Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News: HRW

Showing posts with label HRW. Show all posts

Sunday, September 08, 2019

Proof that Ken Roth knows that Human Rights Watch is antisemitic

Before the IHRA working definition of antisemitism, the most concise and accurate definition of the term was the one created by Natan Sharansky:

We must be clear and outspoken in exposing the new anti-Semitism. I believe that we can apply a simple test - I call it the "3D" test - to help us distinguish legitimate criticism of Israel from anti-Semitism.

The first "D" is the test of demonization. When the Jewish state is being demonized; when Israel's actions are blown out of all sensible proportion; when comparisons are made between Israelis and Nazis and between Palestinian refugee camps and Auschwitz - this is anti- Semitism, not legitimate criticism of Israel.

The second "D" is the test of double standards. When criticism of Israel is applied selectively; when Israel is singled out by the United Nations for human rights abuses while the behavior of known and major abusers, such as China, Iran, Cuba, and Syria, is ignored; when Israel's Magen David Adom, alone among the world's ambulance services, is denied admission to the International Red Cross - this is anti-Semitism.

The third "D" is the test of delegitimization: when Israel's fundamental right to exist is denied - alone among all peoples in the world - this too is anti-Semitism.

Ken Roth of Human Rights Watch tweeted something that proves not only that he is aware of this definition, but that he believes that Human Rights Watch is not guilty of it:

Netanyahu's supporters have tried to expand anti-Semitism to include the “demonization” and “delegitimization” of Israel, but the human rights movement routinely demonizes and deligitimizes governments that systematically persecute and discriminate. https://t.co/7JjMsRYEcR pic.twitter.com/1S0xOhjVyA
— Kenneth Roth (@KenRoth) September 8, 2019

Now, I honestly would never have claimed that HRW usually engages in the kind of demonization or delegitimization of Israel that Sharansky refers to. (Sometimes it does, as in a tweet where Ken Roth implies that there is a relationship between Israel and White Supremacism.) It certainly criticizes Israel but it doesn't compare it to Nazi Germany; it doesn't say that the state has no right to exist as BDS leaders, Palestinians and others say. Roth is claiming that HRW does delegitimize and demonize Israel along with other countries. It is an interesting argument, meant to deflect the 3D definition of antisemitism - it is no coincidence that he chose the exact same words used by Sharansky.

Which means that Roth knows the definition, and purposefully omitted the third D - of double standards.

Why? Because he knows that HRW is guilty of double standards on Israel.

What other country does HRW demand that tourist sites like AirBnB and TripAdvisor withdraw all review from disputed (or even occupied) areas? What other country gets the sheer amount of reports that Israel does? What other country does HRW claim that every possible means of defending its citizens from being murdered is illegitimate?

HRW is now very critical towards Saudi Arabia's actions in Yemen - ever since the Saudis started unofficial channels of communication with Israel. But before that, HRW was much more reticent to criticize Saudis killing civilians compared to the IDF.

I have dozens of examples of HRW lies and double standards towards Israel, as well as double standards of how they treat Palestinians compared to other groups that support terror and martyrdom. I've shown how HRW's criticism of Israel is way out of proportion to that of every other country. I've even shown how HRW has gone after Jews, by implying that most IDF soldiers are religious enough to listen to a right-wing rabbi on when it is permissible to kill enemies instead of listening to their commanding officers. I've shown how HRW has different interpretations of international law for Israel and for everyone else. The only obituary it has ever written that attacked the dead person is for an Israeli leader.

There is no question that HRW engages in double standards when it comes to Israel. Ken Roth knows this, which is why he tries so hard to misdirect his readers away from the definition of antisemitism that he knows HRW is guilty of in spades.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

A tweet to Omar Shakir of HRW

From Friday:

Did you "bear witness" to the bustling parts of Hebron only a few blocks away in H1 that no Jews are allowed to enter?

Of course not. Because you are a partisan anti-Israel hack, not a human rights advocate.https://t.co/qxg7IgUss3
— Elder Of Ziyon ҉ (@elderofziyon) July 26, 2019

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

On Saturday, Director of Human Rights Watch Ken Roth met with Palestinian prime minister Mohammed Shtayyeh.

While smiling, Shtayyeh informed Roth that the Palestinian Authority will no longer arrest people for political speech.

Today I met with a senior delegation from HRW, headed by @kenroth and confirmed my government’s commitment to/ guarantee of the right of Palestinian citizens to free speech through constructive criticism. In this regard I emphasised that no arrests or persecution will happen. pic.twitter.com/FWC8HSLe4Z
— Dr. Mohammad Shtayyeh د. محمد اشتية (@DrShtayyeh) July 27, 2019

Roth appreciated the "pledge."

For some reason, Roth - a supposed defender of human rights - didn't seem to ask for the Palestinian leaders to drop the laws on their books that allow them to arrest anyone for anything they write online that might be considered offensive to the government.

This 2017 law is so vague as to allow the arrest of anyone for pretty much anything:

According to Article 4, “any person who…has abused any information technology…shall be liable to either imprisonment, a fine between two hundred and one thousand Jordanian dinars, or a combination of the two.” ... The ‘abuse’ in question is not defined and open to interpretation by the authorities.

Article 15 states that, in regard to the use of the internet or an information technology, “if a person threatens to commit a felony or an immoral act, they shall be punished by temporary hard labor…”. Again, the definition of an ‘immoral act’ is up to the discretion of the authorities and a felony can constitute any act detailed within this Presidential decree, or any other.

