HRW deferential towards Saudi airstrikes that kill civilians

Here is how Human Rights Watch reported on the beginning of Israel's airstrikes in Gaza last summer:

Israel/Palestine: Unlawful Israeli Airstrikes Kill Civilians
Bombings of Civilian Structures Suggest Illegal Policy

Israeli air attacks in Gaza investigated by Human Rights Watch have been targeting apparent civilian structures and killing civilians in violation of the laws of war. Israel should end unlawful attacks that do not target military objectives and may be intended as collective punishment or broadly to destroy civilian property. Deliberate or reckless attacks violating the laws of war are war crimes, Human Rights Watch said.

Prosecutor, judge and jury. Without any relevant information as to what Israel's targets were, HRW flatly said that Israel was violating international law and said that Israel was targeting homes simply to kill Gazan civilians, apparently for kicks.

Now compare that with how HRW reports on Saudi airstrikes in urban areas that are killing scores of civilians:

Yemen: Saudi-Led Airstrikes Take Civilian Toll

The Saudi Arabia-led coalition of Arab countries that conducted airstrikes in Yemen on March 26 and 27, 2015, killed at least 11 and possibly as many as 34 civilians during the first day of bombings in Sanaa, the capital, Human Rights Watch said today. The 11 dead included 2 children and 2 women. Saudi and other warplanes also carried out strikes on apparent targets in the cities of Saada, Hodaida, Taiz, and Aden.

The airstrikes targeted Ansar Allah, the armed wing of the Zaidi Shia group known as the Houthis, that has controlled much of northern Yemen since September 2014.

...“Both the Saudi-led forces and the Houthis need to do everything they can to protect civilians from attack,” said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East and North Africa director. “Reports of air strikes and anti-aircraft weapons in heavily populated areas raise serious concerns that not enough is being done to ensure their safety.”

...Human Rights Watch has not been able to determine whether specific attacks complied with the laws of war, which apply to the armed conflict in Yemen. The laws of war prohibit attacks that target civilians or civilian property, or that do not or cannot discriminate between civilians and fighters.

Look at that! The mind-reading skills that HRW "researchers" have in Gaza are suddenly malfunctioning in Yemen! They know that Saudi Arabia is targeting terrorists, and they are simply not sure if the bombs that killed 34 civilians were simple mistakes, or maybe there was a legitimate target there.

All that certainty that HRW has in declaring Israel to be criminal is nowhere to be found when Saudis are dropping their bombs on houses and children.

I can't wait to see how HRW reports on yesterday's news:

An air strike killed dozens of people at a camp for displaced people in northwest Yemen on Monday, aid workers said, as Arab warplanes bombard rebels around the country.

The International Organization for Migration said at least 40 people had been killed and 200 wounded at the Al-Mazrak camp in Hajja province where it has staff on the ground, revising an initial toll of 45 dead.

IOM spokesman Joel Millman said 25 of the wounded were in severe condition.

"It was an air strike," said Pablo Marco of Doctors Without Borders (MSF), which has a presence at the hospital.

Another thing: I haven't yet found a scorecard showing how many Yemenis have been killed compared with how many Saudis.The score is probably about 250-0 at this point, which in other contexts would be considered by ignorant pundits as proof of "disporportionate force."

Scorecards are particular to cases when the winning side's name begins with ISR and ends in AEL.

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HRW says #EyalNaftaliGilad were killed because of "settlements"

Human Rights Watch continues its disgusting anti-Israel campaign with its latest article by "researcher" Bill Van Esveld:

Israel typically justifies its harsh policies in the West Bank on security grounds, but since Binyamin Netanyahu took office in 2009, Israel has begun construction on more than 10,000 housing units there for Israeli civilians.

Israel assigns soldiers to protect these civilians, for whose safety it proclaims the need to build expensive special roads, walls and checkpoints. Those measures failed this summer, when Palestinian gunmen abducted and killed three Israeli teenagers in the West Bank – sparking a massive military operation.

Van Esveld knows quite well who was behind the planning, funding, logistics, kidnapping and murders of the boys: Hamas.

Hamas doesn't distinguish between Jews on either side of the Green Line, calling all Israeli towns "settlements."

So HRW's pathetic attempt to claim that Israeli security is compromised by Jews living in their historic homeland of Judea and Samaria is absurd. The second intifada made no distinctions between where Jews lived. The bombings that happened regularly during the Oslo process weren't concentrated to the east of the Green Line.

If HRW wants to use the murder of the boys as proof that settlements cause terror, then they must admit that the number of terror attacks has decreased significantly even as the number of Jews who live in the territories - Jews who move there voluntarily, and not in violation of any sane reading of international law - has increased. By their own logic, settlements help curb terror.

By blaming the Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria for Arab terror, HRW is pushing a myth that has no factual basis in the interests of furthering an agenda against Jews having the human rights to live where their forefathers lived  Control of that land has passed from the Ottomans to the British to the Jordanians to the Israelis without ever having been legally owned by the newly minted "Palestinian people."

The depths of HRW's hate for Israeli Jews can be seen from this sentence:

Unsurprisingly, settlements are flashpoints for confrontation; many arrests of Palestinian children, often for throwing stones, occur near settlements.

Hmmm, why would those horrible Israelis arrest people who throw stones at Jews who are living in and traveling to their communities? Who are the children (HRW doesn't want to mention the adults) throwing stones at? This article blames Jews for Palestinian Arabs throwing rocks at them - and it implies that people throwing rocks at other people is only a human rights issue for the criminals, not the victims! Indeed, Van Esveld seems to believe that throwing rocks at people is a human right in itself.

This is how depraved HRW has become in its zeal to characterize everything Israel does as a violation of human rights while giving Hamas (not mentioned once in this article) and stone throwers (who can and do kill human beings) a pass.

As we've seen, HRW is not a human rights organization: it is a racist organization that has condoned, supported and justified war crimes against Israeli Jews.

(h/t Anne)

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HRW's criticism of Corrie ruling shows its hate for Israel yet again

Human Rights Watch has insulted Israel's Supreme Court for not ruling on a question that it was never asked and misrepresenting what it did say:

The Israeli Supreme Court ruling in a suit seeking damages over Rachel Corrie’s death sends a dangerous message to Israeli armed forces that they can escape accountability for wrongful actions, Human Rights Watch said today. Israel’s Supreme Court on February 12, 2015, exempted the Israeli defense ministry from liability for actions by its forces that it deemed to be “wartime activity,” but wrongly refused to assess whether those actions violated applicable laws of armed conflict, Human Rights Watch said.

Corrie, 23, was killed on March 16, 2003, while attempting to prevent an armored Israeli bulldozer from demolishing the home of a Palestinian family near Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip. She and other foreign nationals, wearing bright orange vests and using megaphones, shouted at and stood in front of bulldozers over the course of several hours to prevent them from destroying homes. Corrie climbed to the top of a mound of earth created by the front blade of a bulldozer, which continued forward, crushing her. The bulldozer operator claimed he didn’t see her.

“This ruling has disturbing implications beyond the Corrie family’s case, as it sends a message that Israeli forces have immunity even for deaths caused by alleged negligence,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East and North Africa director. “The ruling is a stark reminder that in some areas Israeli jurisprudence has veered completely off the track of international law.”

...The ruling flies in the face of the laws of armed conflict, Human Rights Watch said. The ruling grants immunity in civil law to Israeli forces for harming civilians based merely on the determination that the forces were engaged in “wartime activity,” without assessing whether that activity violated the laws of armed conflict, which require parties to the conflict at all times to take all feasible precautions to spare civilian life. Under the laws of armed conflict a state is required to make full reparation for the loss or injury caused by its violations of such laws.

...“Israel’s impunity laws slam the door on civilian victims in Gaza, and look like further evidence that Israel is not genuinely willing to hold its own forces accountable for serious violations,” Whitson said.

Everything HRW and Sarah Leah Whitson said shows how willing the "human rights group" is willing to lie in order to demonize Israel.

