AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL REPORT 2014/2015, GAZA, WEST BANK, TORTURE, CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTORS AND ASYLUM SEEKERS.

Amnesty International Report 2014/15
State of Israel
Head of state: Reuven Rivlin (replaced Shimon Peres in July)
Head of government: Benjamin Netanyahu

Israeli forces committed war crimes and human rights violations during a 50-day military offensive in the Gaza Strip that killed over 1,500 civilians, including 539 children, wounded thousands more civilians, and caused massive civilian displacement and destruction of property and vital services. Israel maintained its air, sea and land blockade of Gaza, imposing collective punishment on its approximately 1.8 million inhabitants and stoking the humanitarian crisis. In the West Bank, Israeli forces carried out unlawful killings of Palestinian protesters, including children, and maintained an array of oppressive restrictions on Palestinians’ freedom of movement while continuing to promote illegal settlements and allow Israeli settlers to attack Palestinians and destroy their property with near total impunity. Israeli forces detained thousands of Palestinians, some of whom reported being tortured, and held around 500 administrative detainees without trial. Within Israel, the authorities continued to demolish homes of Palestinian Bedouin in “unrecognized villages” in the Negev/Naqab region and commit forcible evictions. They also detained and summarily expelled thousands of foreign migrants, including asylum-seekers, and imprisoned Israeli conscientious objectors.
Background

Tensions between Israelis and Palestinians mounted rapidly amid the collapse of US-sponsored negotiations in April, a Fatah-Hamas reconciliation agreement, and Israel’s continuing illegal settlement expansion in the West Bank and blockade of Gaza. The tensions flared into renewed armed conflict in July following the killing of at least 15 Palestinians by Israeli forces since the beginning of the year, the abduction and killing of three Israeli teenagers in the West Bank by Palestinian men affiliated to Hamas, the reprisal killing of a Palestinian youth by Israelis, and rocket-firing from Gaza into Israel. The Israeli military launched an offensive, Operation Protective Edge, on 8 July against the Gaza Strip while Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups increased rocket firing into southern Israel. After 10 days of air strikes, Israel launched a ground invasion in Gaza, withdrawing shortly before a US and Egypt-brokered ceasefire took effect after 50 days of hostilities.

The ceasefire brought an end to open conflict but tension remained acute, particularly in the West Bank. Community relations were inflamed by a series of attacks by Palestinians targeting Israeli civilians, including one on worshippers in a synagogue; new killings of Palestinians, including protesters, by Israeli forces; the government’s announcement of new land expropriations and plans to build additional housing units for settlers in East Jerusalem; and the Israeli authorities’ decision in November to temporarily close access to Jerusalem’s Temple Mount, preventing worshippers from reaching the Al-Aqsa mosque, one of Islam’s holiest sites. Growing international recognition of Palestine as a state also contributed to tensions.

In December , Prime Minister Netanyahu dismissed two ministers for reasons including disagreements on a proposed “Nation-State Bill” defining Israel as a state for the Jewish people. The Knesset voted for dissolution and the holding of new elections in March 2015, upon the Prime Minister’s initiative.
Armed conflict

Israel’s Protective Edge military offensive, which Israel said it launched in response to an upsurge in rocket firing into Israel by Palestinian armed groups in Gaza, killed more than 2,000 inhabitants of Gaza, including more than 1,500 civilians, among them some 539 children. Israeli air and ground attacks damaged or destroyed thousands of civilian homes and internally displaced around 110,000 Palestinians, as well as severing power generation and water supplies, and damaging other civil infrastructure. In Israel, indiscriminate rockets and other weapons fired by Palestinian armed groups from Gaza in breach of the laws of war killed six civilians, including one child, injured dozens and damaged civilian property.

During the 50 days of conflict before a ceasefire took effect on 26 August, Israeli forces committed war crimes, including disproportionate and indiscriminate attacks on Gaza’s densely populated civilian areas as well as targeted attacks on schools sheltering civilians and other civilian buildings that the Israeli forces claimed were used by Hamas as command centres or to store or fire rockets. On the night of 30 July, Israeli artillery fire hit the Jabaliya elementary school where more than 3,000 civilians had taken refuge, killing at least 20 and injuring others. It was the sixth time a school being used by the UN to shelter civilians had been attacked since the conflict began three weeks earlier.

Israeli forces also attacked hospitals and medical workers, including ambulance staff seeking to assist the wounded or retrieve the bodies of those killed. Dozens of homes were destroyed or damaged by missiles or aerial bombs with families still inside. For example, in eight cases documented by Amnesty International, Israeli strikes on inhabited houses killed at least 104 civilians, including 62 children. Often the Israeli military gave no reason for specific attacks.

In the days immediately leading up to the ceasefire, Israeli forces launched attacks that destroyed three multistorey residential buildings in Gaza City and a modern commercial centre in Rafah, amid vague assertions that the residential buildings housed a Hamas command centre and “facilities linked to Palestinian militants” but without providing any compelling evidence or explanation why, if there were legitimate military reasons to justify the attacks, less destructive means were not selected.

Israeli authorities sought publicly to shift the blame for the large loss of life and wholesale destruction caused by the Israeli offensive in Gaza onto Hamas and Palestinian armed groups on the grounds that they fired rockets and other weapons from within or near civilian residential areas and concealed munitions in civilian buildings.

Freedom of movement – Gaza blockade and West Bank restrictions

Israeli forces maintained their land, sea and air blockade of Gaza throughout the year, effectively imposing collective punishment on the territory’s approximately 1.8 million, predominantly civilian, inhabitants, with all imports and exports, and any movements of people into or out of Gaza, subject to Israeli approval; Egypt’s continued closure of its Rafah border crossing kept Gaza effectively sealed. The already severe humanitarian consequences of the blockade, in force continuously since June 2007, were evidenced by the sizeable proportion of Gaza’s population that depended on international humanitarian aid for their survival, and were greatly exacerbated by the devastation and population displacement caused during Israel’s Operation Protective Edge.

Israeli forces policed the blockade using live fire against Palestinians who entered or approached a 500m-wide buffer zone that they imposed inside Gaza’s land border with Israel, and against fishermen who entered or approached the “exclusion zone” that Israel maintains along the full length of Gaza’s coast. Israeli forces shot dead seven Palestinian civilians in or near the buffer zone before Operation Protective Edge, and another after the ceasefire, when the buffer zone was to be reduced and the permitted fishing zone extended. Shooting incidents remained frequent; some fishermen were also shot and wounded by Israeli navy forces.

In the West Bank, Israel continued its construction of the wall/fence with attached guard towers, mostly on Palestinian land, routing it to afford protection to illegal settlements while cutting off Palestinian villagers from their lands. Palestinian farmers were required to obtain special permits to access their lands between the wall and the Green Line demarcating the West Bank’s border with Israel. Throughout the West Bank, Israeli forces maintained other restrictions on the free movement of Palestinians by using military checkpoints and restricting access to certain areas by preventing Palestinians using bypass roads constructed for the use of Israeli settlers. These restrictions hindered Palestinians’ access to hospitals, schools and workplaces. Furthermore, Israel forcibly transferred Palestinians out of occupied East Jerusalem to other areas in the West Bank.

Restrictions were tightened further during Operation Brother’s Keeper, the Israeli authorities’ crackdown following the abduction of three Israeli teenage hitchhikers in the West Bank in June. Operation Brother’s Keeper saw a heightened Israeli military presence in Palestinian towns and villages, the killing of at least five Palestinians, mass arrests and detentions, the imposition of arbitrary travel restrictions and raids on Palestinian homes.
Excessive use of force

Israeli soldiers and border guards unlawfully killed at least 50 Palestinian civilians in the West Bank and continued to use excessive force, including live fire, during protests against Israel’s continued military occupation, when arresting political activists and during Israel’s 50-day military offensive against Gaza. Some killings may have amounted to extrajudicial executions. In September, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reported that the number of Palestinians wounded by Israeli forces in the West Bank – more than 4,200 since the start of 2014 – already exceeded the 2013 total, and that many of those wounded, including children, had been hit by rubber-coated metal bullets fired by Israeli forces. As in previous years, soldiers and border guards used live fire against protesters, including those who threw stones and other projectiles, who posed no serious threat to their lives.
Impunity

The authorities failed to conduct independent investigations into alleged war crimes and human rights violations committed by Israeli forces during Operation Protective Edge and refused to co-operate with an international investigation appointed by the UN Human Rights Council. However, they apparently co-operated with the UN Secretary-General’s Board of Inquiry, established to look into incidents relating to UN buildings in Gaza.

In August, the military’s Chief of General Staff ordered an inquiry into more than 90 “exceptional incidents” during Operation Protective Edge where there was “reasonable ground for suspicion of a violation of the law”. In September, it was announced that the Military Advocate General had closed investigations into nine cases and ordered criminal investigations into 10 others.

Authorities also failed to carry out adequate investigations into shootings of Palestinians during protests in the West Bank despite compelling evidence that Israeli forces repeatedly used excessive force and resorted to live fire in circumstances where such lethal means were unwarranted.
Detention without trial

Hundreds of Palestinians from the Occupied Palestinian Territories were held without charge or trial under administrative detention orders issued against them on the basis of secret information to which they and their lawyers had no access, and were unable to effectively challenge. The number of administrative detainees more than doubled following the security forces’ round-up of Palestinians after the abduction and killing of three Israeli teenagers in June, rising from nearly 200 in May to 468 in September.

Torture and other ill-treatment

Palestinian detainees continued to be tortured and otherwise ill-treated by Israeli security officials, particularly Internal Security Agency officials, who frequently held detainees incommunicado during interrogation for days and sometimes weeks. Methods used included physical assault such as slapping and throttling, prolonged shackling and stress positions, sleep deprivation, and threats against the detainee and their family. Reports of torture increased amid the wave of arrests that followed the abduction of Israeli teenagers in June.

The authorities failed to take adequate steps either to prevent torture or to conduct independent investigations when detainees alleged torture, fuelling a climate of impunity.

Housing rights – forced evictions and demolitions

In the West Bank, Israeli forces continued to demolish Palestinian homes and other structures, forcibly evicting hundreds from their homes often without warning or prior consultation. Families of Palestinians who had carried out attacks on Israelis also faced demolition of their homes as a punitive measure.