Regarding freedom of the press, the most threatening section is Article 20. It declares that, “anyone who creates or manages a website or an information technology platform that aims to publish news that would endanger the integrity of the Palestinian state, the public order or the internal or external security of the State shall be punished…” with a fine between one thousand dinar [$1414 USD] and five thousand dinar [$7070 USD], at least a year of jail time, or both.

Further to this, the second section of the Article states that “any person who propagates the kinds of news mentioned above by any means…shall be sentenced to a maximum of one year in prison or be required to pay a fine of no less than two hundred Jordanian dinar [$283 USD] and no more than one thousand dinars [$1414 USD] or be subjected to both penalties.”

This means that not only is the writer, or publisher of the news liable to be punished, something as simple as a share on Facebook could result in a fine, jail time, or both. The decree even goes as far as to criminalise the use of any means to bypass the blocking of certain websites, such as a VPN. Article 31 mandates a minimum sentence of three months or a fine of between five hundred ($707 USD) and a thousand dinar ($1414 USD).

All of the above is compounded by Article 51, which states that “[i]f any of these offences are committed for the purpose of disturbing public order...or with the intention of harming national unity...the penalty shall be hard labour or temporary hard labour.”

In essence, besides the infringement on freedom of the press, the PA can now imprison and fine individuals for a Facebook share, watching Game of Thrones using a VPN, making an ‘offensive’ meme, posting a tweet against certain policies, or asserting political allegiances.

That's just one law. There is another law criminalizing "insulting the President" and “extending the tongue” against the Palestinian leadership.

These laws are on the books. They can be and are used regularly. The only real reform would be to strike them from the laws - but Roth didn't even ask for that. He believed a "pledge' that the laws won't be enforced any more.

Does that sound like speaking truth to power?

Shtayyeh is a puppet of Mahmoud Abbas. Yet Ken Roth, instead of pushing for real reform as the head of a major human rights organization should do, simply thanked Shtayyeh for his worthless promise.

The contrast between how Roth insults democratically elected Israeli leaders and how he fawns over cogs working in Abbas' dictatorship could not be starker.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

Now, Kenneth Roth of @HRW blames Israel for the UNHRC's obsession with Israel!

Ken Roth, the director of Human Rights Watch, tweeted this yesterday:

Trump blocks a UN Security Council condemnation of Israel's demolition of ten Palestinian apartment buildings. And then Israel complains that the UN Human Rights Council, where there is no veto, is forced to spend more time on it. https://t.co/SxhjetPBbX? pic.twitter.com/ya3tBwvXV5
— Kenneth Roth (@KenRoth) July 25, 2019

Really? The UNHRC was "forced to" write more resolutions against Israel than all other countries combined in its first decade because of the US veto of the UN's one-sided hate of Israel? Is the UNHRC "forced to" create its only permanent single-country agenda item to be aimed at Israel, a practice that has been condemned by other Western nations?

Does Roth think that the recent UN ECOSOC condemnation of Israel as the only country in the world violating women's rights is also a direct result of the US veto in the Security Council?

Of course, Roth has it backwards. The US veto is precisely because of the obsessive bias against Israel in the UN, which predates the UNHRC by decades. Roth has a truly twisted view of the world where he claims that the bias is a result of the US acting morally.

A real defender of human rights would rightfully wonder why the UNHRC ignores so many human rights violations worldwide while singling out Israel every year. A real defender of human rights would notice that UNHRC members are often the worst violators of human rights, and their membership gives them impunity.

But Ken Roth is not a real defender of human rights. He is an obsessive hater of Israel, as this tweet shows.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

The "objectivity" of @HRW and @Amnesty

Yesterday, Kenneth Roth of Human Right Watch told Haaretz, in context of Israeli courts looking at the legality of not renewing the work permit of anti-Israel activist and HRW researcher Omar Shakir, that “This is a campaign by the Israeli government not only to shut down human rights activity, including by our Israeli partners, but also to deprive Israelis of information about what is happening around them. Whatever happens, we will continue to report objectively on human rights violations here and elsewhere.”

Omar Shakir is objective?

Even if we ignore his pro-BDS activities before joining HRW (and he was obviously hired because of them, not in spite of them,) since he joined he tweeted this antisemitic cartoon about ISIS in Syria attacking Palestinians that claims that Jews are behind the terror group, and called the cartoon "powerful:"

OK, so Shakir is not very objective, even when he is supposedly tweeting against Hamas.

But what about HRW (and Amnesty International) as a whole? Are they objective when it comes to Israel and Palestinians?

Today, the top stories at both Human Rights Watch and Amnesty websites are both about Israel.

HRW's is about this court case:

Amnesty is still pushing its months-old campaign against TripAdvisor allowing Jewish-owned tourist spots to be mentioned, clearly the top human rights issue of our time based on its website:

What a coincidence that while there are still human rights crises worldwide, both of the major human rights organizations are obsessing over Israel!

Amnesty's headline, "Stand With Palestinians," implies that these groups are not so much interested in bashing Israel as in protecting the human rights of Palestinians. Is this true?

No.

For the past few weeks, Palestinians in Lebanon have been loudly protesting laws that penalize any businesses that either employ Palestinians or are owned by Palestinians, making their already precarious existence in Lebanon even worse.

Yet the Lebanon pages at Amnesty and HRW still don't mention a word about it.

Their purported concern for Palestinian human rights seems to end where Arab country borders begin.

I'm not even mentioning the hundreds of examples of anti-Israel bias by Amnesty and HRW in the past. This is bias you can see today by just going to their websites.

