(This may be a long thread.)
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I am so proud of these young Jews for their courage, integrity, and ingenuity. What a brilliant idea.
On its face, President Donald Trump’s announcement that he is pulling US forces out of Syria seems like an unfriendly act towards Israel. But it isn’t. Trump’s decision to pull US forces out of Syria is of a piece with outgoing US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley’s address on Tuesday to the UN Security Council regarding the Palestinian conflict with Israel. Both statements reflect the depths of the administration’s friendship and support for the State of Israel.Caroline Glick: Pros and Cons of the U.S. Pullout from Syria
In Haley’s speech at the Security Council’s monthly meeting concerning the Palestinians’ conflict with Israel she decried the “UN’s obsession with Israel.”
Haley noted that the peace process between Israel and the Palestinians has failed for 50 years. And she said that it is time to try something new. She enjoined her “Arab and European brothers and sisters” to move beyond the “failed talking points” that formed the basis of the failed peace plans of the past half century.
Haley’s address intuited a key point that has never been raised by a senior US official. The “peace process” which has been ongoing between Israel and the PLO since 1993 is antithetical to actual peace.
Consequently, any effort to achieve actual peace between Israel and the Palestinians requires the abandonment of the “peace process.”
Haley made this clear by acknowledging that Israel has far less to gain and much more to lose from the peace process than the Palestinians do.
In her words, “Israel wants a peace agreement, but it doesn’t need one.”
“Both sides would benefit tremendously from a peace agreement. But the Palestinians would benefit more and the Israelis would risk more,” Haley said.
She added that if efforts to achieve peace were to fail, “Israel would continue to grow and prosper.”
The Palestinians on the other hand, “would continue to suffer.”
Haley’s insight puts paid the popular claim that Israel’s survival depends on the establishment of a Palestinian state in Judea, Samaria, Gaza and northern, eastern and southern Jerusalem. For years, pro-Palestinian forces have insisted that their demand that Israel surrender its capital and its heartland to the PLO is actually a pro-Israel position. Indeed, they say, anyone who rejects it is anti-Israel.
One of the consequences of the U.S. pullout from Syria is that Trump will finally abandon Obama’s pro-Iranian policy in Syria. True, he isn’t replacing it with an anti-Iranian policy in Syria. But all the same, by abandoning a pro-Iranian policy in Syria, the move will lend some coherence to the U.S.’s overall strategy for countering Iran’s growing power and influence in the region and worldwide.If You Like the Peace Process, Please Don’t Read Polls of Palestinians
Israel’s Hadashot news channel reported on Wednesday that along with Trump’s decision to remove U.S. forces from Syria, U.S. officials told Israel that if Hezbollah gains a more powerful position in the next Lebanese government, the U.S. will end its support for the LAF and agree to Israel’s request that it place an economic embargo on the Lebanese government.
Hezbollah announced its intention to take control over Lebanon’s health ministry shortly after the elections in May. The ministry has one of the largest budgets and plenty of disposable cash. The U.S. had already warned Lebanese President Michel Aoun that it would end its support for Lebanon if Hezbollah receives the health ministry.
On Thursday, it was reported that Hezbollah loyalist Jamil Jabak will serve as Lebanese health minister in the next government. If the U.S. follows through on its promise to end its support for Lebanon as a result, then the Trump administration will entirely abandon Obama’s pro-Iranian policy in the Middle East.
From Israel’s perspective, continued U.S. support for the Hezbollah-controlled Lebanese government and military has been a major concern. In 2006, due the Bush administration’s support for the Lebanese government, then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice prohibited Israel from targeting Lebanese infrastructures and other resources critical to Hezbollah’s war effort. If the U.S. is true to its word and aligns its policy towards Lebanon with Israel, the move will vastly expand Israel’s ability to decisively defeat Hezbollah, Iran’s proxy army in Lebanon, in the next war.
Commenting Thursday morning about Trump’s announcement, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, “We will continue to act in Syria to prevent Iran’s effort to militarily entrench itself against us. We are not reducing our efforts, we will increase our efforts.”
Netanyahu added, “I know that we do so with the full support and backing of the U.S.”
Time will tell whether Trump’s decision to remove U.S. forces from Syria was a prelude to disaster for U.S. allies and a boon for America’s enemies, or whether the opposite is the case. But what is clear enough is that move is not entirely negative.
