{"id":132995,"date":"2014-07-24T16:24:58","date_gmt":"2014-07-24T16:24:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=132995"},"modified":"2014-07-24T16:24:58","modified_gmt":"2014-07-24T16:24:58","slug":"human-rights-watch-hrw-whitewashes-israel-law-supports-hamas-reflections-israels-latest-massacre","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/war-terrorism\/human-rights-watch-hrw-whitewashes-israel-law-supports-hamas-reflections-israels-latest-massacre\/","title":{"rendered":"Human Rights Watch (HRW) Whitewashes Israel, The Law Supports Hamas: Reflections on Israel\u2019s Latest Massacre"},"content":{"rendered":"

On 7 July 2014, Israel unleashed Operation Protective Edge against Gaza. When it launched a ground invasion on 18 July 2014, Israel had already killed 230 Gazan Palestinians, of whom 75 percent (171) were civilians and 20 percent (48) children, wounded more than 1,700, and destroyed or rendered uninhabitable hundreds of homes leaving more than\u00a010,000 Gazans without shelter<\/a>.\u00a0On the other side, according to daily updates Palestinian projectiles had killed one Israeli civilian, wounded 18, and damaged three Israeli homes. It\u2019s hard to conceive of a more disproportionate balance sheet in an alleged \u201cwar.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nonetheless, Human Rights Watch (HRW), in its legal reckoning, didn\u2019t so much even out as\u00a0reverse\u00a0the balance sheet. It never explicitly accused Israel of committing war crimes, whereas its first press release already accused Hamas of committing war crimes. If in fact HRW accurately interpreted the laws of war, the only rational conclusion would be that these laws are morally bankrupt and deserving of contempt: they would not be distilling but instead grossly distorting the moral realities of war, as they exonerate the major perpetrators of war crimes. But did HRW accurately interpret the laws of war, or did this influential human rights organization give Israel a green light to commit war crimes on a yet more massive scale during the ground invasion? Let\u2019s look at the record.<\/p>\n

Israel<\/strong><\/p>\n

In its first press release on 9 July 2014,\u00a0\u201cIndiscriminate Palestinian Rocket Attacks; Israeli Airstrikes on Homes Appear to be Collective Punishment,\u201d<\/a>\u00a0HRW stated that \u201cIsraeli attacks targeting homes may amount to prohibited collective punishment.\u201d In its second press release on 16 July,\u00a0\u201cUnlawful Israeli Airstrikes Kill Civilians; Bombings of Civilian Structures Suggest Illegal Policy,\u201d<\/a>\u00a0HRW stated that \u201cIsraeli air attacks in Gaza\u2026have been targeting apparent civilian structures and killing civilians in violation of the laws of war. Israel should end unlawful attacks that do not target military objectives and may be intended as collective punishment or broadly to destroy civilian property.\u201d It then proceeded to legally define the meaning of\u00a0war crimes, but artfully avoided accusing Israel of committing them.<\/p>\n

In these statements HRW doubly distanced itself from alleging Israeli war crimes: first, it qualified the weight of the incriminating evidence\u2013\u201cappear,\u201d \u201cmay,\u201d \u201capparent,\u201d \u201cmay be\u201d; second, it recoiled from explicitly charging Israel with war crimes and instead settled for lesser or vaguer charges\u2013\u201ccollective punishment,\u201d \u201cviolation of the laws of war,\u201d \u201cunlawful attacks.\u201d The cautiousness perplexes in light of the evidence assembled by HRW itself.<\/p>\n

Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On 7 July 2014, Israel unleashed Operation Protective Edge against Gaza. When it launched a ground invasion on 18 July 2014, Israel had already killed 230 Gazan Palestinians, of whom 75 percent (171) were civilians and 20 percent (48) children, wounded more than 1,700, and destroyed or rendered uninhabitable hundreds of homes leaving more than\u00a010,000 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":132996,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487,16],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-132995","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-breaking-news","8":"category-war-terrorism"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132995","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=132995"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132995\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/132996"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=132995"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=132995"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=132995"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}