Palestinian Bedouin citizens of Israel living in “unrecognized” and newly recognized villages also faced destruction of homes and structures because the authorities said that they had been built without permission. Israeli authorities prohibited all construction without official permits, which were denied to Arab inhabitants of the villages, while also denying them access to basic services such as electricity and piped water supplies. Under the 2011 Prawer Plan, the authorities proposed to demolish 35 “unrecognized” villages and forcibly displace up to 70,000 Bedouin inhabitants from their current lands and homes, and relocate them to officially designated sites. Implementation of the plan, which was adopted without consultation with the affected Bedouin communities, remained stalled following the resignation in December 2013 of the government minister overseeing it. Official statements announced its cancellation, but the army continued to demolish homes and other structures.

Conscientious objectors

Military tribunals continued to impose prison sentences on Israeli citizens who refused to undertake compulsory military service on grounds of conscience. At least six conscientious objectors were imprisoned during the year. Omar Sa’ad was released in June after serving 150 days in a military prison and then declared unsuitable and exempted from military service.
Refugees and asylum-seekers

Asylum-seekers in need of international protection were denied access to a fair determination process. Authorities held more than 2,000 African asylum-seekers in indefinite detention in a facility in the Negev/Naqab desert.

The authorities held more than 2,200 Eritrean and Sudanese asylum-seekers at Holot, a desert detention facility opened after the government rushed through Amendment 4 of the Prevention of Infiltration Law in 2013. In September, the High Court of Justice struck down Amendment 4, under which the authorities had taken powers to automatically detain all newly arrived asylum-seekers for one year, ruling that it infringed the right to human dignity. The Court ordered the government to close the Holot facility or establish an alternative legislative arrangement within 90 days. In December, the Knesset passed new amendments to the law that would allow the authorities to continue automatic detention of asylum-seekers.

Eritrean and Sudanese nationals, who made up more than 90% of an estimated 47,000 African asylum-seekers in Israel, continued in practice to be denied access to fair refugee determination procedures. By the end of the year, Israeli authorities had extended refugee status to just two Eritreans and no Sudanese, dismissing many other claims without due consideration. Asylum-seekers were prohibited by law from taking paid work and had little or no access to health care and welfare services. Meanwhile, the authorities pressured many to leave Israel “voluntarily” under a process that paid them to withdraw their asylum claims and return to their home countries or travel to third countries. More than 5,000 Eritrean and Sudanese nationals were reported to have accepted “voluntary return” in the first 10 months of the year, some leaving after facing imminent risk of detention, despite fears that they faced persecution or torture in the countries from which they had fled. Some were reported to have been detained when they returned to Sudan and accused of spying for Israel.

Israel allegedly maintained secret agreements with certain African countries allowing for the transfer of asylum-seekers under conditions which denied them access to a fair refugee determination process in Israel or any protection from possible subsequent transfers to their home countries, including in cases where such returns amounted to refoulement.

https://www.amnesty.org/en/countries/middle-east-and-north-africa/israel-and-occupied-palestinian-territories/report-israel-and-occupied-palestinian-territories/

COMPLETELY AND UTTERLY DAMNING.
A REPORT BY PEOPLE WHO ARE THERE, SEE IT EVERYDAY AND RECORD IT EVERY DAY

More extremist left wing propaganda.
Hamas places its civillians in harms way.
They place their weaponary around civillians to ensure they are casuialties.
They do not provide their citizens with bomb shelters and all this is ignored by the this pathetic left wing organisation

Amnesty International
I have mixed feelings about the left-wing human rights group Amnesty International. They have offensively left-wing politics on anything that the frontline western states (US, UK, Israel) are doing, and they are not trustworthy on those issues.
But on other parts of the world they are fairly objective. They are willing to criticise communists, Muslims, Arabs and black Africans, for example (whereas many on the left won't).




Amnesty International
Criticism of Amnesty (some of the criticism is from human rights abusers)

Amnesty International - Not a Reliable Source by Steven Plaut, 2 June 2003.

Opposing the Iraq War
In 2002-03, Amnesty opposed the War on Iraq (to depose the democidal Saddam Hussein).
I don't think it is appropriate for a human rights organisation to be opposing a war to depose a dictator. They should stick to known human rights violations, rather than getting involved in the political decision as to whether this war or that against a dictator is a good idea.
Amnesty for Iraq, April 24, 2003, by Christopher Archangelli. On Amnesty's poor performance during the short war, when Iraq's losing strategy consisted almost entirely of war crimes, yet Amnesty still kept focusing on the Allies.
Calling It Like They See It by Jonathan V. Last, 3 Apr 2003, on Amnesty and Iraq.

Supporting jihadis not prisoners of conscience
At some point Amnesty stopped supporting prisoners of conscience, and turned to defending the rights of violent people with contempt for human rights.
Helping jihadi prisoners
Amnesty's shameful relationship with Taliban-supporter Moazzam Begg shows why I no longer donate to Amnesty.
Amnesty are happy to partner with people who hate human rights and support human rights abusers like the Taliban.
Amnesty sacked the head of their Gender Unit, Gita Sahgal, in 2010 for complaining about their relationship with Moazzam Begg.

Standing up for jihadis rather than prisoners of conscience
Amnesty, 1 Dec 2011, calls for the arrest of former U.S. President George W. Bush for waterboarding jihadists. As if that's a big crime.
Why don't they call for the arrest of U.S. President Barack Obama for killing jihadists without trial?
It seems agenda-driven to call for Bush's arrest but not Obama's arrest.

http://markhumphrys.com/amnesty.html

Amnesty's campaign for Mohmoud Abu Rideh (or Mahmud Abu Rideh) illustrates why I no longer support Amnesty.
At some point, Amnesty switched from defending foreign democrats and human rights campaigners to defending all prisoners - including violent people who despise democracy and human rights.
The useful leftie idiots who joined the above campaign got him freed in 2009.
In 2010, oddly enough, he was killed fighting with the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan.
Shame on Amnesty for defending jihadis like this and helping them do their evil work.

Amnesty is anti-Israel

• Amnesty on Israel
  
• Amnesty calls for an arms embargo on Israel.
  
  
• NGO Monitor (and here and search) on Amnesty's anti-Israel bias.
  
  
• Scrutinize Amnesty International by Gerald Steinberg, May 23, 2007, says that: "in 2006, Amnesty singled out Israel for condemnation of human rights to a far greater extent than Iran, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Libya, Syria, Egypt, and other chronic abusers of human rights. During the year, Amnesty issued 48 publications critical of Israel, compared to 35 for Iran, 2 for Saudi Arabia, and only 7 for Syria."
  
  
• Head of Finland branch of Amnesty International calls Israel a "scum state", Aug 2010. See more. "Asked whether there are other countries aside from Israel that, according to him, meet the definition of a "scum state," Johansson did not specify any, but noted that there are "Russian officials" who meet the criteria."
  

Amnesty hosts an anti-Israel hatefest in London, May 2011.
This featured Islamic terror supporter Abd al-Bari Atwan, who supports nuking the Jews of Israel: "If the Iranian missiles strike Israel, by Allah, I will go to Trafalgar Square and dance with delight."
See also Michael Weiss and Richard Millett on Amnesty's Islamist partner Middle East Monitor (MEMO).
I will never donate to Amnesty again!

Utter bastards.

Amnesty’s Q&A on the Gaza War: Many Questions, Few Answers






NGO Monitor August 07, 2014


Summary:

[*]
On July 25, 2014, Amnesty International published a Q&A on the “Israel/Gaza conflict, July 2014,” discussing legal aspects of the fighting. This was one of 21 documents issued by Amnesty between July 8 and August 4.
[*]
As with all Amnesty publications on the Arab-Israeli conflict, the Q&A contains many methodological flaws, under the façade of legal and military expertise, and advances the NGO’s ideological agenda.
[*]
Amnesty invents preposterous explanations and gives Hamas, an internationally recognized terrorist organization, the benefit of the doubt.  In contrast, and as is evident in this Q&A, Amnesty routinely employs a skeptical and cynical approach toward any claim made by Israeli officials and interprets every incident against Israel’s favor.
[*]
Examples include Amnesty’s silence on Hamas’ exploitation of UNRWA and other civilian structures by Hamas to store and fire rockets and conduct Palestinian military operations; feigning of ignorance as to Hamas’ shielding itself among the civilian population of Gaza; and claiming that Hamas directives to ignore warnings of impending attacks were in order to avoid “panic” among the civilian population.
[*]
The overwhelming majority of the document is solely directed at Israeli actions, only briefly mentioning Palestinian rocket fire on Israeli civilians (each one a war crime under the laws of armed conflict). Hamas’ status as a terrorist organization subject to legal and financial sanctions internationally and domestically, and its charter that rejects the existence of Israel within any borders and explicitly calls for the genocide of Jews were not discussed.
[*]
Amnesty “welcomes” the July 23, 2014 UN Human Rights Council resolution establishing a “commission of inquiry” on the war. Yet, as noted by Italy in refusing to vote for it, the resolution “fails to condemn explicitly the indiscriminate firing of rockets into Israeli civilian areas as well as to recognize Israel’s legitimate right to defend itself.”
[*]
Amnesty presents a façade of expertise and research methodology, omitting that Gaza is an environment where information flows are strictly controlled and manipulated by Hamas. As noted in April 2014 by Amnesty’s head of field investigations, Donatella Rovera, “In Gaza, I received partial or inaccurate information by relatives of civilians accidentally killed in accidental explosions or by rockets launched by Palestinian armed groups towards Israel that had malfunctioned and of civilians killed by Israeli strikes on nearby Palestinian armed groups’ positions. When confronted with other evidence obtained separately, some said they feared reprisals by the armed groups.” In other words, Amnesty’s publications in any conflict situation have little to no reliability.
[*]
Amnesty’s call for an arms embargo on Israel and Hamas, and equating the two is immoral, and contradicts its extensive campaign for the end of Israel’s weapons blockade on the organization. Similarly, while emphasizing the U.S. as Israel’s “key supplier,” Amnesty makes no mention of Iran, Syria, and North Korea that have provided weapons and training, in violation of international law, to Hamas and other Palestinian terror groups.


http://ngo-monitor.org/article/amnesty_s_q_a_on_the_gaza_war_many_questions_few_answers

Amnesty International´s Invented Gaza War Accusations

NGO Monitor November 04, 2014

Jerusalem – In advance of a report on the 2014 Gaza War to be released tomorrow (Nov. 5) by Amnesty International, NGO Monitor emphasizes Amnesty’s lack of professional investigatory methodology and documented bias against Israel. The report is expected to repeat the standard accusations of war crimes, including claims that the Israeli military purposefully targeted civilians. The charges will again be made despite Amnesty’s lack of access to military intelligence and other vital decision-making information necessary to support its politicized allegations. NGO Monitor urges journalists to approach all such factual and legal claims with caution.

