Amnesty International's Redefinitions

Last week Alan Dershowitz took on Human Rights Watch and its looking the other way at Hizbullah's use of human shields. This week he attacks Amnesty International's redefinition of "war crimes" and its accusations against Israel.

For Amnesty, "Israeli war crimes" are synonymous with "any military action whatsoever."

The real problem with Amnesty's paper is that its blanket condemnations do not consider the consequences of its arguments. (It doesn't have to; it would never advance these arguments against any country but Israel.)

Amnesty International's conclusions are not based on sound legal arguments. They're certainly not based on compelling moral arguments. They're simply anti-Israel arguments. Amnesty reached a predetermined conclusion - that Israel committed war crimes - and it is marshalling whatever sound-bites it could to support that conclusion.