Amnesty International report on Gaza offensive

A new report by Amnesty International on the Gaza offsensive has been released. It details war crimes committed by the Israeli military.
The report found that “much of the destruction was wanton and resulted from direct attacks on civilian objects as well as indiscriminate attacks that failed to distinguish between legitimate military targets and civilian objects.”

Amnesty’s investigation also managed to produce no evidence to support repeated claims from the Israeli military that the Hamas government was using civilians as human shields during the war. On the other hand they did cite an instance in which Israeli troops forced multiple families of civilians, including children, to remain in a house they turned into a sniper nest, “effectively using the families, both adults and children, as human shields and putting them at risk.”

Using civilians to shield a military target from attack is internationally recognized as a war crime, and is just one of many claims of war crimes committed by the invading forces, as detailed in this report and past ones. Yesterday Human Rights Watch also issued a report accusing Israel of war crimes over its use of drones to indiscriminately target civilians. The Israeli military publicly condemned the Human Rights Watch report, but has yet to comment on the much longer, more detailed Amnesty report.

However, the report also documented war crimes by Hamas and other Palestinian factions: "The report shows that Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups fired hundreds of rockets into southern Israel, killing three Israeli civilians, injuring scores and driving thousands from their homes. "Such unlawful attacks constitute war crimes and are unacceptable," Amnesty said.

Those findings confirm previous ones by many reports issued by other humanitarian organizations.