Editorial: Maybe they'll listen to these guys

wo remarkable things happened this week. Two men whose credentials cannot possibly be impeached by the lunatic left stepped forward in defense of Israel and its principled conduct of the war in Gaza.

A former commander of British forces in Afghanistan, Col. Richard Kemp, told a special session of the United Nation’s  Human Rights Council that the Israeli military “did more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone than any other army in the history of warfare.”

Since its recent inception the Human Rights Council has ignored myriad human rights crises around the globe, instead busily criticizing Israel.

“Hamas, like Hizballah, are expert at driving the media agenda,” Kemp said. “Both will always have people ready to give interviews condemning Israeli forces for war crimes. They are adept at staging and distorting incidents.”

“It is the automatic, Pavlovian presumption by many in the international media, and international human rights groups, that the IDF are in the wrong, that they are abusing human rights.”

“The truth is that the IDF took extraordinary measures to give Gaza civilians notice of targeted areas, dropping over 2 million leaflets, and making over 100,000 phone calls. Many missions that could have taken out Hamas military capability were aborted to prevent civilian casualties. During the conflict, the IDF allowed huge amounts of humanitarian aid into Gaza. To deliver aid virtually into your enemy's hands is, to the military tactician, normally quite unthinkable. But the IDF took on those risks.”

“Despite all of this, of course innocent civilians were killed. War is chaos and full of mistakes,” Kemp said. “But mistakes are not war crimes.”

Israel’s defenders have been making similar statements for many months, but perhaps someone of Kemp’s stature will be impossible to ignore.

For Human Rights Watch, Robert L. Bernstein should be impossible to ignore. He co-founded the group and was its chair for 20 years until 1998.

In a New York Times Op-Ed Bernstein wrote that his former colleagues have “lost critical perspective on a conflict in which Israel has been repeatedly attacked by Hamas and Hezbollah, organizations that go after Israeli citizens and use their own people as human shields.”

The original mission of HRW, Bernstein said, was “to pry open closed societies, advocate basic freedoms and support dissenters. But recently it has been issuing reports on the Israeli-Arab conflict that are helping those who wish to turn Israel into a pariah state.”

The organization “casts aside its important distinction between open and closed societies,” issuing “far more condemnations of Israel for violations of international law than of any other country in the region.”

Israel, population 7.4 million, “is home to at least 80 human rights organizations, a vibrant free press, a democratically-elected government [and] a judiciary that frequently rules against the government,” the former human rights watcher pointed out.

His successors “know that Hamas [chose] to wage war from densely populated areas ... yet Israel, the repeated victim of aggression, faces the brunt of [the] criticism,” Bernstein said.

Do you suppose anyone is listening?

Two remarkable things happened this week. Two men whose credentials cannot possibly be impeached by the lunatic left stepped forward in defense of Israel and its principled conduct of the war in Gaza.

A former commander of British forces in Afghanistan, Col. Richard Kemp, told a special session of the United Nation’s  Human Rights Council that the Israeli military “did more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone than any other army in the history of warfare.”

Since its recent inception the Human Rights Council has ignored myriad human rights crises around the globe, instead busily criticizing Israel.

“Hamas, like Hizballah, are expert at driving the media agenda,” Kemp said. “Both will always have people ready to give interviews condemning Israeli forces for war crimes. They are adept at staging and distorting incidents.”

“It is the automatic, Pavlovian presumption by many in the international media, and international human rights groups, that the IDF are in the wrong, that they are abusing human rights.”

“The truth is that the IDF took extraordinary measures to give Gaza civilians notice of targeted areas, dropping over 2 million leaflets, and making over 100,000 phone calls. Many missions that could have taken out Hamas military capability were aborted to prevent civilian casualties. During the conflict, the IDF allowed huge amounts of humanitarian aid into Gaza. To deliver aid virtually into your enemy's hands is, to the military tactician, normally quite unthinkable. But the IDF took on those risks.”

“Despite all of this, of course innocent civilians were killed. War is chaos and full of mistakes,” Kemp said. “But mistakes are not war crimes.”

Israel’s defenders have been making similar statements for many months, but perhaps someone of Kemp’s stature will be impossible to ignore.

For Human Rights Watch, Robert L. Bernstein should be impossible to ignore. He co-founded the group and was its chair for 20 years until 1998.

In a New York Times Op-Ed Bernstein wrote that his former colleagues have “lost critical perspective on a conflict in which Israel has been repeatedly attacked by Hamas and Hezbollah, organizations that go after Israeli citizens and use their own people as human shields.”

The original mission of HRW, Bernstein said, was “to pry open closed societies, advocate basic freedoms and support dissenters. But recently it has been issuing reports on the Israeli-Arab conflict that are helping those who wish to turn Israel into a pariah state.”

The organization “casts aside its important distinction between open and closed societies,” issuing “far more condemnations of Israel for violations of international law than of any other country in the region.”

Israel, population 7.4 million, “is home to at least 80 human rights organizations, a vibrant free press, a democratically-elected government [and] a judiciary that frequently rules against the government,” the former human rights watcher pointed out.

His successors “know that Hamas [chose] to wage war from densely populated areas ... yet Israel, the repeated victim of aggression, faces the brunt of [the] criticism,” Bernstein said.

Do you suppose anyone is listening?