Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and other prominent human rights groups that frequently launch baseless attacks against Israel have so far declined to condemn Iran’s strike on an Israeli hospital that injured at least 80 people.
The Washington Free Beacon reached out to over a dozen self-proclaimed human rights groups that are some of the loudest and most frequent critics of Israel to ask for comment on Iran’s airstrike on the Soroka Medical Center in southern Israel on Thursday. The bombing destroyed the hospital’s surgical ward and was one of many Iranian airstrikes to hit civilian targets since the conflict between Israel and Iran turned hot earlier this month.
Amnesty International told the Free Beacon that it was “unable to comment at present as our research team is still looking into this incident.” It has not taken the same sort of caution with Israel, continuing to denounce it on social media and accusing the Jewish state of deliberately imposing “genocidal conditions against Palestinians in the occupied Gaza strip.”
When Israel raided Al Shifa Hospital in Gaza—a Hamas command center—Amnesty International described the operation as “a devastating attack on human rights.”
Amnesty International criticized Israel’s military action in Iran earlier this week, saying the “world must not allow Israel to use this military escalation to divert attention away from its ongoing genocide against Palestinians in the occupied Gaza Strip, its illegal occupation of the whole Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) and its system of apartheid against Palestinians.”
Two other human rights groups, Nonviolence International and PAX for Peace, told the Free Beacon they were unable to comment because of staff holidays. Earlier this week, PAX condemned Israel “for this illegal military action” in Iran and submitted a petition to lawmakers calling for a “complete arms embargo against Israel.”
The Canadian Foreign Policy Institute said Israel—not Iran—bears the blame for the attack on its hospital.
“Israel should not put civilian infrastructure near its military installations,” one of the group’s board members said in an emailed statement. “Israel has bombed hospitals dozens of times in Gaza, usually claiming it is targeting Hamas.”
While Iran claimed it was targeting an Israeli military command center, the outpost is located a mile away from the hospital and was not hit in the strike.
Only one group, Churches for Middle East Peace, responded with a statement that condemned Iran for the attack, saying that hospitals “must be protected as safe places where healing can occur without fear of bombardment and war.” Half of the statement also criticized Israel’s actions in Gaza.
Human Rights Watch, the American Friends Service Committee, Adalah, Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN), CODEPINK, the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor, Oxfam International, the International Federation for Human Rights, Just Peace Advocates, and the European Council on Foreign Relations did not respond to requests for comment.
NGO Monitor, a watchdog group that monitors the anti-Israel nonprofit industry, told the Free Beacon that these organizations “have weaponized the moral principles of human rights to demonize the Jewish state.”
“For at least 25 years, the ‘human rights’ industry has embraced a radical anti-Western, anti-Israel agenda,” NGO Monitor president Gerald Steinberg said. “For Amnesty, HRW, and the rest, Palestinians are automatically victims. In parallel, groups [like] Hamas and their allies—particularly the Tehran regime—never commit war crimes.”
“This powerful network, with anti-Semitic U.N. officials, such as special rapporteur Francesca Albanese, erases Israeli victims, including the victims of the Oct. 7 atrocities, and Iran’s missile attacks targeting civilians.”
While these groups have declined to comment on Iran’s hospital bombing, they have been very vocal in condemning Israel for alleged “war crimes,” “aggression,” and its targeted strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities, according to NGO Monitor.
On Friday, Human Rights Watch claimed that “Israeli authorities have starved, killed, and maimed thousands of Palestinian children in Gaza and are responsible for ongoing war crimes, crimes against humanity, and acts of genocide.” The American Friends Service Committee denounced “Israel’s unilateral military attack on Iranian sovereign territory” and called on the U.S. government to “condemn this act of aggression.”
Other left-wing groups reacted to Israel’s operations against Iran in similar ways.
Adalah, an Arab advocacy group, called on the U.S. government to cut off military support for Israel. DAWN, which describes itself as an organization that promotes “democracy, human rights, and the rule of law” in the Middle East, said the world must “urgently act now to curb Israel’s relentless belligerence with a full arms embargo and coordinated sanctions.”
The Canada-based Just Peace Advocates said the government “must immediately condemn the rogue supremacist state’s monstrous attack on Iran.”
CODEPINK, which has ties to the Chinese Communist Party, described Israel’s strikes as “unprovoked” and said that “Iran is not our enemy.”
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