Wednesday, August 19, 2015

Amnesty found biased in series of reports you probably have not read

Hamasty provided by preoccupiedterritory.com

Anonymous blogger, Elder of Ziyon, the internet’s Mike Royko has been uncovering and reporting a pattern of bias and seemingly intentional misinformation by Amnesty International. Some of the reporting has been factual correction caused by Amnesty for being at minimum far too credulous with reportage from Gaza such as this article from July 10th, “@Amnesty says this house had no terrorists. Wrong again.” Amnesty accepts Tawfiq Abu Jame’s claim their house was no involved in the fighting but was bombed anyhow but B’Tselem, an NGO and frequent critic of Israel reported that Ahmad Sahoud was living there and listed as a Hamas Operative. The original post appears to no longer be on the B’Tselem website but the family is listed here: http://www.btselem.org/press_releases/20140721_killing_of_abu_jame_family and an archive of the site shows the listing of the Abu Jame’ family as reported by Eder of Ziyon here: https://web.archive.org/web/20150203050006/http://www.btselem.org/gaza_strip/201407_families.  To my untrained eye, the dropping off of the Abu Jame family by B’Tselem looks like collusion with Amnesty International to remove an embarrassing fact from the B’Tselem website.

In a July 31st Article, “Amnesty ignores Amnesty's own research in anti-Israel tweets” noted that while Amnesty accused Israel of attacking a house without warning, neighbors reported to Amnesty that Hamas was using the empty apartment “for some time prior to the attack” and then the Elder of Ziyon further noted,

As we have shown, under international law, an attack on a communications hub in Serbia that was only knocked out for a single day was not considered a violation of the laws of armed conflict even though the number of fatalities were higher than this instance. Amnesty's claim of "clearly disproportionate" is flatly wrong. The entire reason Israel did not give warning in this case - as opposed to hundreds of other cases - was obviously because this was a high-value military target.

And finally Elder concludes,

There was a violation of international law here, though. Hamas was using the Bayoumi family and others as human shields. Amnesty gathered the evidence proving that Hamas chose a residential building to build a command center and station at least four militants there. Yet instead of blaming Hamas for putting the families at risk- precisely because international law does not tie the hands of an army when the value of a valid military target is high - Amnesty makes up its own international law and accuses Israel of violating it.”

In the August 29th “Proven liars at Amnesty say my research is not credible without pointing out a single error” Elder of Ziyon shares a response from Amnesty International provided by one of his readers:

Amnesty's findings are in accordance with those of other human rights organisations, including B'Tselem, and I'm not sure why you would quote B'Tselem as if their findings were different from ours. B'Tselem's findings on Israeli violations are very much in line with our own, eg see here: http://www.btselem.org/gaza_strip/gaza_201407_operation
We would not deem elderofziyon a credible source.


It’s easy to dismiss an anonymous, pro-Israel blogger with an edgy name, especially when Amnesty International so easily dismisses facts but citing a report in their response which has been conveniently altered is interesting when the altered part just so happens to be a part the Elder of Ziyon quoted.   

Originally published in the Jerusalem Post in the Middle East by Midwest blog.

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