Gaza operation presents a quandary for Israeli rights groups

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http://jta.org/news/article/2009/01/20/1002385/israeli-rights-groups-struggle-to-maintain-neutrality-while-criticizing-idf-in-gaza

By Dina Kraft · January 20, 2009

TEL AVIV (JTA) -- Sari Bashi, a prominent Israeli human rights lawyer, was on the phone last week with a Palestinian utility official in the Gaza Strip who had worked closely with Israelis for years after learning that his house in Gaza was no longer standing.“He asked me, 'Why are they doing this? Israeli soldiers did not used to be like this. Red lines are being crossed.’ ” Bashi recounted.

Bashi's organization, Gisha, which works to protect the freedom of movement of Gaza Palestinians, is one of several major Israeli human rights organizations that banded together during Israel’s military operation in Gaza to highlight the plight of Palestinian civilians caught in the fighting.

Careful to avoid taking political positions on the Israeli military operation itself, the organizations said that as Israeli groups they felt a special duty to point out the Jewish state’s moral and legal obligations during the conflict -- even if those observations would not be well received by an Israeli public overwhelmingly supportive of the war effort.

"Our credo is that there is the same international law that Israel and any other nation in world is bound to respect. We hold our own government accountable," Bashi told JTA. "I would like to think that we make these demands of Israel from a place of empathy -- empathy for the Palestinian civilians whose rights are being violated, and empathy for the ordinary people in Israel who need to be reminded of their core values, especially human rights."