“Amnesty’s claims had no validity when they were first made, without evidence, during the fighting, and they have no more credibility now, despite the façade of ‘research’ and ‘investigations’.” said Prof. Gerald Steinberg, president of NGO Monitor. “For many years, we have shown that Amnesty’s ‘reports’ on Israel lack credibility and are based on double standards that reflect a radical ideological agenda under the façade of universal human rights.”

NGO Monitor recently published a series of detailed research reports that highlight Amnesty’s flawed research, unverifiable claims, and ideological agenda. Exploiting a façade of human rights expertise, Amnesty makes mendacious allegations against Israel without credible evidence or proper investigations. Compounding these fundamental errors, the Amnesty “researchers” who work on Israel have a record of anti-Israel activism that is incompatible with the claims of objective analysis.

In addition, Amnesty’s publications related to armed conflicts notably lack credibility. Donatella Rovera, Amnesty’s head of field investigations, acknowledged this in April 2014: “In Gaza, I received partial or inaccurate information by relatives of civilians accidentally killed in accidental explosions or by rockets launched by Palestinian armed groups towards Israel that had malfunctioned and of civilians killed by Israeli strikes on nearby Palestinian armed groups’ positions. When confronted with other evidence obtained separately, some said they feared reprisals by the armed groups.”

Further confirming the absence of expertise, Amnesty’s Secretary General Salil Shetty acknowledged in a February 10 interview: “We are not an expert (sic) on military matters. So we don’t want to, kind of, pontificate on issues we don’t really understand.” Yet Amnesty’s admitted lack of military expertise has not stopped the NGO from publishing hundreds of unfounded accusations against Israel’s military, including its most recent report.

For example, Amnesty condemned Israel for warning Gaza residents, in accordance with international law, to evacuate civilian facilities used by Hamas illegally to launch attacks. At the same time, Amnesty defended Hamas’ urging residents to stay in these areas – a practice known as human shielding – by saying it was “motivated by a desire to avoid further panic.” In this instance, and many others, Amnesty provided the “spin” to justify Hamas’ actions that deliberately endanger civilian lives.

“Amnesty, which played a central role in the discredited UN Goldstone report of 2009, routinely minimizes the moral crimes of terrorist organizations, while baselessly alleging Israeli violations of international law,” Steinberg continued. “By granting Hamas virtual impunity, Amnesty empowers the terror group and its affiliates to commit more war crimes and atrocities.”

To read NGO Monitor’s detailed analysis of Amnesty’s publications during the Gaza War, click here.





http://www.ngo-monitor.org/article.php?id=4399

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Executive Summary Amnesty International: Founding Structure and Altered Vision Corruption at Amnesty's Core: Women's Rights, Workers Rights and Troubling Partnerships           The Irene Khan Affair                    "Workers' Rights are Human Rights"           Breaking Its Own Rules: Amnesty's Researcher Bias and Government Funding                   Lending Legitimacy to Terror? Amnesty's Partnership with CAGE                     No Impunity for Amnesty: Investigate Partnerships in Wake of Al Qaeda Allegations                     Amnesty International: Defending Those Linked to Terror Group                     Amnesty: Jihad in Self- Defense is Not Antithetical to Human Rights           Second Class Rights: How Amnesty International Fails Women in the Middle East (pgs.32-52) Experts or Ideologues? International Secretariat Employees Deborah Hyams Saleh Hijazi Country Section Staff Kate Allen Kristyan Benedict Edith Garwood Frank Johnansson Sunjeev Bery Disproportionate Focus on Israel Analysis of Amnesty's 2012 World Report Moral Collapse of Amnesty International in 2009 Amnesty in 2008: Disproportionate Focus on Israel Review of Amnesty in 2007: A Quantitative Analysis Case Study: Israel November 2012 Gaza Conflict Amnesty Launches Frontal Attack 2014 Gaza War Q&A on the Gaza War Amnesty's Invented Accusations Amnesty's 2014 Gaza Report Fails All Credibility Tests Amnesty's False Accusations and Inaccurate Claims Arms Embargo Campaign: Abolishing Israel's Right to Self-Defense Amnesty's "Administrative Detention" Report: Issues of Credibility and Bias Amnesty's Water Accusations: "Israel-Apartheid" Allegations Further Reading Findings, But Few Facts, Anne Herzberg, The Jerusalem Post, November 29, 2014 Analysis of Amnesty's 2012 World Report Media Impact: Amnesty International's 'Trigger Happy' Report, March 5, 2014 Amnesty's Credibility Problem, Gidon Shaviv, Ynet, June 6, 2012 Amnesty International is Losing Its Way, Gerald Steinberg and Jason Edelstein, The Jerusalem Post, June 14, 2011 The Dark Side of Amnesty International, NGO Monitor Analysis, April 6, 2010 Amnesty Secretary-General Ignites Row, Abe Selig, The Jerusalem Post, April 7, 2010 Amnesty's Continuing Abuse of Human Rights to Blast Israel, May 26, 2009 Scrutinize Amnesty International, Gerald Steinberg, The NY Sun, May 24, 2007 Amnesty's "Human Rights Meltdown", Sarah Mandel, December 20, 2007

Oh little Dodge the Appeaser, you must have been frothing at the mouth to try and dig all those smears up. Well, the thought of it gave me a giggle!

Lest we forget, it's not only Amnesty saying that:

Independent investigation details Israel’s deliberate targeting of civilians in Gaza

A new independent medical fact-finding mission in Gaza has detailed Israel’s deliberate killing of Palestinian civilians in its summer 2014 attack, codenamed Operation “Protective Edge.” Acts documented in the investigation include the use of human shields, close-range murder of civilians, targeting of medics, and more.

The report, based on fieldwork and research conducted by Physicians for Human Rights-Israel (PHR-Israel), in conjunction with several other human rights and medical organizations, sits at a bulky 237 pages. PHR-Israel, in its words, “recruited eight independent international medical experts, unaffiliated with Israeli or Palestinian parties involved in the conflict,” leading specialists in numerous medical, health, and human rights fields. Jennifer Leaning, the Director of the Center for Health and Human Rights Department of Global Health and Population in Harvard University’s School of Public Health, was among those chosen to oversee the report.

The investigation was also supported by a wide array of prominent international organizations, including the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Science and Human Rights Program, the British Shalom-Salaam Trust, Christian Aid, the Open Society Foundation, and many more.

In its executive summary, the fact-finding mission estimates that, in Israel’s 50-day attack on Gaza,

over 2,100 Palestinians were killed;
at least 70% of those killed were civilians;
over 500 children were killed;
more than 11,000 were wounded; and
at least 100,000 were made homeless.

The Electronic Intifada published a summary of the investigation’s findings, drawing particular attention to an incident in the Gazan village of Khuzaa, in which the Israeli military shot into a crowd of civilians who were fleeing Israel’s siege and carrying white flags while shouting “peaceful, peaceful.”

This attack, nonetheless, pales in comparison to those disclosed in the report. PHR-Israel reported Israel did the following in its Operation Protective Edge:

used civilians as human shields;
shot civilians dead at close range;
left mortally wounded children on the ground to die, even after soldiers made eye contact with them;
conducted multiple consecutive strikes on a single location (“double taps”), killing injured survivors and those attempting to rescue them;
bombed medical clinics that were acting as shelters for civilians and the wounded;
“deliberately” attacked hospitals;
prevented emergency medical evacuation, even by international organizations such as Red Cross;
killed and injured “many” medical teams that were evacuating the injured;
refused to allow civilians to exit areas being attacked;
targeted civilian escape routes;
shelled ambulances;
attacked civilians attempting to flee areas under fire;
physically beat civilians;
denied civilians food and water;

and more.

The report additionally documented Israel’s use of unconventional and experimental weapons, resulting in injuries local doctors characterized as “strange or inexplicable.” Among those used were

flechette munitions (which doctors reported surgically removing from the faces of children);
“explosive barrel” bombs, referred to as “Tzefa Shirion” weapons, that were made to be used to clear mines, but were dropped on civilians;
what are suspected to be DIME weapons, leading to “unusual burns” and “unusual amputations,” with “charred” black skin that did not smell like burning flesh and black “tattooing” around cauterization-like stumps of amputees;
weapons that left “‘computer chips’ with Sony markings embedded as shrapnel in people’s bodies”;
and “a gas of unknown type,” a white-colored substance with a “sewage-like smell” that burned skin and caused respiratory problems and could be seen and smelled from 500 meters away.

The medical fact-finding mission notes that the “overwhelming majority of injuries causing death or requiring hospitalisation … were the result of explosion or crush injuries, often multiple complex injuries.” Roughly half of interviewed Gazans were attacked in their homes. Entire families were killed in the attack



A graph from the report illustrating the most common locations in which Gazans were injured

The report states that Israel’s

attacks were characterised by heavy and unpredictable bombardments of civilian neighbourhoods in a manner that failed to discriminate between legitimate targets and protected populations and caused widespread destruction of homes and civilian property. Such indiscriminate attacks, by aircraft, drones, artillery, tanks and gunships, were unlikely to have been the result of decisions made by individual soldiers or commanders; they must have entailed approval from top-level decision-makers in the Israeli military and/or government.

It also indicates that “there was no guaranteed safe space in the Gaza Strip, nor were there any safe escape routes from it.” The experts accused Israel of “serious violations of international human rights and humanitarian law.”
The Aftermath

These findings are based on extensive interviews with victims, witnesses, healthcare professionals and human rights workers, local government officials, and representatives of international health organizations. Forensic, medical, and other material evidence was also collected to scientifically verify these oral testimonies.

