Showing posts with label HRW. Show all posts
Showing posts with label HRW. Show all posts

Wednesday, July 01, 2015

As biased as the Davis report was against Israel, Human Rights Watch is worse.

The first paragraph of HRW's description of the Davis report says:

The commission appropriately highlighted the extensive death and destruction from last year’s fighting, especially in Gaza, where 1,462 Palestinian civilians lost their lives, including 299 women and 551 children. 
Those figures, that HRW states as fact, came from the UN OCHA-OPT. But the Davis commission in its summary report properly put that in context:
While the casualty figures gathered by the United Nations, Israel, the State of Palestine and non-governmental organizations differ, regardless of the exact proportion of civilians to combatants, the high incidence of loss of human life and injury in Gaza is heartbreaking.
Davis admits that the percentage of civilians killed may be much lower than the UN's figures, and given that we have specific names and sources showing that scores of the "civilians" were actually members of terror groups, this is an appropriate caveat. But Human Rights Watch doesn't bother with such subtleties.

HRW also does what it always does when pretending to be even-handed - it only mentions Hamas rockets. The commission also showed lots of evidence that Hamas fired from the vicinity of schools, hospitals and mosques, evidence that HRW does not want people to talk about (my next post shows that the Davis commission still downplayed even that.)

Monday, April 20, 2015

Last month I showed the striking differences between how Human Rights Watch treated Saudi and Israeli airstrikes that kill civilians.

Here is another example of the differences between the wording of a recent HRW report on a Saudi airstrike in Yemen versus a similar report from last Just about an Israeli airstrike in Gaza.

Note how HRW is bending over backwards to not directly accuse the Saudis of doing anything illegal, only suggesting that there might be problems and asking for an impartial investigation, while noting that the Houthis are placing military targets near civilian structures.

As opposed to Israel where they immediately accuse the IDF of violating the laws of war, purposeful targeting of civilians for no reason, and including sarcasm about Israel's "precision" strikes.

April 16, 2015
17 days after the Saudi airstrike in Yemen
July 16, 2014
7 days after Israeli airstrike in Gaza


Saudi-Led, US-Backed Attack Raises Laws-of-War Concerns

Airstrikes by the Saudi Arabia-led coalition that hit a dairy factory in Yemen on March 31, 2015,killed at least 31 civilians and wounded another 11. The governments that participated in the attacks should investigate the airstrikes, which may have been indiscriminate or disproportionate, in violation of the laws of war.

Forces of Ansar Allah, known as the Houthis, and other opposition forces, also appeared to put civilians at unnecessary risk. Area residents told Human Rights Watch that the Yemany Dairy and Beverage factory, a multi-building compound 7 kilometers outside the Red Sea port of Hodaida, was about 100 meters from a military air base controlled by Houthi forces. Military units loyal to former President Ali Abdullah Saleh were at another nearby military camp.


“The coalition's repeated airstrikes on a dairy factory show cruel disregard for civilians, as does the deployment near the factory by Houthi and pro-Saleh forces." said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East and North Africa director. “The attack may have violated the laws of war, so the countries involved should investigate and take appropriate action, including compensating victims of unlawful strikes.”

While civilian casualties do not necessarily mean that the laws of war were violated, the high loss of civilian life in a factory seemingly used for civilian purposes should be impartially investigated, Human Rights Watch said
Bombings of Civilian Structures Suggest Illegal Policy
Israeli air attacks in Gaza investigated by Human Rights Watch have been targeting apparent civilian structures and killing civilians in violation of the laws of war. Israel should end unlawful attacks that do not target military objectives and may be intended as collective punishment or broadly to destroy civilian property. Deliberate or reckless attacks violating the laws of war are war crimes, Human Rights Watch said.

“Israel’s rhetoric is all about precision attacks but attacks with no military target and many civilian deaths can hardly be considered precise,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “Recent documented cases in Gaza sadly fit Israel’s long record of unlawful airstrikes with high civilian casualties.

