However

The thing that fascinates me about the Left’s view of the War against Islamofascism is the way in which the transgressions of Islamic “freedom fighters” are mentioned only in passing. You know, little things like suicide bombings or random rocket attacks that purposely target civilians. Or using civilians as human shields and then cynically whining about the resultant loss of said human shields when the victim responds to an attack.

It seems that allegations of human rights abuses or war crimes are reserved only for the US and Israel. No matter how egregious the violation on the part of Islamic “freedom fighters,” you’ll be hard-pressed to find a Left-leaning source take a strong negative position against them. When a tepid condemnation does occur, there always seems to be a literal or figurative “but” or “however” in the sentence.

Consider the following paragraph, extracted from a “report” on the Israeli-Hezballah war, released today by Amnesty International (AI):

Israeli government spokespeople have insisted that they were targeting Hizbullah positions and support facilities, and that damage to civilian infrastructure was incidental or resulted from Hizbullah using the civilian population as a "human shield". However, the pattern and scope of the attacks, as well as the number of civilian casualties and the amount of damage sustained, makes the justification ring hollow.

Rather than verifying (their job, I thought) whether or not human shields were used, AI chooses to dodge the issue, saying instead that ‘Israeli government spokespeople have insisted” that is the case. The implication of this wording is clear, that the Israeli claim is suspect, even though literally hundreds of independent sources confirm it to be true. Why doesn’t AI directly address the issue of Hezballah human shields. Because that is a war crime and AI doesn’t want to go there. Note also the ”However,” that follows the tepid negative statement about Hezballah. The sentence that follows suggests that Israel' statement about human sheilds “rings hollow.” Yeah, right.

The entire AI report is a classic example of blatant left-leaning bias within an organization that is credited by the MSM with objectivity. I suspect that the report will be presented without critical evaluation by the MSM.

For an excellent fisking of the report, see Snapped Shot..