During Israels 2008-2009 war on Gaza, the Bush administration and a large bipartisan majority of Congress tried to excuse Israels killing of close to 800 civilians on the grounds that Hamas was using human shields, defined in international humanitarian law as deliberately placing civilians in the line of fire against their will. Detailed investigations by the Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the UN Human Rights Council, and the National Lawyers Guild failed to find a single case of where Hamas actually did so. (These same reports accused Hamas of other war crimes, but not the use of human shields.) I contacted scores of offices of Democratic members of Congress who made this charge and asked them for credible evidence refuting the conclusions of these investigations and backing up their charges. Not one of them replied. In other words, it appears that they lied in order to justify Israeli war crimes and discredit these human rights groups. Once again, you are hearing charges from these same members of Congress accusing Hamas using human shields. Maybe they are telling the truth this time. However, unless they are willing to provide solid empirical evidence to back up these charges, I think we should assume they are lying again.
Posted on: Sat, 26 Jul 2014 15:30:03 +0000
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