PHR-Israel spoke with 68 hospitalized patients who were injured in the attacks, and includes transcripts of these discussions in its report. The majority of Gazans interviewed after the attacks suffered from:

insomnia,
flashbacks,
nightmares,
depression,
weight loss,
loss of appetite,
unstable emotional states

In the wake of the attack, the fact-finding mission reports

strains on and a lack of resources in Gaza hospitals;
problems with sending patients from Gaza hospitals to outside hospitals outside for treatment;
long-term displacement because of the partial or total destruction of approximately 18,000 homes;
long-term psychosocial and mental health damage; and
a dire need for rehabilitation services with insufficient resources to meet them.

Potential War Crimes

In its recommendations, PHR-Israel et al. call upon international actors, including the UN, the EU, and the US, to “ensure that the governments of Israel and Egypt permit and facilitate the entry of investigative teams into Gaza, including experts in international human rights law and arms experts,” revealing that this “has not yet been done, months after the offensive.”

Israel prevented the world’s leading human rights organizations, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, from entering Gaza in August 2014 to investigate. This medical fact-finding mission may be the first large-scale independent investigation conducted in Gaza since the summer attacks.

PHR-Israel also encourages the international community to support investigations conducted by local Palestinian civil society groups in their “efforts to collate evidence in Gaza, in order to proceed with legal and/or other remedies as well as to seek justice and/or reparations.” It suggests that the evidence presented in the report “be used for the purposes of legal determination of violations of international human rights and humanitarian law.”

Both Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have accused Israel of committing war crimes in its summer 2014 attack on Gaza. Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem has shown that most of those killed in Israel’s approximately 70 attacks on Gaza homes were women, children, and the elderly, and says the IDF’s targeting of homes may constitute war crimes.

Palestine will join the International Criminal Court on 1 April 2014. In January 2015, the court’s prosecutor launched a preliminary probe into possible war crimes in the occupied Palestinian territories.

Israel, and its US allies, often refer to the Israel Defense Forces as “the most moral army in the world,” leading some, such as esteemed Israeli journalist Gideon Levy, to criticize what they see as hypocrisy, in light of documented attacks such as these. In July 2014, in the midst of Operation “Protective Edge,” Israeli ambassador to the US Ron Dermer insisted that the Israel Defense Forces deserve a Nobel Peace Prize for the “unimaginable restraint” they practiced in Gaza and that Israel earned “the admiration of the international community” for its purported caution. This report appears to indicate otherwise.
- See more at: http://mondoweiss.net/2015/01/independent-investigation-deliberate

So to sum up Amensty International is a supporter of Hamas.
Amnesty International has campaigned to get terrorists to be released for them to only continue terrorism and is a left wing appeaser organisation that needsto be reclassified as traitors
Stassi is a supporter of Hamas
Hamas want to wipe out all Jews and destroy Israel.
Israel has offered peace countless times only to be constantly attacked.
Hamas  has no care for its people and provides no bomb shelters and in fact places weapons within civillian areas a war crime.
They fire indiscrimnate rockets in to Israel a war crime.
Hamas is anti-semtic, making both Amnesty Internaional and Stassi supports of antisemitism.
The other report is not substanciated and is more left wing propaganda supporting Hamas going off the testimony of Hamas, known liars and fabricators of lies about Israel.


Can Stassi post anything to refute my points?

No

Typical RW Neo-Con claptrap, by an appeaser and coward who wouldn't stand up for his own country in case he was branded a terrorist.

So more points about me and nothing to refute my facts.
That is an extreme left wing appeaser who supports Hamas, who wish to wipe out the Jews.
On several occasions I asked you to condemn Hamas and after watching video's of lefties so clueless to think Hamas are not terrorists, shows clearly you and other appeasers support this extremist terrorist organisation with links to the Nazi's.
I on the other hand do condemn some of the wrongs by Israel and want a two state solution, which Israel also wants and yet at every turn the Palestinians have rejected. AS the only thing they want is control of Israel and the Jews either killed or displaced.
This is backed up by their rejection of the 1948 mandate and again in 2000 offered by Clinton.

When the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) was formed in 1964 its covenant made no mention of liberating the West Bank or Gaza from Jordan and Egypt. The PLO leadership stated that its goal was to “push the Jews into the sea.”

It is clear what the goal is of the Palestinians, the eradication and subjucation of the Jews and the destruction of Israel.
Israel has the ability to wipe out both Gaza and the Weest Bank and never has. Its ability to prevent civillian deaths is backed up by civilian-to-military death ratio.

By contrast, a 2001 study by the International Committee of the Red Cross found that the civilian-to-military death ratio in wars fought since the middle of the 20th Century has been 10:1 – ten civilian deaths for every soldier death. In other words, the Israelis protect civilians at a rate 300 times greater than any other national army. As Harvard Law School Professor Alan Dershowitz observes, “No army in history has ever had a better ratio of combatants to civilians killed in a comparable setting.”

Says it all what the some of the left buy into and are so gullible.

When Dodge gets round to posting facts rather than things I have already shown up as lies he might be worth a reply, but as a complete Neo-Con who just appeases Israeli war crimes, hard luck.

Perhaps he'd like to go back to previous threads where all that has been shown as lies. That's if he can read of course.

You have done nothing but deflect , because you are so immature and gullible sassy.
Lets post the points again for you to provide more excuses that you support Islamic extremism in Hamas, which on every post you run scared from answering because we have lifted the veil of lies, that you support barbaric people.

So more points about me and nothing to refute my facts.
That is an extreme left wing appeaser who supports Hamas, who wish to wipe out the Jews.
On several occasions I asked you to condemn Hamas and after watching video's of lefties so clueless to think Hamas are not terrorists, shows clearly you and other appeasers support this extremist terrorist organisation with links to the Nazi's.
I on the other hand do condemn some of the wrongs by Israel and want a two state solution, which Israel also wants and yet at every turn the Palestinians have rejected. AS the only thing they want is control of Israel and the Jews either killed or displaced.
This is backed up by their rejection of the 1948 mandate and again in 2000 offered by Clinton.

When the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) was formed in 1964 its covenant made no mention of liberating the West Bank or Gaza from Jordan and Egypt. The PLO leadership stated that its goal was to “push the Jews into the sea.”

It is clear what the goal is of the Palestinians, the eradication and subjucation of the Jews and the destruction of Israel.
Israel has the ability to wipe out both Gaza and the Weest Bank and never has. Its ability to prevent civillian deaths is backed up by civilian-to-military death ratio.

By contrast, a 2001 study by the International Committee of the Red Cross found that the civilian-to-military death ratio in wars fought since the middle of the 20th Century has been 10:1 – ten civilian deaths for every soldier death. In other words, the Israelis protect civilians at a rate 300 times greater than any other national army. As Harvard Law School Professor Alan Dershowitz observes, “No army in history has ever had a better ratio of combatants to civilians killed in a comparable setting.”

Says it all what the some of the left buy into and are so gullible.

Yet again, as the Dodgy appeaser never reads anything he doesn't like:

Debunking Israel's 11 Main Myths About Gaza, Hamas and War Crimes
You've got to hand it to Israeli spinners like Mark Regev. They are masters of PR. In fact, as the Independent's Patrick Cockburn revealed over the weekend, "the playbook they are using is a professional, well-researched and confidential study on how to influence the media and public opinion in America and Europe".

Let's be clear: I'm no fan of Hamas, a brutal and anti-Semitic group which has been accused by Amnesty International and other NGOs of human rights abuses against the people of Gaza and of war crimes against the people of Israel. Firing rockets into civilian areas isn't justified under international law, even if it is framed as part of a (legitimate) struggle against foreign military occupation.

Having said that, however, in recent days I've been debating supporters of Israel's latest assault on Gaza on radio and on Twitter and I've been astonished not just by the sheer number of fact-free claims made by those supporters, but also by their confidence, slickness and sheer message discipline. According to the pro-Israel, pro-IDF crowd, Hamas is to blame for everything.

This, of course, is utter nonsense. To quote the late US senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan: "You are entitled to your opinion. But you are not entitled to your own facts."

So, in a Moynihanian spirit, here are fact-filled, evidence-based rebuttals to the 11 main myths, half-truths and self-serving 'talking points' that are repeatedly pushed by various Israeli spokespersons, both on the airwaves and on social media:
1) The Gaza Strip isn't occupied by Israel

Boston Globe: "Israeli-imposed buffer zones.. now absorb nearly 14 percent of Gaza's total land and at least 48 percent of total arable land. Similarly, the sea buffer zone covers 85 percent of the maritime area promised to Palestinians in the Oslo Accords, reducing 20 nautical miles to three." Human Rights Watch: "Israel also continues to control the population registry for residents of the Gaza Strip, years after it withdrew its ground forces and settlements there." B'Tselem, 2013: "Israel continues to maintain exclusive control of Gaza's airspace and the territorial waters, just as it has since it occupied the Gaza Strip in 1967."

2) Israel wants a ceasefire but Hamas doesn't

Al Jazeera: "Meshaal said Hamas wants the 'aggression to stop tomorrow, today, or even this minute. But [Israel must] lift the blockade with guarantees and not as a promise for future negotiations'. He added 'we will not shut the door in the face of any humanitarian ceasefire backed by a real aid programme'." Jerusalem Post: "One day after an Egyptian-brokered cease-fire accepted by Israel, but rejected by Hamas, fell through, the terrorist organization proposed a 10-year end to hostilities in return for its conditions being met by Israel, Channel 2 reported Wednesday.. Hamas's conditions were the release of re-arrested Palestinian prisoners who were let go in the Schalit deal, the opening of Gaza-Israel border crossings in order to allow citizens and goods to pass through, and international supervision of the Gazan seaport in place of the current Israeli blockade." BBC: "Israel's security cabinet has rejected a week-long Gaza ceasefire proposal put forward by US Secretary of State John Kerry 'as it stands'."

3) Israel, unlike Hamas, doesn't deliberately target civilians

The Guardian: "It was there that the second [Israeli] shell hit the beach, those firing apparently adjusting their fire to target the fleeing survivors. As it exploded, journalists standing by the terrace wall shouted: 'They are only children.'" UN high commissioner for human rights Navi Pillay: "A number of incidents, along with the high number of civilian deaths, belies the [Israeli] claim that all necessary precautions are being taken to protect civilian lives." United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict, 2009: "The tactics used by the Israeli armed forces in the Gaza offensive are consistent with previous practices, most recently during the Lebanon war in 2006. A concept known as the Dahiya doctrine emerged then, involving the application of disproportionate force and the causing of great damage and destruction to civilian property and infrastructure, and suffering to civilian populations. The Mission concludes from a review of the facts on the ground that it.. appears to have been precisely what was put into practice."

