Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News: oxfam

Showing posts with label oxfam. Show all posts

Thursday, November 26, 2020

Fisking @Oxfam: How important is the Palestinian olive harvest to its economy, and how much damage do "settlers" cause?

Oxfam put out this infographic:

Is the olive harvest season essential to the Palestinian economy?

Let's look at some of the statistics.

How important is agriculture to the Palestinian economy?

In 2016, agriculture contributed 3.16% of the Palestinian GDP. Which means that the olive harvest contributes less than one percent of the Palestinian economy.

If Oxfam cares about the Palestinian economy so much, they should be insisting that the PA stops paying terrorists and their families - an amount that is more than double the total olive oil revenue!

Let's do the math.

This means that each family's income from olive harvest is on $1480 a year.

The average Palestinian income for one worker is over $20,000 a year.

Which means that these 100,000 families are either starving or they make most of their money doing other jobs, and the olive harvest is a sideline that they only work on a small amount of the year. (In most cases, the husband has a regular job and the wife will spend a few weeks a year on the olive harvest to supplement their main income.)

At any rate, olive oil isn't the critical economic powerhouse that Oxfam pretends.

Now, what about the supposed huge number of vandalized trees by "settlers?" Oxfam claims 1475 trees damaged this year.

There are about 8 million fruit bearing olive trees in the territories. If 1475 of them were destroyed completely, that would come out to total damage worth of about $27,000.

The research and design for this poster probably cost Oxfam more than $27,000!

If you look at the categories of damage listed, you can see that most of the alleged damages still would allow harvesting of some olives, so the real damage is even less. The number of fruit bearing trees cut down completely is probably zero, since olive trees are extraordinarily difficult to cut down or uproot.

And Oxfam is relying on lies to even come up with these figures. In tiny, tiny type, it says - absurdly:

No, Oxfam, the actual incidents are definitely lower. The Palestinian Authority deliberately lies about the attacks by settlers - for example, often claiming that religious Jewish settlers are cutting down olive trees on Shabbat, or showing photos of obviously pruned olive trees and pretending that they were cut down by Jews.

The number 1475 is highly exaggerated, which means that the total damage from "settlers" is minuscule compared to the total yield.

And one more thing: even with all the terrible Israeli restrictions and settler violence alleged, somehow the olive crop last year broke all records.

This poster is a perfect example of lying with facts. Oxfam doesn't say anything that is not truthful here, but it gives an impression of widespread, massive damage to the Palestinian economy by "settlers" and Israel that is completely false.

(h/t Tomer Ilan)

UPDATE: There is no doubt that the dollar value of damage from Gaza firebomb balloons this year far outstrips the damage to olive trees. How much effort has Oxfam made against the firebombs?

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Are Amnesty, HRW and Oxfam antisemitic?

From Politico:

The Trump administration is considering declaring that several prominent international NGOs — including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and Oxfam — are anti-Semitic and that governments should not support them, two people familiar with the issue said.

The proposed declaration could come from the State Department as soon as this week. If the declaration happens, it is likely to cause an uproar among civil society groups and might spur litigation. Critics of the possible move also worry it could lead other governments to further crack down on such groups. The groups named, meanwhile, deny any allegations that they are anti-Semitic.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is pushing for the declaration, according to a congressional aide with contacts inside the State Department.

The declaration is expected to take the form of a report from the office of Elan Carr, the U.S. special envoy to monitor and combat anti-Semitism. The report would mention organizations including Oxfam, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. It would declare that it is U.S. policy not to support such groups, including financially, and urge other governments to cease their support.

The report would cite such groups’ alleged or perceived support for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, which has targeted Israel over its construction of settlements on land Palestinians claim for a future state.

It’s also expected to point to reports and press statements such groups have released about the impact of Israeli settlements, as well as their involvement or perceived support for a United Nations database of businesses that operate in disputed territories.

There is absolutely no doubt that these groups are structurally and systematically biased against Israel. They hire people to "research" Israel with a history of anti-Israel advocacy.

One example is Amnesty's Saleh Hijazi, Deputy Regional Director of the MENA Region, whose Facebook pages include support for terrorists Leila Khaled and Khader Adnan, a glaring piece of hypocrisy for a supposed human rights advocate.

Similarly, Omar Shakir had a well-documented history of supporting BDS against all of Israel (not just "settlements") and of being obsessively anti-Israel when he was hired by HRW - and that continued even as he was employed by them.

This results in these NGOs issuing anti-Israel reports that are longer, more numerous and more detailed than their reports on virtually any other nation, with only a smattering of reports about Palestinian human rights or Arab human rights abuses against Palestinians (which only exist when their anti-Israel obsessions were revealed so they wrote token reports for "balance.") In fact, in some cases these groups have supported terror-linked NGOs.

