The Jerusalem Post's Evelyln Gordon looks at Amnesty International's 2002 annual report, which accuses Israel of holding 2,200 Palestinians on "political charges." And what exactly are "political charges"? To find out, you have to go back to the 2001 annual report, which includes a definition that was omitted this year:

That report also has a section titled "political prisoners"--but in it, Amnesty is kind enough to elucidate what it means by the term. The first sentence of the section explains it clearly: "Israel continued to detain 1,600 Palestinians from the Occupied Territories and 29 Palestinians from Israel sentenced in previous years by military courts for offenses such as attacks on Israelis."

In other words, this "human rights" organization apparently considers the murder of Jewish civilians to be the moral equivalent of peaceably dissenting against a dictatorship.

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Webmaster's Note: in the same article, Evelyln Gordon points out the 2002 report claims that "more than 2,000 Palestinians were arrested for security reasons," with no explanation. The section entitled "arrests" claims that "several of those arrested were prisoners of conscience." While the 2001 section similarly claims that "more than 2,500 Palestinians and Israelis were arrested for political reasons," there under "arrests" the report notes that those arrested "charged with offenses such as stone-throwing," a criminal in most Western countries and not just Israel where 5 month old Yehuda Shoham had his skull crushed by a stone thrown his parents car window.

Another example is in the section on Israel's allegedly illegal detention of "two Lebanese nationals as hostages." Neither of the 2 reports point out that Karim Obeid and Mustafa Dirani were leaders of Hizbullah, who under the Geneva Conventions can be held until the end of the conflict in which they were taken.

Here is the complete article by Evelyln Gordon