It took three weeks, but Amnesty International has finally issued a condemnation of Hezbollah. You may remember that they already have accused Isreal of committing war crimes for ‘disproportionate response’ in harming civilian infrastructure in Lebanon.

Amnesty International’s briefing includes evidence of:

Hizbullah’s firing of some 900 inherently inaccurate Katyusha rockets into urban areas in northern Israel in clear violation of the principle of distinction between civilian and military targets under international law;

Hizbullah’s use of modified Katyusha rockets packed with metal ball bearings, designed to inflict maximum death and injury, with one such rocket killing eight railway workers;

Statements from Hasan Nasrallah and other senior Hizbullah leaders that the group intended to target civilians as a form of reprisal, violating the prohibition on direct attacks on civilians as well as the prohibition on reprisals against the civilian population;

The flight of civilians from northern Israel and the existence of shelters preventing a higher death toll than the 43 civilian fatalities recorded.

I didn’t think it would actually ever happen, but I applaud Amnesty for at least acknowledging the fact that the conflict had two sides. Don’t know why there was such a delay between the two “reports”, and I’m sure this will not receive as much press attention as the first, but at least they did not ignore Hezbollah altogether.

None of it really matters, to be sure, because AI is really just pushing to have a UN investigation, blah-blah- blah. But at least they are not blind to Israel.

Update: I was so shocked that Amnesty actually issued something like this, that I didn’t fully collect my thoughts before publishing my first post. A couple of updates:

  • I guess the question of media coverage is at least partially answered: the story does not even appear on the front page of Google! News (gosh, how I hate it!)
  • The use of rockets against the population in Israel is covered, but there’s no mention of using the civilian population in Lebanon as cover for the staging grounds of their attacks and the storage of their weapons. They did this with full knowledge that they were baiting Israel into causing deaths of innocents when they attempted to eliminate the threat.
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