IDF ground troops enter Gaza City (archive)
IDF ground troops enter Gaza City (archive)Israel News Photo: (Flash 90)

The Foreign Ministry has slammed a report by the human rights organization Amnesty International that called for an end to arms sales to Israel. The London-based group has also asked the international community to embargo delivery of military supplies to Israel and the terrorist groups that have vowed to destroy the Jewish State.

Amnesty International's Middle East director Malcolm Smart said when the 38-page report was published late Sunday night that the Obama administration should immediately suspend military aid to Israel, citing "gross violations of the laws of war and of human rights."

Smart called on the United Nations Security Council to impose "an immediate and comprehensive arms embargo on Israel, Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups," clearly equating the Jewish State with the terrorists that target its civilians.

In the report, the head of the group's fact-finding mission in Gaza and southern Israel, Donatella Rovera, charged that "Israeli forces used white phosphorus and other weapons supplied by the U.S. to carry out serious violations of international law, including war crimes. Their attacks resulted in the deaths of hundreds of children and other civilians, and massive destruction of homes and infrastructure."

Rovera also said that Hamas and allied terrorists had committed war crimes by launching rockets at Israeli civilians in the western Negev.

Israel's Foreign Ministry fired back Monday morning with a statement saying the report "presents a biased version of the events" of the recent counterterrorist Operation Cast Lead in Gaza, noting that the report neglected to mention the 10,000 rockets and mortars fired at Israel over the last eight years.

Moreover, asserted the ministry, the report "does not adhere to professional criteria and objectivity," noting that there was no mention in the organization's report of Hamas's open and deliberate use of civilians as human shields. "Hamas openly and in an organized fashion uses women and children to protect military targets, and booby-trap homes and public buildings," read the statement. "The IDF never intentionally targeted civilians," it pointed out.

The ministry added that credibility of the report is also suspect due to the data having been gathered from witnesses who were "interested parties and under Hamas pressure, as has been documented by many independent investigations in the international media."

Amnesty International also blatantly ignored "the basic fact" that Hamas is recognized as a bona fide terrorist organization by the European Union, the United States and other countries, the ministry said. "This organization [Hamas] has constantly refused to recognize Israel, rejects any opportunity for peace with it, and openly aspires to bring about its destruction."

NGO Media Monitor: 'Campaign to Deprive Israel of Self-Defense'

The harsh report was "clearly part of a campaign to deprive Israel of the means to defend itself," according to NGO Media Monitor director Prof. Gerald Steinberg.

"Amnesty's moral bankruptcy is further reflected by the refusal to condemn the aggression and blatant genocidal objectives as proclaimed by Hamas leaders," he said.

"Journalists who quote from this report without independent verification of the claims, and who omit mention of Amnesty's systematic ideological bias, are contributing to these false claims," the NGO Monitor warned.