Professional Israel-basher
Sarah Leah Whitson

HRW's first claim is that the Supreme Court "wrongly refused to assess whether those actions violated applicable laws of armed conflict." Besides HRW's purposeful misreading of the laws of armed conflict, this was not what the Court was asked; the entire case was about whether the Corries could sue for damages. It is not the place of a court to go beyond the specific question it is being asked; indeed if it had done so it would show that the Supreme Court has little regard for actual laws and legal procedures and is recklessly violating all mores and procedures of a mature legal system. HRW is demanding that the Supreme Court do something which is illegal!

The organization is also wrong in claiming that the accidental killing of Corrie is a violation of the laws of war. Israeli law had already ruled that clearing operations at the Gaza border to find smuggling tunnels were considered wartime activity because Arabs would routinely violently attack the IDF at those times. Accidentally killing someone in wartime is not a violation of the laws of war, and in this case Corrie purposefully and stupidly put herself in front of a moving vehicle in a war zone. (The Court noted that the US government had warned citizens to stay away from Gaza because it was dangerous, showing yet again that the only party who acted negligently towards Corrie's life was Corrie herself.)

Next, Sarah Leah Whitson says the ruling "sends a message that Israeli forces have immunity even for deaths caused by alleged negligence." This is another lie. The court ruling, referring to the earlier Haifa court ruling that it upheld, stated that "the district court addressed the allegations raised by the appellants on their the merits and determined on the basis of the evidence brought, including expert opinion submitted by both parties, that none of the soldiers involved the day saw that Rachel was standing in front of the bulldozer because she was standing in a blind spot in relation to the occupants of the bulldozer. Therefore, it went on to hold, there is no reason to attribute to IDF fighters intentional harm against Rachel and therefore even without the immunity granted to a state [for acting in a war zone] the tort of assault does not exist in the circumstances of this case."

So there was no negligence - and no message that soldiers can act negligently, as HRW claims.

HRW's claim that Israel acts with "impunity," one of their favorite words, is belied by the fact that the Court did not dismiss another aspect of the case, about how Corrie's remains were handled. The only people acting with impunity are those with HRW, which makes wild claims based on lies about the facts and about international law.

HRW cannot back up its claim that the Supreme Court is going against international law. It makes mere assertions with no legal basis, and it even advocates that a professional legal system violate its own ethics and laws.

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Ken Roth tries to give a lesson in context

From the New York Times:

Ken Roth, the executive director of Human Rights Watch, said that both forms of killing should be condemned.

“ISIS’s despicable conduct shouldn’t make us lose sight of the largest killer of civilians in Syria: Assad’s barrel bombs,” he said in an email.

Really? Ken Roth is giving the world lessons on how to put human rights in context?

As I showed recently, the latest world report from Human Rights Watch implies that Israel is only slightly better than Syria and worse than every other nation on the planet, judging from the amount of attention HRW gives to Israel. But here is a list of counts of fatalities from conflicts in 2014:

Syria 76,000
South Sudan 40,000
Iraq 21,000
Afghanistan 14,000
Boko Haram/Africa 11,000
Mexico 7,000
Yemen 7,000
Pakistan 5,500
CAR 5,200
Ukraine 4,700
Somalia 4,400
Libya 2,800
Gaza 2,200
Darfur 2,100

Judging from that 2015 HRW report, Israel more worthy of attention than South Sudan, Somalia, Pakistan and Yemen - combined.

So sorry if I have to laugh when Ken Roth reminds the world that ISIS isn't so bad compared to Syria. When it comes to distorting the seriousness of human rights abuses, Human Rights Watch does not have a very good record.

Speaking of not being able to distinguish between events that are different by orders of magnitude, another HRW researcher today compared Gaza to the Holocaust:

@BBCKimGhattas @DRovera @HolocaustMuseum @BBCNewsUS should also show pics of death and destruction in #Gaza
— Sarah Leah Whitson (@sarahleah1) January 29, 2015

(h/t EBoZ)

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HRW's anti-Israel bias, illustrated, from their annual report

Human Rights Watch has released its 2015 World Report, a 650 page document that goes through the human rights records of every country.

Here is a chart for how often some nations are named in the report:

This gives you an idea of how skewed HRW is when dealing with Israel, placing its importance as a human rights violator somewhere between Syria and Russia.

This isn't a perfect metric. For example, I didn't include the United States (83) because many of its mentions have nothing to do with human rights. "Palestine" or "Palestinians" are mentioned 98 times, but the vast majority of those mentions were regarding them as victims of human rights violations, not violators.

Even with those flaws, this chart is a fairly accurate view of HRW's thinking on who are the biggest violators of human rights, and therefore it is a good indicator of HRW's anti-Israel bias. To think that Israel's human rights posture is deserving of more attention  than those of, say, the DRC or Saudi Arabia or Mexico is the height of absurdity. However, it fits in very well with the patterns we have seen in HRW reports and Ken Roth's tweets being heavily weighted to damn Israel far out of proportion to any human rights issues it has..

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HRW again targets Israel, this time for Thai workers

Human Rights Watch just issued a report about how horrible Israel treats its dometic Thai workers.

Here is the index showing the "rights violations" that HRW found in its research:

Pay and Working Hours
Fired for Striking
Unlawful Deductions, Overcharging for Food and Money Transfers
Living Conditions
Working Conditions and Access to Healthcare
Work-related Deaths
Right to Change Employers

HRW only issued one similar report on foreign workers over the past year, for domestic workers in the UAE. Here is a comparion of the issues they found there:

Physical Abuse
Sexual Violence and Harassment
Psychological and Verbal Abuse

Wage Abuses
Excessive Work and Working Hours without Rest Periods or Time Off

Passport Confiscation
Restricted Communication
Isolation and Forced Confinement

Denial of Adequate Food
Denial of Adequate Healthcare
Inadequate Living Accommodations

Forced Labor and Slavery
Trafficking

Even though the UAE issues are orders of magnitude worse than Israel's, the length of HRW's report on the UAE was about the same.

From looking at the list of topics about Thai workers in Israel, it appears that "Work-related deaths" must be the most damning section. And it does sound bad.

Indeed, an excerpt of the report published in the Bangkok Post as an op-ed was entitled "Thai workers in Israel are dying, and it's got to stop " It was also the highlight in The Guardian's article.

After spending 5 paragraphs about the sudden, unexplained death of a 37-year old Tahi worker, HRW says:

From 2008 to 2013, according to government figures provided by Minister of Health Ya’el German to Israeli Knesset member Dov Khenin of the Hadash party and reported by the Israeli daily Haaretz, 122 Thai workers died in Israel. Of these 122 deaths, 43 were from “sudden nocturnal death syndrome,” 22 from cardiac diseases including cardiac fibrosis and cardiomyopathy, and five from suicide. In 22 cases the cause of death was unknown reasons because Israeli police did not request a post-mortem.[118] Dov Khenin said it was “inconceivable that so many healthy young men die without alarms going off.”

122 deaths among workers between, say, 21 and 40 sounds bad. But HRW adds a crucial piece of information:

Sudden unexplained nocturnal death syndrome (SUNDS) is a disorder that causes sudden cardiac death (typically of young men) during sleep and is found in south east Asia, particularly Thailand, Japan, Philippines and Cambodia.] A 2002 peer-reviewed medical journal paper concluded that SUNDS is “phenotypically, genetically, and functionally” the same as Brugada syndrome, an uncommon but serious heart condition that is a leading cause of sudden cardiac death in young, otherwise healthy people around the world.

So a large number of these 122 deaths can be explained as natural causes, dozens of them would have died back in Thailand as well.

HRW then makes a leap, without any factual basis, that many of the men died from heat stroke:

Douglas Casa, a professor in the department of kinesiology and expert in heat exhaustion and heat stroke at the University of Connecticut, told Human Rights Watch that the combination of Israel’s climate and the working conditions described in this report were likely to significantly increase the risk to workers of heat stroke, which can be fatal.[121] Heat exhaustion and heat stroke are not typically the result of pre-existing medical conditions, but rather of high temperatures in tandem with physical exertion. Whereas pre-existing cardiac conditions such as Brugada syndrome can only be detected by an electrocardiogram test, an autopsy can detect heat stroke as a cause of death and steps can be taken to reduce the risk of heat stroke. The main factors in adequately reducing the risk to workers of heat exhaustion are a work-to-rest ratio that takes account of the prevailing environmental conditions, and ensuring that the body temperature is allowed to cool during that rest time through the provision of shade and water.

