Showing posts with label Garlasco. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Garlasco. Show all posts

Sunday, March 10, 2024

  • Sunday, March 10, 2024
  • Elder of Ziyon

Remember Marc Garlasco, the former Human Rights Watch "senior military analyst" who was suspended and forced to resign when his hobby of avidly collecting Nazi memorabilia and bragging about how "cool" they are was exposed by a group of bloggers, myself included?

He has bounced from job to job. In December, PBS interviewed him as saying that Israeli non-guided bombs were inaccurate, while a real expert in air defense said he didn't know what he was talking about. 

Now Garlasco has a new job - at the US Department of Defense.

According to his LinkedIn profile, Garlasco is now a Division Chief at the DoD, "promoting civilian harm mitigation and response for the US military" based out of Washington, DC. He started in January.

It seems likely that Garlasco was hired in conjunction with the DoD Instruction 3000.1 published in December, to "establish policy, assigns responsibilities, and provide procedures for civilian harm mitigation and response (CHMR)."

This guy is the best they could find?

(h/t Irene)





Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

Read all about it here!

 

 

Sunday, July 03, 2022

Remember Marc Garlasco?

Back in 2009, I discovered that Garlasco, a Human Rights Watch researcher who wrote that organization's typically one-sided anti-Israel reports, was an avid collector of Nazi memorabilia. 

He was forced to resign after it was discovered that he had written things like "The leather SS jacket makes my blood go cold it is so COOL!"

Now, NPR is rehabilitating him, interviewing him as an "expert" in a story about how Israel supposedly cannot be trusted to investigate itself in the Shireen Abu Akleh killing:

ESTRIN: Israel is similar to other militaries, which tend to protect their own when they ask troops to risk their lives for their country, says former Pentagon official Marc Garlasco, who has investigated war crimes around the world.

MARC GARLASCO: Militaries in particular have a very poor record of investigating themselves. It doesn't matter if we're talking about Israel or the United States, Myanmar. When organizations investigate themselves, they tend to either exonerate their personnel, or they'll go after the lowest-hanging fruit, and we very rarely see any kind of justice.
If so, why did the IDF immediately identify a possible weapon that could have killed Abu Akleh? Why didn't it do what the Palestinians did and insist that the other side must have killed her? 

The NPR piece is a typical example of choosing the narrative first and then finding an "expert" to support the already chosen outcome. In this case, they chose someone who used to use the nickname "Flak88" after a German anti-tank weapon that also happens to include the "88" dog-whistle that neo-Nazis use as a shorthand for "Heil Hitler" (H being the 8th letter of the alphabet.)

And someone who not only collects Nazi memorabilia, but wears modern sweatshirts celebrating Nazi-era medals.


(h/t Irene)



Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

Read all about it here!

 

 

Tuesday, April 06, 2010

The Times (UK) article on HRW that I quoted from last week had a number of inaccuracies and other parts that HRW took exception to:
A Magazine article, “Explosive Territory” (March 28) by Jonathan Foreman, mostly about Human Rights Watch’s (HRW) work on Israel, requires clarification and correction. The magazine said that HRW had not published any report on the post-election abuses in Iran when in fact the organisation published one in February this year. Marc Garlasco, the former senior military analyst for HRW, was not the only person in the organisation who had military experience; a number of the HRW staff have military expertise. In the 20-year Kashmir conflict HRW has published nine reports, not four as the article stated. One HRW researcher has had articles published by the Palestinian pressure group Electronic Intifada without her permission but was not directly employed by that group, as the article suggests. Although HRW never produced a full report about the shelling at the Nahr al-Bared refugee camp in 2007 it did write three press releases, not one as the article stated. We regret the errors. Mr Foreman quoted a critic of HRW saying the group “cares about Palestinians when mistreated by Israelis but is less concerned if perpetrators are fellow Arabs”. In fact Human Rights Watch has reported on abuses of Palestinians by the Palestinian Authority, Hamas, Iraq, Kuwait and Jordan. Mr Foreman cited unnamed sources that said Mr Garlasco resented what he felt was pressure to sex up claims of Israeli violations. HRW and Mr Garlasco both say HRW never pressured Mr Garlasco to change his findings. We are happy to clarify HRW’s position.
NGO Monitor comments on the corrections in the same link:
HRW’s “corrections” to Foreman’s expose raise more questions and create more confusion, while avoiding core issues like credibility, bias against Israel, and the Garlasco gag order.

1) They claim that “a number of the HRW staff have military expertise” – what does this mean regarding credibility of combat analysis? Basic training, some time in front of a computer, etc. does not provide the “military experience” necessary to assess actions and weapons (drones, WP, etc.) in Afghanistan, Gaza, Lebanon or Iraq. There is still no information to assess Garlasco's qualifications as HRW's "senior military analyst."

2) Regarding the employment of Lucy Mair in the anti-Israel MENA division: “One HRW researcher has had articles published by the Palestinian pressure group Electronic Intifada without her permission….” Mair published more than one article in EI. These have been on line for seven years, with no record of any objection by her. HRW’s response does not alter Foreman’s point that Mair was a highly visible anti-Israel propagandist before being hired by HRW.

3) Detailed HRW reports and accompanying media campaigns are not comparable to short press releases, whether on Kashmir or Palestinian terror. Reports indicate a major investment, while stand-alone press releases are quickly forgotten, as detailed in NGO Monitor research.

4) HRW officials assert that they “never pressured Mr. Garlasco to change his findings,” but they refuse to explain inconsistencies and changing “forensic” analysis in Gaza Beach and other examples.

Sunday, March 28, 2010

The Times (UK) has a beautiful article that nicely exposes the problems at Human Rights Watch, starting with the Garlasco affair that I helped expose, but showing that Garlasco was just a symptom of a much deeper problem.

Excerpts:

When the story broke that one of the organisation’s most prominent and vocal members of staff might be a collector of Nazi-era military memorabilia it felt like some sort of sexual scandal had erupted in the Victorian church. For a lobbying group accustomed to adulatory coverage in the media, it was a public-relations catastrophe.

Human Rights Watch is one of two global superpowers among the world’s myriad humanitarian pressure groups. It is relatively young — established in its current form in 1988 — but it has grown so quickly in size, wealth and influence that it has all but eclipsed its older, London-based rival, Amnesty International.

Unlike Amnesty, HRW, as it is known, gets its money from charitable foundations and wealthy individuals — such as the financier George Soros — rather than a mass membership. And, also unlike Amnesty, it seeks to make an impact, not through extensive letter-writing campaigns, but by talking to governments and the media, urging openness and candour and backing up its advocacy with research reports. It is an association that is all about influence — an influence that depends on a carefully honed image of objectivity, expertise and high moral tone. So it was perhaps a little awkward that a key member of staff was found to have such a treasure trove of Nazi regalia.

Every year, Human Rights Watch puts out up to 100 glossy reports — essentially mini books — and 600-700 press releases, according to Daly, a former journalist for The Independent.