Israel is routinely accused of "apartheid" by these NGOs. There is literally no other nation in the world that they make similar accusations of.

These NGOs become obsessed about companies like TripAdvisor and AirBnB that operate in disputed territories. There is literally no other nation in the world that they make similar accusations of, let alone participate in huge funded campaigns against international companies.

Amnesty and HRW knowingly twist international law to pretend that Palestinians have a "right to return." As many as 60 million Europeans became refugees after World War II, but none of them have the same "right to return" that the 700,000 Palestinian refugees and their millions of descendants are considered to have today by these NGOs. The only purpose of this demand is to destroy the Jewish state demographically.

Do these obsessions cross the line into antisemitism?

By the IHRA working definition of antisemitism, there is no doubt that these groups are antisemitic because they hold Israel to standards that they do not apply to any other country.

Even if you do not accept the IHRA definition these NGOs seems to have a problem with Jews.

For example, this report from HRW denigrating religious Jews:

Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef, who holds the state-funded, statutory position of Israel’s Chief Sephardic Rabbi, said in a March 12, 2016 sermon, partly in response to Eisenkot’s admonition to limit the use of lethal force, that the Bible authorizes a shoot-to-kill policy: “‘Whoever comes to kill you, rise up and kill him first.’ … let them afterward take you to the High Court of Justice or bring some military chief of staff who will say something else … As soon as an attacker knows that if he comes with a knife, he won’t return alive, it will deter them. That’s why it’s a religious commandment to kill him.”
The Sephardic Chief Rabbi does not command police or soldiers, but he heads the Supreme Rabbinical Tribunal and is tasked with advising on the interpretation of religious law.
...
According to Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics, about half of Jewish Israelis define themselves as religious or traditional, not including ultra-Orthodox Jews, who usually do not serve in the army. Conscription for non-ultra-Orthodox Jewish men is universal. Most soldiers are in their teens or early 20s, and after a few months of basic training, they can be sent to serve in the occupied West Bank.

This is an accusation that religious (and traditional) Jews are bloodthirsty fanatics who would kill Arabs at a drop of a hat - and against army regulations. That is antisemitic slander.

Or Amnesty-USA sponsoring a tour by Bassem Tamimi, who accuses Jews of stealing the organs of Palestinians.

Or this Amnesty employee that denied Egypt's expulsion of its Jews - meaning that Jews are the only group whose human rights are not to be defended.

Or these groups pushing to expel Jews - and only Jews - from their homes in disputed territories when there are also thousands of Israeli Arabs who live across the Green Line but are never called "settlers."

Or Ken Roth of HRW practically justifying European antisemitism as simply a response to Israeli actions.

Or Amnesty-UK which has hosted antisemites and BDSers at its headquarters but denied hosting Jewish Zionist groups.

Or when Amnesty's members voted against a resolution condemning antisemitism - a resolution that had nothing to do with Israel, and the only resolution that was defeated at that conference.

Or when Amnesty praised the "Youth Against Settlements" group - which is explicitly antisemitic.

Or Oxfam selling antisemitic literature on its site - copies of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and other antisemitic books that Oxfam members owned, photographed and blurbed on their website without even considering this to be a problem.

Or Oxfam excusing and supporting Miftah when the latter published the blood libel.

There are dozens of such examples.

In total, it is obvious that these NGOs have a problem not just with Israel, but many of their members have problems with Jews.

Even so, it is unclear whether it is wise for the State Department to declare them antisemitic. Outside the Middle East, the groups seem to do some excellent work and have dedicated employees who really care about human rights. (If the NGOs really wanted to be objective, they would rotate their researchers to different areas of the world instead of allowing obsessive haters of Israel to choose to demonize Israel.)

Declaring the entire organizations themselves to be antisemitic could be counterproductive. But they do have an crazed focus on attacking the Jewish state, and that needs to be publicized.

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Oxfam cooks the books, credits Palestinians for hosting 2,000,000 refugees

Oxfam has a new report on how Western nations aren't doing enough to address the worldwide refugee crisis.

The responsibility for providing refugees with shelter, food and health care, as well as jobs and education, is falling disproportionately on poorer countries, which are often struggling to meet the needs of their own people or are at risk of compromising their own stability.

The world’s six richest countries, which make up more than half the global economy, host just 8.88 percent of the world’s refugees and asylum seekers. Among these countries Germany alone hosts over 736,000 people, while the US, UK, France, China and Japan are hosting the remaining 1.4 million between them.