But not one case of heat stroke was reported! Why is HRW making this assumption that the workers are dying from something preventable when there is literally zero evidence for it?

One more fact that HRW didn't mention in this section- how many Thai workers there are in Israel altogether.

It turns out that there are about 25,000 Thai workers in Israel, most in the agricultural sector. (HRW says 20,000, BBC says 28,000.) HRW quotes Haaretz saying 122 died over 5 years, meaning about 24 a year, or a mortality rate of 96 per 100,000 people. (122/100K as per HRW's figures.)

In the US, the mortality rate for people aged 25-44 in 2006 was about 145 per 100,000 people.

So the odds of dying as a Thai worker under horrible Israeli conditions is significantly less than it is of dying while working at a typical job in the United States for people of the same age. And that includes those who died of SUNDS.

But HRW won't give you context. They will say that all these workers are dying, and it must be Israel's fault - and if they cannot find a reason to blame Israel, they will literally make one up ("heat stroke.")

See also Honest Reporting.

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US Joint Chiefs chairman schools Amnesty and HRW in international law

Yesterday, Gen. Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, gave a lecture at the Carnegie Council for Ethics. He was asked by an audience member to comment on IDF's ethics during Operation protective Edge, and here was his answer:

I actually do think that Israel went to extraordinary lengths to limit collateral damage and civilian casualties. In fact, about 3 months ago we sent, we asked [IDF Chief of Staff] Benny [Gantz] if we could send a lessons learned team – one of the things we do better than anybody I think is learn – and we sent a team of senior officers and non-commissioned officers over to work with the IDF to get the lessons from that particular operation in Gaza. To include the measures they took to prevent civilian casualties and what they did with tunneling, because Hamas had become very nearly a subterranean society. And so, that caused the IDF some significant challenges. But they did some extraordinary things to try to limit civilian casualties to include calling out, making it known that they were going to destroy a particular structure. Even developed some techniques, they call it roof knocking, to have something knock on the roof, they would display leaflets to warn citizens and population to move away from where these tunnels. But look in this kind of conflict, where you are held to a standard that your enemy is not held to, you’re going to be criticized for civilian casualties. So I think if Benny were sitting here right now he would say to you we did everything we could and now we’ve learned from that mission and we think there are some other things we could do in the future and we will do those. The IDF is not interested in creating civilian casualties they’re interested in stopping the shooting of rockets and missiles, out of the Gaza Strip and in to Israel, and its an incredibly difficult environment, and I can say to you with confidence that I think that … they acted responsible.

This came right after Amnesty released an incredibly biased report charging Israel with war crimes, claiming that Israel violated the principles of distinction and proportionality when fighting in Gaza, because, they say, the military targets Israel was aiming at - if there were any - were not valuable enough targets given the number of people who were killed and injured. But Amnesty made that determination without any military expertise and without even knowing what the military targets were - nothing in their 50 page report mentioned anything about tunnels, weapons bunkers or rocket launchers, which would clearly be military targets.

Under international law, who decides whether a military object can be targeted when it is being hidden among civilians?

The answer is: not Amnesty or HRW.

As my links above show, under international law as noted by the ICRC, the decision as to whether something is a valid military target, as well as the decision as to whether the expected collateral damage is justified by the value of the target, is based on what a reasonable military commander would do with the information he has at the moment of the attack.

In order to find that the commander has committed a war crime, the bar is set quite high. ICRC commentary on art 85 of the Additional Protocol states:

The accused must have acted consciously and with intent, i.e., with his mind on the act and its consequences, and willing the ("criminal intent" or "malice aforethought"); this encompasses the concepts of "wrongful intent" or "recklessness"....

It is also the military commander who can decide proportionality. The Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia determined who can make that decision:

The answers to these questions are not simple. It may be necessary to resolve them on a case by case basis, and the answers may differ depending on the background and values of the decision maker. It is unlikely that a human rights lawyer and an experienced combat commander would assign the same relative values to military advantage and to injury to non-combatants. … It is suggested that the determination of relative values must be that of the “reasonable military commander”. [Final Report to the Prosecutor by the Committee established to review NATO bombings in Yugoslavia para. 50-1]

General Dempsey is a reasonable military commander. Unlike Amnesty and HRW, he knows what international law requires. He feels not only that Israel acted in an exemplary manner, but that US forces could learn from Israel how to deal with these new kinds of terrorist tactics that so cynically use the civilian population for their purposes. He sent people to Israel to talk to their soldiers and understand the issues.

If the US military had even the slightest indication that Israel was violating international law, they would not be sending their own experts to learn from Israel's experiences. 

Real-life international law, as ICRC documentation shows, comes very often from the military manuals of nations. Those manuals are written so that military commanders know what they may or may not do under the laws of armed conflict. They are written for the real world, not for the make believe world of Amnesty and Human Rights Watch where all military activity is considered evil by default.

General Dempsey knows more international law than the entire staffs of Amnesty and Human Rights Watch combined. So do IDF commanders. They know that decisions need to be made in the field, sometimes with limited information, to protect not only civilians on the enemy side but also one's own soldiers and one's own civilians - two factors that do not come into play in the deeply flawed reports that HRW and Amnesty release.

The more one researches what real human rights law is, the more one sees how utterly ignorant and indeed malicious the "human rights" organizations are.

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HRW asks donors to Gaza to pressure Israel, not Hamas

Human Rights Watch just can't stop itself from Israel bashing.

Their latest press release, entitled "Donors, UN Should Press Israel on Blockade," starts off this way:

Donor countries at the October 12, 2014 conference on assistance to Palestine should press Israel to lift sweeping, unjustified restrictions on the movement of people and goods into and out of the Gaza Strip, Human Rights Watch said today.

Throughout the inaccurate piece (they use the word "blockade" incorrectly, for example,) HRW calls on donor countries not to pressure Hamas but to pressure only Israel.

Here's what HRW doesn't demand:

• No rebuilding of terror tunnels to kidnap Israelis
• Stopping the use of civilian homes and offices as fronts to cover terror activity
• Dismantling the Hamas terror infrastructure and replacing it with the PA security forces
• Stopping the manufacture of rockets whose sole purpose is to attack Jewish civilians
• Unconditional and immediate release of any remains of Israeli soldiers so their families can bury them properly
• The immediate dismantling of terror groups like the Islamic Jihad Al Quds Brigades and the Fatah Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades
• Demand that Hamas stop booby-trapping civilian homes
• Demand that Hamas remove military headquarters from hospitals
• Demand that Hamas immediately stop recruiting children for fighting

A donor conference is a unique opportunity to pressure those who are receiving aid to ensure that they use the funds and material properly. Yet HRW only sees it as an opportunity for Israel bashing, including some absurd demands like insisting that Israel import Gaza goods.

Naturally, HRW also lies. The article falsely states that Israel restricts Gazans from food, medicine and medical equipment. It falsely states that Kerem Shalom does not have the capacity to provide for Gaza needs, demanding that the crossing be enlarged even though it has never come close to capacity. It accuses Israel of "apparent Israeli attacks" on the Gaza power plant, which makes no sense since if Israel wanted to keep Gazans without power, it can simply turn off the 60% of power that Gaza gets from Israel directly.

Once again a "human rights" organization lies and exposes its clear anti-Israel bias. The question isn't about how donors to Gaza should act - it is how donors to HRW can stomach empowering its lies and impunity.

(To see more of how HRW exposed its anti-Israel bias during the war, see these posts.)

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Ken Roth uses "antisemite" straw man to avoid answering critics. Time to grow up, Ken.

This interview with Human Rights Watch's Ken Roth on Dutch TV reveals how Roth avoids answering the many substantial, provable criticisms of his clear anti-Israel bias.



He simply claims that all his critics are accusing him of antisemitism.