There is one thing that Palestine obsessives never seem obsessed with: the opinions of Palestinians. There's no mystery here—asking what Palestinians believe exposes a fundamental problem with the liberal approach to the peace process, which is based on the belief that Palestinians are willing to live peacefully beside Israel.
If such a mentality prevailed, it would be easily revealed through polling. The Ramallah-based Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research conducts a quarterly poll of Palestinians that is largely focused on internal political questions but also surveys views toward Israel and peace. That one never reads media coverage of this poll suggests that its findings are reliably inconvenient. The latest poll is out. What does it say?
There exists an entire class of people in Washington and other western capitals who have devoted their careers to promoting Palestinian statehood, a quest now entering its fourth fruitless decade. Such people—many with good intentions—regularly explore every aspect of this issue in excruciating detail, every aspect except the one that matters the most: Palestinian public opinion.
- If a new presidential election was held today between the current president, Fatah's Mahmoud Abbas, and the leader of the terrorist group Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas would beat Fatah 49 percent to 42 percent.
- 88 per cent said that Palestinians who sell property to Jews are traitors. 64 percent said the punishment for selling property to Jews should be the death penalty.
- Palestinians oppose the concept of a two-state solution, 55 percent to 43 percent.
- "A large minority of 44 percent thinks that armed struggle is the most effective means of establishing a Palestinian state next to the state of Israel while 28 percent believe that negotiation is the most effective means and 23 percent think non-violent resistance is the most effective."
- In lieu of negotiations, "54 percent support a return to an armed intifada," i.e. terrorism.
- 50 percent of Palestinians reject in principle the holding of negotiations in order to resolve the conflict.
o UNIFIL's job is limited to monitoringo UNIFIL has no mandate to disarm Hezbollaho UNIFIL is not allowed to search private property
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UNIFIL spokesperson Andrea Tenenti. Video screengrab |
Pellegrini made it clear, however, that UNIFIL's mission, even with the new rules of engagement, does not include disarming Hezbollah. "It's not my job," hesaid. UNIFIL's role, he said, is to assist the Lebanese army in guaranteeing state authority over all Lebanese territory.That was on September 3.Three weeks later, Pellegrini gave an exclusive interview to The Jerusalem Post:
In his first interview to an Israeli paper since the war in Lebanon, Pellegrini revealed that last week a Syrian weapons convoy on its way to Hizbullah was intercepted by the Lebanese army near the Lebanese-Syrian border. While the new rules of engagement set by the UN allowed the new UNIFIL force to open fire in order to implement resolution 1701, Pellegrini said he would not automatically order his troops to open fire on Hizbullah guerrillas if they werespotted on their way to the Blue Line to attack Israel. The job of the new multinational force, he said, was to assist the Lebanese army and not to disarm or engage Hizbullah or even to prevent its attacks.Pellegrini's admission that UNIFIL is allowed to use force to implement Resolution 1701 contradicts Tenenti's claim that UNIFIL's role is just to monitor. That Pellegrini goes on to turn around and then claim that their role is to assist the Lebanese army and not to disarm, engage or prevent attacks is puzzling.It also contradicts the text of Resolution 1701, which:
authorizes UNIFIL to take all necessary action in areas of deployment of itsAgain, this assigns to UNIFIL more than just a monitoring role.Now, what about a mandate to disarm Hezbollah?Back to the text of Resolution 1701, which:
forces and as it deems within its capabilities, to ensure that its area of operations is not utilized for hostile activities of any kind, to resist attempts by forceful means to prevent it from discharging its duties under the mandate of the Security Council, and to protect United Nations personnel, facilities, installations and equipment, ensure the security and freedom of movement of United Nations personnel, humanitarian workers and, without prejudice to the responsibility of the Government of Lebanon, to protect civilians under imminent threat of physical violence;
Requests the Secretary-General to develop, in liaison with relevant international actors and the concerned parties, proposals to implement the relevant provisions of the Taif Accords, and resolutions 1559 (2004) and 1680 (2006), including disarmament...Who are the relevant "international actors" who are supposed to implement disarmament?Former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan appears not to havegotten the memo -
Annan angered Israeli officials when he told Channel 2 on Tuesday that "dismantling Hizbullah is not the direct mandate of the UN," which could only help Lebanon disarm the organization.Resolution 1701 implies an orchestrated effort; the only proposal that Annan seems to have developed was to keep the UN as far away as possible. But if UNIFIL is supposed "to ensure that its area of operations is not utilized for hostile activities of any kind," how is it supposed to maintain that kind of control without having the authority to disarm Hezbollah at some level?The last point Tenenti makes is that UNIFIL has no authority to search private property.But according to the Reportof the Secretary-General on the implementation of Security Council resolution 1701, that is not exactly accurate either:
