02/11/2023
Is Israel using illegal white phosphorus?
Since the October 7 massacre of Israeli civilians and rocket bombardment by Hamas terrorists, Israel has received international backlash for its response. Among the voices of criticism are those claiming that Israel is using “illegal white phosphorus bombs”, which magnifies the risk to civilians.
This claim has been quoted and re-quoted by news outlets and social media users around the world, but is it true? And does the truth even matter to the world?
The source of this accusation derives from a Human Rights Watch(HRW) article claiming that Israel is using white phosphorus in Gaza and Lebanon. HRW’s hardcore journalistic evidence is “videos taken in Lebanon and Gaza” and that they “interviewed two people who described an attack in Gaza.” According to HRW, the use of white phosphorus “violates the international humanitarian law.” Media sources like Reuters, Al Jazeera, and Time Magazine have quoted HRw and based their publications on HRW’s claim of Israel’s alleged use of the munitions.
The IDF has completely denied the HRW allegations and responded by saying: “the current accusation… regarding the use of white phosphorus in Gaza is unequivocally false.”
“The news tells us less about Israel than about the people writing the news,” wrote a former AP correspondent. Reports by organizations like Human Rights Watch in conflict zones like Israel often misreport without independent verification of the accuracy of their claims. HRW doesn’t have a local presence in Israel and thus relies on claims from local NGOs to pass on to the media without verifying these claims. Many NGOs in Gaza, for example, are tied to Hamas and other terrorists groups, and therefore when HRW reports their claims, they are essentially publishing claims from terrorists as facts.
The latest false reporting by the media in regards to the war in Israel was on October 17, when a hospital in Gaza was bombed. Hamas claimed that Israel had intentionally bombed the Ahli Arab hospital, killing hundreds of Gaza citizens - and the media ran to print and report. It took several hours to get the facts straightened out, but all the major media outlets - The NY Times, Reuters, and more - had to swallow their words when the truth came out that it was not Israel, but a misfired rocket by the Islamic Jihad that unfortunately bombed its own people in the hospital’s *parking lot*. The Hamas-run health ministry refuses to release information about the “hundreds of victims” supposedly killed in the blast and all traces of the munition has suspiciously disappeared, making it impossible to investigate.
When the media and its blinded followers rely on the reporting of terrorist organizations to supply their facts, misinformation and hate begin to spread.
Human Rights Watch is no better. Israel’s Minister of Strategic Affairs called HRW an “ongoing, political and obsessive campaign against Israel” while the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has said that HRW has “a long-standing anti-Israel agenda, actively seeking for years to promote boycotts against Israel.” HRW funding has been criticized for using its anti-Israel bias to solicit funds from members of Saudi Arabia, a totalitarian regime that supports the juvenile death penalty, discrimination against religious minorities and oppression of women’s rights. On HRW’s website, funding is not fully transparent and does not provide a complete list of organizations.
Omar Shakir, the Israel and Palestine Director at HRW, is an anti-Israel, BDS advocate whose visa to Israel was not renewed due to Shakir’s BDS ties. This falls in line with HRW’s tendency to hire biased, non-objective, anti-Israel employees.
A Washington Post blog describes HRW as “an anti-Israel group masquerading as one devoted to human rights.”
(While I do not consider Wikipedia a valid research tool, they do have a dedicated page to “Criticism of Human Rights Watch” which includes the organization’s attempts at misrepresentation, biases, and misinformation.)
In addition, according to international law, white phosphorus is NOT banned as a chemical weapon and can be legally used on the battlefield to mark targets, burn bunkers and generate smokescreens. If Israel chooses to use this munition as a part of its strategy to protect its country and civilians, it would be within its rights.
The media, while among the loudest voices against the spread of misinformation and fake news, is also the greatest culprit of spreading lies.
(Links to sources in first comment.)
#غزه