In the past ten years, I can find only a single serious critique of Ken Roth, by professional pundits or writers, that criticized him for his opinions of Judaism. Here it is, from The New York Sun, July 31, 2006:

Mr. Roth concludes his letter with a slur on the Jewish religion itself that is breathtaking in its ignorance."An eye for an eye — or more accurately in this case twenty eyes for an eye — may have been the morality of some more primitive moment," Mr. Roth writes. The reference is to the phrase "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth," found in Exodus 21, in Deuteronomy 19, and Leviticus, Chapter 24. The sages have long made clear that this referred to monetary compensation, as the Talmud points out in Baba Kamma 84a. To suggest that Judaism is a "primitive" religion incompatible with contemporary morality is to engage in supersessionism, the de-legitimization of Judaism, the basis of much anti-Semitism.

The ADL's Abraham Foxman referred to this incident as an aside in a much wider-ranging attack on Roth that same year.

Since 2006, Roth and HRW have been criticized for their obsession with Israel from many quarters besides this blog. Here is a small sample:

• Noah Pollak in the Wall Street Journal
• NGO Monitor, many times
• Natan Sharansky
• Israel's Prime Minister's office
• CAMERA
• The New Republic
• David Bernstein in WSJ
• Jennifer Rubin in WaPo
• David Feith in WSJ,
• Ron Kampeas of JTA
• Times of London
• The JC
• Commentary
• The original founder of Human Rights Watch, Robert Bernstein

None of these critiques, many of which are quite substantive, accuse Ken Roth or Human Rights Watch of antisemitism. 

The reality isn't close to what Roth claims in the video. HRW's critics are not using a charge of antisemitism to silence the organization or Ken Roth. On the contrary, Ken Roth is using accusations of antisemitism charges to avoid answering his many critics!

Roth is playing whatever games he can to avoid facing reality: His over-the-top anti-Israel bias is provable from his own words and from what he doesn't say. There is no impartiality in his organization, whose very moral force is dependent on its appearance of fairness.

Roth has a choice. He can keep trying to weasel out of addressing the valid points made by his critics, or he can take their criticism to heart and revamp his organization to address the very real problems it clearly has. There are specific things that HRW can do to prove to the world that it can be a real force for good, and not filled with the corrupt, self-promoting hypocrisy as it appears to be today.

At this point in time, Roth has chosen to act in ways that are worse than the countries his organization criticizes. There is no transparency in HRW's methodology for fact finding, no transparency in HRW's funding sources, no transparency in how HRW hires employees or chooses researchers, no transparency as to what topics it has actual expertise in and what topics that it doesn't. Despite its clear ignorance of military strategy and forensics - critical fields when evaluating the facts - HRW writes reports suffused with ignorance and hand-waving.

HRW likes to accuse its targets of acting with impunity, but that is exactly what Human Rights Watch does under Ken Roth's leadership, by using childish excuses to avoid self-reflection.

It is not unreasonable to demand that an NGO act with at least the same degree of morality and responsibility that it demands from others. Yet its leader, with a salary of  over $400,000, reacts to well-founded criticism petulantly instead of responsibly.

Isn't it time for HRW to stop running away from criticism and to actually address these issues head on? That's what one would expect from a multi-million dollar for-profit corporation, and one should expect no less from an NGO that pretends to be the world's moral conscience.

(h/t Mark)

---

Incidentally, when Roth claims that he takes antisemitism seriously - that isn't true either. By ignoring the major sources of antisemitic incitement today, namely, the Arab and Muslim world, it is Roth that cheapens the term, not his critics.

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HRW's Ken Roth shills for Hamas. Again.

He might occasionally grudgingly admit that Hamas rockets aren't exactly wonderful, but for any area where one can argue to be stricter or less strict on human rights, Ken Roth of Human Rights Watch always chooses the anti-Israel side.

Here's something he tweeted yesterday:

Tunnels used to attack or capture civilians is a rights violation. Tunnels used to attack or capture soldiers isn't. http://t.co/gPPScdrYDO
— Kenneth Roth (@KenRoth) July 29, 2014

Well, Islamic Jihad's legal team might agree that tunnelling into the territory of a sovereign state to kidnap a soldier and hold him hostage is fine, but it isn't true.

I don't need to quote the IDF on this, either. Even B'Tselem calls it a war crime:

On the one-year anniversary of the abduction of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, B'Tselem, the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories , states that he must be released immediately. The organization says that the circumstances of his capture and the behavior of his captors clearly indicate that he is a hostage.

International humanitarian law absolutely prohibits taking and holding a person by force in order to compel the enemy to meet certain demands, while threatening to harm or kill the person if the demands are not met. Furthermore, hostage-taking is considered a war crime and all those involved bear individual criminal liability.

Hamas, which de-facto controls the security apparatus in the Gaza Strip, bears the responsibility to act to release Shalit immediately and unconditionally. Until he is released, those holding him must grant him humane treatment and allow representatives of the ICRC to visit him. The fact that Shalit's right to these visits has been denied constitutes a blatant violation of international law, says B'Tselem.

Shalit was a soldier, wasn't he?

How does the Fourth Geneva Convention word the prohibition of taking hostages?

The taking of hostages is prohibited.

That is the entire Article 34.

No mention of "civilians" or anything. No exception for soldiers. A flat out, explicit prohibition. (Yes, soldiers are covered in Article 4 of the same Convention.)

This isn't the first time Roth defines examples of international law in an artificially - and incorrectly - narrow way in order to exonerate Israel's enemies. But it sure does establish a pattern.

And that pattern is always against the human rights of Israelis.

(h/t @neontaster)

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HRW's definition of "human shields" changes when Israel is involved

We previously discussed how Human Rights Watch was claiming a very restrictive definition of "human shields" contrary to the clear definition given by the ICRC, to clear Hamas of that charge.

A little further research shows that not only does HRW often use the correct definition of human shielding for other conflicts, but it has tightened up its definition over the years for Israel's enemies.

Here is Human Rights Watch, February 19, 2014, discussing a reported drone attack by US forces against a wedding in Yemen:

The legality of the December 12 attack hinges on both the applicable body of international law and the facts on the ground. If international humanitarian law, or the laws of war, applies to the December 12, 2013 attack, only valid military objectives such as AQAP leaders or fighters could have been lawfully targeted. The burden is on the attacker to take all feasible precautions to ensure that a target is a combatant before conducting an attack and to minimize civilian harm.

Had AQAP members deliberately joined the wedding procession to avoid attack they would have been committing the laws-of-war violation of using “human shields.”

In this case, HRW says that the terrorists merely need to purposefully place themselves around civilians. When Israel is the enemy, HRW says that the civilians must be coerced.

That wasn't always the case. HRW tried very hard to excuse Hezbollah from the accusation of human shielding in Lebanon in 2006, but the excuses they used - feeble as they were - do not apply to Hamas in 2014:

A key element of the humanitarian law violation of shielding is intention: the purposeful use of civilians to render military objectives immune from attack.

As noted above, we documented cases where Hezbollah stored weapons inside civilian homes or fired rockets from inside populated civilian areas. At minimum, that violated the legal duty to take all feasible precautions to spare civilians the hazards of armed conflict, and in some cases it suggests the intentional use of civilians to shield against attack. However, these cases were far less numerous than Israeli officials have suggested. The handful of cases of probable shielding that we did find does not begin to account for the civilian death toll in Lebanon. (The related issue of Hezbollah's illegally using several UN posts near the Lebanon-Israel border as shields is discussed in the next section.)

In addition to its own research, Human Rights Watch carefully reviewed local and international press accounts, IDF and Israeli government statements, and the work of various independent think tanks to evaluate allegations of human shielding by Hezbollah. While the Israeli government and certain commentators have described Hezbollah shielding as widespread, they have not provided convincing evidence to support such allegations.[111] The Israeli government provided some video footage taken from drones showing Hezbollah fighters firing rockets from what appear to be civilian structures, or entering such structures, but the footage gives no indication whether these structures were inhabited by civilians or located in then-populated areas.

The Israeli government's allegations seem to stem from an unwillingness to distinguish the prohibition against human shielding-the intentional use of civilians to shield a military objective from attack-from that against endangering the civilian population by failing to take all feasible precautions to minimize civilian harm, and even from instances where Hezbollah conducted operations in residential areas empty of civilians. Individuals responsible for shielding can be prosecuted for war crimes; failing to fully minimize harm to civilians is not considered a violation prosecutable as a war crime.[112]

To constitute shielding, there needs to be a specific intent to use civilians to deter an attack....