In accordance with its mandate, UNIFIL does not proactively search for weapons in the south. UNIFIL cannot enter or search private property unless there is credible evidence of a violation of the resolution, including an imminent threat of hostile activity from that location. In situations in which specific information is received regarding the illegal presence of armed personnel, weapons or infrastructure inside its area of operations, UNIFIL, in cooperation with the Lebanese Armed Forces, has remained determined to act with all means available within its mandate and capabilities.Again, instead of maintaining just a monitoring mode, UNIFIL does have a mandateto search homes when there is evidence of violations. More than that, the text clearly states that when the illegal presence of weapons is detected, UNIFIL notonly has the authority to search but also to act "with all means available" -- meaning that it can disarm.There is, in fact, a documented caseof UNIFIL doing a search of private homes in 2010, using sniffer dogs and resulting in villagers retaliating by grabbing the weapons of a UNIFIL patrol, throwing stones at them and blocking the road.In this case, it was UNIFIL that was disarmed.The bottom line is that clearly, the role of UNIFIL was not intended to be as
o UNIFIL is allowed to use forceo The issue of disarming Hezbollah is a hot potato everyone is trying to avoid, but there is no clear indication that UNIFIL cannot disarm Hezbollah in specific circumstances "to prevent hostile activities"o UNIFIL is allowed to do searches when there is evidence of a violationThe fact that Hezbollah was able to dig multiple tunnels into Israel is just onemore reminder of UNIFIL's failure to do its job.
Whatever the merits of Walker’s reading of Icke, her life history has been one in which she has consistently and eloquently battled bigotry since her teenage college years at Spelman College where she was active in the Atlanta movement against racial discrimination and the Jim Crow system. As one who has studied Walker’s history of political activism, I find no trace of anti-Semitism, but instead find a humane identification with the oppressed, including Palestinians, and a dedication to battling war, poverty, and hatred.Wow. Just wow.
... I know this because this year I published a book on Howard Zinn, Spelman, and the Atlanta student movement, Howard Zinn’s Southern Diary: Sit-Ins, Civil Rights, and Black Women’s Student Activism, and Walker wrote a foreword to it that described in moving terms how her and her family’s love of education and reverence for teachers, along with her passion for freedom, and justice, motivated her to stand up for her beloved [Jewish] teacher.
The 1977 Export Administration Act, which I helped author at President Jimmy Carter's direction, prohibits American companies and individuals from participating in unsanctioned boycotts against U.S. allies, including Israel. For four decades, the law has been upheld by the courts.Sanders, Feinstein Urge Opposition to Anti-BDS Bill
Recently, U.S. companies have been facing the aggressive politics of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, which is working against Israel through international governmental organizations (IGOs).
For three years, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), operating under a mandate from the UN Human Rights Council, has been working to create a database of companies that conduct business beyond the "green line," including east Jerusalem and the Jewish Quarter of the Old City. Companies that appear on such a list may be subject to new, unsanctioned boycotts.
In response, bipartisan legislation is pending to address this new challenge, the Israel Anti-Boycott Act (IABA). The IABA is carefully crafted to update the 1977 legislation by extending the prohibition against complying with boycotts to cover boycott-related activities by IGOs like the UN or the EU.
Some have raised free speech objections to the new legislation. However, like the 1977 legislation, the IABA exclusively targets commercial conduct only, not political speech or activities. U.S. courts have consistently ruled that regulating these commercial activities does not violate the First Amendment.
All the IABA does is follow the constitutional authority that underpinned the 1977 legislation by prohibiting U.S. individuals and companies from providing requested information to an IGO to assist in its efforts to further a boycott against a country friendly to the U.S. The IABA protects American companies from being pressured by IGOs.
Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) urged Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) to not include the Israel Anti-Boycott Act into an upcoming spending bill.
Sanders and Feinstein argued in a letter that they are against the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, but the Israel Anti-Boycott Act is at odds with the First Amendment.
“Federal district courts in Kansas and Arizona have similarly considered state laws that target political boycotts of Israel and found them to violate the First Amendment,” Sanders and Feinstein wrote. “For example, in Jordahl vs. Brnovich, the court held in granting a preliminary injunction, ‘The type of collective action targeted by the [law] specifically implicates the rights of assembly that Americans and Arizonans use ‘to bring about political, social, and economic charge.’”
