Love of the Land: What 'really excites them' is Israel

What 'really excites them' is Israel

Petra Marquardt-Bigman
The Warped Mirror/JPost
09 May '10

In late April, The New Republic (TNR) published a widely-quoted report that investigated accusations of blatant anti-Israel bias in the work of Human Rights Watch (HRW). A month earlier, The Sunday Times featured a similar article, to which HRW apparently responded by demanding a number of clarifications and corrections that in turn were challenged in the comment section by a researcher from NGO Monitor.

In terms of their substance, both reports contain too many interesting findings to summarize adequately here. However, one point that can perhaps serve to illustrate the overall picture that emerges from them is the fact that both reports include statements that openly acknowledge HRW's bias against Israel. The TNR article quotes a board member of HRW admitting: "I think we tend to go where there's action and where we're going to get reaction [...] We seek the limelight - that's part of what we do. And so, Israel's sort of like low-hanging fruit."

The Sunday Times article quotes an anonymous human rights expert working for an organization in Washington, who argues that one consideration in deciding what issues to focus on is "how it's going to be used politically in Washington"; according to this person, there is also the question of whom HRW considers as "a bad guy that they are interested in highlighting", and finally, he offers the observation: "Let's face it, the thing that really excites them is Israel."

Both quotes point to the enormous role publicity plays for HRW - in other words, HRW relies on the media to amplify its message, and the organization knows all too well what sells in the media. In this context, it is fascinating to read a recently published paper entitled "A media eclipse: Israel-Palestine and the world's forgotten conflicts".

The author, Noah Bernstein, can certainly not be accused of showing any bias in favor of Israel; instead, it is clear that he is motivated by a passionate and idealistic concern for human rights. His well-researched article starts out by starkly contrasting the media coverage of two simultaneous conflicts:

(Read full article)

Love of the Land: What 'really excites them' is Israel

Love of the Land: Human Rights Watch versus human rights

Human Rights Watch versus human rights

Based on recent revelations, there were systematic violations in the organization, especially regarding Israel.


Gerald Steinberg
Op-Ed/Jpost
09 May '10

New York-based Human Rights Watch – once the “gold standard” of moral watchdogs – is playing a leading role in demonizing Israel through false allegations of war crimes. HRW supported the UN report condemning Israel on Jenin (2002) and the attack on the separation barrier as a violation of international law (2004), charged Israel with “deliberate” and “indiscriminate” attacks on civilians in Lebanon (2006) and issued a flood of such allegations about Gaza (2009).

HRW also claimed credit for Judge Richard Goldstone’s one-sided UN “inquiry” on the Gaza fighting. Goldstone is a close confidant of HRW’s executive director Kenneth Roth, and was a member of HRW’s board.

But HRW has been shattered following revelations of systematic factual, moral and ethical violations, particularly with respect to Israel. Marc Garlasco, HRW’s “senior military analyst,” who wrote many of the accusations about Gaza, including the white phosphorous libel, was fired. This followed discovery of his obsessive collection of Nazi war memorabilia, but the deeper issues relate to the credibility of his military analyses. (The investigation HRW promised six months ago never happened, and instead, it imposed a gag order on Garlasco.) Garlasco is a symptom, and after NGO Monitor’s systematic revelations of HRW hypocrisy, founder Robert Bernstein denounced his own organization for helping undermine the principles of human rights. Articles by Jonathan Foreman in the Sunday Times and Benjamin Birnbaum in The New Republic have further exposed the mythology.

BASED ON interviews with HRW board members, employees and others, Birnbaum documented systematic bias and factual distortions. Sarah Leah Whitson (who led a bizarre fund-raising trip to Saudi Arabia, invoking the specter of the “pro-Israel” lobby) was brought in by Roth to head the Middle East and North Africa division. Whitson is an admirer of Norman Finkelstein, who, as Birnbaum notes, is a “Hizbullah supporter who has likened Israel to Nazi Germany” and accuses Jews of exploiting the Holocaust. In an e-mail, Whitson wrote of her “tremendous respect and admiration for him, because... making Israeli abuses the focus of one’s life work is a thankless but courageous task...”

(Read full story)

Love of the Land: Human Rights Watch versus human rights

Love of the Land: Human Rights Watch: Their Master’s Voice

Human Rights Watch: Their Master’s Voice

Benjamin Kerstein
The New Ledger
04 May '10

Having just returned from being locked for almost an hour in Tel Aviv’s Dizengoff Center mall while a surprisingly large robot fired three 12-gauge shotgun shells into a suspicious package, which was then disposed of by a man in a Kevlar body suit, I was not, I confess, in a mood to indulge those who make light of Israel’s security concerns. Shortly after, my feelings were compounded by reading Benjamin Birnbaum’s excellent piece in The New Republic on the non-governmental organization Human Rights Watch and its treatment of Israel. It is doubtful that a better, or more important, piece of classic muckraking journalism will be published in the coming months.