In sharp contrast, half the world’s refugees and asylum seekers – almost 12 million people – are hosted by Jordan, Turkey, the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Pakistan, Lebanon and South Africa, whose economies collectively account for less than two percent of the world’s total.

Here are the numbers they give:

These numbers are completely distorted by the addition of Palestinian "refugees."

The "refugees" in the West Bank and Gaza are not refugees by any sane definition, since they are living in the same land from which they are supposedly refugees from.

The vast majority of the "refugees" in Jordan - over two million - are Palestinian citizens of Jordan!

200,000 of the Palestinian refugees supposedly in Lebanon do not exist, and the rest are descendants of refugees - although Lebanon treats them exceptionally poorly.

Oxfam had some reason to fudge the numbers to include refugees who aren't refugees. If you would remove the 5 million fake Palestinian refugees from the calculations, then the number of refugees hosted by these six poor states (and quasi-states) goes down from nearly 12 million to around 7 million,

This doesn't really explain Oxfam's decision to include Palestinian "refugees" in the report, though.

The latest UNHCR trends report, from mid-2015, already lists the top host countries of real refugees - and they are mostly still poor countries: (note how the numbers in Jordan and Lebanon compare with Oxfam's numbers:)

Oxfam could have made its point about poor countries bearing the brunt of hosting the bulk of refugees without adding the fake UNRWA refugees.

Apparently, Oxfam wants to build a halo around Palestinians and act as if they are some kind of humanitarian powerhouse for being so magnanimous in allowing their own people to live in their land until they figure out a way to destroy Israel.

Using UNHCR's figures, the percentage of refugees hosted by the six richest countries goes from 9% to 14%. They could have made the point they wanted to make with the real numbers but the fake Palestinian "refugees" juice up their statistics.

At the very least, this exposes how NGOs are more than willing to fudge statistics, knowing full well that the news media will blindly accept their figures.

(h/t Gastwirt)

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Oxfam covers for Miftah's doubletalk

So far, most of the NGOs that fund Miftah have been silent during the blood-libel controversy I discovered.

Oxfam, however, just responded to a couple of my readers' inquiries (and then to mine) with a canned response which illustrates a troubling downplaying of the issue:

Thank you for making us aware that a blog post published on the website of one of our partners, the Palestinian Initiative for the Promotion of Global Dialogue and Democracy (MIFTAH), included reprehensible anti-Semitic statements.

MIFTAH has removed the offensive blog post and issued a public apology on its website. MIFTAH has assured Oxfam that the individual behind the post has been reprimanded. Oxfam Is clearly on record as opposing the use of language or acting in ways which promote hate or discrimination.

Oxfam has worked with MIFTAH since 2010. Currently, MIFTAH and three other partners are implementing Oxfam’s regional project Supporting Women’s Transformative Leadership in Changing Times. The project targets marginalized women and men to support women’s rights and gender justice with the goal of increased empowerment, self-confidence, and leadership roles for women in public and private spheres.

Oxfam is surely aware that the section of Miftah's site where the offensive article was published was not a "blog" but an essay section where they republish articles they think are interesting for their readers. They even index the section so their readers can read other articles from the same author, and Nawaf al-Zaru has been featured five times.

Oxfam should also be aware that the "apology" was not issued in Arabic, the language of the hateful essay, meaning that Arabic-language readers of Miftah have no idea what Miftah's opinion on the medieval blood libel is, and for all they know Miftah supports that heinous lie.

Moreover, Oxfam must also be aware that Miftah did not issue its English apology until it felt under pressure to do so.

Finally, this response did not even address one of the writer's points about Miftah, that they have praised suicide bombers. And not in their "essay" section, either, but under their own name. (NOTE: Since that essay was discovered and publicized, Miftah has also silently removed that essay - but you can still find it archived at the UN!)

Clearly, Oxfam wants to find excuses for Miftah instead of holding it to a standard that it would hold any Western NGO.

Today's joke from Egypt: MB is an "NGO"

From Al Ahram:

Egypt's largest Islamist group, the Muslim Brotherhood, has been officially registered as a non-governmental organisation by the ministry of social security.

The move came after a 'comprehensive' request submitted by the group on Tuesday, Minister of Social Security Nagwa Khalil told state news agency MENA on Thursday.

The Islamist group met all the requirements of law 84/2002 regulating non-governmental organisations, Khalil said.

The ministry would oversee the group's funding now it is officially registered as an NGO, asserted the minister.

Some analysts argue that the abrupt registration is in breach of the law 84/2002 that forbids NGOs from taking part in political activities, raising doubts about the transparency of the process.

