Many years ago, Human Rights Watch, under the malign guidance of the obsessively anti-Israel Kenneth Roth — now enjoying his fellowship at Princeton after a year at Harvard’s Kennedy School — earned the reputation of being the NGO that is most implacably hostile to the Jewish state. And it has retained that title ever since. It devotes more attention to “human rights abuses” in Israel than it does to Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, and Venezuela combined. Now HRW has again outdone itself. It has just accused the IDF of “gunning down Palestinian children.” More on this accusation can be found here: “Human Rights Watch Accuses Israel of ‘Gunning Down Palestinian Children,’” by Andrew Bernard, Algemeiner, August 28, 2023:
“Human Rights Watch (HRW) on Monday [August 26] released a new report accusing the Israeli military of “gunning down Palestinian children,” despite three of the four cases examined by the group involving teenagers who launched Molotov cocktails, rocks, or fireworks at the security services.
Thousands of Israelis have been killed by Palestinian terrorists since 1948. Thousands of Palestinians have been killed by IDF soldiers in a half-dozen campaigns in Gaza and the West Bank, against both terror groups (chiefly Hamas and PIJ) and individual terrorists. Yet HRW is now accusing Israel of the deliberate killing — “gunning down” — of Palestinian children on the basis of exactly four cases. Four? Why, the Palestinians have gunned down so far this year ten Israelis who were aged 20 or younger: Maia (20) and Rina (15) Dee, Hillel (20) and Yagel (19) Yaniv, Harel Masood (21), Elisha Anteman (17), and Shmuel Mordoff (17), Shlomo Liderman (20), Yaakov Yisrael Paley (6), Asher Menahem Paley (8). None of these Israelis were endangering the lives of Palestinians, the way at least three of the four “Palestinian children” mentioned by HRW had been doing to Israeli soldiers and police just before being shot.
Couldn’t HRW’s investigators find more than four examples of what they claims is a deliberate Israeli policy of “gunning down Palestinian children? Apparently not.
“Palestinian children live a reality of apartheid and structural violence, where they could be gunned down at any time without any serious prospect of accountability,” HRW’s Bill Van Esveld was quoted as saying in the report. “Israel’s allies should confront this ugly reality and create real pressure for accountability.”
Palestinian children do not live an “apartheid” existence. In Gaza, there is not a single Israeli to impose, or engage in, “apartheid.” The deep misery in Gaza is a result of nearly two decades of Hamas’ despotic rule, its massive corruption — with just two Hamas leaders, Khaled Meshaal and Mousa abu Marzouk, managing to amass fortunes of $2.5 billion apiece, money stolen from the foreign aid meant for all the people of Gaza; another 600 “Hamas millionaires” — people just below the top rank of Hamas officials — live in lavish splendor in villas. In Judea and Samaria, the Palestinians in Area A run their lives entirely without any interference from Israel; in Area B, Israel is responsible only for security matters; it is only in Area C, where all of Israeli settlements in Judea and Samaria are located, that — for security reasons — Palestinians are officially prevented from building (though many do so illegally).
As for the State of Israel, no matter how often the HRW throws out the charge of “apartheid,” there is none in the Jewish state. Arabs serve on Israel’s Supreme Court, sit in the Knesset, go abroad as ambassadors. The chairman of Israel’s largest bank, Bank Leumi, is an Arab. Jews and Arabs work in the same offices and factories, attend the same universities, play on the same sports team and in the same orchestras. They are treated in the same hospitals by both Jewish and Arab medical personnel. They go into business together — everything from restaurants to high tech start ups. Arabs and Jews in Israel differ only in one way: Jews must, while Arabs may, serve in the military.
HRW examined four cases of boys who were shot and killed by Israeli security forces from November 2022 to March 2023. In three of those cases, the boys, all aged 15-17, were shot after attacking Israeli soldiers and police. The fourth, Mahmoud al-Sadi, 17, was killed down the road from the scene of a gun battle between Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which is widely designated as a terrorist organization, and the Israel Defense Forces, as he was walking home from school.
The International Legal Forum (ILF), a global network of pro-Israel lawyers, on Monday condemned HRW’s report as “just the latest and most obscene display yet in their unvarnished anti-Israel bias.”
Contrary to HRW’s malicious lies and gross distortions of truth and law, Israeli security forces only target Palestinian terrorists,” ILF CEO Arsen Ostrovsky said in a statement. “If HRW truly cared about the welfare of Palestinian children, it would call out Palestinian terror groups for using Palestinian children as human shields, while the Palestinian Authority continues to create a systematic infrastructure of incitement and glorification of violence.”