When Ken Roth claims that human rights NGOs report "objectively" from the Middle East, he is either delusional or knowingly lying.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

Human Rights Watch REWARDS Hamas' genocidal threats against Jews worldwide by calling it a "freedom movement"

Omar Shakir of Human Rights Watch pretends to condemn Hamas' Fathi Hamad's Friday statements (that was first reported here) threatening to kill all Jews of the world - but he ends up praising Hamas instead!

Human Rights Watch considers Hamas is a "freedom movement"???

By using those words, HRW shows that it actually likes and supports the international terror group Hamas, and is only upset that one of its more visible members (in the "political wing," no less) said something distasteful.

Notice that Shakir didn't mention the other things Hamad said - that Palestinians have built explosive vest factories that should be distributed now, that Jews in Israel including Judea and Samaria should be blown up and murdered by knives that cost 5 shekels.

He doesn't condemn that because the intended victims are Israeli Jews, and presumably deserve death at the hands of the "freedom movement" he admires so much.

Hamad also said that Palestinians worldwide have been "warming up" to perform terror attacks in the countries that host them.

If you go through Shakir's long social media history, you will never find him describing Israel in any positive terms, let alone praising it the way he characterizes Hamas on the very day that we find out beyond any doubt that Hamas has never left its antisemitic genocidal ways behind.

What little dignity Human Rights Watch has remaining after its history of anti-Israel bias has evaporated by one of its most visible members openly praising the innovators of suicide bombings, bus bombings, anti-tank missiles aimed at school buses, tunnels dug into civilian communities to kidnap women and children, using their own people as human shields, and shooting thousands of rockets at civilians, as a freedom movement.

If HRW wants to continue being viewed as a human rights organization, Shakir should be fired, period. This is absolutely disgusting.

Here's a longer excerpt of Hamad's speech.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

@HRW's @KenRoth supports the creation of a state that would not offer basic human rights to its citizens

A tweet can reveal so much:

First of all, Roth is misquoting Kushner.

Asked whether he believes the Palestinians are capable of governing themselves without Israeli interference — a fundamental demand for Palestinians — Kushner said, "That's a very good question. ... The hope is, is that over time, they can become capable of governing."

Kushner said the Palestinians "need to have a fair judicial system ... freedom of press, freedom of expression, tolerance for all religions" before the Palestinian territories can become "investable."

Kushner did not say that Palestinians cannot govern themselves but that there are severe impediments to doing so effectively before they can be truly independent. This is not a very controversial position. Why wouldn't the world demand that a new nation can take care of the basics of human rights before being admitted to the family of nations?

Moreover, Roth does not dispute that Palestinians do not have basic human rights. He says that human rights are irrelevant to the question of their suitability to statehood!

Ken Roth - the leader of a human rights group - is defending granting statehood to a nation that he admits would not offer basic human rights to its citizens from the outset.

If anyone would want a human rights litmus test before granting nationhood, it should be Ken Roth. The fact that he says the opposite is stunning.

Would he say that about any other people who desire statehood? Would he say that ISIS deserves a state despite its human rights record? Hell, he won't go on a limb to say that even Kurds deserve a state, even after they have proven the ability to govern themselves! But he supports the creation of a corrupt, kleptocratic Palestinian dictatorship - because that would take land away from Israeli control, and Jews building houses is far worse to him than Palestinians sentencing Arabs who sell land to Jews to death.

His analogy to existing nations is absurd, of course: there is no comparison between nations that already exist and entities who aspire to statehood. By all means work to fix the human rights abuses everywhere, but the idea of dismantling a state because of its abuses - real or imagined - for some reason only applies to Israel.

Look at his examples of corrupt countries - Saudi Arabia and Egypt. Not Iran, not Turkey, not China with its concentration camps filled with millions of Muslims - Roth only mentions countries that are on Israel's side politically. Even his choice of paradigmatic nations with poor human rights records (which both undoubtedly do have) reveals Roth's deep seated hate for Israel.

Roth's pathological hatred of Israel prompts him to take positions that are diametrically opposed to human rights. Which disqualifies him from his job.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

HRW's eulogy for Bob Bernstein mentions, and dismisses, his criticism of their anti-Israel bias

To their credit, Human Rights Watch finally wrote their own eulogy for their founder, Robert L. Bernstein - and they mentioned that he criticized HRW for its bias against Israel. But they immediately dismissed it:

In 2009, Bernstein publicly criticized Human Rights Watch’s reporting on human rights in Israel. Human Rights Watch and its board responded that the organization’s work on the region was tough and accurate, holding Israel to the same principles and standards applied to all governments around the world.

Here is a short list I compiled of Human Rights Watch's incontrovertible bias against Israel a few years back:

Multiple, huge reports are written about events with death tolls that are a fraction of those in other areas of the world. Here I compare HRW's attention given to every country compared to their Freedom House scores - there is no correlation.

Here are only some examples I've written about over the years:

HRW condemned Ariel Sharon for his indirect role in Sabra and Shatila when he died - but never condemned the Christian Phalangists who actually did the killings. It never condemned any other world figure at the moment of their death.

HRW does not support equal rights for Palestinians in Lebanon who want to become citizens.

HRW twists international law in regards to Israel repeatedly.

HRW has one definition of "occupation" for Israel, and another for the rest of the world.

Ken Roth insulted Israel when it announced plans to save the lives of Syrian Alawites, even as no other country in the world was doing anything for Syrians.

Ken Roth wrote an article castigating Israel that had quite a few lies. he tried to weasel out of some but never admitted his errors.