The senators also criticized the bill for cracking down on “certain constitutionally-protected political activity aimed solely at Israeli settlements in the West Bank.”
“At a time when the [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu government is pursuing policies clearly aimed at foreclosing the two-state solution, it is deeply disappointing that Congress would consider penalizing criticism of those policies,” Sanders and Feinstein wrote.
Brooke Goldstein, executive director of the Lawfare Project, told the Journal in an emailed statement that Sanders and Feinstein are “mistaken” about the bill violating the First Amendment.
In a piece titled “Zionism, Pan-Africanism, and White Nationalism,” author Shaul Magid argues that because Zionism was a “lodestar for other minority attempts to solve the problem of the limits of ethnic self-determination,” it is, therefore a racialized movement that can offer freedom but never equality.
There are several problems with his analysis, which I will attempt to explain in full below.
Magid correctly points out how Zionism was a model for the beleaguered African-American community, beginning with Pan-Africanist Edward Blyden’s feeling of inspiration after reading Theodore Herzl’s Der Judenstaadt. The twin messages of self-empowerment and chosenness proved especially compelling to a people constantly told by the dominant society that they were less than nothing and attracted black leaders from W.E.B. Dubois and Marcus Garvey to Stokley Carmichael.
But in many ways, this is where the similarities end. Although a message of self-actualization and unique destiny are part of the Zionist creed, there are other ideas within statist Zionism that make it incompatible with the notions of racial purity contained in Marcus Garvey and Louis Farrakhan’s Black Nationalism.
For starters, while Zionism concerns itself with a particular ethnic group, it does not concern itself with a particular race insofar as race connotes skin color. And this speaks to the inherent contradictions within the very concept of black nationalism. On the one hand, a call for black nationalism via a separatist movement would naturally be attractive to a people persecuted by the dominant society. On the other hand, the black experience is, ironically and paradoxically, an American creation. The shared history, culture, and collective experience of black Americans is one that is bounded by and fixed within an American construct. In this way, black American culture cannot be separated from its American roots, and calls for black nationalism are rooted in an unsolvable contradiction.
The arc of history was not supposed to look like this, I thought, as I followed Matteo Salvini, the most powerful man in Italy, through the Mahane Yehuda market in Jerusalem. Another day, another world leader was in Israel to meet Benjamin Netanyahu, known to most here simply as “Bibi.” And just like Donald Trump, Narendra Modi, Rodrigo Duterte, and Jair Bolsonaro before him, Italy’s populist interior minister was not coming to scold the Israeli prime minister. Here was another strongman both happy to be in Jerusalem and ready to work with Bibi.
That night, as Salvini relaxed on his market walkabout and shared a beer with his Israeli handlers, he smiled for the cameras in order to show how safe he felt in the hands of such an expert counterterror force. “I love the people,” he said, telling me how much he was looking forward to working with Bibi. I felt a crushing weight on my shoulders: the feeling of having been wrong.
Without a resolution to the Palestinian question, the arc of history was supposed to have bent toward consigning Israel to pariah status—not this. The U.S. embassy has transferred to Jerusalem. A slew of other nations have moved to support some or all of Israel’s claims to the city, including Guatemala, Brazil, the Czech Republic, and even Australia. Meanwhile, the threat of a common anti-Israel European foreign policy, sanctions and all, has imploded so utterly that Bibi can snub Federica Mogherini, the bloc’s foreign envoy, as though she were an irritating pro-Iranian NGO chief—then play the lavish host to Viktor Orbán, the Hungarian strongman.
And there is more: the love-in with India; senior Chinese officials flying in; not-so-secret talks, and even coordination, with Saudi Arabia; photo ops with the sultan of Oman; regular audiences with Vladimir Putin. And all with not even a hint of the peace process or pressure over settlements. Israel, it seems, is paying no price for its treatment of the Palestinians.
In Ramallah, too, pessimism is the order of the day. There is a deep sense of abandonment. Nasser al-Qudwa, a senior Fatah official and a nephew of Yasser Arafat, dejectedly told me he feared that the populist, anti-Arab “transformation” of the West had only just begun. “There has been an unexpected rise of Christian Zionism in countries like Brazil,” he lamented. “America succeeded in persuading Saudi Arabia,” he added, “that Israel and the United States can protect them from Iran.”
Salvini met with nobody from the Palestinian Authority.
