Following the resumption of rocket attacks from Gaza and the Israeli military response beginning December 27, human rights and humanitarian NGOs have issued dozens of statements.

  • Many reflect bias and double standards, which ignore or give little attention to Israeli human rights and casualties, and do not mention Hamas´ use of human shields.
  • Oxfam charges that “Israeli leaders . . . commit massive and disproportionate violence against Gazan civilians in violation of international law,” and repeat the standard claim of “humanitarian catastrophe if Gaza is attacked.”
  • Gisha and others exploit legal terminology, including terms such as “war crimes,” “collective punishment,” “indiscriminate attacks,” and parrot the PLO “legal” opinion of 2005 , which claims that Israel still “occupies” Gaza, and is solely responsible for the welfare of the residents there.
  • Many NGOs use the fighting in Gaza to repeat calls for boycotts and sanctions as part of the Durban strategy. Miftah and Ittijah make claims of an Israeli “massacre,” invoking the successful strategy used in 2002 in Jenin.
  • Many NGOs including Amnesty, PHR-I and PCHR, make unsupported factual claims, particularly on Palestinian casualty numbers.  Amnesty (and others´) claim that “civilians in Gaza are in increasingly dire need of food” is not supported by IDF reports that “the World Food Program …will not be resuming shipment of food commodities in to Gaza due to the fact that their warehouses are at full capacity.”

For NGO Monitor´s extensive coverage of the Gaza conflict, see “EU and NIF-funded NGOs Lead Condemnations in Gaza Conflict