4) Only Hamas is guilty of war crimes, not Israel

Human Rights Watch: "Israeli forces may also have knowingly or recklessly attacked people who were clearly civilians, such as young boys, and civilian structures, including a hospital - laws-of-war violations that are indicative of war crimes." Amnesty International: "Deliberately attacking a civilian home is a war crime, and the overwhelming scale of destruction of civilian homes, in some cases with entire families inside them, points to a distressing pattern of repeated violations of the laws of war."

5) Hamas use the civilians of Gaza as 'human shields'

Jeremy Bowen, BBC Middle East editor: "I saw no evidence during my week in Gaza of Israel's accusation that Hamas uses Palestinians as human shields." The Guardian: "In the past week, the Guardian has seen large numbers of people fleeing different neighbourhoods.. and no evidence that Hamas had compelled them to stay." The Independent: "Some Gazans have admitted that they were afraid of criticizing Hamas, but none have said they had been forced by the organisation to stay in places of danger and become unwilling human-shields." Reuters, 2013: "A United Nations human rights body accused Israeli forces on Thursday of mistreating Palestinian children, including by torturing those in custody and using others as human shields."

6) This current Gaza conflict began with Hamas rocket fire on 30 June 2014

Times of Israel: "Hamas operatives were behind a large volley of rockets which slammed into Israel Monday morning, the first time in years the Islamist group has directly challenged the Jewish state, according to Israeli defense officials.. The security sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity, assessed that Hamas had probably launched the barrage in revenge for an Israeli airstrike several hours earlier which killed one person and injured three more.. Hamas hasn't fired rockets into Israel since Operation Pillar of Defense ended in November 2012." The Nation: "During ten days of Operation Brother's Keeper in the West Bank [before the start of the Gaza conflict], Israel arrested approximately 800 Palestinians without charge or trial, killed nine civilians and raided nearly 1,300 residential, commercial and public buildings. Its military operation targeted Hamas members released during the Gilad Shalit prisoner exchange in 2011."

7) Hamas has never stopped firing rockets into Israel

Jewish Daily Forward: "Hamas hadn't fired a single rocket since [2012 Gaza conflict], and had largely suppressed fire by smaller jihadi groups. Rocket firings, averaging 240 per month in 2007, dropped to five per month in 2013." International Crisis Group: "Fewer rockets were fired from Gaza in 2013 than in any year since 2001, and nearly all those that were fired between the November 2012 ceasefire and the current crisis were launched by groups other than Hamas; the Israeli security establishment testified to the aggressive anti-rocket efforts made by the new police force Hamas established specifically for that purpose.. As Israel (and Egypt) rolled back the 2012 understandings - some of which were implemented spottily at best - so too did Hamas roll back its anti rocket efforts."

Hamas provoked Israel by kidnapping and killing three Israeli teenagers

Jewish Daily Forward: "The [Israeli] government had known almost from the beginning that the boys were dead. It maintained the fiction that it hoped to find them alive as a pretext to dismantle Hamas' West Bank operations.. Nor was that the only fib. It was clear from the beginning that the kidnappers weren't acting on orders from Hamas leadership in Gaza or Damascus. Hamas' Hebron branch -- more a crime family than a clandestine organization -- had a history of acting without the leaders' knowledge, sometimes against their interests." BBC correspondent Jon Donnison: "Israeli police MickeyRosenfeld tells me men who killed 3 Israeli teens def lone cell, hamas affiliated but not operating under leadership.. Seems to contradict the line from Netanyahu government."

9) Hamas rule, not Israel's blockade, is to blame for the humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip

US State Department cable: "Israeli officials have confirmed to Embassy officials on multiple occasions that they intend to keep the Gazan economy functioning at the lowest level possible consistent with avoiding a humanitarian crisis.. Israeli officials have confirmed.. on multiple occasions that they intend to keep the Gazan economy on the brink of collapse without quite pushing it over the edge." The Guardian: "The Israeli military made precise calculations of Gaza's daily calorie needs to avoid malnutrition during a blockade imposed on the Palestinian territory between 2007 and mid-2010, according to files the defence ministry released on Wednesday under a court order.. The Israeli advocacy group Gisha.. waged a long court battle to release the document. Its members say Israel calculated the calorie needs for Gaza's population so as to restrict the quantity of food it allowed in."

10) The Israeli government, unlike Hamas, wants a two-state solution

Times of Israel: "[Netanyahu] made explicitly clear that he could never, ever, countenance a fully sovereign Palestinian state in the West Bank.. Amid the current conflict, he elaborated, 'I think the Israeli people understand now what I always say: that there cannot be a situation, under any agreement, in which we relinquish security control of the territory west of the River Jordan.'"

11) All serious analysts agree it was Hamas, and not Israel, that started this current conflict

Nathan Thrall, senior Mid East analyst at the International Crisis Group, writing in the New York Times: "The current escalation in Gaza is a direct result of the choice by Israel and the West to obstruct the implementation of the April 2014 Palestinian reconciliation agreement." Henry Siegman, former national director, American Jewish Congress, writing for Politico: "Israel's assault on Gaza.. was not triggered by Hamas' rockets directed at Israel but by Israel's determination to bring down the Palestinian unity government that was formed in early June, even though that government was committed to honoring all of the conditions imposed by the international community for recognition of its legitimacy."
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/mehdi-hasan/gaza-israel_b_5624401.html

That debunks nothing . As seen it is left wing drivel with no evidence. All evidence points to my facts Stassi
What you need to do is answer some simple questions.
Why is it that Hamas builds no protection for its citizens?
Why is it, that instead they demnand people to die?
Why is it they preach martyrdom over living life?
Why is it Hamas wants to exterminate all Jews?


In your own time

Didge wrote:Amnesty’s Q&A on the Gaza War: Many Questions, Few Answers

This is something I find frustrating, if not disturbing also. AI aside, so many of the disputes that are discussed reduce to the fact that Israel won. Is that a crime?

We all know that the whole Middle East thing is a public relations game. Imagine a school yard. A little, impish guy walks up to a big guy and stomps on his toe. The big guy cold-cocks the little guy. The little guy gets up and runs to the teacher crying, claiming the big guy beat him up. The whole thing is lost in a flood of: he did; did not; did too; did not; did too...

I do get a little tried of HAMAS (or whoever) starting these things and then hoping we will condemn the big guy with finger-wagging severity. You wanna start a fight, go finish it yourself.

Gets a little boring.

Original Quill wrote:

Didge wrote:Amnesty’s Q&A on the Gaza War: Many Questions, Few Answers

This is something I find frustrating, if not disturbing also.  AI aside, so many of the disputes that are discussed reduce to the fact that Israel won.  Is that a crime?

We all know that the whole Middle East thing is a public relations game.  Imagine a school yard.  A little, impish guy walks up to a big guy and stomps on his toe.  The big guy cold-cocks the little guy.  The little guy gets up and runs to the teacher crying, claiming the big guy beat him up.  The whole thing is lost in a flood of: he did; did not; did too; did not; did too...

I do get a little tried of HAMAS (or whoever) starting these things and then hoping we will condemn the big guy with finger-wagging severity.  You wanna start a fight, go finish it yourself.

Gets a little boring.

Indeed it does get a little boring Quill.
Hamas a group who openly starts attacking Israel with rockets, a war crime, who then ensures many civillians die because again they commit a war crime and place weaponary withion civillian areas and tell people not to leave their homes but to stay and die and deny them access to tunnels they have built to attack Israel which could provide them weith safety.

Original Quill wrote:

Didge wrote:Amnesty’s Q&A on the Gaza War: Many Questions, Few Answers

This is something I find frustrating, if not disturbing also.  AI aside, so many of the disputes that are discussed reduce to the fact that Israel won.  Is that a crime?

We all know that the whole Middle East thing is a public relations game.  Imagine a school yard.  A little, impish guy walks up to a big guy and stomps on his toe.  The big guy cold-cocks the little guy.  The little guy gets up and runs to the teacher crying, claiming the big guy beat him up.  The whole thing is lost in a flood of: he did; did not; did too; did not; did too...

I do get a little tried of HAMAS (or whoever) starting these things and then hoping we will condemn the big guy with finger-wagging severity.  You wanna start a fight, go finish it yourself.

Gets a little boring.

Quill, I know you are American, and some Americans have a great deal of trouble understanding the outside world, but that is pure ignorance and not acceptable in someone who is supposed to be intelligent.

So that you attain some semblance of knowledge, may I point you to this.  Miko Peled, the son of Israeli General, giving a speech in Geneva last year.  It might be an hour, but it will be a hour well spent if it stops you make a total fool of yoursel again.

Yes its pure ignorance the crap you keep spouting in support of an extremist Islamist group that has vowed to wipe out the Jews.
What you need to do is answer some simple questions.
Why is it that Hamas builds no protection for its citizens?
Why is it, that instead they demnand people to die?
Why is it they preach martyrdom over living life?
Why is it Hamas wants to exterminate all Jews?


In your own time

As I thought, Dodge doesn't actually want to listen to someone who was brought up with the military in Israel, served with the military in Israel, lives in Israel, his family live in Israel, but of course Dodge knows more than he does.   I don't mind you being boring Dodge, but revelling in it and not even condemning Israel for the thousands of children killed over the years shows me exactly what you are, and the view isn't very nice.  You are sad, sad man, I pity you.   Every single person who is not appalled by what is happening to those children and speaking out about it, is complicit in their murders, torture and maiming.

The Nazi Jew hater avoids the questions again

What you need to do is answer some simple questions.
Why is it that Hamas builds no protection for its citizens?
Why is it, that instead they demnand people to die?
Why is it they preach martyrdom over living life?
Why is it Hamas wants to exterminate all Jews?


In your own time

By the way I have condemned Israel for war crimes, you though at every turn avodiing condemning Hamas, because you wanty Israel over run and taken over by Islamic extremists and we know what would happen then.
A second Holocaust.