Watching Salvini’s press conference, I felt forced to admit that Bibi was right and I was wrong about the shape of the 2010s. My theory of history had failed me. Back when Bibi was elected in 2009, I believed fervently that Obama was on the right side of history—and that Netanyahu, and Israel, were destined to suffer for their failure to reach a just settlement with the Palestinians.
I was convinced that Obama and yet more Obama was the future of Western politics; that demographic and generational change would lead, inevitably, to a more liberal, less Israel-friendly approach. Bibi, it was clear to me, was endangering the future of his country by resisting.
Last week, a terrorist shot and murdered 2 Israelis and seriously wounded 2 others in a shooting attack next to Givat Assaf, near Ramallah. The terrorist fled the scene and as of Dec. 20, 2018, has not been apprehended.
Responding to these murders, senior Fatah official Abbas Zaki said it was "a great thing." Applying a twisted logic, Zaki indicated that this terrorist shooting was legitimate "blood vengeance" for Palestinians killed by Israel. However, he did not differentiate between deaths of innocent Israelis targeted by terrorists and the deaths of the terrorists who had murdered Israelis and were killed during Israel's attempt to capture them:
"We are proudly following the events in the West Bank. The young Palestinians are avenging a blood vengeance - three Martyrs (Shahids) for three Israelis. This is a great thing."
[SHMS News Agency, Dec. 13, 2018; official Facebook page of Fatah Central Committee member Abbas Zaki, Dec. 13, 2018;
official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Dec. 16, 2018]
The "three Martyrs" are the terrorist murderers Ashraf Na'alwa, who murdered two of his Israeli coworkers in Barkan, and Saleh Barghouti who murdered a baby and wounded 7 others near Ofra. They were both killed while resisting arrest. The third "Martyr" is possibly terrorist Majdi Mteir who was killed while committing a stabbing attack. (See notes below.)
The three Israeli victims referred to by Zaki are probably the baby Amiad Yisrael Ish-Ran who died three days after he was born prematurely by emergency c-section after his mother was shot and critically wounded, and the two victims from Givat Assaf.
For Fatah and the PA, the fact that Um Nasser Abu Hmeid's 6 sons are terrorist murderers responsible for the deaths of at least 10 Israelis, is something to brag about.
This cartoon (above) that Fatah publicized shows Abu Hmeid heroically for being a mother with numerous armed men emanating from her and going on the attack with their weapons poised.
Posted text: "The Khansa of Palestine, Um Nasser Abu Hmeid" [Official Fatah Facebook page, Dec. 15, 2018]
The name of honor "Khansa of Palestine" given by the PA to Abu Hmeid is yet another expression of the PA's encouragement of Palestinians to willingly sacrifice their sons as "Martyrs." The name refers to the woman Al-Khansa who lived in the earliest period of Islam who sent her four sons to battle and rejoiced when they all died as "Martyrs".
Abu Hmeid is the mother of 4 convicted terrorist murderers serving 18 life sentences combined for having murdered at least 10 Israelis. Another terrorist son was killed while resisting arrest after he murdered a member of the Israeli security forces, and the PA refers to him a "Martyr." The Abu Hmeid family's house was demolished on Dec. 15, 2018 after a sixth son admitted to murdering an Israeli soldier, and is now standing trial. (Israel has shown cases in which Palestinians have stopped terror attacks by their sons for fear their homes would be destroyed.)
The PA has turned mother of 6 terrorists Abu Hmeid into an icon and frequently honors her, as Palestinian Media Watch has documented. Recently, Abbas invited her to meet with him in the PA headquarters. Director of PLO Commission of Prisoners' Affairs Qadri Abu Bakr and District Governor of Ramallah and El-Bireh Laila Ghannam headed a "solidarity visit" to Abu Hmeid's home before it was demolished by Israel. The Palestinian officials praised her and glorified her terrorist sons as "a crown of honor":
Israelis are “blood suckers,” says mother of 6 terrorists who murdered at least 10 Israelis
— Pal Media Watch (@palwatch) December 19, 2018
Read more about this here: https://t.co/xDa6bQCTTz pic.twitter.com/Kn7cOAWZnP
His biography on the HRW website says he has "special expertise on: issues of justice and accountability for atrocities committed in the quest for peace; military conduct in war under the requirements of international humanitarian law; counterterrorism policy, including resort to torture and arbitrary detention; the human rights policies of the United States, the European Union, and the United Nations; and, the human rights responsibilities of multinational businesses."Wikipedia indicates its source is the 2011 version of Ken Roth's bio on the Human Rights Watch website.