Human Rights Watch investigated four Israeli strikes during the July military offensive in Gaza that resulted in civilian casualties and either did not attack a legitimate military target or attacked despite the likelihood of civilian casualties being disproportionate to the military gain. Such attacks committed deliberately or recklessly constitute war crimes under the laws of war applicable to all parties. In these cases, the Israeli military has presented no information to show that it was attacking lawful military objectives or acted to minimize civilian casualties.

On July 9, an Israeli attack on the Fun Time Beach café near the city of Khan Yunis killed nine civilians, including two 15-year-old children, and wounded three, including a 13-year-old boy. An Israeli military spokesman said the attack was “targeting a terrorist” but presented no evidence that any of those at the café, who had gathered to watch a World Cup match, were participating in military operations, or that the killing of one alleged “terrorist” in a crowded café would justify the expected civilian casualties.


Notice how HRW took far less time to "investigate" Israeli actions and declare them guilty than they spent to tell us that they don't quite know what happened in Yemen.

There is another difference.

The dead Yemenis are not even worth naming in HRW's dispatch, but HRW went into details of the lives of the victims of Israeli airstrikes, humanizing them.

For example:
Relatives and survivors said the victims frequently went to the beach café. Khaled Qanan, 30, told Human Rights Watch that the attack killed two of his brothers, Mohammed, 25, a master’s degree student in Arabic, and Ibrahim, 28, who sold fish. Ramadan Sabbah, 37, the two victims’ brother-in-law, said:
They went to the beach café all the time, including every day since this operation started [on July 8]. They said they felt safer there than they did in Khan Yunis. But there was nothing to shelter them; it was just chairs and fabric. When we found the bodies, they didn’t have visible injuries. Ibrahim had only a small cut, but we found his body almost 200 meters away. Mohammed was found on the asphalt. The road is cracked from the explosion.

Too bad that HRW couldn't figure out that the Qanan brothers were terrorists.

As the Meir Amit Center documents, they were both members of the Fatah Abu Rish Brigades.

But HRW said, flatly, that these soccer-loving terrorists were civilians. And HRW used that as a reason to accuse Israel of war crimes.

Once again, HRW's bias against Israel is unmistakable.




Tuesday, March 31, 2015

Here is how Human Rights Watch reported on the beginning of Israel's airstrikes in Gaza last summer:

Israel/Palestine: Unlawful Israeli Airstrikes Kill Civilians
Bombings of Civilian Structures Suggest Illegal Policy

Israeli air attacks in Gaza investigated by Human Rights Watch have been targeting apparent civilian structures and killing civilians in violation of the laws of war. Israel should end unlawful attacks that do not target military objectives and may be intended as collective punishment or broadly to destroy civilian property. Deliberate or reckless attacks violating the laws of war are war crimes, Human Rights Watch said.
Prosecutor, judge and jury. Without any relevant information as to what Israel's targets were, HRW flatly said that Israel was violating international law and said that Israel was targeting homes simply to kill Gazan civilians, apparently for kicks.

Now compare that with how HRW reports on Saudi airstrikes in urban areas that are killing scores of civilians:

Yemen: Saudi-Led Airstrikes Take Civilian Toll

The Saudi Arabia-led coalition of Arab countries that conducted airstrikes in Yemen on March 26 and 27, 2015, killed at least 11 and possibly as many as 34 civilians during the first day of bombings in Sanaa, the capital, Human Rights Watch said today. The 11 dead included 2 children and 2 women. Saudi and other warplanes also carried out strikes on apparent targets in the cities of Saada, Hodaida, Taiz, and Aden.

The airstrikes targeted Ansar Allah, the armed wing of the Zaidi Shia group known as the Houthis, that has controlled much of northern Yemen since September 2014.

...“Both the Saudi-led forces and the Houthis need to do everything they can to protect civilians from attack,” said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East and North Africa director. “Reports of air strikes and anti-aircraft weapons in heavily populated areas raise serious concerns that not enough is being done to ensure their safety.”

