More on Amnesty International....

Their recent report called for an arms embargo on Israel....

Despite the inconvenient lack of evidence, Amnesty rules that Israel is guilty as charged and calls for an immediate "UN Security Council arms embargo on Israel." Almost half the report is devoted to detailing Israel's arms imports. Were Amnesty to focus solely on Israel's alleged use of controversial weapons, such as white phosphorus, the report might contribute to a valuable debate. Yet amazingly, it details Israel's procurement of aircraft, tanks, light weapons, ammunition and electronic equipment, all of which would presumably also be subject to Amnesty's suggested boycott. What emerges is an unspoken but shocking conclusion that in Amnesty's view, Israel is unfit to possess weapons and thus should be stripped of the right to self-defense.

Amnesty appears to subscribe to a fairy-tale worldview in which all non-combatant deaths and the use of all weapons under any circumstances are by definition immoral, wrong and illegal. Were the organization's stringent standards to be enforced, there would be no such thing as a just war and all democratic leaders who seek to defend their citizens against aggression and terrorism, as is their responsibility, would be deemed "war criminals."

Possibly in the forlorn hope of appearing even-handed, Amnesty often appears at pains to condemn both Israel and its enemies in equal measure, however contorted the calculation involved may be. "Fueling Conflict" is no different and although it devotes 12 of its more than 30 pages to Israel's "misuse" of conventional arms, compared to one page describing Hamas' unlawful rocket attacks, it concludes with parity that "Both Israel and Hamas used weapons supplied from abroad to carry out attacks on civilians - thus committing war crimes." This creates a dangerous and dishonest moral equivalence between Israel, which makes every effort to avoid civilian deaths and is apologetic when they occur, and Hamas, which regards the spilling of innocent blood itself as a victory. But to conclude with anything other than a manufactured evenhandedness would require Amnesty to make an ethical judgment - which it is reluctant to do.

For their work to have meaning, human rights organizations are by definition required to display moral clarity rather than hide behind a convenient veneer of impartiality. They must be able to clearly distinguish between legitimate and illegal use of arms, ethical warfare and terrorism. If it seeks to remain relevant, Amnesty must engage in the increasingly complex realities of asymmetric warfare and global terrorism and move beyond simplistic condemnations of war and conflict.