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Getting Human Rights Wrong

[Ha'aretz] Dan Kosky - Amnesty International can rightly claim to have been a pioneer in defending prisoners of conscience. Yet, Amnesty's treatment of the Arab-Israeli conflict has long been troubling. Last week, the organization released Fueling Conflict, its first substantive report on the Gaza operation. It devotes 12 pages to Israel's "misuse" of conventional arms, compared to one page describing Hamas' unlawful rocket attacks. It accuses Israel of having committed "war crimes" in Gaza, and calls for an international arms embargo. There is no doubt that there were civilian casualties in Gaza, but Amnesty mistakenly treats this fact as proof of Israel's criminality, when it is nothing of the sort. International law accepts civilian deaths as a tragic reality of war, particularly when fighting an enemy that has intentionally embedded itself in densely populated areas. 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." For their work to have meaning, human rights organizations are by definition required to display moral clarity. They must be able to clearly distinguish between legitimate and illegal use of arms, ethical warfare and terrorism. The writer is communications director of NGO Monitor.
2009-03-06 06:00:00
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