Amnesty goes after Israel....

Their 2009 Annual report (for events in 2008) just present the Palestinian narrative...here's some comments from NGO Monitor.

Amnesty International’s 2009 annual report (covering events in 2008) further highlights the NGO superpower’s highly biased approach. The sections on Israel and the Palestinian Authority present a gross distortion of the conflict, including selectively reports on events which erase the context of terrorism, and ignore human rights issues not related to AI’s political agenda, while repeating un-sourced and anecdotal claims.

The 4-page summary of Israel employs highly exaggerated language and absurd allegations. Amnesty accuses Israel of “unprecedented use of force” in Gaza, “virtual imprisonment,” and bringing the Palestinians to the “brink of human catastrophe,” and charges that “impunity remained the norm for Israeli soldiers.” This echoes the highly tendentious reports and press releases on these issues published by Amnesty throughout the year, and the extreme ideological bias which is entirely inconsistent with universal human rights values.

In discussing the combat in Gaza at the end of 2008, Amnesty falsely blames Israel for “launching” an attack; the long history of terrorism and rocket fire emanating from Gaza, as well as the 6 month cease fire which was used by Hamas to prepare for this conflict, are totally ignored. And on the conflict involving Hezbollah and Lebanon, Amnesty immorally presents Samir Kuntar, convicted and imprisoned for murdering a 4 year-old girl, her father and others, as a political prisoner “held since 1979”; Kuntar was released along with four other terrorists in exchange for the bodies of missing Israeli soldiers Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev.

Amnesty only cites alleged Israeli violations within the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, while showing no interest in a genuine evaluation of Israel’s human rights record. Of four pages, only two paragraphs at the end address topics (migrant workers/refugees and prisoners of conscience) other than the Palestinians. Other areas of concern, notably human trafficking and religious issues, remain unmentioned.

The section on the Palestinian Authority is equally ludicrous in the level of anti-Israel bias. While Amnesty belatedly acknowledges both the continued imprisonment and denial of access for kidnapped IDF soldier Gilad Shalit and the widespread indiscriminate rocket attacks on Israeli civilians in 2008, it also promotes an overwhelmingly Palestinian narrative of events. The end of the Gaza ceasefire (December 2008) is blamed solely on Israel, crudely rewriting history. AI blames Israel for a lack of health care in Gaza – and not Hamas misappropriation of resources for terror attacks, nor intra-Palestinian violence and civil war between the Palestinian factions. Deaths from the collapse of smuggling tunnels between Egypt and Gaza are also absurdly attributed to Israel; the extensive documentation of the use of these tunnels for transporting weapons into Gaza is also erased.