...Human Rights Watch has not been able to determine whether specific attacks complied with the laws of war, which apply to the armed conflict in Yemen. The laws of war prohibit attacks that target civilians or civilian property, or that do not or cannot discriminate between civilians and fighters.
Look at that! The mind-reading skills that HRW "researchers" have in Gaza are suddenly malfunctioning in Yemen! They know that Saudi Arabia is targeting terrorists, and they are simply not sure if the bombs that killed 34 civilians were simple mistakes, or maybe there was a legitimate target there.

All that certainty that HRW has in declaring Israel to be criminal is nowhere to be found when Saudis are dropping their bombs on houses and children.

I can't wait to see how HRW reports on yesterday's news:
An air strike killed dozens of people at a camp for displaced people in northwest Yemen on Monday, aid workers said, as Arab warplanes bombard rebels around the country.

The International Organization for Migration said at least 40 people had been killed and 200 wounded at the Al-Mazrak camp in Hajja province where it has staff on the ground, revising an initial toll of 45 dead.

IOM spokesman Joel Millman said 25 of the wounded were in severe condition.

"It was an air strike," said Pablo Marco of Doctors Without Borders (MSF), which has a presence at the hospital.
Another thing: I haven't yet found a scorecard showing how many Yemenis have been killed compared with how many Saudis.The score is probably about 250-0 at this point, which in other contexts would be considered by ignorant pundits as proof of "disporportionate force."

Scorecards are particular to cases when the winning side's name begins with ISR and ends in AEL.

Tuesday, March 03, 2015

  • Tuesday, March 03, 2015
  • Elder of Ziyon
Human Rights Watch continues its disgusting anti-Israel campaign with its latest article by "researcher" Bill Van Esveld:

Israel typically justifies its harsh policies in the West Bank on security grounds, but since Binyamin Netanyahu took office in 2009, Israel has begun construction on more than 10,000 housing units there for Israeli civilians.

Israel assigns soldiers to protect these civilians, for whose safety it proclaims the need to build expensive special roads, walls and checkpoints. Those measures failed this summer, when Palestinian gunmen abducted and killed three Israeli teenagers in the West Bank – sparking a massive military operation.
Van Esveld knows quite well who was behind the planning, funding, logistics, kidnapping and murders of the boys: Hamas.

Hamas doesn't distinguish between Jews on either side of the Green Line, calling all Israeli towns "settlements."

So HRW's pathetic attempt to claim that Israeli security is compromised by Jews living in their historic homeland of Judea and Samaria is absurd. The second intifada made no distinctions between where Jews lived. The bombings that happened regularly during the Oslo process weren't concentrated to the east of the Green Line.

If HRW wants to use the murder of the boys as proof that settlements cause terror, then they must admit that the number of terror attacks has decreased significantly even as the number of Jews who live in the territories - Jews who move there voluntarily, and not in violation of any sane reading of international law - has increased. By their own logic, settlements help curb terror.

By blaming the Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria for Arab terror, HRW is pushing a myth that has no factual basis in the interests of furthering an agenda against Jews having the human rights to live where their forefathers lived  Control of that land has passed from the Ottomans to the British to the Jordanians to the Israelis without ever having been legally owned by the newly minted "Palestinian people."

The depths of HRW's hate for Israeli Jews can be seen from this sentence:
Unsurprisingly, settlements are flashpoints for confrontation; many arrests of Palestinian children, often for throwing stones, occur near settlements.
Hmmm, why would those horrible Israelis arrest people who throw stones at Jews who are living in and traveling to their communities? Who are the children (HRW doesn't want to mention the adults) throwing stones at? This article blames Jews for Palestinian Arabs throwing rocks at them - and it implies that people throwing rocks at other people is only a human rights issue for the criminals, not the victims! Indeed, Van Esveld seems to believe that throwing rocks at people is a human right in itself.