Some conflict zones get much more coverage than others. For instance, HRW has published five heavily publicised reports on Israel and the Palestinian territories since the January 2009 war.

In 20 years they have published only four reports on the conflict in Indian-controlled Kashmir, for example, even though the conflict has taken at least 80,000 lives in these two decades, and torture and extrajudicial murder have taken place on a vast scale. Perhaps even more tellingly, HRW has not published any report on the postelection violence and repression in Iran more than six months after the event.

When I asked the Middle East director Sarah Leah Whitson if HRW was ever going to release one, she said: “We have a draft, but I’m not sure I want to put one out.” Asked the same question, executive director Kenneth Roth told me that the problem with doing a report on Iran was the difficulty of getting into the country.

I interviewed a human-rights expert at a competing organisation in Washington who did not wish to be named because “we operate in a very small world and it’s not done to criticise other human-rights organisations”. He told me he was “not surprised” that HRW has still not produced a report on the violence in Iran: “They are thinking about how it’s going to be used politically in Washington. And it’s not a priority for them because Iran is just not a bad guy that they are interested in highlighting. Their hearts are not in it. Let’s face it, the thing that really excites them is Israel.”

Noah Pollak, a New York writer who has led some of the criticisms against HRW, points out that it cares about Palestinians when maltreated by Israelis, but is less concerned if perpetrators are fellow Arabs. For instance, in 2007 the Lebanese army shelled the Nahr al Bared refugee camp near Tripoli (then under the control of Fatah al Islam radicals), killing more than 100 civilians and displacing 30,000. HRW put out a press release — but it never produced a report.

Such imbalance was at the heart of a public dressing-down that shook HRW in October. It came from the organisation’s own founder and chairman emeritus, the renowned publisher Robert Bernstein, who took it to task in The New York Times for devoting its resources to open and democratic societies rather than closed ones.

He said: “It broke my heart to write that article… Of course open societies should be watched very carefully, but HRW is one of the very few organisations that is supposed to go into closed societies. Why should HRW be covering Guantanamo? It’s already covered by a lot of other organisations.”

Associates of Garlasco have told me that there had long been tensions between Garlasco and HRW’s Middle East Division in New York — perhaps because he sometimes stuck his neck out and did not follow the HRW line. Garlasco himself apparently resented what he felt was pressure to sex up claims of Israeli violations of laws of war in Gaza and Lebanon, or to stick by initial assessments even when they turned out to be incorrect.

In June 2006, Garlasco had alleged that an explosion on a Gaza beach that killed seven people had been caused by Israeli shelling. However, after seeing the details of an Israeli army investigation that closely examined the relevant ballistics and blast patterns, he subsequently told the Jerusalem Post that he had been wrong and that the deaths were probably caused by an unexploded munition in the sand. But this went down badly at Human Rights Watch HQ in New York, and the admission was retracted by an HRW press release the next day.

Since the Garlasco affair blew up, critics of Human Rights Watch have raised questions about other appointments. An Israeli newspaper revealed that Joe Stork, the deputy head of HRW’s Middle East department, was a radical leftist who put out a magazine in the 1970s that praised the murder of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics. In 1976 he attended an anti-Zionist conference in Baghdad hosted by the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.

Stork’s boss, Sarah Leah Whitson, and most of his colleagues in the Middle East department of Human Rights Watch, also have activist backgrounds — it was typical that one newly hired researcher came to HRW from the extremist anti-Israel publication Electronic Intifada — unlikely to reassure anyone who thinks that human-rights organisations should be non-partisan. While it may be hard to find people who are genuinely neutral about Middle East politics, theoretically an organisation like HRW would not select as its researchers people who are so evidently on one side.

While HRW was dealing with the fallout from the Garlasco affair, it was already on the defensive as a result of criticism of a fundraising effort in Saudi Arabia, one of the world’s worst human-rights violators. This involved two dinners for members of the Saudi elite in Riyadh, at which Sarah Leah Whitson curried favour with her hosts by boasting about HRW’s “battles” with pro-Israel pressure groups, such as NGO Monitor.

I asked the HRW executive director Kenneth Roth about the controversy that surrounded the Saudi dinners. He said: “Because somebody is the victim of a repressive government, should they have no right to contribute to a human-rights organisation?” Even if they had been invited, few victims would have been able to make the dinners — most Saudi dissidents are either in prison or live abroad in exile.
This is exactly the hubris and doubletalk that we have seen time and time again from HRW over Garlasco. There is zero evidence that the Saudi fundraising dinner had a single Saudi dissident or critic in attendance, yet HRW defends itself as if that was the focus of the dinner - not to line its pockets with money from people who share its loathing for Israel.

Many of those on the left of the human-rights “community” may feel conflicting emotions when it comes to dealing with radical Islam, as if the former is somehow a dangerous distraction from the real struggle. In 2006 Scott Long, the director of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights programme at Human Rights Watch, attacked the British campaigner Peter Tatchell, accusing him of racism, Islamophobia and colonialism for having the temerity to lead a campaign against Iran’s executions of homosexuals — a campaign that Long believed was unconstructive and based on “a Western social-constructionist trope”.

Human Rights Watch does perform a useful task, but its critics raise troubling questions that go beyond Garlasco’s hobby or raising money from Saudis. Why put such effort into publicising alleged human-rights violations in some countries but not others? Why does HRW seem so credulous of civilian witnesses in places like Gaza and Afghanistan but so sceptical of anyone in a uniform?

It may be that organisations like HRW that depend on the media for their profile — and therefore their donations — concentrate too much on places that the media already cares about.

HRW’s reaction to the scandals has perhaps cost it more credibility than the scandals themselves. It has revealed an organisation that does not always practice the transparency, tolerance and accountability it urges on others.
The only thing that this article didn't mention was HRW's crude use of sockpuppets to defend itself during the Garlsaco affair.

Read the whole thing.

Friday, March 05, 2010

  • Friday, March 05, 2010
  • Elder of Ziyon
From JPost:
A Human Rights Watch spokeswoman told The Jerusalem Post on Thursday night that its embattled senior military analyst Marc Garlasco resigned nearly three weeks ago....

HRW suspended Garlasco with pay in September, “pending an investigation,” after allegations surfaced that he was an avid collector of Nazi memorabilia.

...As for the “pending investigation,” Daly repeated that Garlasco had resigned and said, “We are not commenting on it any further.”

Garlasco’s collection was initially revealed by Omri Ceren on his blog “Mere Rhetoric” in September, when he wrote that Garlasco was “obsessed with the color and pageantry of Nazism, has published a detailed 430-page book on Nazi war paraphernalia, and participates in forums for Nazi souvenir collectors.”

