The UK is facing some fierce criticism from human rights groups after it condemned Hezbollah’s attacks on Israel, in an annual human rights report, but failed to mention Israel’s attacks on Lebanon. Oops - a minor oversight I�m sure.

The report referred to Hezbollah’s 4,000 rockets which were fired into Israeli territory injuring around 2,000 people and killing around 40 Israeli civilians, yet nothing was mentioned regarding Israel’s military actions against Lebanese civilians. The 34-day war leveled much of Lebanon’s infrastructure and killed 1,200 people who were mostly civilians. The UK report also mentioned that Syria was a “major concern” for their support of Hezbollah.

During the war, Prime Minister Tony Blair angered many for refusing to call for an early ceasefire. Israel was condemned by both the UN, in August, and the head of the Israeli Army rocket unit, in September, for dropping at least 1.2 million cluster bombs over Lebanon. Israel is also known for its human rights violations in occupied Palestine where a special UN envoy recently described the situation as �ethnic cleansing�.

Tom Porteous, the London director of New York based Human Rights Watch said, “If they had time to include Hezbollah and the 40 victims of Hezbollah rockets … they had time to do something on what the Israelis did in Lebanon, especially given the disproportionate number of casualties.” Tim Hancock, campaign director for Amnesty International in the UK said, “It is absolutely right that the government strongly criticized Hezbollah’s rocket attacks, but deeply worrying that this report makes no specific mention of Israel’s illegal targeting of Lebanese infrastructure…”

The UK foreign secretary, Margaret Beckett, responded by blaming the publication date of the report, claiming the tight schedule prevented the subject from being covered in more detail. She said that she would anticipate next year�s report to be more balanced. However, this claim is criticized by Porteous who says the report figures suggest it was published in the middle of the war, meaning its imbalance was �inexcusable�.

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