Islam Times - Amnesty International is rubberstamp of US, Israel

Islam Times - Amnesty International is not a trustworthy agency and has established itself as a rubberstamp of the United States and its allies like Israel, an American peace activist and political commentator says.

Mark Glenn, a writer and co-founder of the Crescent and Cross Solidarity Movement, an interfaith forum dedicated to uniting Muslims and Christians against Zionists, made the remarks.

Amnesty International said on Tuesday that US-led bombing against Daesh terrorists in Syria's Raqqah last year broke international law by endangering the lives of civilians.

The US did not take sufficient account of civilians or take the precautions measures to minimize casualties while attacking Raqqah in 2017, according to Amnesty.

Amnesty interviewed 112 civilian residents of Raqqah during field research there in February, while investigating the sites of 42 air, artillery and mortar strikes.

“While we certainly cannot deny the fact that the United States throughout its history has engaged in reckless and wanton endangerment and the destruction of civilians and non-combatants in various military operations, in which the United States has engaged,” Glenn said.

“Nevertheless the fact that this report is coming out of all agencies [from] Amnesty International should give people some pause for skepticism a question. For the simple reason, in this case Amnesty International fingering at the United States as a guilty culprit and having endangered or recklessly harmed civilians in Syria but at the same time the same agency, Amnesty International, has also said the same thing about the government of Bashar al-Assad and about the Russian military presence in Syria, about Gaddafi in Libya, and about Iran, in the way that Iran has dealt with her own internal problems with regards to security and riots and things like this,” he noted.

“And so Amnesty International has established itself as being somewhat of a rubberstamp whenever condemnation for some type of action whether it is warranted, whether it’s justified or not, Amnesty International is used as rubberstamp for condemning this whether or not there is any evidence to support the claim to begin with,” the analyst said.

“It should be remembered that 20 years ago when the United States was just beginning the occupation and destruction of Iraq that Amnesty International was one of the main agencies that provided ‘evidence’ that Saddam Hussein was murdering his own people, and in fact this was even referenced by former Mossad case officer Victor Ostrovsky’s book, By Way of Deception, where he talked about during the years he was the Mossad officer, the Mossad agent, that the Israeli government utilized its assets within Amnesty International in order to paint Saddam Hussein as a madman, as a barbarian, as a butcher, somebody who murdered his own people with his bare hands, and how Amnesty International was used in order to create the narrative and the consensus that was needed to justify America and the West going into Iraq and turning it into the cauldron of the human suffering that it is today,” Glenn observed.

“So as I said even though the United States has a history of harming civilians, and engaging in reckless military operations without concerns for innocent human lives at the same time the fact that it is coming out of Amnesty International as I said has established itself as an agency that is not necessarily trustworthy when it comes to giving an accurate description of things such as this, we have to reserve a certain amount of skepticism with regards to this. And we have to ask the question whether or not there is a political agenda that isn’t at work here, that Amnesty International is either pushing or is allowing itself to be used in pushing,” he concluded.