So the party that effectively controls the country is an NGO.

Must help them avoid taxes.

HRW can't wait to publish hit pieces on Israel

From The Volokh Conspiracy:

Human Rights Watch has just released a report on Israel’s recent “Pillar of Defense” operation to suppress rocket fire from Gaza. The report concludes that 18 airstrikes violated international law by not being properly targeted. I do not know if 18 is a little or a lot for an operation of this scale, as there an no good comparative data (though the report is released as Afghanistan says yet another NATO airstrike hit a house with innocent women and children inside.)

The report, by its description of its methods, appears to be a hit piece. Here is what the report said about the group’s investigative method (emphasis added):

Human Rights Watch sent detailed information about the cases to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) on January 14, 2013, requesting further information. At a meeting on January 24 and in subsequent phone conversations, the military spokesperson’s office told Human Rights Watch that the military chief of staff had ordered a general (aluf) to conduct an “operational debriefing” (tahkir mivtza’i) concerning “dozens” of Israeli attacks during the conflict, including the cases Human Rights Watch investigated, which would be completed by late February.

Because previous Israeli “operational debriefings” involving attacks were not conducted by trained military police investigators or dedicated to investigating alleged laws-of-war violations, Human Rights Watch has decided to publish its findings rather than wait for their results.

In other words, HRW received high-level and consistent cooperation. A meeting between HRW and the IDF took place on Jan 24 (just 10 days after HRW asked for further information), and were told that the IDF would have a more detailed response by late February after its own investigations were over. One month is not a long time to wait, certainly not covering an incident that occurred months ago.

It is completely baffling why HRW would rush to publish their report a mere two weeks before they could hear in full Israel’s response to their allegations. Furthermore, HRW’s explanation why they chose not to wait lacks any coherence. What is so special about designated military police as opposed to other investigators? And even if the IDF investigations were not conducted by trained military police, it is unquestionable that the IDF investigators would have access to sources HRW does not. One would expect that an organization whose influence is completely based on their reputation for objectivity and thoroughness would wish to have all the facts before rushing to publish.

Well-meaning observers are often puzzled why Israel sometimes does not cooperate with the multitudinous foreign investigations into its military operations. The minimal lack of procedural fairness investigations such as HRW’s is surely one reason for their reluctance.

NGO Monitor went into more detail:

HRW possesses neither the military expertise nor the appropriate fact-finding methodology to make these assessments and conduct proper investigations. Such judgments require knowledge of the military intelligence possessed by Israeli commanders at the time of the strikes, and information on intent of the officers. In contrast, HRW’s “evidence” consists solely of its inability to identify “indication[s] of a legitimate military target at the site at the time of the attack” and Israel’s refusal to explain its operational decisions to the NGO.

HRW’s press release is its seventh document relating to the November 2012 fighting in Gaza and Southern Israel. The disproportionate obsession and political agenda are further seen by HRW’s decision to conduct “field investigations” on that particular conflict, at a time when the UN estimated that over 10,000 people were killed in the Syrian civil war in the month of January 2013 alone.

HRW’s statement also denounced Israeli investigations, claiming that they “were not conducted by trained military police investigators or dedicated to investigating alleged laws-of-war violations.” Therefore, HRW did not wait for a response from the IDF, dealing with HRW’s cases and other attacks, which is anticipated “by late February.”

In fact, Israeli investigations meet international standards, as noted by Judge Mary McGowan Davis (empanelled by the Human Rights Council to lead the follow-up committee to the Goldstone Report), Judge Richard Goldstone, and the Turkel Committee. The real reason HRW does not want to wait for the IDF report is because it will demonstrate that HRW’s claims are baseless, as happened with Israeli responses to the 2009 Gaza conflict and the 2006 Lebanon War.

I visited NGO Monitor in Jerusalem on Thursday, and asked them about the supposed expertise of the "field investigators" HRW sends into Gaza. They are not completely transparent on who writes and contributes to many of their reports, but apparently they rely on people who live in Gaza to fill out much of the information in these reports - and they, in turn, rely on biased sources like PCHR and the Gaza Health Ministry to get the "facts" about particular incidents to them.

One of their Gaza researchers, Fares Akram, also has written for the New York Times - even about HRW itself, without disclosing his affiliation in the article!

This incestuous relationship between native Gazan "investigators," news organization stringers and reporters, and biased "human rights" organizations and NGOs is sorely unreported.