The piece takes as its impetus the recent controversy between the organization’s staffers and some of its board members, in particular, its founder Robert Bernstein, who recently published a New York Times op-ed denouncing the organization’s attitude toward Israel. Its real value, however, is its exposure of the personalities behind the organization; the faces behind the impersonal reports and press releases that constitute the public face of HRW.

Perhaps the most fascinating and disturbing of these is Sarah Leah Whitson, who runs the section charged with assessing Israel’s human rights record, along with that of other countries in the Middle East and North Africa. As far as one can tell, Whitson does not seem to posses any expert credentials in the field of human rights or the laws of war; her bio at the HRW website states only that she received degrees at Berkeley and Harvard Law School, with no indication of her particular field of study. What is certain is that she is a former corporate lawyer and professional activist who has apparently been a lifelong partisan of the Arab cause. Shockingly, and despite her sensitive position, which one imagines would require at least the pretense of impartiality, Whitson seems to make no secret of her sympathies. “As I stepped into her office,” Birnbaum writes, “I noticed that a poster for Paradise Now, a movie that attempts to humanize Palestinian suicide bombers, hangs on her door and that two photos of bereaved Gazans hang on her wall.” Birnbaum them questions her about specific accusations of bias on the part of HRW.

“For people who apply for jobs to be the researcher in Israel-Palestine, it’s probably going to be someone who’s done work on Israel-Palestine with a human rights background,” she explained. “And guess what? People who do work with a human rights background on Israel-Palestine tend to find that there are a lot of Israeli abuses. And they tend to become human rights activists on the issue.”

(Read full article)

Love of the Land: Human Rights Watch: Their Master’s Voice

Love of the Land: Double-Standards Watch

Double-Standards Watch

Noah Pollak
Contentions/Commentary
19 March '10

For a few months, a “human rights activist” named Mohammad Othman was held by Israel in something called administrative detention, which allows suspects to be held for a short period of time without a trial, but with judicial oversight. Othman’s detention earned this rebuke from Human Rights Watch, titled with a stern demand: “End Arbitrary Detention.” Of course, many nations, both democratic and undemocratic, practice administrative detention. And why the presumption that it was “arbitrary”? Never mind. The statement reads:

Israeli authorities have detained Othman without charge for more than two months on what appear to be politically motivated grounds. … Othman has no criminal record and, to the knowledge of Human Rights Watch, has never advocated or participated in violence. …

“The only reasonable conclusion is that Othman is being punished for his peaceful advocacy,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. [Emphasis added to weasel-phrasing]

Is that really the only reasonable conclusion? I would actually characterize this as a fantasy conclusion, or at least one of many possible conclusions. If the Shin Bet or IDF were interested in punishing people for “peaceful advocacy” in Israel and the West Bank, there would be tens of thousands of activists in detention. But there aren’t.

(Read full post)

Love of the Land: Double-Standards Watch

Love of the Land: Analyzing the Durban II Conference

Analyzing the Durban II Conference

Interview with Gerald Steinberg

Prof. Gerald M. Steinberg
Institute for Global Jewish Affairs
Published March '10
No. 96

From 20-24 April 2009, the Durban Review Conference took place in Geneva. It is also known as Durban II, a follow-up to the infamous "Durban I" World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance in the late summer of 2001. At Durban I, an NGO Forum accepted what can be summed up as a declaration of war against Israel. Participating nongovernmental organizations adopted a strategy for the complete isolation of Israel through boycotts, divestment, and sanctions.

The Canadian Harper government was the first to announce in February 2008 that it would not participate in Durban II, followed nine months later by Israel. Other countries, including the United States, eventually followed suit in refusing to come to Geneva. The withdrawal accelerated when Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced his intention to participate. Many funders that had provided large amounts of money for the Durban I NGO Forum, including Canada and the Ford Foundation, did not provide NGO support for 2009.

Although the nonparticipation of so many key countries made Durban II less of a diplomatic disaster for Israel than Durban I, it did not result in any erasure or renouncement of the anti-Israeli "Durban strategy" adopted at the 2001 NGO Forum.

