely Israel’s idea—no mention of Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre—itself a true genocidal act.
No mention, either, that Israelis hadn’t set foot in Gaza for 19 years, since turning the coastal territory over free and clear to the Palestinians in 2005. Is that now what “occupied” means?
In addition to ignoring these facts, Amnesty’s report also omits the fact that Hamas has rained more than 7,000 missiles on Israel’s civilians since Oct. 7, 2023. Never mind, as well, that Hamas is a brutal Islamist dictatorship that oppresses Gaza’s 2 million Palestinians … and uses them as human shields.
To prove the report’s primary accusation of genocide, Amnesty has to excise the primary meaning of the word under international law—which, by definition, states genocide must be specifically intentional. Of course, Israel does not seek to exterminate the Palestinians—and, of course, Amnesty offers no evidence that it does.
The only thing Israel wants to exterminate is Hamas, whose members purposefully hide among, within and below Gaza’s general population. The practice of using civilian shields—a war crime—is thus the primary factor causing unnecessary deaths in Gaza, which Amnesty’s report abjectly disregards in its fraudulent genocide accusation.
The report, however, should not surprise anyone, given Amnesty’s notorious history of unfair bias against the Jewish state. The agency’s lies and misrepresentations in this report are so egregious that Western nations and organizations have rejected it, including an Amnesty affiliate.
Not only lovers of Israel but all supporters of truth and justice should repudiate Amnesty’s recent antisemitic screed. The report invites the kind of shame that has recently tarnished legacy media, whose credibility has sunk to embarrassing lows.
Amnesty’s accusation of genocide falsifies Israel’s defensive war in Gaza. Under international law, genocide is the “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.” But Amnesty, by its own admission, used a less restrictive threshold of proof in determining intent than used even by the corrupt International Court of Justice. Israel has no intention of destroying the Palestinian people. It targets terrorists and only terrorists.
Amnesty’s report also ignores the unprecedented efforts made by Israel, and no other nation, to protect civilians. Thousands of phone calls, texts and leaflets warn civilians before Israel Defense Forces operations, and humanitarian corridors enable Gazans to evacuate safely. Outrageously, Amnesty’s report condemns Israel for saving lives through evacuation, describing the practice as forcible displacement, thus evidence of genocide. Yet this contradicts demands that Israel also take necessary steps to avoid civilian deaths. Supreme hypocrisy.
Amnesty uses fake facts and glaring omissions. For starters, their report relies on false, unverified casualty figures from the Hamas-run Ministry of Health, which doesn’t distinguish between civilian and terrorist deaths. Indeed, according to noted military expert John Spencer, “while some 17,000 Hamas fighters and perhaps 25,000 Gazan non-combatants have been killed during the Gaza war, this is an extraordinarily low ratio of military-to-civilian deaths by any standard.” Notably, Amnesty did not reveal this context in its report.
Unsurprisingly, Amnesty also doesn’t mention that Hamas often prevents its people from fleeing combat zones after the IDF’s evacuation notices, specifically to ensure high death rates and promote undeserved blame on Israel. Amnesty’s deceptive report supports this strategy.
No surprise, either, that Amnesty has never accused former Syrian dictator Bashar Assad of genocide, despite his regime’s use of indiscriminate bombing and chemical weapons to exterminate an estimated 400,000 Syrian civilians. Of course, Amnesty used genocide’s standard, legal definition to evaluate Assad—not its new, Israel-only definition. Of course, Assad isn’t Jewish.
Finally, Amnesty’s report accuses Israel of starving Gazans, even though the United Nations has dismissed reports of famine in Gaza due to lack of evidence. Moreover, Israel has facilitated the transfer of 1.1 million tons of aid into Gaza.
Amnesty has a history of flagrant bias against Israel. In 2022, for example, the organization accused Israel of being an apartheid state from its very birth in 1948. But perhaps the best indication of Amnesty’s anti-Israel bias is their labeling this latest publication the “genocide report” even before it was written, according to a statement by several members of Amnesty Israel and Jewish members of Amnesty International.
Ha’aretz quoted the Amnesty members’ statement, which asserted, “Predetermined conclusions of this kind are not typical of other Amnesty International investigations.” In rejecting the report, Amnesty Israel declared, “We do not accept the claim that genocide has been proven to be taking place in the Gaza Strip, nor do we accept the operative findings of the report.”
Amnesty’s report has been criticized, condemned and rejected. A spokesperson for the U.S. State Department said, “We disagree with the conclusions of such a report … [and] find the allegations of genocide are unfounded.” Germany also rejected the report, stating through its foreign ministry that Israel was acting in self-defense, and that it was Hamas who started the war. The International Legal Forum went further, asserting the report is “replete with malicious lies, gross distortions of truth and fabrications of law,” and calling for President-elect Donald Trump to name Amnesty a hate group.
Amnesty International’s factual perversions, sins of omission and bad faith cause its report to fail utterly at proving Israel’s intent to harm innocent Palestinians. Amnesty has not only slandered Israel but also provided conclusive evidence it has lost all credibility in advocating for human rights.
Originally published by FLAME
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