HRW disingenuously gives examples of Hezbollah firing rockets from fields nearby villages and of only taking over uninhabited homes, in order to protect Hezbollah from the charge of war crimes:

While failing to take precautions to protect civilians violates humanitarian law, intentionally making use of civilians to render military forces or a place immune from attack is considered to be the more serious violation of "shielding." Because the definition of shielding incorporates the concept of intent, any individual ordering shielding would almost invariably be committing a war crime.

Well, guess what: Hamas explicitly instructed Gazans to not evacuate their homes (and UNRWA schools) in Hamas-stronghold neighborhoods when Israel warned them to. Here is the webpage of the Ministry of the Interior where they tell Gazans to ignore Israeli warnings and stay in their homes.

HRW, instead of condemning what are clearly cases of human shielding under international law and under their own definitions, is going out of its way to excuse Hamas, downplay their war crimes - and endanger Gazans. In this case we see that twice HRW changed their definition deliberately to excuse first Hezbollah and then Hamas - moving the goalposts as each terror group gets more depraved.

What kind of a "human rights" group tries so hard to excuse violations of human rights?

(NGO Monitor has documented many other examples of HRW's fluid definitions of "human shielding" to defend terrorists from the charge when Israel is involved.)

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Human Rights Watch's Ken Roth goes to bat for Hamas war crimes

Is Human Rights Watch really biased against Israel, or is it merely that they are zealous about protecting everyone's human rights and Zionists are sensitive to their criticisms of Israel?

HRW chief Ken Roth clearly wants the world to believe that it is the latter. As he wrote a couple of days ago in this sarcastic tweet:

People accept @HRW reporting as fair & accurate around globe but when it comes to poor, helpless, defenseless #Israel we're suddenly biased.
— Kenneth Roth (@KenRoth) July 22, 2014

If what he says is true, then we would expect HRW to be just as energetic in uncovering human rights abuses from Gaza terror groups as it is for attacking Israel.

Yet here is what he tweeted last night:

#Hamas is putting civilians at risk but "no evidence" it forces them to stay--definition of human shields: @NYTimes. http://t.co/9yvh1cRSer
— Kenneth Roth (@KenRoth) July 25, 2014

Roth chooses to refer to a NYT article in order to defend Hamas.

What exactly did The New York Times write that Ken Roth finds so wonderful as to defend Hamas?

Nothing is ever so clear in the complex and often brutal calculus of urban warfare. There is no evidence that Hamas and other militants force civilians to stay in areas that are under attack — the legal definition of a human shield under international law. But it is indisputable that Gaza militants operate in civilian areas, draw return fire to civilian structures, and on some level benefit in the diplomatic arena from the rising casualties. They also have at times encouraged residents not to flee their homes when alerted by Israel to a pending strike and, having prepared extensively for war, did not build civilian bomb shelters.

Guess what? The New York Times is wrong.

The Geneva Conventions and their additional protocols do not use the words "human shields" anywhere. But the ICRC article on customary international humanitarian law has a fairly comprehensive description:

Rule 97. The use of human shields is prohibited.

State practice establishes this rule as a norm of customary international law applicable in both international and non-international armed conflicts.
International and non-international armed conflicts

In the context of international armed conflicts, this rule is set forth in the Third Geneva Convention (with respect to prisoners of war), the Fourth Geneva Convention (with respect to protected civilians) and Additional Protocol I (with respect to civilians in general).[1] Under the Statute of the International Criminal Court, “utilizing the presence of a civilian or other protected person to render certain points, areas or military forces immune from military operations” constitutes a war crime in international armed conflicts.[2]

...The prohibition of using human shields in the Geneva Conventions, Additional Protocol I and the Statute of the International Criminal Court are couched in terms of using the presence (or movements) of civilians or other protected persons to render certain points or areas (or military forces) immune from military operations.[18]

...It can be concluded that the use of human shields requires an intentional co-location of military objectives and civilians or persons hors de combat with the specific intent of trying to prevent the targeting of those military objectives.

While various military manuals do have specific prohibitions against forcing civilians to act as human shields, international law considers any situation where military targets (weapons tunnels, caches, rockets launchers) are deliberately placed near civilians to be cases of human shielding.

Under international law, even if Hamas doesn't force civilians to be in a certain area, they are considered human shields according to the ICRC. Israel is right, and the NYT is wrong.

Ken Roth could have chosen to attack the New York Times for narrowing the definition in such a way as to downplay Hamas culpability for this war crime - which is what a zealous human rights defender would be expected to do. Instead, he went to bat for Hamas against the civilians of Gaza he supposedly cares so much about. Even the Times article says explicitly that "Experts in international law say that...Hamas is legally obligated to minimize its operations near civilians" yet Roth doesn't want to highlight how bad Hamas is, but to emphasize Hamas is not really that bad. Roth is giving a terror group the benefit of the doubt that Israel has never received.

The New York Times article was written before yesterday's events at the UNRWA school, but Roth's tweet was written after details already were being published. And already at that time it was known that Hamas did force civilians to stay in the UNRWA shelter even as Israel was trying to get the civilians evacuated. As Washington Free Beacon recounts the events:

UNRWA spokesman Chris Gunness had similarly accused the IDF of preventing a civilian evacuation.

“Over the course of the day UNRWA tried 2 coodinate [sic] with the Israeli Army a window for civilians 2 leave & it was never granted,” UNRWA spokesman Chris Gunness tweeted, following the strike.

However, in an unusual move late Thursday, multiple IDF sources rejected UNRWA’s claims and characterized them as outright falsehoods when reached by the Washington Free Beacon.

“For two days we were trying to move people out of that school in particular and the Beit Hanoun area in general,” said an IDF official who was involved in the interactions between the IDF, UNRWA, and International Red Cross (ICRC) leading up to the incident.

The official continued: “This morning we sought a cease-fire in the area and a humanitarian evacuation of civilians, but Hamas refused—because they wanted to keep civilians in the area to protect their fighters who were firing on the IDF,” the source said. The claim by Gunness and UNRWA that the IDF did not respond to their request to evacuate civilians, the source said, is “a flat-out complete and total lie.”

Who is telling the truth? I see no reason to doubt the IDF version of events. But the issue is that Ken Roth, whose very job is to prevent war crimes against civilians, chooses to ignore any evidence of Hamas war crimes - in this case, of using human shields even according to the falsely restrictive definition in the New York Times!

If Roth's only bias was towards human rights, then why does he go out of his way to excuse and minimize Hamas war crimes - war crimes under any interpretation of the Geneva Conventions?

The only explanation is that Roth is biased, all right - but not for defending Gaza civilians' human rights from Hamas.

Which tells you volumes about Ken Roth.

(h/t Seth Miller)

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HRW's Ken Roth proves his anti-Israel bias in tweet meant to do the opposite

Ken Roth, the executive director of Human Rights Watch, proves his anti-Israel bias in an absurd tweet intended to show HRW is unbiased!

No one is saying that Israelis "poor, helpless, defenseless" - that is Ken Roth's own hate of the Jewish state revealing itself quite publicly. 

Because the evidence of HRW's, and Ken Roth's bias against Israel is incontrovertible.

The quick answer to his tweet is the huge amount of resources and attention HRW has given to castigating Israel (and the US) compared to every other country on the planet. Multiple, huge reports are written about events with death tolls that are a fraction of those in other areas of the world. Here I compare HRW's attention given to every country compared to their Freedom House scores - there is no correlation. 

Here are only some examples I've written about over the years:

• HRW condemned Ariel Sharon for his indirect role in Sabra and Shatila when he died - but never condemned the Christian Phalangists who actually did the killings. It never condemned any other world figure at the moment of their death. 

• HRW does not support equal rights for Palestinians in Lebanon who want to become citizens. 

• HRW twists international law in regards to Israel repeatedly.

• HRW has one definition of "occupation" for Israel, and another for the rest of the world. 