HRW never answers whether they believe Jews have the right to pray on their holiest spot.

HRW once had its employees write pro-HRW comments on numerous websites pretending that they were ordinary people - engaging in "sock-puppetry" - in defense of their employee with the Nazi memorabilia obsession.

The Sunday Times once showed HRW's obsession with Israel out of proportion to every other conflict.

A HRW researcher falsely claimed Palestinian Arabs in the territories live in "shanties" while Jews live in "spacious villas."

This is beyond looking at their reports and press releases on Israel and the numerous patterns of bias, ignoring any facts that contradict their pre-conceived anti-Israel bias, as well as proof of their ignorance of military methods, every time.
Ken Roth likes to speak about Israel's "impunity" but HRW is not transparent about their methods of information gathering and reporting, about how they hire their Middle East "experts,"or really about their methods altogether - even as they demand the same from everyone else. It is HRW that acts with impunity against Israel.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

People who "speak truth to power" like @btselem @hrw @amnesty will never speak truth to Palestinians

Amnesty tried to get some more interest in the Nakba site they created that apparently didn't get enough traffic to justify its expense, and I responded:

57+ years since @Amnesty was founded, and it has not yet demanded that Palestinians have the right to citizenship in the Arab countries that most have been born in.https://t.co/hgG2vfhOuD https://t.co/xhYyDI4AjH
— Elder Of Ziyon ҉ (@elderofziyon) May 21, 2019

Of course, Amnesty didn't respond.

Gerald Steinberg of NGO Monitor chimed in:

Of course @amnesty isn't interested in helping #Palestinians. They're a radical political #NGO more on demonizing democracies, #Israel.
— (((Gerald M Steinberg))) (@GeraldNGOM) May 21, 2019

Sarit Michaeli of B'Tselem responded to him:

Your sudden expressed concern for Palestinians would appear far less disingenuous had you not denied the existence of the Israeli military occupation they live under.
— Sarit Michaeli (@saritm0) May 21, 2019

Once she joined the thread, I decided to ask her directly if B'Tselem supports the basic human rights of Palestinians born in Arab countries to become citizens, as enshrined in the Convention on the Rights of the Child:

Do you agree that Palestinians should be allowed to have full citizenship in their Arab host countries if they so desire? Let's have it for the record.
— Elder Of Ziyon ҉ (@elderofziyon) May 21, 2019

Michaeli didn't respond. Because she can't.

The unofficial position of B'Tselem, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty and other NGOs is that the nonexistent "Right of Return" for all future generations of Palestinians is more important than the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness. There is no legal or moral justification for that position, and they don't apply it to any other group of people in the world. They know it is indefensible, and their position helps prolong the suffering of stateless Palestinians.

Yet these NGOs, who pretend to "speak truth to power," cannot admit the truth - that Palestinians should be covered by these conventions and their Arab hosts should offer them citizenship after being in their countries for decades. This is the only defensible position for a human rights organization to take - but if they said it, Palestinian "leaders" (as well as Lebanese and others) would angrily retaliate, possibly kick them out of their areas, and threaten them.

So they must go along with the Palestinian position to keep Palestinians miserable and stateless. And they will refuse to answer any questions about it because it reveals that they care more about politics than Palestinian human rights.

It is pretty embarrassing, when you think about it. If only a major reporter would ask these questions from these NGOs that they can't ignore, we can learn a great deal about the hypocrisy of "human rights" NGOs.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

Hamas praises Human Rights Watch - and shooting rockets to Israel. No contradiction there.

On Sunday, Hamas issued a press release praising Human Rights Watch's latest report blaming Israel for responding to violent Gaza riots:

The Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) received great satisfaction and high appreciation of Human Rights Watch's report regarding the violations of the occupation against the residents of the Gaza Strip and the demand for the protection of the Palestinians, which revealed the facts that confirm the involvement of the Israeli occupation in what appeared to be war crimes against Palestinian demonstrators As well as the use by the occupation of policies, laws, arguments and pretexts to justify and cover their deliberate killing and harm to Palestinians by using live and lethal bullets.

The findings of the report reflect a part of the reality of the suffering and injustice inflicted on the Palestinians by the unjust siege imposed on Gaza and its inhabitants twelve years ago. The suffering continues and escalates. As a flagrant form of Israeli violence threatening Palestinian life and rights through a long series of killings, sniping, starvation and siege, which constitute a flagrant and serious violation of international law and international humanitarian law that amounts to war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Today, it issued another statement, supporting the barrage of rockets into Israel last night:

All praise for the valiant resistance that responded to the Israeli shelling of its positions in Gaza. This is a legitimate right. The message of shelling is to confirm that the resistance is the one who determines the rules of engagement in its own way and will not allow the enemy to unite our people or impose any new equations .

On the one hand, Hamas pretends to care about humanitarian issues and to be against violence that targets civilians. On the other, Hamas praises shooting rockets at civilians.

And there is no contradiction. Because Human Rights Watch, like Hamas, doesn't really care about human rights of Jews. Its report mentioned, but didn't comment on, the incendiary kites and balloons that have devastated Israeli forests and fields and threatened lives. HRW didn't even pretend to be even-handed by saying a negative word about Hamas or the rioters.

The Gaza riots are primarily a public relations war; their main purpose is to force Israel to shoot and kill people so Gazans can cry in front of Western cameras. If they would be peaceful demonstrations, Israel wouldn't shoot anyone, so the riots are calibrated to appear like they are simply protests and meanwhile Hamas sends people, sometimes children, to try to breach the Gaza fence as well as to send incendiary objects into Israel. Hamas uses the trappings of non-violence to cover violence, and western "human rights" organizations buy into it.

