PCHR's condemnation of Palmer shows its hypocrisy

It is hardly surprising that the Palestinian Center for Human Rights is livid at the Palmer Report finding that many of its well-worn anti-Israel tropes over the years are invalid:

The Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) strongly condemns the report of the Panel of Inquiry (Palmer Committee) established by the UN Secretary-General to investigate the attack on Mavi Marmara, one of the ships of the Freedom Flotilla, while it was in international waters and headed to the Gaza Strip, carrying humanitarian aid for Gaza’s civilian population. PCHR believes that the Committee prioritized political considerations over the rule of international law and the rights of victims, while legitimizing the policy of collective punishment represented in the blockade imposed on the Gaza Strip.

...PCHR believes that the Panel of Inquiry, established by UN Secretary-General Mr. Ban Ki-moon on 02 August 2010, which started its mission on 10 August 2010, is purely political, and consequently, its conclusions are purely political.

PCHR further believes that the Panel of Inquiry lacks professionalism as its conclusions contradict various legal opinions issued by many international legal experts and UN bodies concerned with human right and international humanitarian law...

PCHR totally rejects the findings of the report of Palmer Committee considering it is politicized and disregards for the international law. PCHR calls upon all international organizations to condemn the report, and not to deal with the findings that contradict with international law and human rights standards.

Have you ever seen a so-called "human rights" organization demand that other human rights organizations condemn a UN Panel of Inquiry?

This part is even more interesting:

PCHR supports the move of the Government of Turkey to the International Court of Justice, as the highest international judicial body to consider this crime, and reminds of its Advisory Opinion on the wall in the West Bank issued in July 2004, which considered the siege imposed on the Occupied Palestinian Territory a form of collective punishment prohibited under the international law.

The ICJ's flawed advisory opinion on Israel's security barrier did find it to be illegal, but nowhere in that document did it say that the reason is because the barrier is "collective punishment."

The PCHR makes up its own facts. 

We can see more than a little psychological projection going on here. While the PCHR said no less than four times that the Palmer Commission was politicized, it brought not a scintilla of evidence to back up that charge. But the PCHR itself is suffused with anti-Israel politics, as it cannot even use the term "Israel Defense Forces" in any of its press releases, instead referring to Israel's army as "Israeli Occupation Forces."

As I and my team exhaustively proved, the PCHR knowingly referred to hundreds of terrorists killed during Cast Lead/Operation Oil Stain as "civilians."

There are plenty of other examples where the PCHR clearly played politics rather than report the truth.

This lying and thoroughly politicized organization gets funding from donors like The Ford Foundation, Christian Aid, Oxfam, the EU, Norway and Denmark (as well as from George Soros.)

Perhaps these donors should start to require that PCHR adheres to a minimum standard of objectivity and truthfulness.