Melanie Phillips, a British journalist, broadcaster and author, writes a weekly column for JNS. Currently a columnist for The Times of London, her new book, The Builder’s Stone: How Jews and Christians Built the West and Why Only They Can Save It, is published by Wicked Son and can be purchased on Amazon. To access her work, go to: melaniephillips.substack.com.
(JNS) Amazing news: Amnesty International has now acknowledged that night follows day!
Well, almost. In a report just published, Amnesty has stated for the first time that Hamas and other Palestinian Arab armed groups committed war crimes and crimes against humanity, including murder and torture, on and after the Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel.
A statement of the blindingly obvious? Of course-but not on Planet Amnesty, which habitually devotes itself to demonizing Israel with malicious falsehoods and distortions while sanitizing its murderous foes.
Yet in this report, Amnesty actually says that based on video, testimonial and other evidence, it found that while some civilians were killed by Israeli forces on Oct. 7, the vast majority of those who died were killed by Palestinian Arabs.
You don’t say.
It also says that all those taken to the Gaza Strip were “unlawfully detained as hostages and that all were subjected to psychological abuse,” and it calls on Hamas to investigate serious violations of international humanitarian law, including crimes under international law, committed by their forces during the Oct. 7 attacks and since.
Put out the bunting? Has the implacable enemy of Israel and the truth suddenly seen the light? Not quite.
It also asks Israel to “end violations of international law against Palestinians” and “take concrete steps towards ensuring justice and accountability for violations and crimes committed by Israeli forces, including genocide and apartheid.”
So the same old same old eye-watering lies. Having finally and correctly identified the unconscionable onslaught against Israeli citizens, Amnesty nevertheless reverts to absurdly accusing Israel of “genocide” in the war of defense that followed.
Nevertheless, this report does mark a significant development in what passes for Amnesty’s mind. It also concludes that sexual violence, including rape and gang rape, was perpetrated on Oct. 7, and that Hamas used sexual violence against the hostages.
In stating this, Amnesty goes further than the United Nations, which, although it acknowledged possible cases of sexual violence on Oct. 7, has failed to accept the reality that this was widespread or systematic.
So why has Amnesty, which has done so much to poison the West against Israel with a sustained and malevolent campaign of lies designed to destroy it, suddenly lurched toward at least some acknowledgment of the truth?
Perhaps it feels the hot breath on its neck of the Trump administration, which is now threatening to take condign action against those who have assisted the Palestinian Arab terrorist armies in their war of extermination against Israel.
Officials in the administration have reportedly held advanced discussions on hitting the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine “Refugees” (UNWRA) with terrorism-related sanctions. Both Israel and the Trump administration have accused UNWRA of links with Hamas, allegations the agency has vigorously disputed.
Washington halted funding in January 2024 after Israel accused about a dozen UNRWA staff of taking part in the Oct. 7 attack. Israel has also accused UNRWA of taking and guarding hostages, as well as consistently glorifying terrorism in its schools, and teaching its children to hate and murder Jews.
However, the use of humanitarian institutions to launder the war of extermination against Israel goes much further. An NGO Monitor report that was recently released has revealed-from scores of internal Hamas documents-the astonishing extent of the terrorist group’s infiltration and exploitation of international NGOs’ operations in Gaza.
The organizations involved include Catholic Relief Services, funded by Ireland, the United States and the United Nations; the International Medical Corps funded by the European Union, France, Germany, Italy, Canada, the United Kingdom, the United States and the United Nations; and Medical Aid for Palestinians, whose funders include UNICEF, the World Health Organization and the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
According to the report, the evidence confirms that these NGOs in Gaza do not operate independently or neutrally. They are instead embedded in an institutionalized framework of coercion, intimidation and surveillance that serves Hamas’s terror objectives.
All NGOs operating in Gaza, it says, are required to adhere to strict Hamas security protocols, which include regular engagement with the terror group’s Ministry of Interior and National Security and other ministries.
Local Gazan “guarantors,” approved by Hamas, serve as the point of contact between Hamas and the NGOs. At least 10 such “guarantors” were Hamas members or supporters, or employed by Hamas-affiliated authorities.
The report details how-as part of a Norwegian Refugee Council program funded by the United Kingdom and the European Union to provide cash assistance to families selected by the Hamas-controlled Ministry of Social Development-a council delegation, including the Gaza head and five other employees, visited a beneficiary’s apartment.
This resident was chosen because of his poor medical and living conditions. During the visit, he asked whether “the reason that the floor collapsed was that there was a tunnel” beneath his home. No one else followed up on his question. And he never received an answer.
While the Trump administration is reacting to UNWRA’s terrorist links in the way any civilized government should do, the British government is doubling down on supporting it.
The U.K.’s junior foreign office minister, Hamish Falconer, expressed shock that Israeli police had entered UNWRA’s Jerusalem headquarters. The Israelis had raided it because of what they said were several years of unpaid property taxes, and to gather intelligence on who was operating the compound, since an Israeli ban on UNRWA has been in force since January.
Fumed Falconer on X: “This appears to be a blatant disregard of Israel’s obligations to protect and respect U.N. premises. UNRWA must be able to continue their essential work supporting millions of Palestinians.”
But Falconer has expressed no shock that members of UNRWA’s staff took part in the Hamas-led atrocities in Israel on Oct. 7.
He has expressed no shock that hundreds of UNRWA staffers have been revealed as Hamas members.
He has expressed no shock that some Israeli hostages were imprisoned by UNRWA staff members in their homes.
He has expressed no shock that Gaza’s children have been taught in UNRWA schools to hate and murder Jews.
Instead, his government continues to fund and support UNRWA while he expresses shock at Israel for having the audacity to disrespect an agency that has so much Jewish blood on its hands.
The reason for the dramatic difference in approach to UNWRA isn’t just because of the difference between U.S. President Donald Trump and Britain’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer, leader of the Labour Party.
It’s because for the liberal elites that run the United Kingdom, international human rights are the nearest thing to a secular religion, and the global humanitarian establishment-the United Nations, UNRWA, NGOs like Amnesty and the international courts-are its priesthood.
Yet this entire establishment has led the legal and cognitive war of extermination against Israel, in concert with Hamas and other Palestinian Arab terror outfits. Driving the moral bankruptcy of the West through the Palestinian cause, it has weaponized antisemitism and called it conscience. This has seriously messed with people’s minds.
As Mike Huckabee, the U.S. ambassador to Israel, observed this week, people assume that if an organization calls itself a humanitarian NGO, then it must be doing God’s work. “People who would never give money to a terror organization can’t imagine that there would be any group founded for the sole purpose of funneling money to bad people,” he said.
Very true. That’s why the campaign of lies waged against Israel by the entire human rights and humanitarian complex has made untold numbers in the West believe that the genocidal attacks by Hamas were justified “resistance” and that Israel’s defense against it is genocide.
Western liberals repeatedly describe UNRWA as “indispensable” and as a “neutral, humanitarian actor” in the Middle East drama. By contrast, a U.S. State Department official called it a “corrupt organization with a proven track record of aiding and abetting terrorists.”
As Huckabee also observed about the Hamas-associated NGOs, to be silent is to be complicit. The United States is putting itself on the side of civilization. The silent, complicit United Kingdom and the rest of the liberal West have chosen to side with barbarism.