The rare times that HRW and Amnesty issue reports against Hamas, those reports are "balanced" and include as much blaming of Israel as of the terrorists. But their reports against Israel don't mention any responsibility by Hamas. That's why a terrorist organization is so effusive in praising a supposed human rights NGO.

HRW's report proved to Hamas that Israel's arguments about the purposes of the riots and its defensive measures are being ignored by the West. It proved to Hamas that the West completely buys the lies about peaceful protests and that Israel's response is cruel and wanton.

HRW proved to Hamas that it has little to lose by escalating things, because major western "human rights" organizations will support Arab violence against Jews but not Israelis defending themselves.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

New @HRW report is inconsistent - except for its hate of Israel

Once again, Human Rights Watch has issued a report on how evil Israel is, this time in context of the Gaza riots.

And once again it shows that the point of the organization isn't human rights but attacking Israel.

A careful reading of the report shows that they know they are lying.

For example:

Israeli forces’ repeated use of lethal force in the Gaza Strip since March 30, 2018, against Palestinian demonstrators who posed no imminent threat to life may amount to war crimes, Human Rights Watch said today. Israeli forces have killed more than 100 protesters in Gaza and wounded thousands with live ammunition.

“Israel’s use of lethal force when there was no imminent threat to life has taken a heavy toll in life and limb,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “The international community needs to rip up the old playbook, where Israel conducts investigations that mainly whitewash the conduct of its troops and the US blocks international accountability with its Security Council veto, and instead impose real costs for such blatant disregard for Palestinian lives.”

Yet later on HRW admits that the Israeli Supreme Court has looked at Israel's open fire regulations and decided they were within the law, so this is beyond any supposed "whitewash" by the IDF. So HRW attacks the well-respected court as well:

On May 25 Israel’s supreme court rejected petitions by human rights groups against the military’s live-fire orders without applying the clear standard on the use of lethal force set out in international human rights law, and substantially deferring to the government’s discretion. The court’s unwillingness to apply international law and to challenge a policy that authorizes lethal force even when there is no imminent threat to life highlights the importance of the International Criminal Court prosecutor opening a formal investigation into the situation in Palestine.

Yes, HRW is claiming that the Supreme Court is ignoring the law.

In another place, HRW mentions Israel's legal arguments that were apparently supported by the Supreme Court:

The government response rejected applying human rights law applicable in law enforcement to the demonstrations, and claimed that only international humanitarian law, applicable in fighting in armed conflicts, applies, because the protests were “organized, coordinated and directed by Hamas, a terrorist organization engaged in armed conflict with Israel.”

HRW states as a fact that these demonstrations fall under "human rights law and not the laws of armed conflict. Israel gives a specific reason why this is not true. Israel's Supreme Court agrees with Israel. HRW ignores that and insists that Israel adhere to a standard that they are not required to meet - and HRW condemns Israel on the basis of the false premise of which laws Israel is obligated to meet.

But that isn't enough. HRW says on the one hand that Israel should use the more restrictive human rights laws rather than the laws of war - in its headline it accuses Israel of "war crimes!" This inconsistency is only possible because HRW only has one consistency - find ways to blame Israel no matter what, and change the yardstick to measure Israel against as needed.

HRW quotes Israel's position later, and does not come up with any substantive arguments against it except its own gut instinct that Israel is lying:

Israeli officials argued that Hamas directed protesters to cross the fences so that armed fighters could run through the breach to kill or kidnap Israeli civilians or soldiers. The Israeli military spokesperson, Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus, said on May 15 that there was “no dilemma” in deciding between “having a lower amount of Palestinian casualties,” and using lethal force in order to “defend Israeli communities immediately behind the [Gaza perimeter fences].” The government’s April 29 court response elaborated that soldiers could use “potentially lethal force” to prevent protesters from breaching the fences and crossing from Gaza to Israel if “the evaluation is that the force is necessary at that time to remove the danger before it is realized, even if the danger itself has not yet become imminent,” and that shooting demonstrators before they reach the fences is justified because if crowds breached them, it would “operationally require live fire on a massive scale.”

...Israeli concerns that members of armed groups would use the protests as cover to fire at Israeli soldiers or plant explosives near the fences do not justify the repeated use of live ammunition, including with apparent lethal intent, against protesters who posed no imminent lethal threat, Human Rights Watch said.

HRW is making guesses on why the IDF targeted who they targeted. They trust Gazans to tell the truth about what the people who were shot were doing. They push the idea that invading another country is not reason to be shot.

Netanyahu referred to a May 15 statement by a Hamas leader, Salah al-Bardawil, that 50 of 62 people killed by Israeli forces on May 14 were Hamas members – “in other words, members of a terrorist organization,” Netanyahu said. Israeli military and political officials also claimed that Hamas “strategically placed [civilians] in harm’s way” because graphic media coverage of their injuries would harm Israel’s image. Hamas’s encouragement of and support for the protests and the participation of Hamas members in the protests do not justify the use of live ammunition against protestors who posed no threat to life.

HRW again is twisting the facts. The Hamas members who were indeed further from the fence were directing civilians to cut the fence and to provide smoke cover for the fence cutters. This is a military operation, and targeting the people who were giving the military orders is perfectly legal in an armed conflict (as is targeting those who are trying to invade your country.)

The fact that the military leaders were wearing civilian clothing, a violation of international law, doesn't bother HRW.