This is how depraved HRW has become in its zeal to characterize everything Israel does as a violation of human rights while giving Hamas (not mentioned once in this article) and stone throwers (who can and do kill human beings) a pass.

As we've seen, HRW is not a human rights organization: it is a racist organization that has condonedsupported and justified war crimes against Israeli Jews.

(h/t Anne)

Tuesday, February 24, 2015

The PA and Hamas might disagree on everything, and insult each other regularly, but if a Hamas agency declares that Israel is opening up dams without evidence, then by Allah the PA is going to believe them!

The Palestinian foreign ministry condemned on Monday Israel’s act of pumping large amounts of rainwater into the Gaza Strip, which flooded dozens of homes and caused injuries among Palestinians.

On February 21, the Israeli army opened the floodgates of a canal leading to central Gaza, which resulted in the removal of sand mounds along the border with Israel, said Gaza's Civil Defense Directorate said in a statement.

Civil Defense said about 50 homes sank in the floods, while a number of local residents in eastern Gaza areas were reported injured. There were also reports of deaths of livestock and poultry.

The ministry considered this Israeli action as ‘arbitrary’ and a continuation of Israel’s aggression against the people of Gaza, stressing that this action is a crime against humanity and in violation of all norms and standards.

It expressed surprise at the international community’s silence over this ‘crime’, demanding a prompt move to stop the Israeli siege imposed on the strip, to provide the people of Gaza with the necessary protection, and to prosecute the perpetrators at international courts.
I have a fantasy that in some back rooms at the UN, when the PLO representative starts babbling bizarre accusations to real diplomats, they just tell him to shut the hell up.

Meanwhile, the list of people who are willing to repeat the lie about Israel opening nonexistent dams grows to include fifth-rate academic Juan Cole and Human Rights Watch's Sarah Leah Whitson.

In a sane world, the list of people and news organizations that repeated this lie would instantly lose all credibility. Too bad we live in an insane world.

(h/t Judge Dan)

Thursday, February 19, 2015

  • Thursday, February 19, 2015
  • Elder of Ziyon
Human Rights Watch has insulted Israel's Supreme Court for not ruling on a question that it was never asked and misrepresenting what it did say:
The Israeli Supreme Court ruling in a suit seeking damages over Rachel Corrie’s death sends a dangerous message to Israeli armed forces that they can escape accountability for wrongful actions, Human Rights Watch said today. Israel’s Supreme Court on February 12, 2015, exempted the Israeli defense ministry from liability for actions by its forces that it deemed to be “wartime activity,” but wrongly refused to assess whether those actions violated applicable laws of armed conflict, Human Rights Watch said.

Corrie, 23, was killed on March 16, 2003, while attempting to prevent an armored Israeli bulldozer from demolishing the home of a Palestinian family near Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip. She and other foreign nationals, wearing bright orange vests and using megaphones, shouted at and stood in front of bulldozers over the course of several hours to prevent them from destroying homes. Corrie climbed to the top of a mound of earth created by the front blade of a bulldozer, which continued forward, crushing her. The bulldozer operator claimed he didn’t see her.

“This ruling has disturbing implications beyond the Corrie family’s case, as it sends a message that Israeli forces have immunity even for deaths caused by alleged negligence,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East and North Africa director. “The ruling is a stark reminder that in some areas Israeli jurisprudence has veered completely off the track of international law.

...The ruling flies in the face of the laws of armed conflict, Human Rights Watch said. The ruling grants immunity in civil law to Israeli forces for harming civilians based merely on the determination that the forces were engaged in “wartime activity,” without assessing whether that activity violated the laws of armed conflict, which require parties to the conflict at all times to take all feasible precautions to spare civilian life. Under the laws of armed conflict a state is required to make full reparation for the loss or injury caused by its violations of such laws.

...“Israel’s impunity laws slam the door on civilian victims in Gaza, and look like further evidence that Israel is not genuinely willing to hold its own forces accountable for serious violations,” Whitson said.
Everything HRW and Sarah Leah Whitson said shows how willing the "human rights group" is willing to lie in order to demonize Israel.

