Friday, September 12, 2014
Elder of Ziyon
PART 7
(Part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6)
Continuing my series of lies that were tweeted by Ken Roth of Human Rights Watch over the past two months.
August 26 Devoted to reporting Palestinian life under occupation, @Levy_Haaretz is now "one of the most hated men in #Israel." http://trib.al/MzqStRK
Truth: When Ken Roth quotes Al Jazeera, he does it accurately. That is a great synopsis of the article there.
Of course, it is not true.
The reason Levy is hated isn't because he tells the truth - it is because he lies. He has reported inaccurately and defended it even when other left-wing journalists took him to task. He lied about the Mavi Marmara. His lies have been cataloged again and again. And all his lies are in one direction: against Israel.
Just like Ken Roth's.
Of course Roth will approvingly quote from Al Jazeera about Gideon Levy, where Levy praises himself - because the people who actually read Levy's writing know better.
August 26 retweet: Peter Bouckaert @bouckap #IDF destroying major apartment buildings in #Gaza wholly unrelated 2 #Hamas 2 pressure pop--called collective punishment, maybe war crime.
Truth: Peter Bouckaert is another HRW employee. This tweet has no links, no proof, and no facts. It makes a general accusation that the IDF is destroying buildings for no reason, not even perfunctorily quoting the IDF's reasons.
The tweet is an assertion made without any HRW people in the field in Gaza, No IDF official was interviewed. It is utterly without any basis in truth.
So, of course, Ken Roth must retweet it.
August 31: Massive new #Israel settlement expansion again violates 4th Geneva Convention--more war crimes http://trib.al/7ckDAw6
Truth: There was no settlement expansion. There was no land grabbed. There was no private land seized. The only thing that happened is that land that was uncategorized before was declared state land.
It is not against international law to do that. It is not a war crime. It is, actually,the sort of administrative act that
As Eugene Kontorovich - who is truly an expert in international law - writes:
... if Israel is indeed an occupying power, it has a duty to administer and maintain the rule of law, and oversee public resources, both of which require the authorities to know what land has private owners and what does not.When Roth calls this a war crime, he is showing off, yet again, his profound ignorance at best and his gross bias at worst.
...The hysteria over this announcement illustrates several points. First, it reflects how detached discussions of “illegal settlements” are from international law. The entire legal argument against settlements rests on one sentence of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which prohibits an “occupying power” to “deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population” into the territory it occupies.
Assume the treaty even applies to this situation–and there is good reason to think it does not. Further assume that Israelis moving across the Green Line can be considered a “deportation or transfer” committed by the Israeli government, though it does not appear the government is moving anyone. None of that has anything to do with the occupying power determining the ownership status of the land, an action which does not transfer or help transfer, and indeed, has nothing to do with the movement of people.
On the other hand, Israel also announced this week the construction of thousands of housing units in eastern Jerusalem for Arab Israelis. If the Geneva Convention indeed forbids building apartments in occupied territory for one’s nationals, it does so without any ethnic discrimination. The question would not be whether the “settlers” are Jews or Arabs, but whether they are part of Israel’s “civilian population.” Yet on this action, the international community was entirely silent.
The outrage over Israel’s “settlement” actions has no basis in law. Moving people is settlement activity, but only when done by Jews. Not moving people is also settlement activity. “Settlement activity” has just become a term of opprobrium with legal pretensions.
August 31: Non-excuses for Israel war crimes: 1. We respect rights at home; 2. Hamas started it; 3. Hamas commits war crimes too http://trib.al/3qa0LeT
Truth: This is perhaps a fitting way to cap the series.
The link that Roth points to are letters to the New York Times responding to an article called "The End of Liberal Zionism." The writer of the article, Antony Lerman, was essentially saying why Zionism - the movement for self determination of the Jewish people - is no longer for him, and those liberal Zionists who still exist are fooling themselves.
Lerman has many problems with Israel today - perceived religious intolerance, a supposed assault on free speech, treatment of illegal immigrants - and its conduct during war was only a small portion.
To Roth, it was the whole article.
Only one letter in the responses is being referred to by Roth, and that writer was responding to the article, not defending "Zionist war crimes." The fact that Roth read the original article through his own distorted lens and therefore assumes that the reactions are through the same lens just proves that Roth has lost the ability, if he ever had it, to see clearly.
Lerman advocates the end of Israel (a "one state solution.") Roth, apparently, agrees. Roth, who has never said a word about Arab antisemitism, is non-plussed with the idea of a state where Jews are a persecuted minority (after the "right of return," which HRW supports by lying that such a right exists.) Self-determination might be great for Palestinian Arabs, a people who no one had heard of before the 1960s, but to Ken Roth, the Jewish nation has no such rights.
This is the last of this series of Roth's lying tweets, but there is still much to say.