What you need to do is answer some simple questions.
Why is it that Hamas builds no protection for its citizens?
Why is it, that instead they demnand people to die?
Why is it they preach martyrdom over living life?
Why is it Hamas wants to exterminate all Jews?


In your own time

Palestinians on 9/11

Have a good evening people and never forget what many Palestinians think of those of us in the west.

Night people

EU throws out NGO Monitor case, tells Gerald Steinberg to pick up the tab

NGO Monitor and its director went all the way to Luxembourg to sue the EU for lack of transparency concerning the funds its gives NGOs in Israel and Palestine. Last month, the EU Court of Justice threw the case out saying the action was “manifestly lacking any foundation in law”

About three years ago, those lovely people over at NGO Monitor filed a suit in Luxembourg against the European Union to force the EU to release details of its funding of NGOs. NGO Monitor pulled out all the stops – hiring a top law firm, calling a press conference to announce the move, accusing the EU of a lack of transparency, with director Gerald Steinberg saying that the EU has funneled about $46 million to about 90 NGOs in Israel and the Palestinian territories over three years. This past January, NGO Monitor attacked the German Heinrich Böll Foundation for a grant of 6,000 euros it gave +972 Magazine in 2011.

http://972mag.com/eu-throws-out-ngo-monitor-case-tells-gerald-steinberg-to-pick-up-the-tab/62491/

Exposing Gerald Steinberg and NGO Monitor

Gerald Steinberg of NGO Monitor, and his associates in government, have entered a new phase in their campaign to suppress Israeli human rights NGOs. This morning (November 27 2009) Haaretz’s English edition ran an op-ed by Steinberg. No longer satisfied with de-legitimization, Israeli neoconservatives have begun taking concrete parliamentary action to silence internal dissent. Because of a sense that some of the remaining freedoms of Israeli democracy — expression and association for Israeli citizens — were under dangerous assault I agreed, for the first time in years, to byline an op-ed addressing Steinberg’s (both op-eds, side-by-side, can be viewed here). Below is an annotated version of the op-ed, with comprehensive links to supporting documentation.

http://coteret.com/2009/11/27/exposing-gerald-steinberg-and-ngo-monitor/

They debunked the 'Palestine's Dancing' vid as well, showed they were handing out sweets and the film had nothing to do with 9/11.

Brasidas wrote:So more points about me and nothing to refute my facts.
That is an extreme left wing appeaser who supports Hamas, who wish to wipe out the Jews.
On several occasions I asked you to condemn Hamas and after watching video's of lefties so clueless to think Hamas are not terrorists, shows clearly you and other appeasers support this extremist terrorist organisation with links to the Nazi's.
I on the other hand do condemn some of the wrongs by Israel and want a two state solution, which Israel also wants and yet at every turn the Palestinians have rejected. AS the only thing they want is control of Israel and the Jews either killed or displaced.
This is backed up by their rejection of the 1948 mandate and again in 2000 offered by Clinton.

When the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) was formed in 1964 its covenant made no mention of liberating the West Bank or Gaza from Jordan and Egypt. The PLO leadership stated that its goal was to “push the Jews into the sea.”

It is clear what the goal is of the Palestinians, the eradication and subjucation of the Jews and the destruction of Israel.
Israel has the ability to wipe out both Gaza and the Weest Bank and never has. Its ability to prevent civillian deaths is backed up by civilian-to-military death ratio.

By contrast, a 2001 study by the International Committee of the Red Cross found that the civilian-to-military death ratio in wars fought since the middle of the 20th Century has been 10:1 – ten civilian deaths for every soldier death. In other words, the Israelis protect civilians at a rate 300 times greater than any other national army. As Harvard Law School Professor Alan Dershowitz observes, “No army in history has ever had a better ratio of combatants to civilians killed in a comparable setting.”

Says it all what the some of the left buy into and are so gullible.

'the Israelis protect civilians at a rate 300 times greater than any other national army. As Harvard Law School Professor Alan Dershowitz observes, “No army in history has ever had a better ratio of combatants to civilians killed in a comparable setting.”'

That is a load of rubbish and if that is to be quoted then it would be best.
and the context and where it originally came from.

It was in the publication Israel History and it referred to targeted strikes by Israeli Air Force pilots in 2007 against specific targets not the wider Israeli Army activities.

The amount of land Israel have taken illegally

The first panel of the traditional version of this map has the biggest lie:


While I presume that the white sections are indeed the land that was privately owned by Jews, the land in green was not privately owned by Arabs.

Only a tiny percentage of land in Palestine was privately owned. The various categories of land ownership included:

• Mulk: privately owned in the Western sense.
  

• Miri: Land owned by the government (originally the Ottoman crown) and suitable for agricultural use. Individuals could purchase a deed to cultivate this land and pay a tithe to the government. Ownership could be transferred only with the approval of the state. Miri rights could be transferred to heirs, and the land could be sub-let to tenants. If the owner died without an heir or the land was not cultivated for three years, the land would revert to the state.
  

• Mahlul: Uncultivated Miri lands that would revert to the state, in theory after three years.
  

• Mawat (or Mewat): So-called “dead”, unreclaimed land. It constituted about 50 to 60% of the land in Palestine. It belonged to the government. ...If the land had been cultivated with permission, it would be registered, at least under the Mandate, free of charge.
  

By the early 1940s Jews owned about one third of Mulk land in Palestine and Arabs about two-thirds. The vast majority of the total land, however, belonged to the government, meaning that when the state of Israel was established, it became legally Israel's. (I believe that about 77% of the land was owned by the government, assuming 6 million dunams of private land as shown in this invaluable webpage on the topic from which I got much of this information.)

To say that the green areas were "Palestinian" land is simply a lie.


In the case of this version of the map, the lie is even worse, as the implication is that pre-1948 Palestine was an entirely Arab country with no Jews and no Jewish land ownership. Of course, before 1948 the word "Palestinian" more often than not referred to Palestinian Jews, not Palestinian Arabs. For example, the Palestine exhibit at the 1939 World's Fair was entirely Jewish, the Palestine Orchestra was entirely Jewish, the Palestine soccer team was almost entirely Jewish, and so forth. 

Now the next one:



While this is a somewhat accurate representation of the partition plan (with the notable exception of Jerusalem, which was meant to be an international city,), it has nothing to do with land ownership. The entire purpose of this map is to make it appear that Israel has been grabbing Arab land consistently, to serve as a bridge between maps 1 and 3. What is not said, of course, is that Israel accepted the partition and the Arabs did not, so as a result Israel in 1949 looked like it does in map 3.

Map 3 is still a lie, however, because in no way was the green land "Palestinian" at that time. Gaza was administered by Egypt and the West Bank annexed by Jordan. No one at the time spoke about a Palestinian Arab state on the areas controlled by Arab states - only in Israel.

In other words, this progression of maps is a series of lies meant to push a bigger lie, and it is tragic that a lot of people believe them to be the truth.

Here is a small attempt on my side to show a more accurate picture of Israel's giving land it controlled up for peace since 1967:



This map shows that Israel gave up control of the Sinai, Gaza, Southern Lebanon and much of the West Bank over the years. Rather than falsely accusing Israel as a land-grabbing rogue state, it accurately shows Israel as perhaps the only state in history that has voluntarily given up more than two-thirds of the areas it controls in exchange for nothing more than a paper agreement - or sometimes not even that. All at the risk of serious security concerns for her people, no less.

This is all because Israel wants, desperately, to live in real peace with her neighbors. This desire is not reciprocated by those neighbors, unfortunately.

The real map shows the truth of Israel's incredible concessions in the often vain hope for peace.

---

Irn Bru wrote:

Brasidas wrote:So more points about me and nothing to refute my facts.
That is an extreme left wing appeaser who supports Hamas, who wish to wipe out the Jews.
On several occasions I asked you to condemn Hamas and after watching video's of lefties so clueless to think Hamas are not terrorists, shows clearly you and other appeasers support this extremist terrorist organisation with links to the Nazi's.
I on the other hand do condemn some of the wrongs by Israel and want a two state solution, which Israel also wants and yet at every turn the Palestinians have rejected. AS the only thing they want is control of Israel and the Jews either killed or displaced.
This is backed up by their rejection of the 1948 mandate and again in 2000 offered by Clinton.

When the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) was formed in 1964 its covenant made no mention of liberating the West Bank or Gaza from Jordan and Egypt. The PLO leadership stated that its goal was to “push the Jews into the sea.”

It is clear what the goal is of the Palestinians, the eradication and subjucation of the Jews and the destruction of Israel.
Israel has the ability to wipe out both Gaza and the Weest Bank and never has. Its ability to prevent civillian deaths is backed up by civilian-to-military death ratio.

By contrast, a 2001 study by the International Committee of the Red Cross found that the civilian-to-military death ratio in wars fought since the middle of the 20th Century has been 10:1 – ten civilian deaths for every soldier death. In other words, the Israelis protect civilians at a rate 300 times greater than any other national army. As Harvard Law School Professor Alan Dershowitz observes, “No army in history has ever had a better ratio of combatants to civilians killed in a comparable setting.”

Says it all what the some of the left buy into and are so gullible.

'the Israelis protect civilians at a rate 300 times greater than any other national army. As Harvard Law School Professor Alan Dershowitz observes, “No army in history has ever had a better ratio of combatants to civilians killed in a comparable setting.”'

That is a load of rubbish and if that is to be quoted then it would be best.
and the context and where it originally came from.

It was in the publication Israel History and it referred to targeted strikes by Israeli Air Force pilots in 2007 against specific targets not the wider Israeli Army activities.

So its not a load of rubbish then, you elude to this yourself and this again avoids all the points I made and even the Red cross backs this up.

Try again

Brasidas wrote:So more points about me and nothing to refute my facts.
That is an extreme left wing appeaser who supports Hamas, who wish to wipe out the Jews.
On several occasions I asked you to condemn Hamas and after watching video's of lefties so clueless to think Hamas are not terrorists, shows clearly you and other appeasers support this extremist terrorist organisation with links to the Nazi's.
I on the other hand do condemn some of the wrongs by Israel and want a two state solution, which Israel also wants and yet at every turn the Palestinians have rejected. AS the only thing they want is control of Israel and the Jews either killed or displaced.
This is backed up by their rejection of the 1948 mandate and again in 2000 offered by Clinton.