• Ken Roth insulted Israel when it announced plans to save the lives of Syrian Alawites, even as no other country in the world was doing anything for Syrians.

• Ken Roth wrote an article castigating Israel that had quite a few lies. he tried to weasel out of some but never admitted his errors. 

• HRW never answers whether they believe Jews have the right to pray on their holiest spot.

• HRW once had its employees write pro-HRW comments on numerous websites pretending that they were ordinary people - engaging in "sock-puppetry" - in defense of their employee with the Nazi memorabilia obsession. 

• The Sunday Times once showed HRW's obsession with Israel out of proportion to every other conflict.

•  A HRW researcher falsely claimed Palestinian Arabs in the territories live in "shanties" while Jews live in "spacious villas." 

This is beyond looking at their reports and press releases on Israel and the numerous patterns of bias, ignoring any facts that contradict their pre-conceived anti-Israel bias, as well as proof of their ignorance of military methods, every time.

Ken Roth likes to speak about Israel's "impunity" but HRW is not transparent about their methods of information gathering and reporting, about how they hire their Middle East "experts,"or really about their methods altogether - even as they demand the same from everyone else. It is HRW that acts with impunity against Israel.

Ken Roth never answered these charges - because he can't. Instead he tweets snarky comments insulting the very nation he claims he is not biased against.

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Beitunia Pallywood again: The injury of Mohammed Azza/Azi/Aziz (update)

The HRW report I mentioned earlier today does shed light on something: the time of the shooting of the injured youth Mohammed Azza.

HRW says:

Israeli forces shot and wounded Azza in the chest at around 12:20 p.m., about 15 meters from where Nawareh and Salameh were later fatally shot, Azza’s father and a witness told Human Rights Watch.

Human Rights Watch has not seen any video footage of Azza at the time he was shot. Azza stated he was not throwing rocks at that time.

...According to the reports, Azza suffered a gunshot injury to the left anterior chest wall and the left lung.

We have video from Camera 2 of Azza apparently being shot:



Starting from 12:20:00 on the security cam (37:20 of the video) you can see Azza moving towards the lower right side of the view, right next to a burning tire. He is hurling lots of stones, breaking some into smaller pieces on the ground.

Now that we have established how truthful Azza is in his testimony, we can go on.

At 12:20:42 on the CCTV time we see Azza suddenly crouch and turn - again, completely inconsistent with being shot in the chest with live fire, but possibly consistent with being hit with a rubber bullet. Two Arab girls in the lower right of the screen barely flinch at the sound, and continue to walk into the apparent line of fire, unconcerned.

Azza staggers back north, where he is quickly aided by a few people who help bring him to an ambulance.

There are photos of, supposedly, Azza with what appears to be a lot of blood. (I am not sure at what point he loses his light colored top/scarf.)

At least one photo appears to have been retouched, though. Here is the first one from the photographer's Facebook page:



Here's the version from Palestine News Network:

That is very bright blood, especially on dark clothing.

In the video, no blood is apparent on the street after the shooting. Still, this photo of him being carried to the ambulance seems to show blood on the carrier's jeans.

HRW's account is wildly different from the "eyewitnesses" that they love to quote. Mohammed told The Guardian that he was shot in the back, not the chest. 

Fakher Zayed in the same Guardian video says that he witnessed three youths get shot: first one in the chest, the second in the back, and the third in an unspecified area, a half hour after the second. Since Nawareh was facing south and Salameh was facing north, and Azi was according to the video and HRW hit 85 minutes before Nawareh, none of what Zayed says squares with the facts (unless there was a mystery fourth incident.)

Azza's account of the events to The National is also utterly inconsistent with his statements elsewhere and with the video:

“The protest wasn’t so big when we got there [at about 10.30am], there were only around 70 boys and four soldiers who were shooting rubber bullets and tear gas. When we went to the front, everyone was moving fast and throwing rocks. I was looking directly at a soldier under the vine tree and I wasn’t moving,” Mohammed recalls, sitting next to his father in their detached home.

“Then I heard the sound of the rifle. I thought it was a rubber bullet but then I felt something burning inside me. I started running with some of the other guys and they told me that I had been shot in my back. Some people picked me up and carried me to the ambulance.”

So he was looking directly at the soldier who shot him and he was shot in the back? He started running with them even though no one is seen on the video?

None of this bothers Human Rights Watch. HRW says that Azza suffered wounds "to the chest" but then later says that "Mohammed Azza, 15, told Human Rights Watch that Israeli forces shot him in the back earlier during the protests." So HRW, trying to square the accounts, instead of showing skepticism over Azza's words compared to the medical report, seems to be claiming that Azza was shot twice!

The accounts are absurdly inconsistent, and they do not jive with the video at the moment that HRW says the event occurred, but HRW just shrugs and insists Israel shot him with live fire in the chest, causing him to...crouch down and run under his own power.

Here is the supposedly critically wounded Azza, smiling for the camera in a photo posted on the day after the incident:

And here is is five days later:

I have no idea what really happened at 12:20 PM on May 15. I do know that Azza is lying, big time, about what he was doing at the time, as are all the other "eyewitnesses" and his family. Based on his reaction and the reaction of the passersby, I think it is highly unlikely that he was hit by a live bullet.

More importantly, Human Rights Watch also has no idea what really happened - but that doesn't stop them from pushing their own theories as if they are fact.

(h/t Bob Knot)

UPDATE: I wrote this based on HRW's time of 12:20 for the incident. But DCI is claiming that they have a CAM 3 view of the incident that happened around 13:00. (Conveniently, we don't have CAM 1 footage at 13:00, it starts at 13:04, and that's the highest quality camera.)

Someone is wrong. 

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HRW lies about Beitunia

In a  move that surprises no one, Human Rights Watch has released a report on the Beitunia shootings that uncritically reports every anti-Israel claim and ignores everything that is self-contradictory:

Video footage, photographs, witness statements, and medical records indicate that two 17-year-old boys whom Israeli forces shot and killed on May 15, 2014 posed no imminent threat to the forces at the time. The boys, who had been participating in a demonstration in the West Bank, were apparently shot with live ammunition, Human Rights Watch said.

Video footage clearly shows Israeli soldiers firing in the direction of the boys, Nadim Nawareh and Mohammed Salameh, and the boys falling to the ground. Medical records indicate that the two boys, as well as 15-year-old, Mohammed Azza, whom Israeli forces also shot and seriously wounded, suffered wounds to the chest caused by live ammunition. Nawareh and Salameh were shot right through the chest. Witnesses told Human Rights Watch they heard the sound of live ammunition being fired, quite distinct from the sound of rubber bullet fire, at the time the three boys were shot.

“The willful killing of civilians by Israeli security forces as part of the occupation is a war crime,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East and North Africa director. “Israel has a responsibility to prosecute the forces who targeted these teens, and also those responsible for assigning the use of live ammunition to police a demonstration.”

The Israeli military stated that it is investigating the killings but that its forces “did not use live fire,” only rubber bullets and teargas. However, rubber bullets are specifically designed not to penetrate bodies. It is highly unlikely that, at a range of at least 60 meters, rubber bullets would have caused the injuries that killed Nawareh and Salameh and wounded Azza. Nawareh’s family retrieved what may be the live bullet that killed him.

Offenses committed by Israeli security forces as part of the occupation, such as deliberate attacks on civilians, would be subject to prosecution under international humanitarian law as war crimes. Israeli forces have repeatedly shot Palestinians who posed no imminent threat with live ammunition during similar protests, including at an April 4 demonstration in the same location, and the Israeli military has a poor record of bringing soldiers to justice for such acts, Human Rights Watch said.

The boys were shot in three separate incidents but in virtually the same location in the town of Beitunia, where Palestinians had earlier held a demonstration to commemorate “Naqba Day,” which marks the expulsion of Palestinians from present-day Israel from 1947 to 1949. After the demonstration, there was a violent confrontation during which Israeli forces fired rubber bullets, live ammunition, and tear gas at Palestinians who threw rocks at the forces.

