AMNESTY'S 2004 ANNUAL REPORT: ALL POLITICS, NO CREDIBILITY
www.ngo-monitor.org
Summary analysis: May 25, 2005

Amnesty International's Annual Report for 2004
www.amnesty.org , released on May 25 2005, provide
further illustrations of the three fundamental failures in this NGO's
activities:

1) The absence of credibility in its research and allegations
regarding Israel and the Palestinian Authority;
2) The use of terms such as "war crimes" and "violation of
international law" in an arbitrary and inconsistent manner;
3) The pervasive impact of ideological and political agendas that
favor closed anti-democratic regimes over democracies, and replace
universal human rights norms.

These failures have been documented by NGO Monitor in reports on previous
Amnesty International publications and campaigns
www.ngo-monitor.org/archives/infofile.htm#amnesty,
and are continued in the current report. At the same time, the current
report devotes somewhat greater attention to the systematic Palestinian
violations of human rights, and is a step towards correcting the unbalanced
and excessive emphasis on allegations against Israel

Examination of the sections on Israel and the Palestinian Authority
reiterate the unverified and unverifiable claims of "Palestinian
eye-witnesses", without an independent research capability or effort. The
section on Israel is largely a compilation of Amnesty's previous campaigns,
"alerts", and other activities, which as shown in
www.ngo-monitor.org, lack credibility. For
example, this report simply repeats Palestinian claims that during 2004,
Israeli forces were responsible for the deaths of 700 civilians. This
highly contentious allegation requires careful documentation to distinguish
between combatants and others, and this is far beyond the minimal resources
that Amnesty devotes to fact-checking and research in the Israeli-Arab
conflict zone.

The claims regarding the number of Palestinian children killed in the
conflict highlights the internal contradictions within Amnesty's
report. Beyond the lack of verification of various claims, the section on
the Palestinian Authority acknowledges that Palestinian "armed groups" use
children to attack Israel. However, the chapter on Israel in which this
claim is presented ignores evidence that many of the
www.allheadlinenews.com/articles/2233897244 Palestinian children
were sent to carry explosives for use in terror attacks. As a result of
this contradiction, the allegations of Israeli violations of human rights
on this issue are invalid.

The absence of credibility in this report is further illustrated by
Amnesty's repetition of the Palestinian version of Hamas leader Ahmed
Yassin as www.amnesty.org.uk/deliver/document/15263.html "paralysed
and wheelchair-bound". The fact that before he was killed by Israel, he
was the leader of Hamas, and was directly responsible for planning the
deaths of hundreds of Israeli civilians, is sanitized from Amnesty's
reports.
Similarly, Amnesty fails to provide systematic evidence for the familiar
claims of Palestinian victimization, such as the absence of "education and
medical facilities and other crucial services", as well as "high
unemployment and poverty among the Palestinian population." Terror,
rampant corruption as documented by the World Bank, as well as other casual
factors are ignored in this report.

In the place of credible and verifiable reporting on real human rights
issues, Amnesty's annual report highlights the abuse of terms such as "war
crimes", "violations of international law", "excessive use of force", and
"crimes against humanity". In the absence of clear and consistent criteria
by which to measure and apply such terminology, it loses all normative and
legal significance. As result, there is no basis for Amnesty's charge that
the IDF killed many Palestinians "in deliberate as well as reckless
shooting, shelling and bombardment of densely populated residential areas
or as a result of excessive use of force."

At the same time, the expanded analysis of the human rights abuses by the
Palestinian Authority and "armed groups" is a welcome step towards
correcting this unbalanced agenda. This section is significantly more
substantive than in previous years, although it still reflects the relative
lack of resources devoted to analyzing and reporting on Palestinian abuses,
in comparison to Israel.

The disproportionate and excessive condemnations of Israel, particularly
given the absence of credible research, demonstrates that Amnesty's
dominant political and ideological framework has not been reversed. The
section of the 2004 annual report on Israel continues to focus on highly
complex questions such as borders, "occupation", etc. without background or
context, including ongoing warfare and terrorism. Amnesty critique of
"stringent restrictions on the movements of Palestinians in the Occupied
Territories" is a clear reflection of this dominant political agenda, which
merely annexes human rights norms.

The report also erases the distinction between open democratic societies
under attack, and "fear regimes" (including terrorist groups) that use
violence to pursue their goals. Such distortions demonstrate the
exploitation of human rights rhetoric and claims in the service of narrow
political objectives.

AI wrote that Palestinian "armed groups" killed 67 Israelis including eight
children, and 42 soldiers. Most of the civilians were killed in suicide
bombings.

Regarding the Palestinian Authority, AI wrote that the internal security
situation had significantly deteriorated because of power struggles and
disagreements within the PA and between the PA and other factions.

These disagreements resulted in frequent armed clashes, attacks on
individuals and property and abductions. Palestinian armed groups killed 18
"collaborators," and continued to carry out attacks against Israelis in the
West Bank and Gaza and inside Israel.