When the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) was formed in 1964 its covenant made no mention of liberating the West Bank or Gaza from Jordan and Egypt. The PLO leadership stated that its goal was to “push the Jews into the sea.”

It is clear what the goal is of the Palestinians, the eradication and subjucation of the Jews and the destruction of Israel.
Israel has the ability to wipe out both Gaza and the Weest Bank and never has. Its ability to prevent civillian deaths is backed up by civilian-to-military death ratio.

By contrast, a 2001 study by the International Committee of the Red Cross found that the civilian-to-military death ratio in wars fought since the middle of the 20th Century has been 10:1 – ten civilian deaths for every soldier death. In other words, the Israelis protect civilians at a rate 300 times greater than any other national army. As Harvard Law School Professor Alan Dershowitz observes, “No army in history has ever had a better ratio of combatants to civilians killed in a comparable setting.”

Says it all what the some of the left buy into and are so gullible.

Evelyn Gordon, knows how to read the newspaper. She mined a very important statistic in the last paragraph in last week's NY Times article on the WikiLeaks Iraq War log on civilian deaths. Interpolating from this statistic, one sees that the Gaza War civilian casualties were not dispropotionately out of the norm. In fact they were on the low side, especially considering Hamas' use of civilians as human shields. Try telling that to the Israel Deligitimization Committee.

"The New York Times tucked a remarkable statistic into the tail-end of an article on WikiLeaks’s latest document dump, one with ramifications for the ongoing delegitimization campaign against Israel: for most of the last century, the normal civilian-to-combatant wartime fatality ratio has been 10:1.

Civilians have borne the brunt of modern warfare, with 10 civilians dying for every soldier in wars fought since the mid-20th century, compared with 9 soldiers killed for every civilian in World War I, according to a 2001 study by the International Committee of the Red Cross.

This elicits an obvious question: if civilians routinely account for 90 percent of all casualties in modern warfare, why is the world up in arms about the civilian casualty rate in last year’s Israel-Hamas war in Gaza — which, by even the most anti-Israel account, was markedly lower?
If one accepts the Israel Defense Forces’ statistics, then noncombatants accounted for only 39 percent of Palestinian fatalities — less than half the standard 90 percent rate noted by the ICRC. Nongovernmental organizations obviously cite a much higher civilian casualty rate. But even they put it below 90 percent.
According to B’Tselem, the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, Israeli forces killed 1,390 Palestinians in the war, including 759 noncombatants, 349 combatants, 248 Palestinian policemen, two in targeted assassinations (bizarrely, these aren’t classified as either combatants or noncombatants), and 32 whose status it couldn’t determine. The policemen are listed separately because their status is disputed: Israel says the Hamas-run police force served as an auxiliary army unit; Palestinians say the policemen were noncombatants.
Omitting the 34 whom B’Tselem didn’t classify, these figures show civilians comprising 74 percent of total fatalities if the policemen are considered noncombatants, and 56 percent if they’re considered combatants. Either way, the ratio is well below the 90 percent norm."


Please read the rest of her post, but don't get your knickers in a twist about which publication she writes for:
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/blogs/index.php/evelyn-gordon/377631
The NYT article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/23/world/middleeast/23casualties.html?_r=2

Irn Bru wrote:EU throws out NGO Monitor case, tells Gerald Steinberg to pick up the tab

NGO Monitor and its director went all the way to Luxembourg to sue the EU for lack of transparency concerning the funds its gives NGOs in Israel and Palestine. Last month, the EU Court of Justice threw the case out saying the action was “manifestly lacking any foundation in law”

About three years ago, those lovely people over at NGO Monitor filed a suit in Luxembourg against the European Union to force the EU to release details of its funding of NGOs. NGO Monitor pulled out all the stops – hiring a top law firm, calling a press conference to announce the move, accusing the EU of a lack of transparency, with director Gerald Steinberg saying that the EU has funneled about $46 million to about 90 NGOs in Israel and the Palestinian territories over three years. This past January, NGO Monitor attacked the German Heinrich Böll Foundation for a grant of 6,000 euros it gave +972 Magazine in 2011.

http://972mag.com/eu-throws-out-ngo-monitor-case-tells-gerald-steinberg-to-pick-up-the-tab/62491/

Is that it?
The EU?
You have to do better than that, if that is you base point, being as they make some pretty daft rullings the EU

risingsun wrote:Quill, I know you are American, and some Americans have a great deal of trouble understanding the outside world, but that is pure ignorance and not acceptable in someone who is supposed to be intelligent.

I honestly think that being American is an advantage.  Unlike Europe, America actually starts with a moral premise.  In the founding people actually devoted a lot of thought to right and wrong...both pragmatically, and actually morally.  America has its flaws, but we know them.

Europe does not know it's own flaws.  Europe has never gone through a similar passage, hence you guys have such things as Nazism and what is going on in Russia presently.  Having never experienced a clensing, you guys don't really know what a bath is.

It's refreshing, having thought about right and wrong.  Americans are not so tied to ideologies.  We can make judgments, and fairly quick ones.  Like, I know when HAMAS hurls a missile into Israel, it's a provocation.  Having such an unencumbered view, I can make clean, right/wrong decisions.  I can see plain as day when someone is playing me; y'all have difficulty because of the all that ideology that y'all drag the facts through.  

Well, here's what it looks like up here in the clear air: HAMAS is playing you; they are playing a huge public relations trick on y'all.  ISIL is doing the same thing.  Parading pictures of bloodied children is intended to get the sympathy vote; chopping off heads and burning victims is intended to get the revenge vote.  They are playing you.  One way or the other they want you involved, they want you to pay for it, and they want you to work for them.  The only thing they can stand is for you to ignore them.

Yep...it's refreshing to say...if it walks like a duck, and talks like a duck...it's a duck.

I wasn't referring to all Americans, just those that allow the wool to be pulled over their eyes and refuse to learn anything Quill, as you appear to fit into that catagory.

Thankfully, the Boycott Israel is being led from the States, from nearly every University, huge numbers of Jewish Americans have come out for Jews for Peace and all the other Jewish groups standing against what Israel is doing, thousands march in support of Palestine and over 50% according to the latest poll oppose Netenyahu speaking to Congress.

Yes Universities are being fed a lie by a Muslim organisation funded by the Muslim Brotherhood as still proclaiming lies to the land as if it belonged to all Palestinians, when it never did. Both Palestinians and Jews held land and the discourse is for Israel to become part of Palestine.
Do not worry some of us are fighting back against this creeping appeasement to this extremism being spouted by some of the left.
At least Quill can see past all the bullshit.

Donatella Rovera, an Amnesty field investigator, wrote an interesting article about the challenges of fact finding in war situations.
One of her main points is that eyewitnesses are often unreliable. For example:

In Gaza, Lebanon, Libya, Syria, and other places I interviewed civilians who described what they thought were artillery or bomb strikes being launched by far away government forces and striking near their homes – whereas in reality the loud bangs and tremors were caused by mortars or rockets being launched by opposition fighters from their positions nearby. For the untrained ear it is virtually impossible to distinguish between incoming and outgoing fire, and all the more so for those who find themselves close to the frontlines.

Another factor she mentions:

Even if they disregard it, investigators must be alert to the fact that disinformation and misinformation can contribute to shaping the perception of events, the narrative surrounding the events, and the behaviour of people who take it in good faith and internalize it, including victims, witnesses, and others potential sources.

Here Rovera  is referring to lies that spread quickly and then become widely believed – including by “unbiased” NGOs – before anyone has a chance to investigate. How many times have we seen that?
She gives a specific example from Gaza:

Fear can lead victims and witnesses to withhold evidence or give deliberately erroneous accounts of incidents. In Gaza, I received partial or inaccurate information by relatives of civilians accidentally killed in accidental explosions or by rockets launched by Palestinian armed groups towards Israel that had malfunctioned and of civilians killed by Israeli strikes on nearby Palestinian armed groups’ positions. When confronted with other evidence obtained separately, some said they feared reprisals by the armed groups.

Meaning that “eyewitnesses” will often claim that there was no terrorist activity in the area of an airstrike and Israel wantonly and indiscriminately killed people for no reason.
This gets wholly believed and parroted by the UN and other NGOs.  The Goldstone Report has many such examples.
Unfortunately, in many cases the NGOs themselves are part of the problem. Rovera  admits, a little elliptically:

Conflict situations create highly politicized and polarized environments, which may affect even individuals and organizations with a proven track record of credible and objective work. Players and interested parties go to extraordinary lengths to manipulate or manufacture “evidence” for both internal and external consumption.

It is a shame that Rovera didn’t include Amnesty International itself as being guilty of this, and she ascribes the lack of objectivity almost only to fake evidence that is created by one side rather than to the ideological desire to find war crimes when none exist.
They might strenuously deny it, but Amnesty and HRW have systemic biases against Israel. This article, while a step in the right direction, only scratches the surface of how NGOs themselves contribute to the culture of lies in order to issue their reports and maintain their funding without doing basic fact checks.
And while Rovera notes that some “eyewitnesses” act out of fear, she doesn’t go far enough. At least in the territories, the lies about Israel are repeated so often that the witnesses will often  tell Western reporters and researchers what they expect to hear rather than what happened. This isn’t necessarily out of fear; it is part of their culture to ensure that Israel is always blamed no matter what. It saturates their media. I cannot count how many times “eyewitness” accounts were found to be complete fiction, and fear didn’t enter into the equation. However, many of the “witnesses” happen to work for the largest employer in the West Bank – the PA – which lies constantly.
Not to mention that many anti-Israel activists that will knowingly repeat the most outrageous lies to further their own agenda.
Lets hope that this article can at least open up the discussion of how inaccurate much of the reporting and research is about Israel, even from NGOs that pretend to be objective.

http://www.algemeiner.com/2014/05/09/amnesty-researcher-admits-that-palestinian-eyewitnesses-often-lie/

Donatella Rovera has already reported that Israel are guilty of war crimes. Look it up

And she is referring not just to Gaza and not just Palestians is she?