A photojournalist taking pictures at the time, Samer Nazzal, told Human Rights Watch that Israeli forces shot rubber bullets at a group of Palestinians who gathered to carry Nawareh away. Human Rights Watch viewed a series of Nazzal’s high-shutter-speed photographs taken immediately after Nawareh was shot that show a projectile, apparently a rubber bullet, coming from the direction of the Israeli forces. It struck the head of a Palestinian medic, who was wearing a bright orange vest and was part of the group carrying Nawareh.

The Israeli rights group B’Tselem reported that Israeli occupation forces also shot and wounded a 23-year-old man in the arm that day with live ammunition.

...Witness statements, medical reports, security camera videos, news media videos and photographs by journalists, which Human Rights Watch viewed, indicate that Israeli forces fired live ammunition.

As we have shown conclusively, at least Nadeem Nawarah's fall to the ground was accompanied by what was undoubtedly the firing of a rubber bullet.



Nazzal and the other "eyewitnesses" are lying.

Nazzal, 28, a photographer and journalist for Raya news, told Human Rights Watch that he arrived at the scene at around 1:30 p.m., after the clashes had started. He later heard Israeli forces fire both rubber bullets and live ammunition. Witnesses at demonstrations, as well as Israeli, Palestinian and international human rights monitors, have repeatedly confirmed that the sound of live fire is easily distinguished from the sound of the type of rubber bullets used by the Israeli Defense Forces. Nazzal said:

There were seven or eight soldiers on foot in an elevated area, behind a concrete wall and fence, about 60 meters away. There were also a lot of [military vehicles] about 200 meters away from us. There were dozens of protesters, most of them doing nothing but watching, and about 20 others were throwing rocks. Two or three of them would run forward and throw rocks at a time, but because the soldiers were in an elevated place and shielded, none of the rocks seemed to actually hit them. They were shooting tear gas and rubber bullets constantly, and once in a while we would hear live ammunition.

I started taking photos of the clashes as soon as I got there. Nadim [Nawareh] decided to cross the street. At that time he wasn’t throwing rocks; he was just crossing the street. As soon as he was in the middle of the street he was shot straight in the chest. I saw it. I was just 15 meters away from him. I heard the bullet, and he dropped to the ground and didn’t move.

Zayed, the store owner, and Abbas Mamoni, another journalist, corroborated Nazzal’s account.

Nazzal took a rapid series of photographs that show a projectile flying toward the group evacuating Nawareh, and apparently striking the head of a man wearing a medic’s fluorescent vest. The man stumbles and holds his head in subsequent images.

This photograph, if accurate, exactly corresponds with the second gunshot sound in the CNN video, a sound identical to the first one that corresponds to Nawarah's fall. If the sound of a rubber bullet is so easily distinguishable from that of live fire - and it is - then the two shots were of the same type and Nawara was not hit by live fire.

HRW pretends to look at the inconsistencies but dismisses them with what can only be described as a wild conspiracy theory: (There are links in HRW's report that do not go anywhere, and there are no links to the description of the rifle.)

Some commentators and news reports have incorrectly stated that the CNN footage could not show Israeli forces shooting live ammunition because the assault rifles seen in the footage have attachments that are used to fire rubber bullets. However, the Israeli military has used at least one type of assault-rifle attachment, produced by Israel Military Industries, that allows forces to fire rubber bullets, but also to fire live ammunition without removing the attachment. A brochure states that the 22-centimeter-long “launcher” can be “attached to any rifle with NATO flash suppressor” and allows “immediate 5.56-mm lethal firing capability without removing adapter.”

Human Rights Watch could not determine whether the gunshot in the video fired a live round or a rubber bullet, or to rule out the possibility that Nawareh might have been killed by another gunshot that the video did not record.

The gunshot in the CNN video was accompanied by the appearance of a paper wad (you need to go frame by frame to see it) that accompanies many but not all rubber bullet firings, but do not correspond with live fire. In addition, the sound of a live fire round even from such a rifle would sound different, as HRW emphasizes. So HRW prefers a conspiracy theory involving several layers of IDF command over the clear evidence from the CNN video and photographs that HRW relies upon.

HRW's presentation of the facts here simply do not jive with the reality of the videos and the photos. The organization casts no doubt on the supposed bullet that Nawara's family has shown to the media that could not possibly have passed through a human body as an  expert showed. And it is credulous regarding "eyewitnesses" who are known to lie.

But HRW isn't interested in discovering the truth - it is interested in damning Israel.

(h/t Gidon)

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Why HRW is racist: it condemns Sharon in death, ignores Phalangists, supports Dieudonné

Human Rights Watch remains as disgusting as ever.

As Ariel Sharon died after his long illness, HRW is very sad. Not about his death, of course:

Ariel Sharon died without facing justice for his role in the massacres of hundreds and perhaps thousands of civilians by Lebanese militias in the Sabra and Shatilla refugee camps in Lebanon in 1982. The killings constituted war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Sharon also escaped accountability for other alleged abuses, such as his role expanding settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, prosecutable as a war crime. Sharon ordered the removal of all Israeli settlers from the Gaza Strip and from four West Bank settlements in 2005, but the overall number of settlers in occupied territory increased significantly during his term as prime minister.

“It’s a shame that Sharon has gone to his grave without facing justice for his role in Sabra and Shatilla and other abuses,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “His passing is another grim reminder that years of virtual impunity for rights abuses have done nothing to bring Israeli-Palestinian peace any closer.”

As far as I can tell, HRW has never written an article like this about the death of any other person. Not Osama bin Laden, not Moammar Qaddafi, not Saddam Hussein. Only Ariel Sharon gets treated this way.

Now, if you do a search through HRW's archives of the word "Phalangist" (or "Keta'eb," which is the current name of that group in Lebanon, still an active political party) you will not find a single condemnation of their massacres in Sabra and Shalita. Every single time they are mentioned it is in context of - Ariel Sharon.

To HRW, the people who actually slaughter human beings and mutilate pregnant women are blameless. They are not worthy of any calls to investigation, there is no reason to seek justice from them.

How can this be? How can Human Rights Watch ignore the perpetrators of the crime and give the lion's share of responsibility to someone who, while he should have anticipated and stopped the crime, was not either its planner nor executor?

The answer is very simple, and it betrays the racism of Human Rights Watch and many other such groups, media and politicians:

Middle Easterners are expected to be savages. Arabs and Maronite Christians, in HRW's world, are animals. They have no free will - their actions are disgusting but inevitable, a consequence of their subhuman natures.

Jews, on the other hand, must act like human beings. They must prevent two sets of animals under their control from killing each other.  Indeed, this is how human beings should act, and Sharon was correctly slammed by Israeli commissions for his not being proactive in stopping what was almost inevitable.

Human Rights Watch, however, only blames Sharon. The esteemed organization cannot be bothered to condemn Maronites or Arabs for acting like this - that is their nature. This is pure racism.

Sabra and Shatila would not exist on the website of Human Rights Watch if it wasn't for Ariel Sharon. In fact, Lebanon saw much worse massacres in recent decades- even against Palestinian civilians - and HRW has not a word to say about those massacres. Only if a Jew can be blamed is it worth being brought up.

Another angle: Sharon forcibly expelled thousands of people from their homes in Gaza and the West Bank. This would seem to be against the Geneva Conventions. The ICRC interprets international law this way: "Individual or mass forcible transfers...are prohibited, regardless of their motive." But they were Jews, so HRW has nothing bad to say about that. Jews in the territories are the only group of people in the world that HRW insists should be forcibly removed from their homes. There is a double standard clear to all: international law must be twisted to ensure that Jews, the indigenous people of ancient Israel and Judah, are always violators of law while Arabs who invaded or moved in millenia later are nearly blameless in their actions.

To put the icing on the HRW anti-semitism cake, they also wrote this about antisemitic French "comedian" Dieudonné:

France made the wrong decision when it banned controversial comedian Dieudonné M’Bala M’Bala, known for appallingly and insultingly mocking the Holocaust, from performing a number of his stand-up shows.

The government’s representative in Nantes banned a show scheduled for Thursday, on grounds of threats to public order. On the day of the show, one of the city’s courts overturned the ban. But Minister of the Interior Manuel Valls, who has spoken out openly and strongly against Dieudonné, appealed to France’s highest administrative court, the Conseil d’Etat, which later in the day upheld the ban.