Professional Israel-basher
Sarah Leah Whitson
HRW's first claim is that the Supreme Court "wrongly refused to assess whether those actions violated applicable laws of armed conflict." Besides HRW's purposeful misreading of the laws of armed conflict, this was not what the Court was asked; the entire case was about whether the Corries could sue for damages. It is not the place of a court to go beyond the specific question it is being asked; indeed if it had done so it would show that the Supreme Court has little regard for actual laws and legal procedures and is recklessly violating all mores and procedures of a mature legal system. HRW is demanding that the Supreme Court do something which is illegal!

The organization is also wrong in claiming that the accidental killing of Corrie is a violation of the laws of war. Israeli law had already ruled that clearing operations at the Gaza border to find smuggling tunnels were considered wartime activity because Arabs would routinely violently attack the IDF at those times. Accidentally killing someone in wartime is not a violation of the laws of war, and in this case Corrie purposefully and stupidly put herself in front of a moving vehicle in a war zone. (The Court noted that the US government had warned citizens to stay away from Gaza because it was dangerous, showing yet again that the only party who acted negligently towards Corrie's life was Corrie herself.)

Next, Sarah Leah Whitson says the ruling "sends a message that Israeli forces have immunity even for deaths caused by alleged negligence." This is another lie. The court ruling, referring to the earlier Haifa court ruling that it upheld, stated that "the district court addressed the allegations raised by the appellants on their the merits and determined on the basis of the evidence brought, including expert opinion submitted by both parties, that none of the soldiers involved the day saw that Rachel was standing in front of the bulldozer because she was standing in a blind spot in relation to the occupants of the bulldozer. Therefore, it went on to hold, there is no reason to attribute to IDF fighters intentional harm against Rachel and therefore even without the immunity granted to a state [for acting in a war zone] the tort of assault does not exist in the circumstances of this case."

So there was no negligence - and no message that soldiers can act negligently, as HRW claims.

HRW's claim that Israel acts with "impunity," one of their favorite words, is belied by the fact that the Court did not dismiss another aspect of the case, about how Corrie's remains were handled. The only people acting with impunity are those with HRW, which makes wild claims based on lies about the facts and about international law.

HRW cannot back up its claim that the Supreme Court is going against international law. It makes mere assertions with no legal basis, and it even advocates that a professional legal system violate its own ethics and laws.

Thursday, February 05, 2015

  • Thursday, February 05, 2015
  • Elder of Ziyon
  • ,
From the New York Times:
Ken Roth, the executive director of Human Rights Watch, said that both forms of killing should be condemned.

“ISIS’s despicable conduct shouldn’t make us lose sight of the largest killer of civilians in Syria: Assad’s barrel bombs,” he said in an email.
Really? Ken Roth is giving the world lessons on how to put human rights in context?

As I showed recently, the latest world report from Human Rights Watch implies that Israel is only slightly better than Syria and worse than every other nation on the planet, judging from the amount of attention HRW gives to Israel. But here is a list of counts of fatalities from conflicts in 2014:

Syria 76,000
South Sudan 40,000
Iraq 21,000
Afghanistan 14,000
Boko Haram/Africa 11,000
Mexico 7,000
Yemen 7,000
Pakistan 5,500
CAR 5,200
Ukraine 4,700
Somalia 4,400
Libya 2,800
Gaza 2,200
Darfur 2,100

Judging from that 2015 HRW report, Israel more worthy of attention than South Sudan, Somalia, Pakistan and Yemen - combined.

So sorry if I have to laugh when Ken Roth reminds the world that ISIS isn't so bad compared to Syria. When it comes to distorting the seriousness of human rights abuses, Human Rights Watch does not have a very good record.

Speaking of not being able to distinguish between events that are different by orders of magnitude, another HRW researcher today compared Gaza to the Holocaust:



(h/t EBoZ)

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