Epic fail

Brasidas wrote:

Irn Bru wrote:EU throws out NGO Monitor case, tells Gerald Steinberg to pick up the tab

NGO Monitor and its director went all the way to Luxembourg to sue the EU for lack of transparency concerning the funds its gives NGOs in Israel and Palestine. Last month, the EU Court of Justice threw the case out saying the action was “manifestly lacking any foundation in law”

About three years ago, those lovely people over at NGO Monitor filed a suit in Luxembourg against the European Union to force the EU to release details of its funding of NGOs. NGO Monitor pulled out all the stops – hiring a top law firm, calling a press conference to announce the move, accusing the EU of a lack of transparency, with director Gerald Steinberg saying that the EU has funneled about $46 million to about 90 NGOs in Israel and the Palestinian territories over three years. This past January, NGO Monitor attacked the German Heinrich Böll Foundation for a grant of 6,000 euros it gave +972 Magazine in 2011.

http://972mag.com/eu-throws-out-ngo-monitor-case-tells-gerald-steinberg-to-pick-up-the-tab/62491/

Is that it?
The EU?
You have to do better than that, if that is you base point, being as they make some pretty daft rullings the EU

No that wasn't just it. There are others that I posted. And what is daft about that ruling? What do you see wrong with it?

Foreign influence, transparency problems of NGO Monitor
Right-wing NGO that went after progressive and human right groups is financed from abroad, including through large grants from undisclosed donors

Last week, Haaretz’s Uri Blau had a short expose – available only in the Hebrew edition – regarding the rightwing non-profit NGO Monitor. As some readers might remember, NGO Monitor recently attacked the German Heinrich Böll Foundation for a grant of 6,000 Euros it gave +972 Magazine in 2011.

According to its website, “NGO Monitor’s objective is to end the practice used by certain self-declared ‘humanitarian NGOs’ of exploiting the label ‘universal human rights values’ to promote politically and ideologically motivated agendas.” It does so through attacking public position taken by NGOs, questioning their motives and partners, and going after their sources of funding.

Human rights organizations in Israel are very transparent, partly because of the increasing attention their activities get (this is one, and probably the only positive influence of the work of some conservative groups and journalists). Right-wing groups, on the other hand, seem to operate under different standards. Im Tirzu, for example, submitted its list of donors only after receiving threats from the state’s NGO department. Elad, the organization leading the colonization efforts of Palestinian neighborhoods in East Jerusalem, has received special status from the government that allows it not to disclose any of its major donors.

http://972mag.com/questions-regarding-foreign-influence-transparency-of-ngo-monitor/35854/

Brasidas wrote:

Irn Bru wrote:

Brasidas wrote:So more points about me and nothing to refute my facts.
That is an extreme left wing appeaser who supports Hamas, who wish to wipe out the Jews.
On several occasions I asked you to condemn Hamas and after watching video's of lefties so clueless to think Hamas are not terrorists, shows clearly you and other appeasers support this extremist terrorist organisation with links to the Nazi's.
I on the other hand do condemn some of the wrongs by Israel and want a two state solution, which Israel also wants and yet at every turn the Palestinians have rejected. AS the only thing they want is control of Israel and the Jews either killed or displaced.
This is backed up by their rejection of the 1948 mandate and again in 2000 offered by Clinton.

When the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) was formed in 1964 its covenant made no mention of liberating the West Bank or Gaza from Jordan and Egypt. The PLO leadership stated that its goal was to “push the Jews into the sea.”

It is clear what the goal is of the Palestinians, the eradication and subjucation of the Jews and the destruction of Israel.
Israel has the ability to wipe out both Gaza and the Weest Bank and never has. Its ability to prevent civillian deaths is backed up by civilian-to-military death ratio.

By contrast, a 2001 study by the International Committee of the Red Cross found that the civilian-to-military death ratio in wars fought since the middle of the 20th Century has been 10:1 – ten civilian deaths for every soldier death. In other words, the Israelis protect civilians at a rate 300 times greater than any other national army. As Harvard Law School Professor Alan Dershowitz observes, “No army in history has ever had a better ratio of combatants to civilians killed in a comparable setting.”

Says it all what the some of the left buy into and are so gullible.

'the Israelis protect civilians at a rate 300 times greater than any other national army. As Harvard Law School Professor Alan Dershowitz observes, “No army in history has ever had a better ratio of combatants to civilians killed in a comparable setting.”'

That is a load of rubbish and if that is to be quoted then it would be best.
and the context and where it originally came from.

It was in the publication Israel History and it referred to targeted strikes by Israeli Air Force pilots in 2007 against specific targets not the wider Israeli Army activities.

So its not a load of rubbish then, you elude to this yourself and this again avoids all the points I made and even the Red cross backs this up.

Try again

Brasidas wrote:So more points about me and nothing to refute my facts.
That is an extreme left wing appeaser who supports Hamas, who wish to wipe out the Jews.
On several occasions I asked you to condemn Hamas and after watching video's of lefties so clueless to think Hamas are not terrorists, shows clearly you and other appeasers support this extremist terrorist organisation with links to the Nazi's.
I on the other hand do condemn some of the wrongs by Israel and want a two state solution, which Israel also wants and yet at every turn the Palestinians have rejected. AS the only thing they want is control of Israel and the Jews either killed or displaced.
This is backed up by their rejection of the 1948 mandate and again in 2000 offered by Clinton.

When the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) was formed in 1964 its covenant made no mention of liberating the West Bank or Gaza from Jordan and Egypt. The PLO leadership stated that its goal was to “push the Jews into the sea.”

It is clear what the goal is of the Palestinians, the eradication and subjucation of the Jews and the destruction of Israel.
Israel has the ability to wipe out both Gaza and the Weest Bank and never has. Its ability to prevent civillian deaths is backed up by civilian-to-military death ratio.

By contrast, a 2001 study by the International Committee of the Red Cross found that the civilian-to-military death ratio in wars fought since the middle of the 20th Century has been 10:1 – ten civilian deaths for every soldier death. In other words, the Israelis protect civilians at a rate 300 times greater than any other national army. As Harvard Law School Professor Alan Dershowitz observes, “No army in history has ever had a better ratio of combatants to civilians killed in a comparable setting.”

Says it all what the some of the left buy into and are so gullible.

Evelyn Gordon, knows how to read the newspaper. She mined a very important statistic in the last paragraph in last week's NY Times article on the WikiLeaks Iraq War log on civilian deaths. Interpolating from this statistic, one sees that the Gaza War civilian casualties were not dispropotionately out of the norm. In fact they were on the low side, especially considering Hamas' use of civilians as human shields. Try telling that to the Israel Deligitimization Committee.

"The New York Times tucked a remarkable statistic into the tail-end of an article on WikiLeaks’s latest document dump, one with ramifications for the ongoing delegitimization campaign against Israel: for most of the last century, the normal civilian-to-combatant wartime fatality ratio has been 10:1.

Civilians have borne the brunt of modern warfare, with 10 civilians dying for every soldier in wars fought since the mid-20th century, compared with 9 soldiers killed for every civilian in World War I, according to a 2001 study by the International Committee of the Red Cross.

This elicits an obvious question: if civilians routinely account for 90 percent of all casualties in modern warfare, why is the world up in arms about the civilian casualty rate in last year’s Israel-Hamas war in Gaza — which, by even the most anti-Israel account, was markedly lower?
If one accepts the Israel Defense Forces’ statistics, then noncombatants accounted for only 39 percent of Palestinian fatalities — less than half the standard 90 percent rate noted by the ICRC. Nongovernmental organizations obviously cite a much higher civilian casualty rate. But even they put it below 90 percent.
According to B’Tselem, the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, Israeli forces killed 1,390 Palestinians in the war, including 759 noncombatants, 349 combatants, 248 Palestinian policemen, two in targeted assassinations (bizarrely, these aren’t classified as either combatants or noncombatants), and 32 whose status it couldn’t determine. The policemen are listed separately because their status is disputed: Israel says the Hamas-run police force served as an auxiliary army unit; Palestinians say the policemen were noncombatants.
Omitting the 34 whom B’Tselem didn’t classify, these figures show civilians comprising 74 percent of total fatalities if the policemen are considered noncombatants, and 56 percent if they’re considered combatants. Either way, the ratio is well below the 90 percent norm."


Please read the rest of her post, but don't get your knickers in a twist about which publication she writes for:
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/blogs/index.php/evelyn-gordon/377631
The NYT article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/23/world/middleeast/23casualties.html?_r=2

The figures are a load of bollocks because that line “No army in history has ever had a better ratio of combatants to civilians killed in a comparable setting' has nothing to do with the ratio of war figures being banded about. It's from a specific period about the Israeli Ait Force and it comes out of the book Israel History so it's nonsense to use it in the context that you are trying and failing to put over. So that's that dealt with.

As for the 2000 Clinton mandate. Who scuppered the Camp David deal then? There are conflicting opinions about who was to blame and several witnesses who were present blame the US negotiators for blundering the whole thing.

Your whole piece is just nonsense and when I see a blatant lie being pushed it just brings into doubt the whole thing.

You need to do better chum.

tut tut

Irn Bru wrote:

Brasidas wrote:


So its not a load of rubbish then, you elude to this yourself and this again avoids all the points I made and even the Red cross backs this up.

Try again

The figures are a load of bollocks because that line “No army in history has ever had a better ratio of combatants to civilians killed in a comparable setting' has nothing to do with the ratio of war figures being banded about. It's from a specific period about the Israeli Ait Force and it comes out of the book Israel History so it's nonsense to use it in the context that you are trying and failing to put over. So that's that dealt with.

As for the 2000 Clinton mandate. Who scuppered the Camp David deal then? There are conflicting opinions about who was to blame and several witnesses who were present blame the US negotiators for blundering the whole thing.

Your whole piece is just nonsense and when I see a blatant lie being pushed it just brings into doubt the whole thing.

You need to do better chum.

tut tut

You are just making things up as you go along because the fact is Israel does try to keep casualties to a minimum and all the facts poiunts to this more so than any other conflict and you can keep denying this all you like but the ration is there for all to see.
You are just proving that.
This is not just about the air force even the latest war shows the ratio is still not ten to one not even anywhere close so its time you started to debate with some honesty instead of your clear hatred for Israel which here by doing so you are backing those who seek to derstroy them.
I suggest you start showing some intellectual honesty of which you have utterly none even your links to discredit an organisation which has been backed up by memebers of Amnbesty international showing how flawed and unreliable the witnesses of such conflicts are and yet again you ignore this.
This is what backers of extremists do.