On Friday, another court upheld the ban on another show by Dieudonné that was to take place in Tours in the evening. Welcoming the ruling by the Conseil d’Etat, Valls said that “The Republic has won”.

Yet a country’s dedication to human rights and democratic values is measured in the way it treats those with whom it disagrees, and in this instance, France has failed that test. France should respect freedom of expression, including those opinions that shock, offend, or disturb – unless they amount to inciting violence. Any restrictions to this freedom must be necessary and proportionate, and banning Dieudonné shows is neither. If there are indeed threats to public order, authorities should deploy enough police officers to deter violence, not ban the show altogether.

Please, HRW, explain how making fun of the Holocaust and Jews is anything less than incitement. How does creating an environment where Jews being gassed and burned is a subject of mockery make it a safer country for Jews to live in? There is a reason that record numbers of French Jews moved to Israel this year, but, hey, HRW probably considers that a war crime as well.

And, of course, Arab media regularly has much more open incitement against Jews, as I have documented countless times. Yet to this day, HRW has never said a word against Arab antisemiticm and incitement to kill Jews.

HRW has a halo effect as being one of the most prestigious human rights organizations. And in some parts of the world, perhaps it does some good work. But its standards are twisted into a mockery of human rights when the subject or object of the reports happen to be Jews. The standard for Jews to tolerate hate against themselves is lower than that for anyone else; while the standard for Jews to act in a humane manner is much, much higher than that of their neighbors.

 It is hard to find this to be a coincidence.

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How HRW and Amnesty have failed women in the Middle East (NGO Monitor)

NGO Monitor has just released a very impressive report, titled "Second Class Rights: How Amnesty International & Human Rights Watch Fail Women in the Middle East."

Here are some excerpts from its executive summary and introduction:

Given the importance of women’s rights and their contribution to the development of society, the promotion of liberal democracy, and the strengthening of other human rights, they should be a primary focus of the most prominent human rights NGOs, specifically Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch (HRW). And as noted above, given that women’s rights are the least protected within MENA countries, it would seem to follow that these organizations should direct significant resources and sustained campaigning toward promoting women’s rights within the MENA region.

As NGOs with huge budgets rivaling those of multinational corporations, and with tremendous influence among policy makers and in UN frameworks, Amnesty and HRW have a distinct advantage in championing women’s rights. Research and advocacy by these organizations can give women’s issues international prominence. Conversely, violations ignored by Amnesty and HRW may lead the media, academics, and policy makers to conclude that these problems are not serious enough to warrant attention.

Despite the advantages of being well-funded, highly organized, and powerful actors, campaigning on women’s rights in the MENA region leading up to the Arab Spring was not a priority for Amnesty and HRW. While these NGOs project an image of prioritizing women’s rights, both quantitative and qualitative analyses of their activities demonstrate that this is not, in fact, an accurate assessment. Amnesty’s and HRW’s campaigning was sporadic and impressionistic, without sustained advocacy, and not aimed at achieving concrete objectives.

Instead, these groups chose to focus on issues related to criminal detention, armed conflict, and counter-terrorism. Often, the NGO agenda appeared to be driven by media interest and prominent world events, or as a foil to U.S. policy.

Because of the core agenda drivers for these NGOs, there was relatively little campaigning on women’s issues in the MENA region from 1990 through 2011. There was no reporting at all for some MENA countries; in other instances, the minimal reporting soft-peddled abuses by repressive governments. As a result, these NGOs were ill-prepared to deal with the Arab Spring upheavals.

In the aftermath of the Arab Spring, sustained campaigning by these NGOs has been all the more important given the ascendancy of Islamist parties and the backlash against women throughout the region. There is a sense of urgency among women activists for the need to “create a strong body to lobby and advocate for rights” in order to prevent further deterioration. This period of tremendous uncertainty, however, has not seen Amnesty and HRW step in to fill the vacuum.

...With regards to Amnesty, for example, external consultants hired by the NGO to evaluate its women’s rights program found that “there is little evidence that Amnesty International was able to use its ‘might’ (name and reputation, resources, research and campaign work) to ‘change the global conversation’, ”12 and further concluded that “Women’s rights are not yet part of Amnesty International’s DNA.”13 The evaluators noted many problems, including that new campaigns “lack any explicit analysis of or com- mitment to women’s rights, despite a commitment to gender being explicit in [Amnesty’s strategic plan],”14 “Some staff do not see the need to learn about or work on women’s rights; it is still seen as optional,”15 and “with the ending of [the Violence Against Women (VAW) program] the number of staff employed to work on VAW and women’s rights has declined.”16 The main recommendation in the evaluation was that “a clear plan for ensuring that Amnesty International takes women’s rights seriously is needed urgently.”17

For HRW, no case better illustrates the NGOs soft-peddling approach on women’s issues in the MENA region than its activities relating to Saudi Arabia. HRW acknowledges that the situation for women in Saudi Arabia is untenable.18 Yet, despite this recognition, the organization has undertaken little substantive and sustained campaigning on the fundamental issues relating to women in the Kingdom. Instead, it has chosen to focus on relatively minor concerns that may garner media attention, but have had little to no impact on eliminating systemic abuse.

HRW’s reporting on Saudi Arabia has also included analyses of whether its repressive guardianship system is required under Islamic law – a discussion that would be unthinkable, for instance, in HRW reports on gay rights and abortion in Catholic countries. Moreover, HRW’s reporting on Saudi Arabia is hesitant and often lacks the language of demand, certainty, urgency, and immediacy, and offers praise for the most minor and illusory of rights reforms. In contrast to recommendations in reports on the U.S., Israel, and other countries, there is no call for external intervention by other nations and international institutions, no demand for the establishment of international investigations or fact-finding inquiries, no call for the imposition of international sanctions and embargoes, and no demand for international prosecutions or other hard-hitting measures.

This approach has also been coupled with offensive statements by HRW’s leadership such as Executive Director Ken Roth who has written “Of new #Saudi reforms for women municipal voting, Olympics a greater work role, even if segregated, will matter most.” It is inconceivable that Roth would have made similar statements relating to African-Americans or other minority groups.

The most troubling aspect of HRW’s soft approach is that it appears to coincide with a new strategy by the organization to intensify fundraising from Gulf elites. This financing plan raises numerous ques- tions regarding the impact of such funding on HRW’s priorities and agenda setting, as well as HRW’s commitment to moral and ethical principles.

...The research also demonstrates that Amnesty and HRW officials’ attitudes towards rights abuses against women in the Middle East is largely motivated by post-colonial ideology and a fear of being labeled “Western” or “Islamophobic.” The failure to report and the “soft-peddling” of abuses also appears to be driven by a desire not to be seen as supporting the policies of the U.S. government.

Additionally, in discussing abuses against women, Amnesty and HRW often employ language that is much softer than that used to describe alleged violations committed by Western countries, reflecting a tendency by these groups to opine on politics, promote specific regimes, and justify religious strictures. In many cases, as will be described in the report, rather than documenting and condemning offenses, Amnesty and HRW gave praise and encouragement to abusive regimes. In several instances, these NGOs marketed a façade of regime reforms that were mostly illusory, as in Saudi Arabia, and even false, as in the case of Libya. In other examples, and in contrast to the approach towards Western or non- Muslim countries, these NGOs relied on Islamic precepts for their analyses, rather than the standards established by international human rights law. And in still other cases, these organizations actively promoted those who oppose true political and social freedom for women such as Amnesty’s embrace of a Taliban supporter and HRW’s stance towards the Muslim Brotherhood. In essence, these organizations have chosen a “kid-gloves” approach to promote change in dictatorial societies rather than engaging in hard-hitting advocacy, tough “naming and shaming,” and application of universal, internationally-adopted human rights standards.

As will be shown in this report, HRW and Amnesty have allowed ideology and politics to prevail at the expense of true freedom for women. Doing so has compromised the role of these organizations as independent “non-governmental” actors that monitor and report on universal human rights. Had a different, more sustained, hardline approach been adopted or even just attempted by these organizations, perhaps women’s rights would be far more advanced in the MENA region, and the Arab Spring would have truly led to positive change for women.

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