Human Rights Watch Reports

Well, there's some interesting news, unanticipated. For a change Human Rights Watch releasing a report on its findings against Hamas in Gaza, that their rocket attacks against Israel represent war crimes. "Hamas forces violated the laws of war both by firing rockets deliberately and indiscriminately at Israeli cities and by launching them from populated areas and endangering Gazan civilians", according to the HRW program director.

"Under the laws of war, such weapons are indiscriminate when used against targets in densely populated areas", claims the New York-based human rights group. Unsurprisingly, Hamas rejects this conclusion, and the report that contains it as not worth the bother of responding. Although they have responded, claiming that: "It is a politicized report lacking objectivity and impartiality."

Interesting that: 'lacking objectivity and impartiality'. On the other hand, Hamas is front and centre, applauding Human Rights Watch for its condemnation of the Israel Defence Forces, and in that particular instance the human rights group fully implements objective and impartial judgement. Guess that must make Human Rights Watch pretty glum, right? Assailed indignantly by either side for reaching absurd conclusions.

Funny thing that; here's Jerusalem-based NGO Monitor, going to great lengths to debunk Human Rights Watch's declaration that Israel committed "war crimes" during Operation Cast Lead. The HRW official report along with its press releases accused the IDF of using drones during the Gaza operation, which led to 'wrongful' civilian deaths. Which is rather odd, given the fact that HRW accused Hamas of launching attacks against Israel from within populated areas to begin with.

So let's see how this goes down: Hamas illegally launches Qassam rockets and Soviet-designed Grad rockets from the Gaza Strip into Israel, hoping to successfully hit Israeli citizens, along with their property, causing anguish, fear and terror in the population, along with the occasional death and destruction of property. It launches those rockets from within crowded civilian populations in the Gaza Strip.

Inviting response, provoking the Zionist 'occupier'. And when that evil occupier has had too many years of such provocations, and the citizens of Israel are utterly fed up with the carnage and the physical and psychic wounds that result, the army is sent in to respond. In so doing, it targets the very areas from which the rockets emanate. As any military would do; targeting the rocket launch sites, not civilian enclaves.

Unfortunately, thanks to the deliberate planning of Hamas, they turn out to be one and the same. The result of which is that civilians, alongside the Hamas militias manning the launches (except when the militias flee, leaving the civilians to their fate) get hit by responding fire. Tt is not Hamas that is held responsible, but the country and the army that has responded to the clear invitation to meet force with like force.

Additionally, the editor of Jane's Air-Launched Weapons - clearly experts in the theatre of war and the armaments used therein - claims that the HRW's case is speculative, "But the conclusions are stated with absolute assurance, as if the evidence was totally clear". The editor, Robert Hewson, has been quoted as saying, "Human Rights Watch makes a lot of claims and assumptions about weapons and drones, all of which is still fairly speculative, because we have so little evidence."

Evidence? Apart from hearsay? How very innovative! Who might have even dreamt that inculpatory evidence must be gathered to give total credence to declarations of guilt, as charged. Israel is most certainly guilty of launching an offensive against an offensive. This is usually taken as a given; that a country under attack by another country will respond in its self-defence. This mimics human behaviour at any level.

Human Rights Watch obviously wants to avoid the charge of exploitation of human rights to forward an ideological agenda critical of the State of Israel, and attempting to register some modicum of 'balance' and 'fairness', acknowledges that Hamas is guilty as well of human rights offences by using civilian populations as shields to protect themselves. The urban battle zone is one selected purposefully by Hamas, more than willing to sacrifice innocent civilians to their agenda.

It is an agenda that deliberately uses civilians as shields, anticipating there will be a violent response, as IDF militias fire back at launch sites which incidentally are placed among civilian enclaves. Enabling Hamas to focus world attention as they bitterly lament the violence, laying blame on Israel for targeting civilians.

Israel prosecuted its offensive against Hamas in the best way it knew how. It urged civilians to remove themselves from harm's way, by contacting them directly, through leaflets, cell-phone messages and any other method available. The IDF made use of technology that HRW itself admitted enhanced accuracy, minimizing collateral damage. Those precision weapons were designed to avoid indiscriminate attacks against civilian targets. This was a matter of no account whatever to Hamas.

Hamas is not merely an Islamist terrorist organization. It prides itself on being a political force, a social arbiter of Islamic values. It is not possible to separate the jihadist ideology from the social-political agenda of the organization. Yet Hamas wants to be taken seriously by the international community as a political force in the area, while at the same time it flaunts its objective of destroying another country.

That, in and of itself constitutes a vicious human rights travesty.