The subsequent media coverage sparked controversy and condemnations from groups such as NGO Monitor, which released a statement saying that Garlasco’s background, “when combined with his central role in the condemnations of Israel under false banners of ‘human rights’ violations and ‘war crimes,’ show that he is entirely inappropriate as a human rights reporter.”
One of my readers had tipped me off to Garlasco's hobby,and I emailed Omri and other bloggers about it, letting him run with the story. (I also found the Garlasco quote "The leather SS jacket makes my blood go cold it is so COOL", which I also told a number of other bloggers about and they posted it before I did.)

During the days afterwards I was involved in exposing both Garlasco's picture with his daughter while wearing an Iron Cross sweatshirt as well as the fact the HRW sent out sockpuppets to various blogs to defend Garlasco.

The problems with HRW are not limited to Garlasco, of course, but this was one of the increasing number of cases where we mere bloggers manage to break news as well as any reporter.

Sunday, November 15, 2009

The Guardian reports on HRW's whining about being criticized by people like me:
America's leading human rights organisation has accused Israel and its supporters of an "organised campaign" of false allegations and misinformation, including "extremely personal attacks" on its staff, in an attempt to discredit the group over its reports of war crimes in Gaza. Iain Levine, HRW's programme director, said that while the organisation had long attracted criticism, in recent months there had been significant attempts to intimidate and discredit it. "I really hesitate to use words like conspiracy, but there is a feeling that there is an organised campaign, and we're seeing from different places what would appear to be co-ordinated attacks ... from some of the language and arguments used it would seem as if there has been discussion," he said."We are having to spend a lot of time repudiating the lies, the falsehoods, the misinformation."
Isn't it a shame that HRW has to spend time defending its positions rather than being believed uncritically? All together now....Awwww! Although I was tragically not mentioned by name, I am an integral part of the nefarious anti-NGO conspiracy. After all, I was the one who noticed Marc Garlasco's interesting hobby of collecting Nazi memorabilia, information that I shared with other bloggers in an illegal secret Zionist underground information channel known as "email." I didn't have the time to exhaustively research it all, and Omri Ceren of Mere Rhetoric took the story and ran with it (with my full support.) My later contributions to the story included the sock-puppets that HRW sent out to defend themselves and the picture of Garlasco wearing the Iron Cross sweatshirt (which I believe someone else found first and alerted me to.) [And now Omri has a radio show, where such information can be shared with even more people! See how deep our Zio-connections are?] Notably, even then the Guardian quoted HRW implying some sort of blog conspiracy when the story broke. One has to wonder if, say, HRW and Amnesty and the UNHRC and the PCHR and Al Mezan and Al Addameer share information with each other - and whether this is a terrible conspiracy as well? (The answer to the first question is, of course, "yes.") The difference is that the NGOs have multi-million dollar budgets, and will often repeat the claims of other NGOs - even clearly biased ones - without any of their own fact checking. For example, Al Addameer's absurd claim of 750,000 Palestinian Arab prisoners since 1967 has been accepted as fact. Would HRW say that this story is above criticism as well? In interests of full disclosure, a Zio Blog conspiracy member list has been published. You can see us in the About Us page on the Understanding the Goldstone Report site. It includes NGO Monitor, CAMERA and Honest Reporting as well as some well-known writers and bloggers. We share information and build on other posts and articles. We do this precisely because it is more effective and focused. In fact, I'm going to now link to another, far more detailed critique of the Guardian article, from Richard Landes and Augean Stables. See how we all conspire together? Booga booga!

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

  • Tuesday, September 15, 2009
  • Elder of Ziyon
  • ,
From the NYT:
A leading human rights group has suspended its senior military analyst following revelations that he is an avid collector of Nazi memorabilia.

The group, Human Rights Watch, had initially thrown its full support behind the analyst, Marc Garlasco, when the news of his hobby came out last week. On Monday night, the group shifted course and suspended him with pay, “pending an investigation,” said Carroll Bogert, the group’s associate director.

“We have questions about whether we have learned everything we need to know,” she said.

The suspension comes at a time of heightened tension between, on one side, the new Israeli government and its allies on the right, and the other side, human rights organizations that have been critical of Israel. In recent months, the government has pledged an aggressive approach toward the groups to discredit what they argue is bias and error.

Injected suddenly into that heated conflict, word of Mr. Garlasco’s interest seemed startling to many. The disclosure ricocheted across the Internet: Mr. Garlasco, an American, was not only a collector, he has written a book, more than 400 pages long, about Nazi-era medals. His hobby, inspired he said by a German grandfather conscripted into Hitler’s army, was revealed on a pro-Israel blog, Mere Rhetoric Mere Rhetoric, which quoted his enthusiastic postings on collector sites under the pseudonym “Flak88” — including, “That is so cool! The leather SS jacket makes my blood go cold it is so COOL!”

It was a Rorschach moment in the conflict between Israel and its critics. The revelations were, depending on who is talking, either incontrovertible proof of bias or an irrelevant smear.

The Mere Rhetoric posting said Mr. Garlasco’s interests explained “anti-Israel biases.”

Ms. Bogert called the attacks on Mr. Garlasco and her group “a distraction from the real issue, which is the Israeli government’s behavior.”

But some who firmly support Human Rights Watch were left unsettled by the researcher’s extracurricular activities.

Helena Cobban, a blogger and activist who is on the group’s Middle East advisory committee, asked on her blog, Just World News, if Mr. Garlasco’s activities were “something an employer like Human Rights Watch ought to be worried about? After consideration, I say Yes.”

Garlasco's hobby cannot be hermetically sealed off from his work at HRW. Whether or not it shows any pre-existing bias, his obsession - and HRW's reaction for the past week - show an immaturity that is incompatible with the role they claim for themselves. I would argue that this same immaturity is often seen in their anti-Israel reports as well; comparing their assumptions and legal positions on Operation Cast Lead with the IDF report appears to me at least like HRW is filled with people who do not know anything about how wars are fought and who interpret international law with a bias that makes it literally impossible to effectively fight terror without endangering the citizens of any free country.

Moreover, their reports on Israel make the assumption that Israel is identical in its own human rights posture as third-world dictatorships. The reason that Israel no longer cooperates with these organizations isn't because Israel has no interest in human rights (which seems to be the petulant conclusion drawn by the egotistical "human rights" community) but because Israel knows that they will not be given a fair shake. She's been burned too many times.

The inescapable fact is that for the most part, the IDF and the Israeli people themselves have no interest in violating the rights of anyone - as long as their own rights to living in peace and security are not violated as well. Palestinian Arab human rights are no more important than those of Israelis taking a bus. Not only that, but the primary responsibility of any government is protecting its own citizens. These facts are self-evident yet ignored in the multitude of reports that come out against Israel - in HRW's case, about every month.

It is comparatively easy to judge Israel against strict interpretations of international humanitarian law, especially when the interpreters frame each report to look at the human rights of only one side. The issue gets messier when real-world Israel needs to balance its own obligations to protect her own people against the human rights of her sworn enemies. Invariably, some of the decisions that will be made will value the lives of IDF soldiers and Israeli citizens in rocket range above those of terrorists, their supporters and the people who are purposefully used by terrorists as cover.

