Amnesty says some Israeli West Bank killings may be war crimes
Source: Reuters
Israeli forces are using excessive, reckless violence in the occupied West Bank, killing dozens of Palestinians over the past three years in what might constitute a war crime, Amnesty International said on Thursday.
In a report entitled "Trigger Happy", the human rights group accused Israel of allowing its soldiers to act with virtual impunity and urged an independent review of the deaths.
The Israeli army dismissed the allegations, saying security forces had seen a "substantial increase" in Palestinian violence and that Amnesty had revealed a "complete lack of understanding" about the difficulties soldiers faced.
....
An Israeli army statement responding to the report did not refer to any specific incidents, but said 2013 had seen a sharp increase in rock hurling incidents, which had injured 132 Israeli civilians and military personnel.
Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/02/27/us-palestinians-israel-amnesty-idUSBREA1Q00G20140227
DeSwiss
(27,137 posts)El_Johns
(1,805 posts)threat to life. "In some, there is evidence that they were victims of wilful killings, which would amount to war crimes," the group said.
Mosby
(16,416 posts)Just look at these two reports:
This report on Israel killing (by Amnesty's count) 22 civilians in 2013 is 87 pages long and they aver that:
They seem pretty confident in their assertions and plainly state that they think the Israeli government engaged in war crimes.
Now take a look at a report about Egypt from six months ago where they discuss the killing of 1400 protesters and other crimes like rape:
They are "concerned".
AI is a joke.
Comrade Grumpy
(13,184 posts)Mosby
(16,416 posts)Half the country was ethnically cleansed of Cypriots and perhaps thousands murdered. Now there are around 150,000 Turkish settlers, and Turkey has annexed half the island despite UNSC resolutions.
Where is the AI report?
Doesn't exist.
The Stranger
(11,297 posts)This one isn't about Turkey, thank you very much.
Ash_F
(5,861 posts)Yeah, you are not very effective.
dipsydoodle
(42,239 posts).
truth2power
(8,219 posts)L0oniX
(31,493 posts)Mosby
(16,416 posts)Jerusalem A report scheduled to be released by Amnesty International tomorrow, Trigger-happy: Israels use of excessive force in the West Bank, falsely and maliciously accuses Israel of callous disregard for human life, according to analysis by NGO Monitor, a Jerusalem-based research organization. The report also repeats Amnestys calls for political warfare against Israel, in the form of an arms embargo.
Amnesty International accusations are reckless, blatantly biased, and reflect the lack of a credible research fact-finding methodology, said Prof. Gerald Steinberg, president of NGO Monitor. Amnesty lacks the expertise and credibility to analyze or assign blame for deaths in the context of violent confrontations in the West Bank. As in the past, the allegations in this report repeat unverifiable Palestinian testimony.
Indeed, in a February 10 interview with Al Jazeera, Amnesty Internationals Secretary General Salil Shetty acknowledged that we are not an expert (sic) on military matters. So we dont want to, kind of, pontificate on issues we dont really understand.
In its report, Amnesty makes numerous non-specific claims without any supporting evidence, such as Palestinians killed by Israeli soldiers did not appear to be posing a direct and immediate threat to life and the use of arbitrary force. In contrast, other monitoring groups such as BTselem acknowledge that the majority of Palestinian casualties occurred during combat or violent clashes and confrontations with Israeli security personnel. Amnestys removal of this essential context and abuse of the term civilian further highlights the lack of credibility. Similarly, in 2009, Amnesty played a central role in the discredited Goldstone report on the Gaza conflict, as well as in a number of other allegations targeting Israel.
Likewise, NGO Monitor has shown that Amnestys research team on Israel comprises two individuals with backgrounds in anti-Israel political activism, not military and legal expertise.
http://www.ngo-monitor.org/article/amnesty_international_report_reflects_lack_of_expertise_and_methodology
Capt. Obvious
(9,002 posts)The on-line communications editor of NGO Monitor, Arnie Draiman, was indefinitely banned from editing articles about the Israeli-Arab conflict for biased editing, concealing his place of work and using a second account in a way that is forbidden by Wikipedia policy.[17] Draiman was a major contributor to the articles of his employers NGO Monitor and Gerald Steinberg, and performed hundreds of edits of human rights organizations, such as B'Tselem, the New Israel Fund, Human Rights Watch and many others, to which NGO Monitor's president, Professor Gerald Steinberg, is opposed.[44]
Just two of the sections on Wiki