Best. Excuse. Ever.

Human rights groups argued Wednesday that a detailed probe into Hamas's firing of Kassam rockets at Israeli communities is not necessary, because it constitutes such a "blatant" war crime. By contrast, Israel's actions are more complex, and therefore do require such investigation, they said... said Sarit Micha'eli of B'tselem... "It is quite clear that [Hamas is] attacking and targeting civilians... With Israel things are more complicated because Israel states it does not deliberately target civilians and that it safeguards them. With Israel, you have to investigate each specific incident because even if a civilian is killed in an attack..." "The Israeli authorities deny everything, so one has to prove what happened in a way that you don't need to do with the Palestinian rockets," said Donatella Rovera of Amnesty International.

So the obsessive focus on Israel - the drip drip drip of leaks, investigations, and reports about hypothetical Israeli war crimes that turn out not to be war crimes at all - that's because the Israelis commit far fewer war crimes than Hamas. Of course. That's why NGOs published roughly 100 anti-Israel statements for every condemnation of Hamas during Cast Lead. That's why Durban II will viciously demonize Israel and apologize for Hamas. That's why Israelis are being investigated for war crimes while Hamas is basking in creeping international legitimacy. It's all because Hamas's war crimes are so blatant.

I wonder if B'tselem will be launching an investigation into how Hamas rounded up and executed one of their field workers?

A Palestinian human rights activist and journalist who used to work for the Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem has been executed by Hamas on charges of "collaboration" with Israel, Palestinians in the Gaza Strip said over the weekend... They pointed out that Ghanem, who was a field researcher for B'Tselem, had been sentenced to death by a Palestinian Authority court in 2002 after being found guilty of passing on information to Israel that later resulted in the elimination of Fatah gunmen. Ghanem, according to the Palestinians, was among dozens of suspected "collaborators" who were executed by Hamas during Operation Cast Lead.

Or are they going to brush it off because it's just so obvious that you shouldn't round up human rights workers and shoot them in the back of the head?

Not to get too academic: on the whole, people will follow their ideologies and biases until reality kicks back too hard to be ignored. They'll keep pretending that reality is whatever they want it to be until facts become undeniable. So for decades anti-Israel partisans blatantly invented Israeli atrocities and just unblinkingly lied about Palestinian war crimes. This time Israelis filmed themselves providing humanitarian aid and filmed Hamas committing blatant war crimes. They innovated their media strategies, getting outletsto write process stories about webcams just to get "Israel provides aid" into circulation. They made the evidence undeniable. Anyone who takes notice of the evidence has to admit that Israel is fighting a civilized battle for its survival while the Palestinians are waging a barbaric, genocidal war.

Nice to see that human rights groups have found a way to ignore all that evidence. Because it's just so obvious.

References and previously after the jump...