On the HRW website, Roth is listed as having ‘investigated human rights abuses around the globe’, with ‘special expertise’ on issues of justice and accountability for atrocities committed in the quest for peace; military conduct in war under the requirements for international humanitarian law etc.But when you actually take a look at his bio on the Human Rights Watch website, Roth's CV is more modest:
Prior to joining Human Rights Watch in 1987, Roth served as a federal prosecutor in New York and for the Iran-Contra investigation in Washington, DC. A graduate of Yale Law School and Brown University, Roth has conducted numerous human rights investigations and missions around the world. He has written extensively on a wide range of human rights abuses, devoting special attention to issues of international justice, counterterrorism, the foreign policies of the major powers, and the work of the United Nations. [emphasis added]Roth's background in law is as a federal prosecutor. He has conducted "investigations" and "missions" on human rights and he has even written on issues of international justice -- but no, there is nothing in Ken Roth's background that makes him an expert in international law.
Although the level of his expertise and experience are obscure, Garlasco consistently presents himself and is presented as an “expert” on weapons and military technology. He has no combat experience, and his various Pentagon positions were apparently not concentrated on dealing with the details of weapons systems. This has not prevented him from making public statements and authoring reports that project the pretense of both a detailed knowledge of weapons such as unmanned drones and white phosphorous, and an understanding of the implications of their use under international law.Even the most basic qualification, that of critical objectivity, seems to be lacking at Human Rights Watch.
“Whitson’s soft approach towards totalitarian regimes clearly is counterproductive and immoral, as in the Libya cover-up” adds Herzberg. “She met with Hamas in May 2010 to reassure the terrorist organization that HRW’s reports were ‘objective and impartial,’ while at the same time promising that HRW’s next report would denounce Israeli violations of international law. Prior to that, she solicited funds in Saudi Arabia to combat so-called pro-Israel ‘pressure groups.’ Instead of confronting human rights violators, the MENA division under Whitson has helped sustain their power.”Whitson's lack of objectivity may be explained by her background.
During a November 2010 trip to Lebanon, Whitson praised “the Lebanese sophistication for human rights,” contradicting HRW’s own Lebanon Director, Nadim Houry, who condemned the lack of effectual and accountable state institutions, the absence of political will to implement change, and the problems created by the country’s political “confessionalism.” Shortly after Whitson’s assessment, Hezbollah overthrew the Hariri government in a bloodless coup.
Before joining Human Rights Watch, Whitson worked in New York for Goldman, Sachs & Co. and Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton. She graduated from the University of California, Berkeley and Harvard Law School.David Bernstein of The Volokh Conspiracy notes what the HRW website omits about Whitson:
What the official bio doesn’t tell you is that Whitson was an active member of the New York chapter of the American-Arab Antidiscrimination Committee. She had served on the Steering Committee (source: ADC Times, Apr 30, 2002). When HRW hired her, she was serving a two-year term on the new Board of Directors, which replaced the Steering Committee (Source: ADC Times, Jan. 31, 2004).Expertise and objectivity do not appear to be among Human Rights Watch’s strengths.
The ADC styles itself as a civil rights organization, but like the Jewish organizations on which it is modeled, it also involves itself in Middle East issues, specifically by supporting the Arab and Palestinian cause against Israel. Local chapters are often more active on foreign policy issues than is the national organization.
...when HRW hired Ms. Whitson to be its Middle East director, it was hiring someone that was in the middle of serving what amounted to a second term on the Board of Directors of an organization that was firmly and openly on the Arab side in the Arab-Israeli conflict. And she had personally engaged in pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel activism while serving in that position. I don’t know whether she resigned her position when she started working for Human Rights Watch; if she didn’t, it was a clear conflict of interest. Regardless, it should hardly come as a surprise that one of her first acts at Human Rights Watch was to involve the organization in political action, supporting the campaign to get Caterpillar to stop selling tractors to the Israeli Army.
Buy EoZ's book, PROTOCOLS: EXPOSING MODERN ANTISEMITISM
If you want real peace, don't insist on a divided Jerusalem, @USAmbIsrael
The Apartheid charge, the Abraham Accords and the "right side of history"
With Palestinians, there is no need to exaggerate: they really support murdering random Jews
Great news for Yom HaShoah! There are no antisemites!