One other fact that NGO Monitor noted to me that is terrifically important: HRW does not have a published methodology on how they conduct these "field investigations." Without a rigorous and known methodology, bias isn't only possible - it is inevitable. Facts that conform to the "researcher"'s preconceived notions will naturally get highlighted and anything that contradicts it will be silently ignored. This is natural, after all, the news media do this all the time. But an organization like HRW must adhere to the higher standard it demands from others. Its standards must be far greater than that of journalists. In this case, there was no "deadline" that forced HRW to release this report before waiting for the official investigation by Israel. They simply decided to ignore any response before the fact.

HRW claims that Israel's investigations do not reach some arbitrary level of professionalism and objectivity that they made up. Yet if HRW would investigate itself with the same standards, it would come out far, far worse. Its bias has been exposed over and over again, here as well as elsewhere. HRW never admits it was wrong, and when caught doing something unethical itself.

This is not the way an organization dedicated to the truth should act. But it is exactly how a biased organization with an agenda would act.

PCHR finds a poor person in Gaza, says it is Israel's fault to the UN

From PCHR:

On Monday, 4 February 2013, the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) made a written submission, in the form of an Individual Complaint, to Ms. Magdalena Sepulveda Carmona, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights, which draws attention to the case of Ramadan Daoud Hussein Abdel Bari (51) from Gaza city, Gaza Strip (Palestine).

Ramadan Abdel Bari, who lives in Gaza together with his wife, their 8 children, and his sick mother, opened a clothing factory in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, in 1985. His business was forced to shut down in 2005 as a result of the Israeli-imposed movement restrictions inside the Gaza Strip since the beginning of the Second Intifada in 2000. After that Ramadan was unable to find or generate new employment, as the Israeli closure of the Gaza Strip has caused the near total collapse of Gaza’s economy, leaving many unemployed and impoverished without a chance of finding a job and generating an income for themselves and their families.

The ruining of Ramadan’s business and the subsequent impossibility to find new employment causes him and his family to live in poverty.

PCHR will be submitting either Memorandums or Individual Complaints on a regular basis to UN Working Groups and Special Rapporteurs, to draw attention to human rights issues facing the Palestinian people.

Yes, PCHR plans to send an individual complaint to the UN for every single poor person it finds in Gaza, blaming Israel for every one.

The International Poverty Line applies to people who are living on less than $1.25 a day (PPP). By that standard, the West Bank and Gaza have a rate of only 0.04% of people living below that line - one of the better ones recorded, and far better than every Arab country listed (Egypt is 1.69%, Syria 1.74%, Yemen 17.53%) while many countries have a rate of well over 50%! The number of truly poor people in Gaza is minuscule by nearly every measure.

Gaza has some 38% of people living below the national poverty line, but that number is different for every nation. For comparison, in Israel, some 23.6% of the population live below the national poverty line; in the West Bank it is 18.3%, in the US it is about 15%. In contrast, in poor sub-Saharan countries and central American nations the rates are often above 50%.

Moreover, in Gaza much of the population gets free food, free medical services and free education - because the UNRWA considers them, against all normal definitions of the term, to be "refugees."

PCHR, obviously, doesn't care about poor people in Gaza. The entire exercise, indeed their entire existence, is centered on how to use the concept of "human rights" in order not to improve the situation but to delegitimize Israel. Their legal briefing accompanying the complaint makes this crystal clear.

They even twist the fact that the UN gives free food and aid to Gazans far out of proportion to their need compared to the truly poor of the world, by saying "over 75% of the people are food aid dependent, 80% of the people receive humanitarian aid." Only about 30% of Haitians are food-aid dependent - but they are far poorer than Gazans by any yardstick with 61% below the international poverty line, compared to 0.04% of Gazans.

This is only one tiny example of how relentlessly anti-Israel NGOs are working, night and day, to demonize Israel.

PCHR receives funding for its faux "humanitarian" work from Norway, Denmark, the European Commission, the Ford Foundation and several other international NGOs. And this is where the money goes.

"NGO staff advised to avoid area"

Life in Gaza, from the Gaza NGO Safety Office:

18 DEC, 0900hrs: Massive demos. will be organized at 1000hrs near UNSCO office, GC, in support of Pal. prisoners. NGO staff advised to avoid the area.

20 DEC, 1000hrs: A sit-in will be organized at 1100hrs in front of UNSCO office, GC. NGO staff advised to avoid the area.

26 DEC, 0900hrs: Palestinian prisoners Association will organize a demo. at 1100hrs in front of UNDP office in GC in support of Pal. prisoners. NGO staff advised to avoid the area.

30 DEC, 1100hrs: A demo. is to be organized in front of UNSCO office, GC, in solidarity with Pal. prisoners. NGO staff advised to avoid area.

