Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International

Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International: Following a long-standing pattern, these NGO superpowers issued similar statements in response to the election of Hamas. In a press release on 31st January, Amnesty said that "the campaign of suicide bombings and deliberate attacks against Israeli civilians by Hamas and other armed groups constitutes crimes against humanity;" and a HRW release on January 30th stated that " attacks that intentionally kill and maim civilians are among the very worst kinds of crimes – war crimes and crimes against humanity."

While the belated inclusion of terrorism as a violation of human rights is a promising development, these NGOs continue to draw amoral equivalence between terrorism and its defense or feel the need to "balance" criticism of Palestinians with that of Israel. Amnesty referred to the "spiral of violence" and HRW closely followed its reports on Palestinian terrorism with a critical release on impunity in the IDF.

 

 

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