Omar Shakir, Israel and Palestine Director at Human Rights Watch, gestures during a news conference in Ramallah, Oct. 23, 2018. Photo: Reuters / Mohamad Torokman.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) on Monday released a new report accusing the Israeli military of “gunning down Palestinian children,” despite three of the four cases examined by the group involving teenagers who launched Molotov cocktails, rocks, or fireworks at the security services.

“Palestinian children live a reality of apartheid and structural violence, where they could be gunned down at any time without any serious prospect of accountability,” HRW’s Bill Van Esveld was quoted as saying in the report. “Israel’s allies should confront this ugly reality and create real pressure for accountability.”

HRW examined four cases of boys who were shot and killed by Israeli security forces from November 2022 to March 2023. In three of those cases, the boys, all aged 15-17, were shot after attacking Israeli soldiers and police. The fourth, Mahmoud al-Sadi, 17, was killed down the road from the scene of a gun battle between Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which is widely designated as a terrorist organization, and the Israel Defense Forces as he was walking home from school.

The International Legal Forum (ILF), a global network of pro-Israel lawyers, on Monday condemned HRW’s report as “just the latest and most obscene display yet in their unvarnished anti-Israel bias.”

“Contrary to HRW’s malicious lies and gross distortions of truth and law, Israeli security forces only target Palestinian terrorists,” ILF CEO Arsen Ostrovsky said in a statement. “If HRW truly cared about the welfare of Palestinian children, it would call out Palestinian terror groups for using Palestinian children as human shields, while the Palestinian Authority continues to create a systematic infrastructure of incitement and glorification of violence.”

The HRW report describes 2022 and 2023 as the deadliest years for Palestinian children in the West Bank since 2004 but doesn’t mention the role of Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and other terrorist groups in recruiting children as fighters or combat spotters. Nor does it mention the role of the Palestinian Authority (PA) in inciting violence.

This year, some 65,000 children have attended PA summer camps where kids aged 13-17 are taught that terrorist “martyrs” are role models and that Israel has no right to exist in any borders because there is only “Palestine.”

HRW has long been accused of anti-Israel bias and double standards by US and Israeli officials and by American Jewish groups.

“Hostility and hypocrisy are HRW’s hallmarks when it comes to Israel,” the American Jewish Committee wrote in 2021.