Israel has every interest in waging as moral a war as possible, and Gaza - by any objective measure - was such a war. Hamas has incentive to endanger its citizens, the IDF has disincentive to kill them. If human rights groups would work with Israel to find a way to improve the IDF's methodology to help save enemy lives while not jeopardizing Israelis, I am certain that the IDF would be happy to cooperate. That is not what these groups do, though, and from reading the IDF report and various Israeli legal treatises, Israelis are far ahead of HRW in applying international law to real conflicts anyway.

Garlasco, from what I can tell, has a lack of real military experience. Working at the Pentagon does not make one a forensics expert. But HRW, in its seeming immaturity, gave him that job more because of his resume than because of his knowledge. This is the problem. For all of HRW's laudatory goals, they have no ability to be as critical of themselves as they are of anyone they set their sights on. To my mind, this is what was exposed here - not a sickening hobby from one of their more visible figureheads, but HRW's tone-deafness and immaturity.

Saturday, September 12, 2009

  • Saturday, September 12, 2009
  • Elder of Ziyon
  • ,
Marc Garlasco finally responds to the story about his obsession with collecting Nazi-era German paraphernalia. And, as could be expected, he twists the facts around a bit:
Now I've achieved some blogosphere fame, not for the hours I've spent sifting through the detritus of war, visiting hospitals, interviewing victims and witnesses and soldiers, but for my hobby (unusual and disturbing to some, I realize) of collecting Second World War memorabilia associated with my German grandfather and my American great-uncle. I'm a military geek, with an abiding interest not only in the medals I collect but in the weapons that I study and the shrapnel I analyze. I think this makes me a better investigator and analyst. And to suggest it shows Nazi tendencies is defamatory nonsense, spread maliciously by people with an interest in trying to undermine Human Rights Watch's reporting.
Actually, he had achieved some blogosphere fame previously, for his poor analyses blaming Israel for various things that he didn't have adequate evidence for.

Secondly, his hobby is not "Second World War memorabilia associated with my German grandfather and my American great-uncle." Unless he has another handle he keeps secret, his obsession - it is difficult to call it anything else - has been specifically with German memorabilia, and specifically with WWII-era German memorabilia (although I saw a few awards from the earlier part of the century.) His book was on specifically German medals.

Thirdly, collecting medals has zero in common with military analysis. To imply that somehow his creepy hobby makes him a better analyst is laughable.

Fourthly, there are serious questions as to how good an analyst he is to begin with. I am not one who can judge, but I would love to hear from military people who have read his analyses. Clearly he has screwed up in the past. And as far as I can tell, his Pentagon career had nothing to do with "analyzing shrapnel."
I've never hidden my hobby, because there's nothing shameful in it, however weird it might seem to those who aren't fascinated by military history. Precisely because it's so obvious that the Nazis were evil, I never realized that other people, including friends and colleagues, might wonder why I care about these things.
If this is true, then why did he agonize in one of his forums as to whether he should use his real name on his book? He was concerned because he sometimes gets quoted on the news, and being associated with this enterprise might hurt his career. That indicates an awareness that he knew that his hobby was potentially offensive to some. He knew quite well that people "might wonder." Yet, like all obsessives, he justified it rather than take up collecting stamps or pink flamingos.

The question he has yet to satisfactorily answer is why his obsession was almost exclusive to Nazi-era German memorabilia. He has simply denied that (as has HRW) and there has been little evidence that he spent even 1% of his collecting time on non-Nazi-era German war materials.
I deeply regret causing pain and offense with a handful of juvenile and tasteless postings I made on two websites that study Second World War artifacts (including American, British, German, Japanese and Russian items). Other comments there might seem strange and even distasteful, but they reflect the enthusiasm of the collector, such as gloating about getting my hands on an American pilot's uniform.
Here he is simply lying. The websites were both specifically geared towards German Nazi-era collections, one named GermanCombatAwards.com and the other was Wehrmacht-Awards.com. I didn't see any post about getting his hands on an American pilot's uniform, but I did see the one on his enthusiasm about seeing an SS jacket:
That is so cool! The leather SS jacket makes my blood go cold it is so COOL!

Marc
It makes my blood go cold, as well, but for completely different reasons.

Which points up to the major problem with Garlasco's non-apology: it is an excuse, with the trappings of some apologetic words, probably forced by his bosses at HRW who are trying desperately to shut this story down.

And the problem is not specifically Garlasco. It is HRW. Garlasco is always trotted out as their "senior military analyst" but we do not know what his areas of expertise really are, and one gets the impression that he is overreaching in his analyses to get to a conclusion that was already decided before he entered the scene. Now he looks a lot flakier, and so does HRW's credibility; their defense of him indicates that they just don't get it.

Friday, September 11, 2009

  • Friday, September 11, 2009
  • Elder of Ziyon
A comment at Solomonia by Neurodoc caught my eye:
Now, at the risk of denying Marc Garlasco any of the attention he deserves, might I point out something I have not seen mentioned about another HRW stalwart, Sarah Whitman [sic]? Am I the only one to think it noteworthy that Ms. Whitman's Facebook page identifies as a special friend of hers Adam Shapiro, the same Adam Shapiro who was a founder of International Solidarity Movement, buddy of Yassir Arafat, etc.? I don't see anyone among her friends that I recognize as an ardent supporter of Israel, matching the very much anti-Israel Shapiro.
Indeed, Sarah Leah Whitson's Facebook page includes Shapiro.

Now, I am not a big user of Facebook, so I don't know whether "friends" is meaningful at all in this context. But it may be a useful exercise to see if any of the "objective" members of NGOs like HRW have as many unabashed supporters of Israel as friends as they have unabashed haters.

Thursday, September 10, 2009

  • Thursday, September 10, 2009
  • Elder of Ziyon
  • ,
Earlier this evening I received a comment from "Dash F.", about the Garlasco story, saying:
This is total nonsense. It's malicious and defamatory and borderline libelous, to be honest. The mere fact that someone collects a certain kind of military artifact does not make them loyal to what those artifacts represent. Saying Garlasco is a Nazi b/c he owns Nazi medals is like saying someone interested in cave paintings is a neanderthal. It simply makes no sense! Instead of dragging this man's name through the mud, perhaps it would be better to consider his record, his position at a leading Human Rights NGO (which, despite claims to the contrary, is not anti-Israel since they criticize Israeli and Palestinian tactics alike when either cross the line of legality), and the fact that he COLLECTS stuff. That's as far as it goes. People study and write about and read about and are interested in every evil figure and vile empire that ever existed, Nero, Ghengis Khan, Sadam Hussein, Stalin, Hitler. This interest does not equal acceptance or agreement or support in any way and to argue otherwise is totally illogical!
Five minutes later, on a different thread, I received another missive from "Tom K." who pasted HRW's press-release defense of Marc Garlasco.