Perhaps most outrageously, HRW implies that even if masses of Gazans poured through a breached fence into Israel, then Israel still wouldn't have the right to defend itself:

In addition to the barbed wire fence separating Gaza and Israel, the two-meter-high fencing with electronic sensors, ditches, and military watchtowers along the Gaza periphery, in 2015 the Israeli military built fences around 12 Israeli communities near Gaza with electronic sensors that detect any contact with the fence and automatically alert the military. This further undercuts the claim that the protesters posed an imminent treat.

How, exactly, would the IDF stop thousands of Gazans who were instructed to attack Jews with knives once they were already in Israel - especially when HRW says that the IDF isn't allowed to shoot them even then?

HRW simply doesn't care about the facts. It wrote the headline of accusing Israel of possible war crimes before it even talked to a single Gazan to support the argument. As always, it judges Israel to be guilty first, and then it looks for facts or half-truths to twist into justifying their initial accusation.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

HRW says Israel should let Gazans break through the fence, since they are no real danger

Sari Bashi, the "Israel and Palestine advocacy director" at Human Rights Watch who never advocates for Israel, writes in Foreign Policy another anti-Israel screed that shows just how hateful and ignorant HRW is towards Israel.

First of all, Bashi completely ignores the point of the demonstrations, to incite tens of thousands of civilians to breach the fence and attack Israeli civilians with guns and knives. Bashi doesn't even mention the word "return" in his entire article, claiming that the protests were both about the US Embassy and about general anger at the "siege."

Once Bashi falsely frames the protests - something she does deliberately, since she selectively quotes the social media of the riot organizers and ignores the point of the "Great Return March" - she goes on to claim that Israel did not use the correct methods to defend itself from a threat that she doesn't admit exists:

[U]nder the international standards for policing demonstrations, even the use of rocks or firebombs does not justify lethal force, absent an imminent threat to life.Yet under the international standards for policing demonstrations, even the use of rocks or firebombs does not justify lethal force, absent an imminent threat to life. It doesn’t matter whom the protesters support or who, if anyone, encouraged them to demonstrate. Lethal force can only be used when strictly necessary to protect against an imminent threat to life.

The Israeli government acknowledges the international law enforcement standard but says its forces will fire live rounds even before a threat to life becomes imminent, because it believes that Hamas will exploit the presence of thousands of demonstrators to breach the border fences. That essentially empties the word “imminent” of any meaning. It ignores the nonlethal means, such as tear gas, skunk water, and rubber-coated steel pellets, that Israel can and should exhaust to protect its border.

It took me maybe 30 minutes of research to find out exactly why Israel cannot accurately or effectively use those means to protect against thousands of violent rioters hell bent at breaching the fence and pouring into Israel. But the teams of researchers at HRW confidently claim not only that these means would work, but also that Israel isn't using them as much as it can, without saying what facts back up that claim. Beyond that, HRW is implying that Israel wants dead civilians, because there is some secret way that HRW knows that Israel could use non-lethal means in ways that Israel refuses to use:

Even if those methods were to fail (and they haven’t been exhausted), Israel would be justified in using lethal force only if a border breach presents an imminent threat to life. Israeli troops and snipers currently fire from well-fortified positions inside Israel, behind two fences, and, in key locations, behind ditches dug to prevent border crossings. They receive footage from drones hovering over Gaza and have backup from additional personnel and equipment located farther inside Israel.

Essentially, Bashi is arguing that Israel is too aggressive in stopping Gazans from cutting through the fence and pouring through the breach by the thousands - and then, even if thousands would rush through and aim towards Israeli communities, the IDF must wait until they take out their knives and raise their arms to stab Jews before the IDF can intervene.

How insane is that?

If the IDF would follow HRW's advice, it would be forced to kill hundreds of people, rather than the few dozen that were killed.

Moreover, Sari Bashi of course does not mention that even Hamas admits that the vast majority of those killed with Hamas members - which proves that Israeli snipers were only aiming to kill the militant organizers of the protests who were directing their human shields to breach the fence while Hamas -which openly admits its militants were disguised as civilians - would take advantage of the chaos to infiltrate Israel and kidnap Jews, its major military goal for years.

The entire riots are military operations to breach Israel's border, and civilians are used to cover the military aims.of Hamas. Arguably, the laws of war are the proper framework for Israel, not the laws of domestic police work as HRW tries to frame this.

Yet even under HRW's framework, Israel is doing everything possible to limit civilian deaths. Given that the number of civilians killed is quite small compared to the number of militant organizers, it is apparent that Israel's actions at the border saved far more civilian lives than HRW's proposed solution of waiting for the fence to be breached and for thousands of Gazans to attempt to run into Israel and enter civilian communities before the IDF can respond with deadly force.

(h/t Ari)

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

The biggest Human Rights Watch lie yet?

From CBS News:

Israel has given a Human Rights Watch director two weeks to leave the country, accusing him of promoting a boycott, in a move the rights group said sought to muzzle criticism. The interior ministry said Tuesday it had terminated the residency permit of HRW's Israel and Palestine director Omar Shakir, a U.S. citizen, over accusations that he supported a boycott of Israel.

"Following the recommendations of the Ministry of Strategic Affairs, containing information that Shakir has been a BDS activist for years supporting the boycott of Israel in an active way, the ministry has decided to terminate (his) residence permit," the interior ministry said in a statement.

"This is not about Shakir, but rather about muzzling Human Rights Watch and shutting down criticism of Israel's rights record," HRW said in a statement.

"Neither Human Rights Watch nor its representative, Shakir, promotes boycotts of Israel."

