Omar Barghouti's lies in HuffPo

In the Huffington Post, Omar Barghouti argues against an earlier article by Bernard-Henri Levy in order to justify the anti-Israel BDS movement.

It doesn't take very long before one sees that the truth is not exactly Barghouti's strong suit.

The fact is the BDS Call was launched by a great majority in Palestinian civil society on July 9, 2005, as a qualitatively new phase in the global struggle for Palestinian freedom, justice, and self-determination. More than 170 leading Palestinian political parties, trade union federations, women's unions, refugee rights groups, NGOs, and grassroots organizations called for a boycott against Israel until it fully complies with its obligations under international law.

Do the organizations behind the boycott really represent the majority of Palestinian society?

I found the list of organizations that signed on to BDS on the website he cited, and a good number of them are not based in "Palestine" but rather in Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Europe and North America. As far as I can see, there is not a single political party on that list. And if all the 170 organizations signed on in 2005, as the website says, then that means that not too many have signed on since then!

The Palestinian Arab organizations that signed onto BDS are a motley crew of trade unions, highly anti-Israel organizations like "Al-Awda" which agitates to destroy Israel completely, and some pseudo-"human rights" organizations like Addameer which inflates the number of Arabs arrested by Israel by at least a factor of a hundred.

Apparently, lying comes naturally to all BDS supporters!

However, the Palestinian Authority does not support BDS. Most Palestinian Arabs consume Israeli goods. I daresay that one will be able to find plenty of Israeli products in the offices of most of the West Bank and Gaza organizations listed.

Not only that, but most Palestinian Arab trade unions don't support BDS! In fact, the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions (PGFTU) is explicitly against BDS. (h/t Zach N)

The BDS movement tries to represent itself as being far larger than it is, but if you want a laugh, look at the "Achievements Calendar" on the BDS Movement website.

It is, as far as I can tell, completely empty!

He goes on:

"Rooted in a century-old history of civil, nonviolent resistance ..."

I always laugh when I see this claim made. The liars who say that the Palestinian Arab "resistance" movement was nonviolent usually point to the beginning of the 1936-9 riots, which started with a strike. Of course, that didn't last long, and by the time it was over there were thousands of casualties - most of them Arab, and many of them injured and killed by other Arabs - for not adhering to the strike!

Palestinian Arab terrorism has evolved since then, to airplane hijackings, suicide bombings and shooting rockets at women and children. All of which are supported, implicitly or explicitly, by many of these same "civil society" organizations listed.

Even today, when Palestinian Arabs talk about "non-violent resistance," they include throwing large rocks through the windshields of cars belonging to civilians who happen to pass by the wrong neighborhood.

[T]he BDS National Committee (BNC) [is] anchored in deep respect for international law and universal human rights...

The entire point of the BDS initiative is to deny and destroy the right of the Jewish nation to self-determination. That is its entire raison d'être. To say that is based on human rights is a very bad joke - yet this lie is one that is used repeatedly.

The BDS movement, being strictly rights-based, has consistently avoided taking any position regarding the one-state/two-states debate, emphasizing instead the three basic rights that need to be realized in any political solution. Ending the Israeli occupation that started in 1967 of all Arab territories, ending Israel's system of legalized and institutionalized discrimination against its own Palestinian citizens, and recognizing the UN-sanctioned rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes of origin are the three basic principles of the movement.

There is no UN-sanctioned right for the Palestinian Arabs to "return.' The 1949 UNGA Resolution 194 that they love to use has phraseology that limits this "right," it does not extend to the descendants, it was a General Assembly resolution with no legal weight, and it was roundly rejected by the Arab world anyway. It is simply a BDS and Palestinian Arab lie to take portions of one of its fifteen paragraphs as the holiest of holies while utterly disregarding the rest of the resolution.

Mr. Levy completely misrepresents my position on the matter. Citing a 2003 article of mine, he outlandishly claims that I endorse a "two-Palestines" solution....For more than 27 years, I've consistently and openly advocated a secular, democratic state in the entire area of historic Palestine.

Either way, the point of the BDS movement is to destroy the Jewish state. No two ways about that.

