Broken Lives - One Year of Intifada: Israel/Occupied Territories/Palestinian Authority [Paperback]

Amnesty International is an organization that used to show some respect for human rights. It supported Soviet dissidents such as Natan Sharansky. But as Sharansky noted, its reports were way off base. It reported all sorts of human rights violations in Israel, while leaving out most of the much more serious and systematic violations of human rights elsewhere in the Middle East. Amnesty International boasted that it showed "the picture as it is." But it did nothing of the sort. And it still doesn't.

Let's look at Amnesty International's recommendations in this report.

1) End the killings
2) Safeguard detainees

Yes! "Respect for human life must be restored." To Amnesty International, that means that Levantine Arab thugs ought to be arrested, treated with respect, and given fair trials (but by their fellow thugs, not by some reasonable judicial system). And Israel, of course, ought to avoid retaliating, lest it be charged with recklessness and "extrajudicial executions."

3) End collective punishments

This is a great idea. Except Amnesty International intends Israel to be the one to avoid defending itself against the thugs! The possibility that the thugs themselves could be in violation of some law appears to escape Amnesty International here.

Amnesty International also calls for "the setting up of an international monitoring presence in Israel's Occupied Territories with a human rights component." That sounds nice, but I have my doubts about whether it would do anything positive for human rights. It sounds to me that its main duty would be to ensure that thugs not be harassed. In addition, Amnesty International has taken a view by calling the disputed West Bank, "Israel's Occupied Territories."

To its credit, Amnesty International did admit that Arab armed groups have intentionally killed other Arabs, as well as some Israelis. But their "recommendations" are useless. There would be no war if the thugs stopped killing Israelis. Israel has no need to fight except in self-defense.

I think it is fine to cite instances of injuries, murders, torture, and all sorts of other violations of human rights. Some Germans did that in World War Two. They cited all sorts of violations against Germans, but they tended to omit their own violations. Amnesty International ought to be better than that. But it isn't.

Amnesty International had no problem in reporting the death of Muhammad al-Dura in a chapter on "Killings by Israelis." Well, I have nothing against such a chapter. People on all sides die in wartime. But Amnesty International is doing us all a disservice to accept all sorts of Arab propaganda pretty much as factual while casting doubt on what Israelis report. The evidence that Israel did not kill Muhammad al-Dura was very strong, and it was unreasonable for Amnesty International to make it appear that such incidents are typical Israeli behavior as opposed to a simple blood libel.

I am in favor of human rights, and as a result, I can't support Amnesty International at all. We need human rights organizations that truly support human rights. And I think that this article shows that Amnesty International is not up to this task.