Here are some relevant points from the regional overview.

amnesty int

…or in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, where Palestinian children were among those killed with impunity by Israeli troops. In Iraq, both US and other foreign forces and those of the Iraqi government used excessive force with impunity.

Killings of civilians by Israeli forces and Palestinian armed groups continued in Israel and the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, although on a lesser scale than in recent years. While Israel used a wide range of judicial and extrajudicial means to punish Palestinians individually and collectively for killings of Israelis, Palestinian victims were denied justice and redress. Impunity remained the rule for Israeli forces who unlawfully killed and ill-treated Palestinians. In July Israel passed a new law denying Palestinians the right to claim compensation for death, injury or damage caused by Israeli forces. The Palestinian Authority also failed to take action against Palestinian armed groups responsible for unlawful killings and abductions amid increasing lawlessness.

…Despite the Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, the situation for Palestinian refugees there and in the occupied West Bank continued to worsen because of land acquisitions, house demolitions, closures and other controls on movement imposed by the Israeli authorities and the increasing lawlessness arising from rivalry between Palestinian armed groups.

Marginalized people were particularly vulnerable, including Bedouins in Israel, Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, members of ethnic and religious minorities in Iran, and migrants, especially women migrant workers in Gulf countries and Lebanon. For Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, Israeli policies and controls made life especially harsh. Palestinians were left without shelter by destruction of their homes; without livelihood by the seizure of land and closures; and without access to adequate health care due to road closures and checkpoints. Access to scarce water resources increasingly emerged as a likely flashpoint for the future.

More details can be found at Michael and Rabbi Yonah’s fav paper, Jpost.

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15 Comments

  • Killings of civilians by Israeli forces and Palestinian armed groups continued in Israel and the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, although on a lesser scale than in recent years.

    🙄

    Thanks for the context, Amnesty.

  • Personally I liked America’s response to Amnesty’s report (hat tip: LGF):

    http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060523/pl_afp/amnestyrightsus

    US goes on counter-attack against Amnesty International

    WASHINGTON (AFP) – The United States went on the counter-attack against Amnesty International, rejecting its charges of the torture of terror suspects and criticizing its lack of help in prosecuting deposed Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.

    State Department spokesman Sean McCormack dismissed allegations by the Nobel Prize-winning rights group, which cited reports that US prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and elsewhere were subject to “torture and ill-treatment.”

    “Nobody is being tortured at Guantanamo Bay,” McCormack told reporters when asked about the charges in Amnesty International’s latest annual report.

    He went on to point out Amnesty’s role in documenting rights abuses during the 24 years of Saddam’s rule before he was deposed by the Americans in 2003 and later captured and charged with crimes against humanity.

    “But when it came time to put Saddam Hussein on trial, which is happening right now, they (Amnesty) are absent. They’ve done zero, zip, nothing, to assist in those efforts,” McCormack said.

    “So in terms of where they might focus some of their efforts, I would just offer the humble suggestion that they might follow through in actually assisting with or providing some support to this trial for what they acknowledge is one of the great human rights abusers of recent times.”

    McCormack said Amnesty could help the Iraqi authorities, currently trying Saddam for a massacre of Shiite villagers in the 1980s, by making available its vast database cataloguing the Iraq dictator’s alleged abuses.

    I am glad there are groups like this, but they need to be scrutinized themselves.

  • Easy, Middle, it was the ‘regional overview’. Muffti is too cheap to pay for the full study. Oh yeha, and he’s finishign a dissertation and stuff. 🙂

  • I understand, but to see them compare the Bedouin in the Negev to the Palestinians in Lebanon is a joke. And yet, it is precisely the same game they play by equating and putting side by side the “killing of civilians” between the Israelis and Palestinians without any context whatsoever.

  • hehehe. just look at the report’s intro:

    During 2005 some of the world’s most powerful governments were successfully challenged, their hypocrisy exposed by the media, their arguments rejected by courts of law, their repressive tactics resisted by human rights activists. After five years of backlash against human rights in the “war on terror”, the tide appeared to be turning.

    http://web.amnesty.org/report2006/index-eng

    refuse/resist! way to go amnesty!

    these loonies put on a clinic in propagating moral equivalency. check it out: http://web.amnesty.org/report2006/isr-summary-eng

    thanks man, that was a good laugh. i can’t wait for ngo-monitor to get a hold of this one. http://www.ngo-monitor.org/archives/infofile.htm#amnesty

  • Ho ho ho, Bobo!

    Link 1 (just look to see where Amnesty is mentioned)

    Link 2

    Here’s an example of excellent balance by Amnesty:

    Report showing Israel kills five terrorists during their training, along with a child who was brought along to watch (!!!) by the father

    Amnesty report on the topic.

    Expressions of regret by Israeli army and government officials for the killings of Palestinian children and other bystanders ring hollow as repeated attacks by Israeli troops on densely populated residential areas continue to claim the lives of Palestinians, including children, in situations where they pose no threats to the lives of Israelis.

    In the same press release, they condemn Israeli shelling of Gaza without mention of the reasons, namely the Palestinian Qassem rocket attacks. They mention the three family members who were killed because their house caught on fire after an Israeli shell landed nearby but neglect to mention that Israel was responding to attacks and that 99.998% of their artillery shells did not hit any civilians or homes.

    Here’s the joke part of the release:

    The Israeli authorities contend that such attacks are in response to frequent mortar and rocket attacks by Palestinian armed groups launched from the Gaza Strip against Israeli towns and villages near the Gaza Strip. Although they have rarely caused Israeli fatalities or casualties, these Palestinian attacks are unlawful and should stop immediately.

    Israeli forces, for their part, must put an immediate end to the frequent, disproportionate and excessive use of force against Palestinian. Such attacks continue to cause death and injury to Palestinian children and other bystanders, and constitute violations of international law.

    Thank you Amnesty for being so even-handed, for your impartial reporting and for your excellent military advice. There is no doubt that were Israel to follow this advice, there would be many more Israelis dead and maimed, and your organization might mention in a small note somewhere in a lengthy press release that the Palestinian attacks are unlawful and should stop.

    How about it Bobo, that was after 5 minutes of Googling, is that enough for you? Ho ho ho.

  • It’s truly a shame that Amnesty International has adopted a political agenda which distorts its stated purposes. Now it’s just another mouthpiece of the European/anti-American/anti-Israeli left.

  • hehehe…um, themiddle….

    to quote the comic book guy: “Er, er, er. Seeing as we are unfamiliar with sarcasm, I shall close the register at this point, and state that 99 cents is the rental price.”

    wasn’t it obvious that i was laughing at amnesty (“these loonies put on a clinic in propagating moral equivalency”)? and totally agreeing with you (“i can’t wait for ngo-monitor to get a hold of this one”)? well i thought it was…i guess my sarcasm needs some work….

    i can only guess that you thought my “thanks man, that was a good laugh” reference was to you….it was to adam and amnesty…

    muffti, by the way, would understand that bobandy is what mr. leahy (from trailer park boys) calls randy…but anyway…

    in an amnesty side-story: i had 2 friends who clerked at the israeli supreme court…one for a summer and the other for a year…apparently the israelis have a “special” fax machine setup just for amnesty international “action alerts” (who bombard their fax machine to the tune of about 5 trees per day)…the fax machine is slanted down so that as soon as the fax is printed out, it falls right into the recycling bin…