Both of them happen to have the same IP address.

And that IP address happens to resolve to ....HRW.org!

Is this HRW's idea of how to win friends and influence people in the new media? Because, to my mind, they just did the opposite. Sock-puppet messages are considered a gross breach of netiquette, and it indicates a certain dishonesty, not to mention puerility.

HRW? Dishonest? Juvenile? Non-professional? Perish the thought!

UPDATE: Commenter Max notices that "Dash F."'s comment was repeated, verbatim, at Solomonia under the name "Sue." I wonder how many other blogs got visits from our pals at Human Rights Watch under different handles?

Meanwhile, Helena Cobban, who is on the HRW Middle East advisory committee, seems as disgusted with Garlasco as the rest of us are.

UPDATE 2: "Sara" wrote an identical message at the Z-Word blog. When it was mentioned, a person who answered her wrote, "Yay, I was debating with CTRL-C + CTRL-V!"
  • Thursday, September 10, 2009
  • Elder of Ziyon
  • ,
I'm trying to find time to post on other topics, but this one keeps getting more interesting...

Daled Amos uncovers some stuff that Garlasco has said in the past that seems somewhat, um, inconsistent with his attitude towards Israel:
"I don't think people really appreciate the gymnastics that the U.S. military goes through in order to make sure that they're not killing civilians," Garlasco points out.

"If so much care is being taken why are so many civilians getting killed?" Pelley asks.

"Because the Taliban are violating international law,” says Garlasco, “and because the U.S. just doesn't have enough troops on the ground. You have the Taliban shielding in people's homes. And you have this small number of troops on the ground. And sometimes the only thing they can do is drop bombs.”
Daled Amos finds another quote from Garlasco in that same interview concerning his previous life working with the US military:
Garlasco says, before the invasion of Iraq, he recommended 50 air strikes aimed at high-value targets -- Iraqi officials.

But he says none of the targets on the list were actually killed. Instead, he says, "a couple of hundred civilians at least" were killed.
Let see, that's a ratio of, very roughly, zero percent of the dead that were the intended targets. The worst you can say about the IDF in Gaza is about 45% with equally tough circumstances. (Is this sorry record what makes him a military expert?)

Perhaps we should ask HRW to investigate whether Garlasco should be charged with war crimes.

Read the whole thing.

Meanwhile, The Guardian has picked up on the story, even mentioning little ol' me:
Several of the websites that have been running with the Garlasco story, Human Rights Watch says, are the same websites that have been attacking its reporting of the Gaza war. They include Elder of Ziyon, NGO Monitor and Mere Rhetoric.
Sounds vaguely conspiratorial, no?
  • Thursday, September 10, 2009
  • Elder of Ziyon
  • ,
NGO Monitor does a nice job rounding up all the latest findings about Human Rights Watch's Marc Garlasco and his fetish for WWII German memorabilia.

Wednesday, September 09, 2009

  • Wednesday, September 09, 2009
  • Elder of Ziyon
  • ,
From the German Combat Awards forum. The members are introducing themselves, and HRW's Marc Garlasco posts this picture of himself. The discussion afterwards:

Skip: Love the sweatshirt Mark. Not one I could wear here in germany though (well I could but it would be a lot of hassle)

Flak88: Everyone thinks it is a biker shirt!

Skip: Yeh, were you come from but imagine walking around in Berlin with "das Eisene Kreuz" written across your cheat. Either you get beaten to pulp by a group of rampaging Turks or the police arrest you on suspicion of being a Nazi
Yeah, this is what a serious military historian looks like on his day off.
  • Wednesday, September 09, 2009
  • Elder of Ziyon
  • ,
Israel Matzav translates Ma'ariv's article about the problems at Human Rights Watch, which include the new information about Marc Garlasco's Nazi-paraphernalia hobby:
If it were one case, one could argue it was a coincidence. Even two are not proof. But the more about that is disclosed about Human Rights Watch (HRW), the most important international body to protect human rights, the more that it seems that something really stinks there. No, that's not a delicate word, and certainly not diplomatic one. But it is doubtful that there is a better word to describe the can of worms that is gradually being dug up there. ...Now Marc Garlasco, who is HRW's senior military analyst, and who was the linchpin of past poisonous reports against Israel, joins the party. For example, Garlasco is the man who determined that an Israeli shell caused the deaths of an entire Palestinian family in Beit Lahiya, on the Gaza beach, in June 2006, and who made various other charges related to the Second Lebanon War and to Operation Cast Lead. Garlasco has made so many mistakes that they cannot be counted. But he is against Israel. And that is permitted. It is not clear yet whether Garlasco himself is a Nazi. Those claims deserve close scrutiny, but it seems possible to make do with what we already know. We're talking about a Nazi memorabilia collector. This is not an innocent collection. In many cases, the collectors are expounders of a clear ideology; there are no sane people there. ...What is clearer is that HRW is being disclosed as a dangerous group, which needs a serious shakeup. Human rights in the world deserve much better protectors than a terrorist-lover like Stork or collectors of Nazi memorabilia, like Garlasco.
Read the whole thing.

Tuesday, September 08, 2009

  • Tuesday, September 08, 2009
  • Elder of Ziyon
  • ,
Human Rights Watch is providing an offense (in every sense of the word) to defend their researcher Marc Garlasco. Earlier this evening I, and other bloggers who commented on the story of Garlasco's obsession with Nazi artifacts, received a canned response from HRW:
Several blogs and others critical of Human Rights Watch have suggested that Marc Garlasco, Human Rights Watch’s longtime senior military advisor, is a Nazi sympathizer because he collects German (as well as American) military memorabilia. This accusation is demonstrably false and fits into a campaign to deflect attention from Human Rights Watch’s rigorous and detailed reporting on violations of international human rights and humanitarian law by the Israeli government. Garlasco has co-authored several of our reports on violations of the laws of war, including in Afghanistan, Georgia, and Iraq, as well as by Israel, Hamas, and Hezbollah.

Garlasco has never held or expressed Nazi or anti-Semitic views.

Garlasco’s grandfather was conscripted into the German armed forces during the Second World War, like virtually all young German men at the time, and served as a radar operator on an anti-aircraft battery. He never joined the Nazi Party, and later became a dedicated pacifist. Meanwhile, Garlasco’s great-uncle was an American B-17 crewman, who survived many attacks by German anti-aircraft gunners.

Garlasco own family’s experience on both sides of the Second World War has led him to collect military items related to both sides, including American 8th Air Force memorabilia and German Air Force medals and other objects (not from the Nazi Party or the SS, as falsely alleged). Many military historians, and others with an academic interest in the Second World War, including former and active-duty US service members, collect memorabilia from that era.

Garlasco is the author of a monograph on the history of German Air Force and Army anti-aircraft medals and a contributor to websites that promote serious historical research into the Second World War (and which forbid hate speech). In the foreword he writes of telling his daughters that “the war was horrible and cruel, that Germany lost and for that we should be thankful.”

