President Barack Obama’s decision to award Mary Robinson the
Medal of Freedom Award justifiably caused controversy. Robinson
was the High Commissioner for Human Rights who helped organize
the UN’s infamous 2001 World Conference Against Racism in Durban.
NGOs like Amnesty International helped spearhead the Conference
and hijacked the agenda to depict Israel as the world’s most
racist state and egregious human rights abuser. Their final
declaration accused Israel of committing “war crimes” and
“violations of international law” for anti-terror policies and
also labeled Zionism a form of racism. Robinson’s legacy will not
be her Medal of Freedom, but the Durban Strategy, which lives on
strong through various collaborators — NGOs, UN committees, and
international organizations.
Earlier this year, the UN hosted another Conference Against
Racism, which resembled the original. And in July, the Committee
on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian
People met in Geneva — it has been referred to as a “mini-Durban”
— to address the “Responsibility of the international community
to uphold international humanitarian law to ensure the protection
of civilians in the Occupied Palestinian Territory in the wake of
the war in Gaza.”
Today, Amnesty and others NGOs work with UN committees, including
the Human Rights Council (UNHRC), in the effort to de-legitimize
Israel. In January of this year, the UNHRC convened its Ninth
Special Session to
address “the grave violations of human rights in the Occupied
Palestinian Territory including the recent aggression in the
occupied Gaza Strip.” Amnesty and Human Rights Watch, among
others, stoked the flames by accusing Israel of “human rights
abuses,” and the UNHRC condemned Operation Cast Lead, saying it
resulted “in massive violations of the human rights of the
Palestinian people.”
Amnesty also released a report in July disclosing the results of
its “investigation” into the Israeli/Hamas conflict from last
December and January. The report,
titled “‘Operation Cast Lead’: Israel/Gaza: 22 Days of Death and
Destruction,” continues a predictable pattern of largely ignoring
terrorism and human rights abusers, while accusing Israeli
officials and soldiers of committing war crimes.
Amnesty seeks to portray itself as an independent, objective
organization — its
website boasts that it is “Independent of any government,
political ideology, economic interest or religion.” But reality
tells a different story. Its latest 100-plus page
report (pdf) — a grotesquely misleading account of Operation
Cast Lead — reveals the organization’s blatant bias. It is
filled with blanket statements and unqualified military and legal
conclusions, often without any attribution of sources, and relies
primarily upon one-sided Palestinian “eyewitness” accounts
after-the-fact.
The report repeatedly accuses Israeli of deliberately targeting
civilians, while at the same time acknowledging Israel’s
attempted to warn citizens in Gaza of impending military
activity. Rather than praising Israel for its extraordinary
efforts to save civilians lives, the report criticizes Israel for
issuing too many warnings, saying, they “were too general and
reached residents all over Gaza.”
Amnesty frequently refers to its “delegates” who investigated
Operation Cast Lead. However, it does not reveal who the
delegates were, how many there were, or whether they had other
affiliations. According to Bar Ilan University Professor Gerald
Steinberg, who is also the executive director of the NGO
watchdog, NGO Monitor, “After every battle, the ‘researchers’
come for a few days, collect unverifiable testimony from
pre-defined victims (Palestinians, Lebanese, etc.), add some
pseudo-technical analysis of weapons by a self-proclaimed
‘military expert,’ and embed the concoction in a bath of quotes
from irrelevant legal documents.”
Unfortunately, NGOs like Amnesty are treated seriously by
international organizations and by much of the media. As the
Amnesty report makes clear, their objective is to see Israeli
officials prosecuted for war crimes either by an international
forum or a country willing to exercise universal jurisdiction,
and Amnesty is part of the cadre of organizations pressuring the
International Criminal Court’s prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, to
investigate Operation Cast Lead and prosecute Israeli officials.
Amnesty International long ago betrayed its stated mission of
protecting human rights by enabling and apologizing for terrorist
organizations while demonizing the Middle East’s freest
democracy. As Amnesty ingratiates itself to international bodies
that lend it credence and detest Israel, the rest of us should at
least recognize the motives. Otherwise, we may watch a future
President honor Amnesty for its work in promoting freedom and
think it was well deserved.