The media is quick to note that HRW has written critical reports of Israel - a fact meant to support the idea that Israel is muzzling critics.

Yet the articles don't bother to check the simple fact that Shakir indeed has explicitly promoted boycotts of Israel.

And HRW is knowingly lying.

These tweets were before Shakir re-joined HRW (he had worked there in 2013 and then returned in October 2016.) But they show that he is an enthusiastic BDS supporter. Much more from an article by Petra Marquardt-Bigman here.

As far as HRW's assertion that it doesn't promote BDS itself, what about this article in Haaretz by Kathleen Peratis, co-chair of the Middle East North Africa Advisory Committee of Human Rights Watch and an emerita member of its board of trustees?

This is a full throated and explicit call for support for BDS and giving advice to the movement on tactics.

HRW lies quite a bit. This may be the biggest lie yet.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

.@HRW notices that wishing for children to be martyred is sick - but not when Palestinians wish it

There was a moment of moral clarity from a Human Rights Watch worker recently.

A BBC story said:

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been criticised after telling a girl in military uniform that she would be honoured if killed while fighting.

"If she's martyred, they'll lay a flag on her," he told the sobbing girl at a televised congress of his AK Party.

In the event, broadcast live on state television, the young girl dressed as a soldier seems to catch the attention of Mr Erdogan, who then invites her to the stage.

"Look what you see here! Girl, what are you doing here? We have our maroon berets here, but maroon berets never cry," he told her, referring to the beret worn by the Turkish Special Operations Forces.

"She has a Turkish flag in her pocket too... If she's martyred, they'll lay a flag on her, God willing," he said during the congress in the southern town of Kahramanmaras on Saturday.

"She is ready for everything, isn't she?" The girl replied: "Yes."

In response, HRW's Andrew Strohlein tweeted:

Turkish President Erdogan tells a sobbing girl in military uniform that she would be honoured if killed while fighting. Glorifying children’s deaths? Promoting child soldiers? Sick. https://t.co/3PW1qKsTuT pic.twitter.com/Ua8rson2BD
— Andrew Stroehlein (@astroehlein) February 26, 2018

Doesn't seem like a controversial thing to say.

Yet there are many examples of glorification of death and encoraging child "martyrdom" in official Palestinian Authority TV, from official Fatah sites and Hamas sites.

And not once has Human Rights Watch called this Palestinian shahid culture, or any of these examples, "sick."

"These are our lion cubs.We have brought them up on the love of Jihad and Shahada (Martyrdom-death)"

Why is an obviously moral position on encouraging childhood martyrdom "sick" in Turkey but not worth mentioning in the Palestinian arena?

One reason is that in Turkey there was actually disgust in social media about Erdogan's actions - but you will be hard pressed to find a similar reaction in the Arab world towards Palestinian aspirations to death for Allah.

In other words, HRW doesn't bother to criticize Palestinians pushing their children to become martyrs, because they would be trying to kill Jews - and there is no local outrage about that goal.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

Iraq strips Palestinians of their rights. NGOs silent.

There are about 4000 Palestinians left in Iraq, a fraction of the number who used to live there.

From Al Monitor:

The Arabi21 news website revealed Dec. 20 that Iraqi President Fuad Masum had approved Law No. 76 of 2017, which stripped Palestinian refugees living in Iraq of their rights and classified them as foreigners. The law came into effect after being published in the Iraqi Gazette.

The new law replaced Law No. 202 of 2001, issued by former President Saddam Hussein, forcing the Iraqi state to treat Palestinians as equals to Iraqis, with all privileges and citizenship rights, such as tax exemption, opportunities to work in government departments, and access to education and health care services.

Mohammed Mshenesh, a Palestinian researcher on refugee affairs, told Al-Monitor, “The new law will deprive Palestinian engineers, doctors and teachers the ability to become members of Iraqi trade unions," thus preventing them from practicing these professions, "and whoever wants to start a commercial project will have to comply with the foreigners law, which requires the presence of an Iraqi sponsor and the approval of the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs and the Ministry of Interior. This will increase the Palestinians’ suffering and push the few left to leave Iraq.”

If the law were to be applied in early 2018, the number of Palestinians in Iraq would decrease even more; they would leave in search of safety, especially since they would be prevented from investing and deprived of employment in the private sector. The law would also prevent them from owning property or joining trade unions, and it would force them to pay full college tuition.

Thamer Mashineesh, the president of the Iraqi Palestinians Association, told Al-Monitor, “The Iraqi law ends the permanent residency of Palestinians in Iraq, so they are now required to renew their residency through consulting the official agencies. They could risk being expelled from Iraq if they were to commit any violation. This could threaten their rights to compulsory and university education, which evidently affects their education and gradually turns them into an ignorant community. In addition, all health care services would decline and they would be unable to pay for expensive surgeries, increasing their daily suffering.”

A law specifically targeting and discriminating against Palestinians.

In an Arab country.

Which has been mentioned in Arabic news media for nearly three weeks.

And this is the first English language article I've seen about it.

Somehow, the dozens of researchers at HRW and Amnesty, not to mention the "pro-Palestinian" NGOs who know Arabic. have not made a big deal out of this.

If they care so much about Palestinians, then why, oh why, do they ignore the news when their fellow Arabs are their oppressors?

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

HRW makes up international law, again

From Bloomberg:

Loans to West Bank Settlers Violate International Law, HRW Says

Human Rights Watch called on Israeli banks to halt the financing of settlement activity in the West Bank, arguing that the legal justification they use for doing business there isn’t valid.

