AI

AI stands for "Amnesty International."

AI also stands for "anti-Israel."

From The Financial Times:

Amnesty International says attacks on civilian targets by Israeli military forces during the recently ended fighting in Lebanon look like deliberate war crimes.

In a report released on Wednesday, the London-based human rights organisation argues that the destruction of Lebanese homes and basic infrastructure “was an integral part of the military strategy”.

Noting violations by both sides, Amnesty says it has asked the United Nations to open a “comprehensive, independent and impartial inquiry” about the 34-day war between Israel and the Lebanese-based Hizbollah militia.

The losses inflicted by Israeli forces were not just “collateral damage” under the accepted rules of war, according to Amnesty.

More than 7,000 air force attacks and 2,500 naval bombardments “particularly concentrated on civilian areas”, the report says. Israeli officials, while acknowledging Lebanese civilian losses, have placed the blame on Hizbollah for allegedly hiding weapons among the population.

The majority of the 1,183 Lebanese fatalities were non-combatants, and around a third were reportedly children. Israel lost 118 soldiers, but also 43 civilians, with Hizbollah firing rockets across the border daily throughout the war. Another 970,000 Lebanese were displaced by the war, relief workers say.

While Israel has started investigations into some of the possible violations by its forces, the Lebanese government is yet to look into actions by Hizbollah that also break international humanitarian law, the Amnesty report says.

Along with destroying thousands of homes in mainly Shia Muslim parts of the country, the Israeli military destroyed some 80 bridges around the country. Amnesty also criticised attacks on fuel and water storage sites with no obvious military value.

The head of the research team that prepared the report, Donatella Rovera, says the main difference between Israel’s and Hizbollah’s violations is the “issue of scale”.

Every bombardment by Hizbollah against Israel was indisriminate and therefore unlawful, Ms Rovera said, regardless of the technological limitations of the militia’s old-fashioned Katyusha rockets.

But she also countered Israeli claims about “responding to the source of fire,” which is legal. “This doesn’t mean send a hell of a lot of stuff vaguely in that direction,” she said.

Israel has meanwhile maintained a blockade on Lebanon to prevent Hizbollah from re-arming. Commercial flights have partly resumed, but only through Amman, Jordan. Direct flights from anywhere else must stop to be searched in Amman, airline officials said.

Tarrad Hamadeh, a Hizbollah member and Lebanese labour minister, urged airlines and shipping companies to break the blockade.

The cabinet is considering measures for Lebanon “to rid itself of the siege,” he said on al-Manar, the Hizbollah television station, on Tuesday.

Reading this article gave me a headache.

I am so sick of Amnesty International being an apologist for terrorists. The organization's pontificating makes me nauseous.

I have yet to hear AI speak out against Hezbollah's practice of using schools, mosques, and hospitals as bases to store and launch their weapons.

Where is the condemnation for Hezbollah?

AI is calling on the terrorist-appeasing, anti-Semitic, incompetent, corrupt UN to investigate Israel's "war crimes."

There probably wouldn't have been any war if Lebanon had fulfilled its promises made under Security Council resolution 1559 and removed Hezbollah forces from southern Lebanon.

Lebanon gave Hezbollah, TERRORISTS, safe harbor. The Lebanese failed to comply with the terms of the UN resolution. That failure had consequences.

Now, AI believes that the UN should condemn Israel because Lebanon was in violation of that 2004 resolution.

That's nuts.


The fact is too many Lebanese support Hezbollah and are complicit in its reign of terror.

And the casualty figures, the civilian numbers, are a joke.

Talk about the fog of war!

Hezbollah and its sympathizers don't wear uniforms. They aren't readily identifiable. Hezbollah is not a military in the traditional sense, even though it's funded by sovereign nations and given haven by Lebanon. It's a citizen TERRORIST militia.

Obviously, children are non-combatants; but in the final analysis, their parents must take responsibility for allowing their children to have targets on their backs.

If the parents didn't know that they were being used as pawns, that's even more reason for there to be international condemnation of Hezbollah.

If children were in a home where Hezbollah placed rockets, then Hezbollah bears responsibility for the despicable tactic of exploiting them as human shields and then using their lifeless little bodies as props in their propaganda war.

I used to think that Amnesty International had some credibility, that its work was noble. No longer.

It's not a human rights group. It's a biased pack of Lefties pushing an anti-Israeli, anti-American agenda.