HRW again minimizing Palestinian crimes and exaggerating blame on Israel

The first three paragraphs of HRW's annual report on "Israel/Palestine" reveals all you need to know about their anti-Israel bias.

Israel continued in 2016 to enforce severe and discriminatory restrictions on Palestinians’ human rights, to facilitate the transfer of Israeli civilians to the occupied West Bank, and to severely restrict the movement of people and goods into and out of the Gaza Strip.

Israeli actions are all illegal and everything that happens is because if Israeli actions, according to HRW.

"Facilitating transfer" is not a crime according to Geneva. "Transfer" is.

Israel has every legal and moral right to limit people and goods into enemy territory.

In 2016, a new escalation of violence that began in October 2015 continued, characterized by demonstrations, some violent, in the West Bank and at the Gaza border with Israel that Israeli forces have suppressed, often using live fire. 

HRW doesn't even identify Palestinian Arabs in this sentence as being behind the continuation of violence, but it sure mentions "Israeli forces."

There was a wave of stabbings and attempted stabbings by Palestinians against Israeli passersby and security forces, both in the West Bank and Israel, mostly by people acting without the sponsorship of any armed group.

Passive voice in referring to Palestinian stabbings - and no mention of car rammings and shootings and firebombs.

Israeli security forces used lethal force against suspected attackers in more than 150 cases, including in circumstances that suggest excessive force and at times extrajudicial executions.

Here we have active voice: "used lethal force" and supposedly often for no reason.

Overall, between January 1 and October 31, 2016, Palestinians killed at least 11 Israelis, including 2 security officers, and injured 131 Israelis, including 46 security officers, in the West Bank and Israel. Israeli security forces killed at least 94 Palestinians and injured at least 3,203 Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza, and Israel as of October 31, including suspected assailants, protesters, and bystanders, according to the United Nations.

HRW wants to minimize any mention of direct Palestinian terror, so it doesn't mention the Israelis killed by Israeli Arabs (January 1) or the non-Israeli, Taylor Force, killed March 9 in a stabbing spree.

Here's another example:

Israel maintained severe restrictions on the movement of people and goods into and out of Gaza, exacerbated by Egypt’s closure of its own border with Gaza most of the time, 

Israel, which lets tens of thousands of Palestinians travel via Erez and tens of thousands of trucks filled with goods through Kerem Shalom, is characterized as maintaining "severe restrictions." Egypt's nearly complete closure of Rafah merely "exacerbates" the problem that is mainly caused by Israel.

This is deliberate - emphasize and exaggerate Israeli actions while minimizing and downplaying Palestinian terror and any other Arab culpability.

Also, HRW, by leading the article with blaming Israel, makes it appear that Palestinian terror is a response to Israeli actions, and not the other way around..

This has been the pattern for years, but HRW needs to be called out on this bias every time.

(h/t Irene)

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