31 DEC, 0845hrs: Islamic Jihad will organize a demo. on 1000hrs starting from Palestine Square through Omar Al Mokhtar Street toward ICRC office, GC, in support of Pal. prisoners. NGO staff advised to avoid the area.

31 DEC, 1100hrs: Fatah supporters are holding a demo. starting from Al Azhar University toward Al Saraya compound, GC. NGO staff advised to avoid the area.

If the protests are so peaceful, what are the NGO staff - people who are there to help Gazans - afraid of?

"Euro-Mid" NGO fabricates data, counts Hamas terrorists as "children" killed in Gaza

The Euro-Mid Observer for Human Rights, a Geneva-based NGO, has released a 72-page report (Arabic-only) detailing the names, photos and details of 41 children they claim were killed in Gaza by Israel.

Some of the "children" listed were, in fact, adults.

Some were Hamas terrorists.

And at least one was killed by a Hamas rocket.

Here are some details:

Muhammad Hani Ibrahim Hani Al-Kaseeh was - according to Euro-Mid! - born on July 29, 1994, making him 18 years old when he was killed on November 14, 2012. PCHR admits that he was a terrorist, as the motorcycle he was on together with Essam al-Meiza was targeted.

Ahmed Taqfiq al-Nassasra was identified as a member of Hamas by the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terror Information Center. He was 17.

Muhammad Kamel Salame Abu Udwan was born in March of 1994, making him 18 years old. I could not find him in the known lists of people killed.

Abdallah Tal'at Ahmad Ibrahim was also born in March 1994, making him 18 years old as well. I could not find him either.

Ouda Arafat al-Shindi was 17 years old, according to Euro-Mid. PCHR notes that he was a terrorist, but does not mention his age.

And Mahmoud Sadallah, 4, was killed by a Hamas rocket, a fact admitted even by HRW.

These are only the ones I could identify. But it shows a pattern.

These are not simply mistakes. The inclusion of all these names in this glossy, professional report is meant to serve only one purpose - to demonize Israel as much as possible. Very few people would question a report that looks as slick as this one does, replete with photos of the dead, and even fewer would bother doing research to see if it is accurate. The prestigious-sounding name of the NGO, its Geneva address, and the trappings of professionalism, together with an audience that is already predisposed to believe the worst of Israel, together creates a culture where anti-Israel "researchers" can lie with impunity and with little worry about being exposed.

The NGO itself is more than sketchy. I could not find out the sources of funding for the Euro-Mid Observer for Human Rights, and its webpage doesn't even list the names of its founders or leaders. A press release mentions Dr. Ramy Abdu as the chairman of its board of directors, and he is also the head of the Council for European Palestinian Relations, which exists purely to pressure Europe to pressure Israel. The Twitter account of Euro-Mid says explicitly that the purpose of this report is to kick off an international campaign against Israel.

In any sane world, finding out that an NGO is purposefully fabricating its data should be enough to get it disbanded, to get its donors to cut off all funding, and to force the leaders to answer for their lies. But we don't live in a sane world.. Anti-Israel NGOs will continue to proliferate and attract attention with lying reports that convince those who want to be convinced.

(h/t Al Gharqad and CHA)

EU-funded NGO glorifies terrorism on TV

From Palestinian Media Watch:

Two teenage hosts on the Palestinian Authority TV program for youth Speak Up, which is co-produced with the Palestinian NGO PYALARA, chose to read aloud a poem that glorified plane hijackings and threatened Israel and the United States:

“People of Israel, don’t get caught up in arrogance,
the hands of the clock will surely come round...
Expect us always, expect us where least expected.
We’re in every airport, and in every ticket.
We emerge in Rome and in Zurich from under the rock…
Our men arrive without warning, with the fury of thunder and the pounding of rain.
They come in the Prophet’s robe and with Omar’s sword (Muslim conqueror).
Remember, always remember that America, important as it is, is not Allah the Almighty and Omnipotent, and that America with all its strength will not stop the birds from flying.
A small rifle in the hand of a small boy can kill the big one.”
The mention of Rome and Zurich in the poem is a reference to hijackings by PLO/PFLP terrorists. In July 1968, El Al Flight 426 from Rome was hijacked. In February 1969, terrorists attempted to hijack El Al Flight 432 before taking off from Zurich.

PYALARA, the co-producer of this program, is funded by NDC. NDC's international donors include: the European Union, the World Bank, the French government’s Agence Française de Développement, a donor consortium of Switzerland, Denmark, the Netherlands and Sweden, the Islamic Development Bank, the United Palestinian Appeal, and the Palestinian private organization the Welfare Association. [NDC website, accessed Dec. 20, 2012]
PYALARA is also funded by the Swedish Olof Palme International Center.