And when Barghouti says "historic Palestine" he is ignoring history and betraying the fact that the BDS movement is only interested in the portions of "historic Palestine" that happens to be controlled by Jews.After all, portions of Jordan were once considered "eastern Palestine" yet not one BDSer will ever insist that Jordan give up its portion of historic Palestine!

The BDS movement against Israel could not care less whether it is a Jewish, Muslim, Catholic or Hindu state; all that matters is that it is a colonial oppressor that persistently denies the Palestinian people their basic rights. Is this too difficult to understand?

If that was remotely the case, then the BDS movement would boycott every single Arab country - because every one of them has discriminatory laws to disallow Palestinian Arabs from becoming fully naturalized citizens of their states. Where are the boycotts of Lebanon? Saudi Arabia? Even Jordan has been systematically taking away Jordanian citizenship from their citizens of Palestinian origin.

Yet the BDS movement is silent on the matter.

The fact that they only call for sanctions against Israel indicates - actually, it proves - that anti-semitism is the root of the entire movement. Not that all of its members consciously realize it or not, but there can be no other explanation.

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ElderToons: Aliens land in Jerusalem

Because of this story....

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Muslim Brotherhood on El Baradei: "He's only temporary"

From this Russia Today video, starting around 2:15, interviewing a Muslim Brotherhood member:



Mohammed El Baltagy: "We didn't choose El Baradei. We chose him only for a short period of change. He's only temporary."


Notice how el-Baltagy phrases it, as if the Muslim Brotherhood is calling the shots of the current uprising and using players as pawns to gain leadership.

El Baltagy is a major figure in the Muslim Brotherhood.

Much of the rest of the video is about Egyptian skepticism over El Baradei, making some would-be analysts look like complete fools.

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Amnesty officially calls Turkel report a "whitewash" - with no proof

As a follow-up to this story I broke this morning, proving Amnesty's bias by condemning the Turkel Commission report before even reading it, Amnesty has written a more comprehensive critique of the Turkel report, this time explicitly calling it a "whitewash."

Of course, since Amnesty had already come to that conclusion before actually examining the report, we can rest assured that their objectivity in their analysis is equally flawed. Can it even enter one's mind that Amnesty would have issued a press release saying, "Sorry, we were wrong"?

And, of course, Amnesty's response falls short of proving anything close to what they are claiming:

Amnesty International has condemned the findings of an Israeli inquiry into last year’s raid on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla as a “whitewash” which failed to account for the deaths of nine Turkish nationals.

The published  Turkel report indeed did not go into details on every death, and it explained why:

The detailed testimonies of the soldiers as well as their analysis can be found in an annex to the report. The Commission decided, while giving due consideration to article 539 A of the Military Justice Law 5715-1955, to privilege this annex pursuant to its authority under Article 11 to the Government’s decision of June 14, 2010, unless the government decides to lift this privilege. The Commission recommends that the Government will examine the possibility of making this annex public pursuant to its authority under law.

Amnesty seizes on this:

[The report] states that a detailed analysis of each incident, as well as the Israeli soldiers’ written testimonies on which this analysis was based, are contained in an unpublished annex to the report, which it recommends that the Israeli government “examine the possibility of making… public”. Amnesty International calls on the Israeli authorities to do so without delay, so that it can be read by independent parties.

If the Turkel commission itself is recommending that the annex be made public, how can Amnesty accuse it of a whitewash? Clearly the investigators wanted to make their methods and result be as transparent as possible, and the observers did get a chance to see their methods - and approved them.

The fundamental problem that Amnesty has is not with the report itself, though, but the framework:

Significantly, [the commission] chose to base its analysis of the lawfulness of the actions taken against those who resisted the boarding of the ship on international humanitarian law, which governs armed conflict and allows much greater latitude for the use of lethal force. Amnesty International categorically rejects the application of this legal framework to the events concerned.

But Turkel goes into great detail on why they chose to base the report on international humanitarian law rather than human rights law as Amnesty demands:

Although there are schools of thought that largely favor extensive applicability of human rights law, this approach is not universally accepted. For example, neither Israel nor the United States agrees with a broad extra-territorial application of human rights law.796 The issue of
whether, or the degree to which, there is extra-territorial application of human rights law is particularly relevant to the enforcement of the Gaza naval blockade on May 31, 2010, since it took place on the high seas, outside the territory of the Israeli State.

