While stopping short of calling the IDF effort a blatant crock of caca, Amnesty International showing its typical partiality strongly implied that conclusion in its response to the IDF report. The group's press briefing referred to the report as "lacking credibility" and branded it as failing to account for either the totality of all (purported) civilian casualties or the observations made on the spot by Amnesty International sources.
Amnesty International holds the conceit that its observers are so Noble and High Minded that there is no way any of their spot reports could reflect any sort or semblance of agenda beyond a Lofty Thinking concern for the well-being of innocents caught in harm's way. This dubious assumption goes unquestioned by those who rely on the same High Minded notions as the fine folk at Amnesty.
The real problem of Amnesty International's critique is the group's failure to consider the culpability attendant upon Hamas' choice of battlefield. Amnesty must be aware, at least dimly, that Hamas acts under the color of government in the Gaza Strip. After all, they shot their way to power fair and square so the best trigger men won the election of blood. This means that Hamas had the responsibility to act in a way which protected the people living under their sway.
This responsibility was not only abdicated, it was tossed in the trash heap. Hamas made no effort to restrain those of its membership or those aligned with other armed factions to fire rockets against Israeli civilian targets. It did nothing to halt or even slow the flow of munitions and weapons to men dedicated to kill Israelis even if they died in the effort.
Beyond that, Hamas elected to place defensive positions in civilian structures. Hamas made the decision to allow the emplacement of offensive missiles in or near mosques, schools (including those operated by the UN) and residential areas. Hamas allowed, even encouraged the intermixing of civilians and armed personnel so as to assure that the IDF would have no option other than the killing of civilians in the effort to neutralise Hamas gun and bomb slingers.
It is quite true that there is an obligation, a duty, laid upon military forces to restrict to the greatest practical extent the harming of unarmed people including wounded combatants as well as non-combatants. There are those within the Legion of the High Minded who argue that a military must be willing to accept higher levels of casualties in order to assure that not a single civilian hair be harmed.
The duty placed upon military commanders and those under their command to refrain from inflicting harm on civilians is balanced by a long recognised duty that the defending forces and government take all necessary measures to protect their non-combatants. While the IDF may have been less, much less than ideally scrupulous in avoiding unnecessary damage and loss of life to civilians, Hamas was even more guilty of having taken no measures to protect those under their authority and, logically, protection.
The record of history is filled with excesses of civilian death during time of war. The days of Frederick the Great who sought to wage war so that neither the peasant in his field or the merchant in his counting house would notice its presence are long gone. Changes in the technology of war are the minor factor in this death of "civilized" or at least, civilian-free war.
The greater responsibility lies with governments. Governments, whether the offender or the defender, have proven increasingly willing to place civilians at the same or even greater risk as the front line grunt.
Hamas has taken this tendency to its logical (albeit criminal) extreme of actively choosing to fight a war in the most heavily populated portion of its mini-state. Hamas made the cynical and cold-blooded decision to assure maximal civilian loss of life and property in the hopes of winning the battle for international sympathy and support. Hamas knowingly and with calculated aforethought sought to place the IDF in a position where it would either have to bear the international onus of killing civilians or lose an unacceptably high number of its own soldiers.
Hamas well understood, indeed, counted upon the unfortunate democratic weakness which afflicts not only Israel but the US and other countries. The political unacceptability of too many body bags.
The US could not accept the number of bags coming home from Vietnam. This lesson was not lost upon others.
It was not lost on countries and pretenders such as Hamas who seek to wage a war of political will against a democratic adversary. Hamas bet its collective butt on the proposition that the IDF would both kill civilians and end the operation before it became or could become conclusive.
Right now, Amnesty International, whether its leadership knows it or not, is willing to acknowledge it or not, is acting according to the Hamas authored script. It is a propaganda arm of an admitted terrorist organisation pretending to the role but not the responsibilities of a legitimate government: Hamas.
What the IDF did with its report was self-justification. What Hamas did to provoke the necessity of the report was frankly criminal. What Amnesty International and others of the High Minded and Lofty Thinking sort are doing is not criminal, but it is facilitating the success of criminals.
It is regrettable that Amnesty International lacks the intelligence necessary to assure that its sentiments are not perverted by a gang of True Believing thugs.
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