Earlier this year I exposed real anti-semitism in PYALARA's youth magazine.

"New Israel Fund" tries, and fails, to defend its grantees demonizing Israel

Im Tirtzu wrote an open letter to the new head of the New Israel Fund, which funds anti-Israel NGOs:

Dear Mr. Lurie:

We write to ask a simple question: Do you stand by the latest accusations NIF-funded groups are making against Israel?

After Operation Cast Lead in 2009, groups funded by the NIF led a campaign that sought to portray Israel as a war criminal and human rights violator. That campaign culminated in the Goldstone Report, a ruthlessly biased attack on Israel that cited NIF groups hundreds of times. Even Judge Goldstone himself has disowned it.

Now, in the weeks after the latest conflict in Gaza, NIF groups are once again making misleading and unfounded accusations against the IDF.

B’tselem, Adalah, Gisha, and the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel are claiming that the IDF targeted journalists and civilians, violated international law, and is perpetrating “collective punishment,” a war crime under the Geneva Conventions.

In the weeks leading up to Israel’s response, as terrorist rockets forced thousands of Israelis into bomb shelters, none of these groups criticized the attacks or stood up for Israel’s right – its human right, and its right under international law – to defend itself.

Despite this troubling record, we hold out hope for your leadership as the new president of the New Israel Fund. We ask that you hold the groups you fund responsible for the veracity of their accusations, and that you demand just as much accountability from them as they do from the IDF.

And if you do not stand by their latest false accusations, Israelis deserve to know: What will you do to reform the New Israel Fund?

Sincerely,

Im Tirtzu

The Zionist Student Movement

The NIF response is astonishing (not yet online):

In today’s “open letter” to the New Israel Fund chair, the Im Tirtzu organization uses allegation, misrepresentation and outright falsehood to make their case.

* Many fewer civilian lives were lost during Operation Pillar of Defense than in Cast Lead four years ago. This is partially because the Israel Defense Forces, publicly and to its credit, used reports from human rights organizations to improve its operational procedures to better avoid civilian casualties.

The work of NIF-supported human rights organizations saved lives.

The percentage of civilians killed compared to militants in Pillar of Defense is roughly the same as for Cast Lead, about 1 to 1.

Anyone who has read the IDF responses to Goldstone would know that the processes meant to protect civilians pre-dates Cast Lead. Of course, the IDF is always looking to improve, and it looks at criticism from all corners, but the IDF goes to lengths that are literally unprecedented by any other army to minimize civilian casualties. For the NIF to take credit for this is not only obviously false, but more than a little self-serving. And its comparison of casualties in two completely different scales of conflict is knowingly deceptive.

NIF's response is false.

* For three years, Im Tirtzu has accused the Israeli human rights community of being the prime source for the Goldstone report. Repeating a lie loudly and frequently doesn’t make it so. An objective analysis proved that less than two percent of the Goldstone Report’s negative findings about the IDF during Operation Cast Lead were attributable to human rights organizations (link); the vast majority of information came from public sources in the Israeli government and military.

Im Tirtzu does not make that claim in this open letter. It says that the anti-Israel campaign from NGOs culminated in the Goldstone Report and that NIF grantees were cited extensively. Im Tirtzu's language here is mostly accurate (maybe not "hundreds of times" but well over a hundred.) NIF's response is false.

* Not one of the human rights organizations Im Tirtzu attacks accused Israel of war crimes in the recent Gaza action. One organization signed a letter asking for investigation of possible breaches of the Geneva convention by both sides in the conflict.

In Im Tirtzu's fact sheet, they document the accusations with citations:

A B’Tselem statement the day after Operation Pillar of Defense began accused Israel of targeting civilians: “As was the case four years ago [in Operation Cast Lead], Israeli officials are now using the conduct of Palestinian organizations to justify harm to Palestinian civilians….The fact that one side violates the law does not give the other side the right to violate it as well.” (HERE) Days later, B’Tselem accused Israel of targeting journalists (HERE) despite the fact that the “journalists” were well-known senior terrorists in Hamas and Islamic Jihad. (HERE) Adalah, another flagship NIF grantee – it seeks as an official position the end of Israel as a Jewish State – accused Israel of “a serious violation of the laws of war.” (HERE) Sari Bashi, the executive director of Gisha, accused Israel of “collective punishment” during the conflict. (HERE) Collective punishment is a war crime under Article 33 of the 4^th Geneva Convention. The Public Committee Against Torture in Israel signed a statement claiming, without offering any specifics, “concrete evidence indicating the commission of war crimes” by Israel. The statement also blamed Israel entirely for Hamas’s rocket attacks on Israeli civilians and called for another Goldstone-style “investigation” of Israel at the United Nations. (HERE)

NIF's response is false.