The HRW report describes 2022 and 2023 as the deadliest years for Palestinian children in the West Bank since 2004 but doesn’t mention the role of Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and other terrorist groups in recruiting children as fighters or combat spotters. Nor does it mention the role of the Palestinian Authority (PA) in inciting violence.
This year, some 65,000 children have attended PA summer camps where kids aged 13-17 are taught that terrorist “martyrs” are role models and that Israel has no right to exist in any borders because there is only “Palestine.”…
These “innocent children” are schooled in hatred, beginning with the children’s shows on Palestinian children where tiny tots are shown making stabbing motions with their little knives as they lisp their desire to “kill Jews.” Their schoolbooks are full of antisemitic passages. The walls of their schools are plastered with pictures of dead terrorists — “martyrs” — whom these children are encouraged to emulate. And in their summer camps, they learn more hatred of Israel, which they are taught has no right to exist. Is it any wonder that some Palestinian “children,” in their mid-to-late teens, end up engaged in battle alongside adults their fighting against the IDF, by hurling rocks, Molotov cocktails, and fireworks? The IDF soldiers, of course, cannot stop to ask the ages of everyone they are fighting; their task is to neutralize those who are trying to kill them.
Three of the four Palestinian “children” (in their mid-to-late teens) whom HRW claims prove that Israel is “gunning down Palestinian children” were shot while they were hurling rocks and Molotov cocktails.
All three Palestinian “children” had been throwing rocks and Molotov cocktails at Israeli soldiers. They were not innocent children, but in their mid-to-late teens, and dead set on causing grievous bodily harm to Israeli soldiers and police. A rock to the head can kill; a Molotov cocktail can set someone on fire.
The fourth Palestinian teenager who was killed, Mahmoud al-Sadi, 17, according to HRW was standing at the side of the road outside the Jenin camp, while a gun battle was going on between the IDF, conducting arrest raids in the camp, and terrorists deeper inside the camp. A single witness claims that Al-Sadi was not holding a weapon. That may be, or such a weapon may have been removed after he was shot. But in any case, he was near enough to the gunfire to have been taken for a terrorist. He was shot by a soldier who was 100 meters away.
HRW fails to inform readers of its report that the IDF scrupulously investigates the circumstances of every Palestinian death that is caused by its forces. It will not hesitate to prosecute any soldier failing to observe the rules of engagement, just as it has always done. Since December 2021, the IDF adopted new rules of engagement. Its soldiers are allowed to shoot at Palestinians who are fleeing if they had just been throwing stones or Molotov cocktails. But that “shooting” was not indended to kill, as HRW well knows. The IDF soldiers try to aim at the legs of those who are running away, after having just tried to kill them with rocks and Molotov cocktails. In the fog of war, not every bullet hits its intended target. Some of those running may have been leaning over in such a way that a soldier aiming for their legs instead could hit them in the upper body. But that is a far cry from the deliberate “gunning down of Palestinian children.”
What is particularly maddening about this charge is that what the HMW wrongly accuses Israel of doing is what the Palestinians have been doing all along. It is the Palestinian terrorists who murdered 22 Israeli teenagers at Ma’alot, blew up 15 people, of whom seven were children, at the Sbarro pizzeria, murdered 38 Israelis, of whom 15 were children, kidnapped and killed three yeshiva students who were hitchhiking, smashed in the head of a two-year-old against a rock, and committed countless other such atrocities, with hundreds of Israeli children among their victims, none of whom HRW has ever written a syllable about.
If the Israelis are such wanton killers of Palestinian children, as HRW claims (while managing to adduce only four examples), why is it that Israeli hospitals have so many Palestinian and other Arab children routinely being treated, often at no charge, by Israeli doctors and nurses? Apparently their parents are not convinced that the Israelis are diabolical child-killers. It is the Palestinian terror groups that hide weapons in, and launch rockets from, civilian structures — apartment buildings, hospitals, and schools — using civilians, including children, as human shields. The IDF makes enormous efforts to spare the lives of civilians, including children, when it targets a building in Gaza, by warning its inhabitants in advance to leave, using every means — telephoning, emailing, leafleting, and the “knock-on-the-roof” technique — which is why Palestinian civilian casualties are so low. And it is the IDF’s extreme solicitousness about minimizing Palestinian civilian casualties which led British Colonel Richard Kemp to describe the IDF as “the most moral army in the world.” But HRW says the Israelis are “gunning down Palestinian children.” Who do you think is telling the truth?