Amnesty International Calls for the Destruction of Israel

There is no explicit call for the elimination of Israel in the July 12, 2007 Amnesty International press release, Israel/Lebanon: War crimes without accountability, but that would be the effect if the following recommendation were followed.

The Security Council should declare and enforce an arms embargo on both Israel and Hizbullah until effective mechanisms are in place to ensure that weapons will not be used to commit serious violations of international humanitarian law.

Ignoring the fact that an arms embargo against Hizbullah would never be enforced (witness the arms flowing freely to Hizbullah now in violation of the United Nations resolution in conjunction with the cease fire in the first round of last summer's war) and the only effective way to ensure Hizbullah will not use weapons to commit serious violations of international humanitarian law is to eliminate that terrorist group, this recommendation would leave arms flowing freely to Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Fatah, Al-Aksa and the countless other terrorist groups attacking Israel citizens, not to mention Syria, Iran and dozens of other countries that would not hesitate to launch a war of elimination against Israel if they believed they would succeed.

That recommendation, which can only be the product of insanity or evil intent, comes near the end of a self-contradictory press release rife with subtle and not-so-subtle bias.

It criticizes "the patent unwillingness by all concerned parties to investigate the violations" despite the fact that, as acknowledged elsewhere in the same press release, Israel has conducted investigations. Amnesty International's real problem is that those investigations did not result in the conclusions AI wanted.

The press release did note "an inquiry appointed by the UN Human Rights Council was given a one-sided mandate, focusing only on evidence of violations by Israeli forces." Indeed, there has been no shortage of investigations relating to (generally unjustified) allegations against Israel.

It's unfortunate that many organizations such as Amnesty International which have, at face value, idealist and laudable goals have been hijacked into agendas which are not only anti-Israel but effectively undermine their own stated aims.

The press release concludes:

Amnesty International continues to urge Hizbullah to provide information about the two Israeli soldiers its fighters captured on 12 July 2006 and allow them immediate access to the International Committee of the Red Cross.

This really demonstrates the crux of the problem: Israel is facing enemies which have no concern for either human life or the standards of behavior groups such as Amnesty International was originally created to further. Hizbullah illegally crossed into Israel and abducted Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev. The first priority of the international community, especially those interested in making the illusion of international law a worthwhile reality, should be the immediate, long-overdue, unconditional release of those two young men along with Gilad Shalit, similarly abducted by Hamas terrorists at about the same time.