To imply that Garlasco’s collection is evidence of Nazi sympathies is not only absurd but an attempt to deflect attention from his deeply felt efforts to uphold the laws of war and minimize civilian suffering in wartime. These falsehoods are an affront to Garlasco and thousands of other serious military historians.
It is hard to tell how much of this is HRW being obtuse and how much is them pretending to be obtuse.

Most of their argument is strawman and irrelevant.

I never accused Garlasco of being a Nazi or even a Nazi sympathizer, and as far as I can tell most bloggers who took up this story didn't either. HRW's tarring us with that brush is, frankly, offensive, and it serves to detract from the real issue that they studiously ignore:

HRW's poster boy for human rights research nurses a serious obsession with, and fascination for, the worst human rights abusers in history.

Saying that this is him doing "research" is an insult to everyone's intelligence. He is a collector of Nazi-era German objects like daggers, Iron Crosses, swastikas. He has written hundreds, maybe thousands, of posts on forums dedicated to the topic. He has written a 400 page book on the topic. Writing a monograph on German medals does not make one a "historian" in any real sense; it makes him a rabid collector. I am fairly sure that his purchase of many of these items would be illegal in many European countries. To deflect those disturbing facts by saying that he also owns a few American air force memorabilia is to dodge the real issue.

It is extraordinarily bad taste and truly offensive that the same person who habitually castigates the Jewish state to a worldwide audience has a creepy obsession with the symbols of those who tried to destroy all Jews.

No amount of doubletalk and misdirection can take that away.
  • Tuesday, September 08, 2009
  • Elder of Ziyon
  • ,
Marc Garlasco, the HRW senior military analyst who has written a number of reports harshly critical of Israel and whose own expertise has been called into question, has a side hobby:

Collecting Nazi memorabilia.

I noticed his obsession yesterday, to the point that he has even written a book on the topic. He has written a number of posts on various forums about Nazi memorabilia, such as daggers, Iron Crosses and the like.

While this may not be illegal or immoral, it does raise some disturbing questions about his Israel obsession.

I mentioned my findings to Omri at Mere Rhetoric, and he now has many more details to show the connection between the HRW researcher and the Nazi war buff. Read the whole thing.

UPDATES: See also Solomonia and Yaacov ben Moshe.

And the CAMERA blog.

This is getting some traction.

The people who are on Marc's forums are upset, saying that they do serious research and this does not prove he is a Nazi. However, no one is accusing Garlasco of being a Nazi; the question is whether there is a connection between his twin obsessions of Nazi paraphernalia and Israel's right to defend itself - and whether HRW sees this as a problem for their vaunted "objectivity."

UPDATE 2: Noah Pollak from Commentary talks about this as well:
A Nazi-memorabilia hobby sure is a strange one for a professional human-rights activist to have. Are there any senior staffers at PETA who moonlight as collectors of fur coats and leg-hold traps?

Monday, September 07, 2009

  • Monday, September 07, 2009
  • Elder of Ziyon
  • ,
No one denies that civilians were tragically killed in Gaza. The major question that human rights organizations like HRW and Amnesty International have to deal with is whether the civilian casualties could have been reasonably avoided, or if they appear to have been deliberate.

Clearly, they have no insight into the thinking of the IDF commanders, so it is literally impossible to prove that the IDF killed civilians deliberately. Instead, these groups will attempt to find evidence - physical, or via interviews - that seem to prove that the attacks were deliberate. While this can never be considered conclusive, it is a reasonable approach to take all the existing data and look to see if the evidence fits better into a narrative of deliberation or a narrative of accidental or collateral killings.

Looking into the details of HRW's reports that condemn Israel, one can see a disturbing but consistent pattern that HRW seems to have shown a definite bias towards evidence that condemns the IDF while downplaying or ignoring evidence that could exonerate the Israeli army. From all indications, HRW is stacking the deck to make the IDF look as guilty as possible.

Here are some examples from the HRW report on alleged drone attacks on civilians in Gaza, entitled Precisely Wrong.

Gaza Technical College, Gaza City

HRW writes:

Around 1:30 p.m. on December 27, 2008, the first day of the IDF offensive, an IDF drone launched a missile at a group of young men and women standing across the street from the UNRWA-sponsored Gaza Technical College in downtown Gaza City [GPS 31.51162/034.44336] killing 12. Nine of the dead were college students, two of them young women; all were waiting for a UN bus to take them to their homes in Rafah and Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza strip. The three other civilians killed were bystanders. The missile struck 25 meters from UNRWA's Gaza headquarters, in the Rimal neighborhood of central Gaza City, which is frequented by UN staff and international aid workers.

According to nine witnesses interviewed by Human Rights Watch, including three international UN staff, no Palestinian fighters were active on the street or in the immediate area just prior to or at the time of the attack. Fighters from Hamas and the other Palestinian factions were rarely seen in the Rimal neighborhood where the attack took place, witnesses as well as Palestinian journalists and human rights activists based in Gaza said. This was one of the first airstrikes of Operation Cast Lead, and the street was crowded at the time of the attack as civilians went about their normal business.

Human Rights Watch altogether interviewed nine witnesses to the attack, three of them in a group and the rest individually. All gave corroborative details of the attack, which lent credibility to their claims. No fighters from Hamas or other Palestinian armed groups were in the area of the Gaza Technical College at the time of the attack, they all said. An UNRWA security guard who witnessed the attack told Human Rights Watch, "There wasn't anybody else around-no police, army, or Hamas."

What HRW is not mentioning is that one of the victims, Adham Hamdi al-'Adani, was identified in Hamas forums as a member of the al-Qassam Martyrs Central Region Deir el-Balah Martyrs Battalion.

HRW is purposefully misleading in another detail. While it is true that this was "one of the first airstrikes of Operation Cast Lead," it occurred a good 1.5 hours after the first Gaza City airstrike, according to PCHR. It seems unlikely that civilians were going about their "normal business" when the city was already under attack.

PCHR describes the targets in Gaza City this way:
At approximately 11:25 on Saturday, IOF warplanes bombarded Arafat police compound in the center of Gaza City, where the ceremony of graduation of trained officers was being conducted; the headquarters of the past Preventive Security Service and offices of Wa'ed Society for Prisoners in Tal al-Hawa neighborhood in the south of Gaza City; al-Mashtal site [detention center - EoZ] in the Beach camp in the west of the city; al-'Abbas police station; a bust garage belonging to Hamas near Gaza Harbor; and the headquarters of the Security and Protection Service and the presidential compound in the west of the city. They also bombarded a police station in al-Daraj neighborhood in the east of Gaza City, a site of the 'Izziddin al-Qassam Brigades of Hamas in al-Shoja'iya neighborhood and another one in al-Zaytoun neighborhood in the east of the city; a house belonging to the Humaid family in al-Tuffah neighborhood in the east of the city.
It is possible that the PCHR's list is not exhaustive, but it appears that every target mentioned besides the Humaid house was a legitimate target. Which of these listed corresponds to Al-Sena'a street in the neighborhood where the attack detailed above occurs? Could it be that HRW missed one of the al-Qassam sites that was obliterated, and that the eyewitnesses were covering it up? (If it was the Humaid house, it seems strange that HRW wouldn't mention the IDF bombing of a house in this case.)