The NIF response letter continues:

* The right to dissent is often a casualty of war. After Operation Cast Lead, Israel’s human rights community were threatened and vilified and it is now happening again. As in any conflict anywhere, it is the responsibility of human rights groups to monitor and report, and it is their right and everyone’s to offer opinions regarding the conduct of the conflict. While NIF does not necessarily agree with the positions of the many organizations we support, we staunchly defend their right to do their jobs, dissent from the majority based on their own analyses, and point out controversial issues of concern.

Here, the NIF is acknowledging that they cannot defend everything that the organizations they fund do - but they are willing to continue to fund them nonetheless! Is there any oversight? Are there any checks and balances? Are there any reviews of issues that the NIF might find problematic? Or is an organization's criticism of Israel enough to give it the benefit of the doubt?

Moreover, it is a bit hypocritical to complain about NGO's being "vilified" when that is exactly what they do to Israel, every day. The simple fact is that the NGOs must adhere to the standards they demand from the Israeli government and the IDF. Demanding that their biases, their sources of funding, their methodologies and the identity and affiliations of their researchers be exposed is simply asking them to be transparent - something that any legitimate watchdog organization should welcome. They draw conclusions about Israeli motivations using far, far less credible evidence than their detractors use to criticize them. It is when they stonewall on this vital information that we can start to wonder if they are as pure and objective as they claim to be.

Any unbiased observer must conclude that they are not - far from it. And this letter from NIF proves it.

This doesn't mean that what they do is worthless - all democracies must have checks and balances, and Israel is no exception. But when they cross the line from truth into lies, as the NIF response does, it is reasonable to question everything else about them.

It is not a small matter. While the NGOs claim that they are working to save people's lives, their work can also endanger people's lives. The debate as to where the line must be drawn between valuing some lives and endangering other lives during wartime is a valuable one, and one that the IDF does every day with or without the NIF.

Criticism is fine - but lies are not. This response shows that, apparently, the funder of these anti-Israel NGOs does not know the difference.

(h/t N.)

....but Oxfam blames Israel for Hamas power cuts!

Oxfam, a major human rights NGO, is pushing a false narrative of Israeli responsibility for Gaza's power plant problems. This press release, published at Palestine News Network, proves once again that many NGOs are hopelessly biased against Israel and are equally afraid to criticize Hamas.

The Gaza Strip is inching towards a total collapse of essential services as fuel supplies from the tunnels beneath the border between Gaza and Egypt have reportedly ground to a halt.

With the blockaded enclave's only power plant shut down for long hours daily, the 1.6 million Palestinians in Gaza are being affected across the board, with impending life threatening consequences in health services.

Since Israel put Gaza under total blockade in 2007, only limited amounts of fuel for Gaza's power plants were allowed to enter the enclave, prompting the government in Gaza to procure fuel from Egypt through the Rafah tunnels.

...Oxfam partners Palestinian Centre for Human Rights and Al Mezan have both stressed the responsibility and obligations of Israel as the occupying power, to provide for the wellbeing of the civilian population under occupation, with international humanitarian law requiring it to allow the passage of fuel for the Gaza power plant. Israeli restrictions on fuel supplies via the overland crossings, imposed in 2007, caused massive shortages, leading the authority in Gaza to seek alternate solutions in fuel supplied through the tunnels.

Then why did they stop taking the fuel from Israel?

There was one week on November, 2010 when Israel transferred over 1.7 million liters to the Gaza power plant. Normally it transferred about a million liters a week. Then Hamas started refusing to get reliable amounts of fuel from Israel and chose instead to get smuggled fuel from Gaza. And now Oxfam is blaming Israel for Hamas' refusal to take in millions of liters of fuel that Israel is more than willing to provide!

Not only that, even though the press release was published today, Oxfam still refuses to complain about Hamas' refusal to accept fuel from Egypt going through Kerem Shalom!

Oxfam has the story exactly wrong. Israel is willing to provide fuel and Hamas is refusing to accept it. Yet the word "Hamas" is not to be found in the entire press release.

Oxfam's press release here is proof positive that this so-called "human rights organization" has less interest in the well-being of Gazans than in slamming Israel for a problem that Hamas is wholly responsible for.

This is more than just bias. This is evidence that Oxfam is actively working to promote Hamas' false narrative of the problem. And when NGOs support the terrorists against the free world, we have a problem.