Recently, the European Court of Human Rights ruled in the Case of Medvedyev and Others v. France 797 that the interception of a vessel on the high seas by a French warship in a counter-drug law enforcement operation did engage human rights jurisdiction after "full and exclusive control" over the ship had been established. However, the judgment does not clarify exactly when the French armed forces were considered to have obtained "full and exclusive control" of the ship, especially since the litigation did not center on the boarding and overtaking of the ship,
but rather on the arrest and confinement of the crew to their cabins for a period of 13 days during the transit to France.

In the case at hand, it is difficult to see how Israel could be considered to have had “full and exclusive control” prior to taking control of the bridge of the flotilla vessels and the subsequent cessation of resistance. Further, even if Israeli forces were considered to have had such control over the Mavi Marmara prior to taking control of the bridge, the actions of the Israeli forces would still be governed by the lex specialisof international humanitarian law since the enforcement of a blockade is not a law enforcement mission. Therefore, the ruling of the European Court of Human Rights in the Medvedyev case is of limited assistance in resolving the issue of extra-territorial application of human rights law during the enforcement of the Gaza blockade.

With respect to the enforcement of the blockade, the use of force is to be interpreted under the international humanitarian law framework,798 which permits attacks against combatants and civilians taking a direct part in hostilities. International humanitarian law is guided by the principle of distinction, which is an obligation to distinguish at all times between civilians and combatants. A civilian is any person who is not defined as a "combatant."799 Civilians enjoy a general protection against the dangers arising from military operations.800 Hence, when attacking a military objective, the attacking party must take all feasible precautions to avoid incidental (collateral) injury and death to civilians.801 Further, the expected incidental harm caused to civilians by an attack must not be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated (the "principle of proportionality").802 Civilians shall not be
the object of an attack unless, and for such time as they take a direct part in hostilities.
803

Regarding the use of force, international humanitarian law treats combatants and civilians who take a direct part in hostilities differently than uninvolved civilians. Under international humanitarian law, the right to life is protected by prohibitions against indiscriminate attacks,
804 targeting individual civilians and the civilian population unless they take a direct part in
hostilities,805 causing superfluous or unnecessary suffering to combatants,806and targeting those who are hors de combat.807

This is only a part of Turkel's justification for the legal framework - arguments that Amnesty dismisses without putting forth any of its own legal arguments, effectively declaring Turkel wrong because they say so. In fact, Amnesty even goes into hyperbole, saying:

Effectively, the Commission argued that these activists could be shot dead lawfully whether or not they were posing a direct threat to the lives of IDF soldiers.

Turkel makes no such claim and his analysis of every bullet and paintball pellet shows that Amnesty's charge is baseless - if Turkel's frame of reference was that every IHH member could be killed legally, why bother investigating?

Amnesty throws in some more tendentious charges, such as that there is no evidence that Turkel had access to ballistics tests [there is no evidence that he didn't, either - must the report mention every activity done over five months?] all of which are designed to divert attention from the fact that the Turkel Commission's methods were transparent and observed by two highly qualified internationals who gave their unqualified stamp of approval on their methods.

Amnesty had a pre-determined idea of what the conclusion should be - that Israel was guilty - and no amount of evidence could ever change its mind. And as we saw, its conclusion really was pre-determined. As such, Amnesty's criticisms ring hollow, as an after-the-fact papering over of their own ignorance of the circumstances. Amnesty has proved its willingness to believe every piece of evidence that damns Israel and to question everything that exonerates her.

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Amnesty proves it cannot be unbiased - Malcolm Smart must be fired

My latest article at NewsReal shows that Amnesty does not even need inconvenient things like "facts" and "proof" before accusing Israel's Turkel Commission of a "whitewash."

One can argue that other accusations of bias have no solid proof. But a press release from Amnesty slamming the report before they even read it shows, beyond any doubt, that Amnesty has an anti-Israel agenda, and it casts doubt on the methods used in every report Amnesty has ever written.

Read the whole thing.

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AFP's bias shines through

My latest article at NewsRealBlog fisks a single paragraph from an AFP story last week to show how biased the media is - even if it is subconscious.

Enjoy!

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ElderToons: How the Guardian thinks

References:

Honest Reporting

Robin Shepherd

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