And so, it finally happened. The “esteemed” Human Rights Watch has finally declared Hamas’s actions during Operation Cast Lead as war crimes. The question is, why has it taken them four months to come to the same conclusion that I, a mere citizen was able to come to five months ago.
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I am not singing my own praises. I simply turned to the facts. An Israeli town (actually, it was, and still is somewhat, an entire region) was under fire, for eight years. Hamas was attacking civilians for eight years. That should have been recognized as a war crime when it started. We’re talking about endless cases of PTSDs among both children and adults, tons of people who have gone into shock, property and infrastructure damage, and of course, not to mention casualties. For what? Living to close to the border?!
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What irked me even more about this ‘declaration’ is that while HRW did (finally) condemn Hamas for shooting rockets at Israeli civilians, no where does it say that they condemned Hamas for war crimes against their own people, the Palestinians:
    “Deliberately using civilians to deter attacks on military targets amounts to ‘human shielding’ which is a war crime. Human Rights Watch either could not determine or the evidence did not indicate that militants launched rockets from areas close to civilians with the intention of deterring Israeli forces from counterattacking.”
 Hamas blatantly used Palestinians as human shields during this operation, a tactic they have used repeatedly during other military operations as well. Hiding rockets in schools, mosques, residential neighborhoods, as well as threatening uninvolved families and preventing them to leave to a safe haven. HRW just couldn’t prove it.Â
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I guess they do what they’re good at- watch as peoples’ human rights are taken away. At least they’re aptly named.
