More on Amnesty...

Amnesty International has turned into a nasty, politically-correct outfit...

Amnesty perversely reads that body of law in ways that unduly handcuff nations with legitimate reasons for military action. Indeed, in a recent letter to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice about the Gaza conflict, Amnesty imposes a new - and entirely unfounded - restriction on the use of military force: that it be "strictly necessary." Presumably Israel's assault on Gaza is not "strictly necessary." Israel could live with ongoing rocket attacks or simply accept whatever terms Hamas dictates as a condition for stopping its rocket fire. Fortunately for the rest of us, peace at any price or yielding to blackmail by rocket fire is not required by international law.

These distortions are plainly evident in a series of statements and letters Amnesty has written since Israel began its invasion of Gaza. Although these statements rely repeatedly on the principle of distinction - requiring combatants to do their best to distinguish between civilians and combatants - Amnesty manages to not once mention Hamas' plain duty under that principle to avoid placing its military assets (i.e., rockets and rocket launchers) amongst civilians in civilian neighborhoods. If one wants to protect civilians, that is the place to start.

There is no question that such a duty exists and that, as demonstrated by a report [PDF file] by Israel's Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center, Hamas pays it no mind. Amnesty necessarily also elides the point that Hamas' violation does not immunize dual use military sites from attacks which inevitably have collateral consequences of harm to civilians.

Amnesty's silence about that systematic violation of the law of war is made worse by the fact that Hamas' "fighters" often wear no uniform or identifying symbols as soldiers of national armies must do, so that it is far more difficult to distinguish them from civilians in the first place.

These human shield tactics, used as well by Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the Taliban in Afghanistan, are what put civilians in harm's way, not Israel's attacks. Pretending such a duty does not exist, but insisting that Israel may not attack such sites because they endanger civilians, is to confer on Hamas de facto immunity from military action except at the precise instant a rocket is being launched and then only if no civilians are in the vicinity, a circumstance that does not often exist in Gaza. It is certain that those nations which ratified the Geneva Conventions and the Additional Protocols did not intend for international law to be a terrorist's most impenetrable shield.

It is equally telling that while Amnesty repeatedly denounces Israel's attacks as "disproportionate," it never explains to what the attacks are disproportionate. Reading its materials, it appears to understand proportionality to mean "too many Palestinian casualties," an irrelevant figure in calculating proportionality. But even on this made-up test of proportionality, Israel's actions pass muster. By Amnesty's own figures, the overwhelming number of persons killed are not civilians, but Hamas personnel. Hamas has so admitted, boasting of its "martyrs." By Israeli figures, some three-quarters of the dead are not civilians.