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Tuesday, March 10, 2015

The intellectual dishonesty of the "progressive" NIF

Earlier today, I published here the JINSA-sponsored report "2014 Gaza War Assessment" which showed in detail where anti-Israel NGOs are wrong in their interpretations of the Laws of Armed Conflict when they damned Israel for Operation Cast Lead.

Naomi Paiss, self described "Pro-Israel progressive VP New Israel Fund," sided with the anti-Israel NGOs and tried to say that the report was ipso facto inaccurate based purely on who sponsored it:

I answered her:










I received no response.

We won't see any substantial critique of the report that exonerated Israeli actions in Gaza, written by military experts who are sorely lacking from NGOs like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.

The reason is that they know that they are wrong. They know that they cannot argue with these generals on the topic of international law or the law of armed conflict, because they would lose. They know that if they would be intellectually honest they would have to drop their entire anti-Israel positions, which is the source for much of their funding.

I'm sure that Paiss didn't even read the report before dismissing it out of hand. Because she is not pro-Israel nor is she pro-truth. She reflexively chose to support those whose anti-Israel bias is proven and palpable.

So these esteemed NGOs, and purported "pro-Israel" organizations like the NIF, will continue to ignore the report for as long as they can, hoping it gets no traction.  And if there is enough pressure, they will find someone to nitpick about a minor part of the report and the entire crowd will point to that as a "rebuttal." They'll say things like "But look at all the houses destroyed!" as if that point isn't discussed in the general's report.

They'll resort to sarcasm and deflection and misdirection. But none of them will honestly take on the challenge of answering the report itself.

Because Israel's critics aren't intellectually honest. And Naomi Paiss' tweets prove it.

But I am more than willing to be proven wrong if someone is willing to write a real critique of the JINSA report.