Is it possible that 'Adani (PCHR: 'Udeini) was doing something other than just innocently going to class, a full hour and a half after the initial IDF assault on Gaza City? We have no way of knowing. But one can definitively say this: if HRW had the information about 'Adani's affiliation, it didn't see fit to mention it in its report; if it didn't have that information, it can hardly be considered to have done a complete analysis. Either way, HRW is not showing that it was objective in its research and reporting.

Samur family metal shop, Jabalya

This was one of the more infamous accidents that the IDF made during the war: misidentifying dozens of cylinders being loaded into a truck as being rockets, and not as the oxygen tanks that they were. The IDF video of that airstrike was widely watched.

HRW blames the IDF for not knowing the difference:

The family showed Human Rights Watch some of the oxygen canisters that it said it had moved that day before the Israeli strike. The canisters measured 1.62 meters long-shorter than the average adult man-and 20 cm in diameter. Grad rockets are 2.87 meters long, nearly twice the length.

Jabalya is in the northern Gaza Strip, which has been the origin of many of the Palestinian rocket attacks into Israel. Whatever suspicions that raised, however, the drone's advanced imaging equipment should have enabled the drone operator to determine the nature of the objects under surveillance. The video posted online by the IDF indicates that this was the case: two of the cylindrical objects the men were loading onto the truck are visible, and both are clearly shorter than Grad rockets, which, at nearly three meters are taller than any grown man and longer than the width of the Mercedes-Benz 410 flatbed truck onto which the cylinders were being loaded crossways. The Russian-designed Grad rocket is a known weapon in the Hamas arsenal, and consequently recognizable to IDF personnel. As such, given the visual evidence, the drone operator should have considered the likelihood that these were not Grad rockets. In addition, according to the IDF video of the attack, the truck was under surveillance for more than two minutes, and possibly longer because the truck was not moving, so the operator should have had time to consult with superior officers on whether the truck could be considered a legitimate target.

HRW is discounting a number of possibilities: that the person watching the truck might have thought that the rockets weren't Grads but rather Qassam-2 rockets, which are almost identical in size to the oxygen cylinders (180 cm vs. 162 cm) or perhaps another type, that the proximity to the metal workshop where Qassams are often built indicated a likelihood of them being rockets, whether two minutes is really enough time to check when being wrong would result in dozens of rockets being launched towards Israel.

In addition, HRW breezily mentions the dimensions of the Grad rocket as if everyone could recognize their size immediately. Yet Mark Garlasco, HRW's senior military analyst, at the time said:

"This case highlights the complexity of targeting in urban areas. Even when the commander is certain of his target based on active observation, this shows they can be mistaken. . . . It is difficult to know what your target is."

Garlasco, no fan of Israel and someone who has shown his bias before, hardly finds this an open-and-shut case of Israeli blame. And isn't it interesting that HRW's "senior military analyst" didn't immediately notice that the cylinders in the video were not as large as Grad rockets? HRW clearly gives the IDF more responsibility for accurately identifying a rocket in two minutes than it gives its own resident expert in a week of watching the video.

HRW also doesn't address another salient point that the IDF mentions about the incident:
The objects were being loaded into the truck next to a recognised Hamas rocket manufacturing site, and close to Hamas‘ central base. The loading point was also near an area frequently used by Hamas to launch rockets towards Israel.
All of these facts would tend to justify Israel's decision to strike, and HRW doesn't mention them - even though the IDF report was already released at the time the HRW report was published.

Al-Habbash family house, al-Sha'f, Gaza City

Another tragic case:
On January 4, at around 3 p.m., an IDF drone launched a missile at six children playing on the roof of the al-Habbash family home in the al-Sha'f area of Gaza City [GPS 31.50928/034.47826]. The missile killed two girl cousins, ages 10 and 12, and injured three other children, two of whom lost their legs.

The father and two lightly wounded sons, interviewed separately, told Human Rights Watch that there was no fighting in the area at the time of the attack. "There were no Israelis in the area; it was the second day of ground fighting," Muhammad al-Habbash said.
Admittedly, it is difficult to understand why the IDF would not have been able to identify the children on the roof, assuming that HRW is correct in saying that they were killed by a drone. However, the claim that there was no fighting going on in the area needs to be verified independently. On that same day in that same neighborhood that the PCHR identifies as Al-Tufah, al-Qassam Brigades member Mohammed Bashir Mohammed Khader was killed (PCHR, Hamas says January 6.) Is that not relevant?

'Allaw family house, Al-Sha'f, Gaza City

Another seemingly tragic case:
On January 5, around noon, an IDF drone launched a missile at members of the 'Allaw family who were on the roof of their home [GPS 31.50828/034.47721], three blocks from the al-Habbash house, which was struck the day before. The missile killed a young boy and injured his brother and sister.

Human Rights Watch investigated the site of the blast and fragments from the missile. The site had the same fragmentation patterns as the other sites and the missile fragments were consistent with the other Spike attacks.
HRW may be correct, but the PCHR reported the case a bit differently at the time:
At approximately 14:15 on Monday, IOF artillery shelled a house belonging to the 'Allaw family in al-Tuffah neighborhood. As a result, 2 children from the family were wounded:

1.Mo'men Mahmoud Talal 'Allaw, 11; and

2.Mohammed Mhamoud Talal 'Allaw, 12.


Their sister, 8-year-old Iman Mahmoud Talal 'Allaw, was also wounded.

PCHR's casualty list released in March lists Mohammed as being killed on January 5th, so it is curious that the PCHR didn't count him as being killed on that weekly report. The differences in the times of the attack and that the PCHR considered it an artillery, not a drone missile, attack indicates that perhaps HRW's methods for identifying drone missiles is not as accurate as they think, or that PCHR's reporting was incorrect at the time. Either way, one or both of these human rights organizations were very mistaken about the event. And HRW should at least tangentially acknowledge that others disagreed about the circumstances, for if PCHR is correct, that calls into question nearly every case mentioned in this report as being missile strikes based on the patterns of the holes.

UNRWA Asma Elementary School, Gaza City

On the afternoon of January 5, 2009, the Sultan family from Beit Lahiya along with about 400 other people fled their homes due to fighting in the area and sought protection at the UNRWA Asma Elementary Co-educational "A" School in the center of Gaza City, which the UN had opened earlier that day as a shelter. The displaced families stayed in classrooms and used two bathrooms inside the main building. UNRWA officials registered 406 people in the school.

