Friday, March 05, 2010
Elder of Ziyon
A Human Rights Watch spokeswoman told The Jerusalem Post on Thursday night that its embattled senior military analyst Marc Garlasco resigned nearly three weeks ago....One of my readers had tipped me off to Garlasco's hobby,and I emailed Omri and other bloggers about it, letting him run with the story. (I also found the Garlasco quote "The leather SS jacket makes my blood go cold it is so COOL", which I also told a number of other bloggers about and they posted it before I did.)
HRW suspended Garlasco with pay in September, “pending an investigation,” after allegations surfaced that he was an avid collector of Nazi memorabilia.
...As for the “pending investigation,” Daly repeated that Garlasco had resigned and said, “We are not commenting on it any further.”
Garlasco’s collection was initially revealed by Omri Ceren on his blog “Mere Rhetoric” in September, when he wrote that Garlasco was “obsessed with the color and pageantry of Nazism, has published a detailed 430-page book on Nazi war paraphernalia, and participates in forums for Nazi souvenir collectors.”
The subsequent media coverage sparked controversy and condemnations from groups such as NGO Monitor, which released a statement saying that Garlasco’s background, “when combined with his central role in the condemnations of Israel under false banners of ‘human rights’ violations and ‘war crimes,’ show that he is entirely inappropriate as a human rights reporter.”
During the days afterwards I was involved in exposing both Garlasco's picture with his daughter while wearing an Iron Cross sweatshirt as well as the fact the HRW sent out sockpuppets to various blogs to defend Garlasco.
The problems with HRW are not limited to Garlasco, of course, but this was one of the increasing number of cases where we mere bloggers manage to break news as well as any reporter.