Israel’s five biggest banks, led by Bank Hapoalim Ltd. and Bank Leumi Le-Israel Ltd., are contributing “to serious human rights and international humanitarian law abuses” by financing construction in the settlements, the New York-based group said in a report published on Wednesday.

“Israeli banks are making existing settlements more sustainable, enabling the expansion of their built-up area and the take-over of Palestinian land, and furthering the de-facto annexation of the territory,” the report said.

The headline is slightly misleading, but HRW is still making us its own version of international law for Israel and another for the rest of the world.

Here is what HRW says about the legality of what Israeli banks do:

Israeli banks would have a responsibility in all circumstances to seek ways to honor the principles of internationally recognized human rights.

And

Settlements are unlawful under international humanitarian law. ...International humanitarian law forbids an occupying power from using land except for military purposes or for the benefit of the local population living under occupation.

If HRW was serious about Israeli banks having the "responsibility" to honor principles of internationally recognized human rights, it would say that no company can do business in any country - and certainly cannot loan money to any country - that engages in alleged human rights abuses.

Yet, according to HRW and every other human rights organization, virtually every country is guilty of human rights abuses.

Only Israel has such a uniquely evil system called "settlements" where Jews can live in their historic homeland that deserves the demand that even domestic companies must divest from them.

Oh, wait. Morocco builds settlements. "Hundreds of thousands of Moroccan settlers were encouraged to enter Western Sahara with state-subsidised property and employment, under the army's protection." Yet HRW does not say a word about international humanitarian law and Moroccan settlements. It would be laughable to see a paper by HRW demanding that Moroccan banks stop giving loans to Moroccans living in land Morocco occupies. After all, the EU even invests in companies in Western Sahara.

Turkey builds settlements. "A group of mainland Turkish people ... settled in Northern Cyprus since the Turkish invasion in 1974. It is estimated that these settlers and their descendants (not including Turkish soldiers) now make up about half the population of the North." Yet HRW does not demand any company stop investing in Turkish settlements in Northern Cyprus.

Only for Israel does Human Rights Watch keep adding restriction upon restriction - even when Israel's settlement policy is far better grounded in international law than those of other countries. (For one thing, there was no recognized High Contracting Power to the Geneva Conventions whose territory was seized, so the territory is not legally considered occupied under the Geneva Conventions. Any law or international instrument Israel can be accused of violating was written after Israel already held the territories - meaning, laws written specifically for Israel and no other country, such as the Rome Statute.)

This new report doesn't show or indicate any violation of international law, or humanitarian law, at all. But it does show yet again that Human Rights Watch does not hold any country to anything near the standards it demands of Israel.

And that is yet more proof of HRW's obsessive bias against Israel.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

.@HRW's Ken Roth spouts the new "Israel=White Supremacist" lie

This tweet from Ken Roth of Human Rights Watch shows, yet again, that his bias against Israel is pathological.

Yes, Ken Roth has embraced the latest and wholly fallacious anti-Israel trend: to conflate Israel with white supremacists because the bigots claim to be Zionist.

Not because Israel embraces the bigots, but because the bigots pretend to embrace Israel.

I've shown how absurd these arguments are before and have shown that the exact same logic damns the "progressives" far more than Zionists because neo-Nazis love to quote the anti-Israel articles written by the supposedly liberal progressives.

The neo-Nazis know Jew-hatred when they read it, and the neo-Nazi Stormfront site has quoted both Mondoweiss and Electronic Intifada over 100 times each, Ali Abunimah himself over 35 times, and Max Blumenthal over 80 times. Today's Nazis aren't approvingly quoting Naftali Bennett or Binyamin Netanyahu - they are quoting the people that Ken Roth links to on his Twitter feed.

In fact, Stormfront also quotes Human Rights Watch for fuel for its anti-Israel articles. Stormfront was just taken down, but Google cache shows several of the articles:

This article at Stormfront that quotes Ken Roth and HRW has a headline that would be right at home at "progressive" websites that HRW employees write for.

Which means, according to this logic, that HRW is a Nazi-sympathizing organization.

But Ken Roth isn't going to tweet "Many neo-Nazis embrace @HRW research against Israel." Because he is interested in his anti-Israel narrative, not the truth.

Even worse is that Roth has ignored that Arabs have embraced actual Nazi ideology. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and Nazi propaganda in Arabic is still sold at Arab book fairs, the blood libel is still mentioned in mainstream Arab newspapers, and the amount of blatant antisemitism in Palestinian media fills up the Palestinian Media Watch and MEMRI websites.

But Ken Roth isn't going to equate Arabs with the Nazis that they openly have admired at the highest levels. He only wants to equate Israelis with racism and bigotry, not Arabs who practice those very attributes every day, publicly, in their own media and public statements.

Once again, Ken Roth of Human Rights Watch shows that he is beneath contempt.

The article he links to, by Nada Elia, states the equivalence of Zionism and fascism as a flat truth. But she accidentally reveals her real agenda item in this one sentence:

If we are to gain anything from this critical moment, we absolutely must seize the opportunity offered us by white supremacists to foreground the similarities between fascism and Zionism.

White supremacists want to use their newfound affinity for Zionism for their own political purposes - and anti-Zionists want to use white supremacists' pretense to love Zionism to further their own political interests.

Nada Elia is acting just like the white supremacists are. And Ken Roth approves.

(By the way, Elia's Twitter handle is @NadaBDS. How twisted must one be to choose to dedicate one's entire online presence towards hating Israel? That's who Ken Roth chooses to feature.)

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.