- We've seen that one of its members openly celebrated a Hamas murderer.
- We've seen them write a report blaming Israel for Gaza men beating their wives.
- In the same report, they falsely claim that Israel limits medical equipment to Gaza.
- We've seen them count Gaza terrorists as "children" who were killed in Gaza.
They just released a new report with this graphical summary:
Let's look first at the cartoon. Notice that the word "Israel" on the soldier's jacket is backwards. The original cartoon was a mirror image. Why did they flip the cartoon?
The cartoon is one of Latuff's most famous antisemitic cartoons, which is meant to evoke the famous photo of a Jewish child being arrested by Nazis (although edited to take out the dish and fork):
Euro-Mid is using an antisemitic cartoon to illustrate their anti-Israel report! But since the original cartoon is so obviously a product of a sick Jew-hating mind, they were considerate enough to flip it so as to not be so explicitly antisemitic.
Let's look at one of the statistics, that 75% of Palestinian Arab children detained by Israeli forces are supposedly tortured. Going through the report, they do not give a source for this statistic: they merely say that "International humanitarian agencies have documented that 75 percent of Palestinian children
detained by Israeli forces are subjected to treatment that meets the definition of torture."
What agencies might these be?
It turns out that the main source for this statistic is another rabidly anti-Israel NGO, called DCI-Palestine. We have looked at them before, too - they lied about the number of children killed in Operation Cast Lead, and they consistently report kids killed by Palestinian Arab rockets as being killed by Israel. DCI-Palestine openly admits that it "develops its programs and acts according to Palestinian children's needs and Palestinian priorities."
In other words, its objectivity is zero.
DCI-Palestine describes its methodology here:
Initial identification of potential human rights violations
Al Mezan and DCI-Palestine identify potential violations through two main avenues: victims’ reports and field monitoring. Al Mezan is a well-known Gaza-based human rights organisation in operation since 1999 and victims of human rights violations regularly contact one of Al Mezan’s three offices located across the Gaza Strip for assistance; in addition, Al Mezan’s five experienced fieldworkers based throughout the Gaza Strip use their strong community links to identify potential cases of human rights violations. Similarly, DCI-Palestine receives reports from children and parents in any of its four West Bank offices and through Gaza-based fieldworkers; however, most investigations are initiated following ongoing and proactive field monitoring from nine fieldworkers across the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
This means that the way DCI (and Al-Mezan) work is that every case of "torture" that they document is either self-reported or they go out of their way to find them. And if there are inconsistencies, what do they do?
Fieldworkers frequently go back to the source in order to verify details and correct any data inconsistency.An organization that admits up front that it is biased says that rather than discard any inconsistent testimony as being unreliable, they go back and massage the reports until they fit together better with the other facts!
This is a fancy way of admitting that they coax the "witnesses" to lie, or at the very least to shade the truth until they fit the agendas of the Israel-hating NGOs.
The 75% statistic (actually, in 2013 the number increased to 76.5%) comes from "affidavits" that DCI-Palestine coaxes "victims" to give, and then coaxes "eyewitnesses" to corroborate in turn. They pretty much say this explicitly. There is nothing scientific about their methods, the "victims" are all but handpicked for their fanciful stories, not chosen according to any objective criteria of children detained. A real statistician would cringe at this methodology.
So DCI-Palestine coaxed about 100 Palestinian Arab kids to say what they wanted them to say. Then they published a statistic saying that about 75% of the kids they interviewed - not all the kids, but the ones they handpicked - claim that they are tortured.
Euro-Mid Observer runs with that statistic as if it has any validity, and expands it to the (unverified) number of Palestinian Arab kids who are supposedly detained, to claim that Israel physically tortures thousands of Palestinian Arab kids a year.
It is a lie built on top of previous lies, but they are lies that no journalist bother to follow back to the source. I fully expect there to be articles today about this report without the slightest bit of skepticism.
Now that we know the methods that these NGOs use, how valid is the statistic that "95% of children are forced to admit to charges they did not commit"? Or any of the other bogus statistics mentioned?
Given the published methodology and the knowledge that Palestinian Arabs often lie to NGOs, and knowing that DCI-Palestine and Euro-Mid are anything but unbiased, the only conclusion is that every single statistic in this paper is not only suspect but can be assumed to be knowingly false.
The idea that Euro-Mid Observer, or DCI-Palestine, or Al Mezan, or PCHR, any of dozens of other biased anti-Israel NGOs can produce verifiable facts, is a joke.