After dinner, around 10 p.m., three young men from the al-Sultan family wanted to use the bathroom but the facilities in the school's main building were occupied, so they left the building to use the bathrooms in the courtyard. While there, a single Israeli missile directly struck the bathroom, killing all three. The hole in the bathroom wall and surrounding fragment marks, as shown by CNN and the BBC, are fully consistent with impact from a drone-launched Spike missile.

But from the IDF's perspective, three young men appeared late at night outside a building,
a place where no civilians were known or presumed to be at night, especially since the school had been closed for nine days when the incident occurred. Earlier that day, the UNRWA apparently had opened the school as an emergency shelter, although it did not so notify the IDF prior to the strike. The IDF concluded that there was no reasonable explanation for the presence of the unit in the elementary school, other than their preparation for the terrorist activity. The IDF targeted the terrorist unit only after it cross-checked this information.
So why does HRW not blame the UN for not informing Israel of the use of this school as a shelter, thereby endangering people there? The IDF, closely coordinating with the UN, cannot help but assume that three young men going to the small building at night are terrorists.

Instead, HRW blames Israel. HRW notes, but airily dismisses, the IDF's information:
The IDF was reportedly not informed of its use as a shelter until January 6, but civilians lining up outside the school and inside the school compound would have been clearly visible by aerial surveillance.
The assumption is that the IDF is omnisciently seeing what every resident of Gaza is doing at all times, and cannot rely on the UN to relay correct information but must double, triple and quadruple check every possible explanation of why people might be acting like terrorists act when terrorists brag about hiding among civilians.

HRW, without knowing anything about the coverage and priorities of Israel's drones, facilely makes an absurd assumption that, somehow, Israel should have known that a UN facility was being used when the UN never told Israel about it. Yet anyone who has spent any time looking at footage from drones knows that they can only focus on a tiny percentage of Gaza at a time at a resolution that can identify people, and HRW betrays its own naivete when it makes a statement like that.

Yet it is consistent with the bias shown throughout the report: for every incident, HRW bends over backwards to find fault with IDF decisions and spends no effort trying to see if they have any justification - on the contrary, it uses borderline sarcasm to belittle IDF explanations.

This is not what the function of a fact-finding mission should be. This reflects the function of a partisan group, that already knows ahead of time what it is going to decide, and only admits evidence that supports its pre-existing verdict.

Wednesday, July 01, 2009

  • Wednesday, July 01, 2009
  • Elder of Ziyon
  • ,
I just looked a little at the Human Rights Watch report on Israeli drones killing civilians in Gaza.

The report was mainly written by Marc Garlasco, who had famously blamed Israel for the very ambiguous Gaza beach blast in 2006 and whose credentials as an expert are equally ambiguous.

I didn't have time to look at the report too carefully, but it follows the normal HRW playbook of doing everything possible to blame Israel for not being perfect.

The main example was the famous case of Israel bombing what appeared to be a group of men loading a truck with missiles.
To support its statement, the IDF released video footage of the attack, made available online, probably taken by the drone that launched the missile. It showed a group of at least one dozen men casually loading cylindrical objects crossways onto an open truck immediately before the missile struck. At least five more men are seen standing around the vehicle.

The IDF video does not show any secondary explosions, which would have indicated the presence of weapons-grade explosives or propellants at the site. Nor was the destruction at the site consistent with the presence of rockets. Had the truck been carrying Grad rockets with warheads, the truck and adjacent buildings would have been destroyed. Even without warheads, the propellant in the rockets would have destroyed the truck.

Credible doubts about the attack arose on December 31, when the Israeli human rights group B'Tselem released an interview with the owner of the truck, Ahmad Samur, who said that he was transporting oxygen canisters used for welding, and not Grad rockets. According to Samur, his family was trying to move the canisters from the metal workshop he owns to protect them from looters. He denied any connection to Hamas or any other Palestinian armed group. Eight civilians died in the attack, Samur said, including three children and Samur's son 'Imad, age 32. Two others were severely wounded.

As HRW mentions, the video was widely available and can be seen here:

While HRW is probably right in that the cylindrical objects were probably not Grad missiles as they appeared, its only advice to the IDF was to notice that the objects were smaller than Grad missiles are and try to identify them better before firing. (As it was, the video shows that the IDF watched the activity for over two minutes before firing.)

However, the objects were being taken from the vicinity of a metal workshop - the places that Qassam rockets are typically built. It is a very reasonable assumption that these were weapons of some sort. HRW doesn't even consider that the IDF might have a case in targeting these men. Would an average soldier looking at this video be able to make such an assumption that these are oxygen tanks, knowing that at that very moment there were dozens of rockets being fired at Israeli communities daily? I cannot blame the IDF for their decision - but HRW, of course, does.

One other interesting fact. HRW lists the names of those killed during the attack, and says that eight civilians were killed and none had any connection with any terror group. However, one of them, Ashraf Sayed Khamis al-Dabbagh, was identified as a "militant" by the PCHR. (#366.)

One other person I noticed from the report, Adham Hamdi al-'Adani, killed when the IDF hit near a Gaza school, is this person depicted in an Al Qassam Brigades martyr poster, #33 in the PCHR list:

He is identified here as a member of the Al Qassam Brigades Deir al-Balah Battalion.

This is not to say that these bombings weren't mistakes. Most of the victims do not appear to have been terrorists, and the IDF should - and does - do everything necessary to avoid killing civilians. There are articles and video that show the IDF aborting bombings when they see civilians in the area, evidence that the HRW seems to ignore in its reckless quest to damn Israel as being indiscriminately violent.

However, HRW either ignored evidence that some of the "civilian" victims they are talking about were actually terrorists or it didn't do any reasonable research (typing the names into Google should have been enough.) This is either sloppy work or it is purposeful deception on HRW's part.

Thursday, June 29, 2006

  • Thursday, June 29, 2006
  • Elder of Ziyon
The Washington Post has a column called World Opinion Roundup, ostensibly to show other sides of news stories from other countries.

But when the reporter, Jefferson Morley, discusses the Gaza beach bombings, he introduces the discussion with a comment from an American blog.

Juan Cole's blog, to be precise.

Not surprisingly, he goes on to show how seemingly everyone in his universe believes that Israel bombed a family on the beach, and only the IDF seems to believe that Israel is not responsible. (He mentions the Sueddeutshce Zeitung as well.)He quotes the British newspaper triumvirate of Israel-bashers, he quotes Mark Garlasco (misspelled in his column) - as if HRW is a media outlet - and he quotes a slew of Arab newspapers calling it a cold-blooded crime.

Somehow, he doesn't manage to mention any reasons why Israel's account is far more believable than the critics'. He has no problem mentioning critics' not believing the timeframes, for example, but not a word about the shrapnel Israel found in the victims' bodies showing it was not from Israeli artillery.

Yet another example of bias in an "even-handed" report.

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