American Thinker- Print Article

Last summer's Israeli-Hezb'allah war featured the Iranian backed terrorists deliberately launching rockets at civilian targets, hoping to kill as many innocents as possible. The Israelis on the other hand, carried out a massive but carefully targeted bombing campaign on an enemy who was deliberately using civilians as human shields.

Guess who the group Human Rights Watch finds at fault?

In its harshest condemnation of Israel since the Second Lebanon War, Human Rights Watch charged that most of the Lebanese civilian casualties came from indiscriminate Israeli air strikes, according to a report to released Thursday.

Presenting the group's findings at a news conference, Human Rights Watch executive director Kenneth Roth said there were only rare cases of Hezbollah operating in civilian villages.

"To the contrary, once the war started, most Hezbollah military officials and even many political officials left the villages," he said. And indeed what we found is that most Hezbollah military activity was conducted from prepared positions outside Lebanese villages in the hills and valleys around."

Israel has said that it attacked civilian areas because Hezbollah set up rocket launchers in villages and towns. More than 1,000 Lebanese were killed in the 34-day conflict last summer, which began after Hezbollah staged a cross-border raid, killing three Israel Defense Forces soldiers and capturing two others, Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev. They are still being held.

The rights group attempted to hold a press conference in Beirut last month but cancelled it due to expected Hezb'allah street demonstrations protesting their findings that the terrorist group fired rockets indiscriminately into Israeli villages.

No intimidation there.

Incredibly, the HRW blamed the IDF for attacking anyone in Lebanon:

The group said simple movement of vehicles or people, such as attempting to buy bread or moving around private homes, could trigger a deadly Israeli attack. The group charged that Israeli aircraft targeted vehicles carrying fleeing civilians.

Roth said that Hezbollah guerrillas did not wear uniforms, making it hard to pick them out from civilians, but that did not justify the Israeli military's failure to distinguish between them. He said the laws of war dictate if in doubt to treat the person as a civilian.

Let me get this straight: You're not supposed to attack civilians, only the enemy, even if the enemy is dressed up to look like civilians, in which case you can't attack them.

Huh?

Did Human Rights watch not see the videos or read all those reports regarding rockets being launched from the homes inside the villages? Did HRW not read the reports of civilians being used as shield by Hezbollah?

The HRW faults Israel for being unable to identify a terrorist when he is dressed in civilian clothes and wrote that , when in doubt Israel had to consider that person as a civilian-which is advocacy for the tactic of terrorism.

The HRW condemns more harshly Israel because more Lebanese civilians died than Israeli civilians. Israel protected its civilians by shelters and by moving them away from the fields of battle, while Hezbollah LAUNCHED its terror strikes from civilian areas, did not provide shelters for Lebanese civilians, and deliberately used them as shields.

This makes Israel more at fault than Hezbollah...welcome to the Orwellian or might I say Soros-ian world of Human Rights Watch since George Soros is a major funder of Human Rights Watch.

'Human Rights Watch' Lowers the Boom on the IDF