The cynical manipulation of a worthy cause has a history.
by Joshua Muravchik, The Weekly Standard
Just three weeks after Hezbollah invaded Israel, kidnapping two Israeli soldiers and causing the deaths of eight others, Human Rights Watch issued a 49-page report about the war that had been ignited by this attack. The title of the report was Fatal Strikes: Israel’s Indiscriminate Attacks Against Civilians in Lebanon. “Our research shows that Israel’s claim that Hezbollah fighters are hiding among civilians does not explain, let alone justify, Israel’s indiscriminate warfare,” declared Kenneth Roth, executive director of the New York-based nongovernmental organization. “In some cases, these attacks constitute war crimes,” the group concluded. Then it added the most damning charge of all: “In some instances, Israeli forces appear to have deliberately targeted civilians.”
Human Rights Watch did not claim that its representatives were present when any of these alleged crimes occurred. Rather, the report explained that its information was gleaned from interviewing “eye-witnesses and survivors” of Israeli strikes who “told Human Rights Watch that neither Hezbollah fighters nor other legitimate military targets were in the area that the IDF attacked.” To reinforce its interpretation, the report added that when Human Rights Watch investigators arrived at the various scenes, they did not see “any signs of military activity in the area[s] attacked, such as trenches, destroyed rocket launchers, other military equipment, or dead or wounded fighters.”
There was of course no dependable method by which Human Rights Watch could assess the veracity of what it was told by the “witnesses.” Indeed, there was no means by which it could be sure that they were not Hezbollah cadres, since members of the group do not ordinarily wear uniforms or display identity badges. As for the absence of physical signs of Hezbollah’s presence at bomb sites, the report seemed to assume that the group would have left in place damaged weapons and fallen and injured comrades during the hours, or more likely days, that passed before HRW’s investigators arrived at each site. For the especially grave accusation that civilian deaths were inflicted “deliberately,” no evidence was offered. Civilians were hit, of course, and individuals claiming to be witnesses denied Hezbollah had been in the area.