Many UN-sponsored mini-Durbans promoting the indictment of Israel continue to take place, led by the same NGOs active in the Durban I hate-fest. In the dominant narrative, Israel is the world's worst violator of human rights and must be held accountable through investigations predetermined to find it guilty. Judge Richard Goldstone has become the patron saint of this "Durban process."

(Read full interview and analysis)

Love of the Land: Analyzing the Durban II Conference

Love of the Land: HRW and Garlasco: Independent Investigation Has Top Priority

HRW and Garlasco: Independent Investigation Has Top Priority

NGO Monitor
05 March '10

Human Rights Watch’s Unfinished Business

JERUSALEM – The belated “resignation” of Marc Garlasco, who held the position of senior military analyst at Human Rights Watch, underscores HRW’s lack of credibility and the need for a thorough investigation.

Since Garlasco was revealed to be an avid collector of Nazi memorabilia in September 2009, NGO Monitor had repeatedly called for an independent examination of HRW’s policies and hiring practices.

“Although Garlasco no longer works with HRW, the organization’s reliance on his supposed ‘military expertise’ raises alarming questions about the credibility of its activities, and the Goldstone report, which relied heavily on HRW’s claims,” said Gerald Steinberg, president of NGO Monitor. “HRW’s problems go far deeper than the Garlasco case.”

(Read full article)

Love of the Land: HRW and Garlasco: Independent Investigation Has Top Priority

Love of the Land: Signs of Change at Human Rights Watch

Signs of Change at Human Rights Watch

Frayda Leibtag
OpEdNews.com
18 February '10

Changes at Human Rights Watch regarding the Arab-Israeli conflict are a good beginning, but the organization must do more to restore its reputation as a moral leader.

::::::::

Human Rights Watch (HRW) made many media headlines this year -- but not for its human rights work. Revelations regarding an HRW fundraising trip in Saudi Arabia and HRW senior military analyst Marc Garlasco's obsessive collection of Nazi memorabilia caused many to question the moral standing of HRW. Although HRW officials publicly rebuff any accusations of wrongdoing, recent events at HRW suggest that the organization is heeding calls for reform.


During HRW's 2010 World Report press conference in Tel Aviv, Program Director Iain Levine focused on Israel's potential as a moral advocate on the issue of banning "blood diamonds" mined under abusive conditions in Zimbabwe. He also noted Israel's "positive movement" toward investigating Gaza war operations, especially as compared to Hamas' lack of initiative. While Levine repeated allegations about the "increasingly disastrous blockade of Gaza" and IDF misuse of white phosphorous, he also mentioned Hamas rocket attacks against Israeli civilians, brutal internal repression by Hamas under the cover of war, and the endemic lack of accountability for torture in the Palestinian Authority.

Soon after the press conference, HRW announced that James F. Hoge Jr. will replace Jane Olson as the chair of HRW's board. Hoge's many landmark essays as the longtime editor of Foreign Affairs include "Tiananmen Papers," about the Chinese leadership's decision to crush the 1989 protests. Could the appointment of Hoge signify a shift in HRW's obsessive attention on the Middle East? Perhaps, under Hoge, HRW will devote more of its resources to substantively addressing severe human rights abuses in China and other countries with chronic human rights issues.

(Read full article)

Love of the Land: Signs of Change at Human Rights Watch

Love of the Land: The moral blindness of the 'human rights' industry

The moral blindness of the 'human rights' industry

Melanie Phillips
The Spectator
16 February '10

With this, Melanie Phillips has placed her finger squarely on the noticeable disparity of expected standards between Israel and the rest of the world. Click here for the full article. Y.

When pondering the extraordinary obsession with Israel by the ‘human rights’ industry and the way in which it ignores real human rights abuses in the third world, I always recall the conversation I had in the early ‘80s with senior colleagues at the Guardian (where I worked in another life). When I wondered at the double standard which caused the paper to go to town with front page splashes, leading articles and outraged opinion columns whenever Israel killed a handful of Palestinians, but relegated major atrocities such as Syria’s massacre of tens of thousands of Islamic militants over the course of a few days to a few paragraphs buried on the foreign pages and then totally ignored such events, I was told that of course there was a double standard.

Since countries of the third world did not subscribe to western cultural norms of respect for human life, they said, we in the west could not judge such countries’ behaviour by those norms. To do so would be an act of cultural imperialism. But since Israel did subscribe to those norms, it was accordingly judged by them; indeed, they added, since the Jews claimed superior standards to the rest of humanity, they needed to be judged by higher standards than those applied to the rest of the human race.

Leaving to one side the specific prejudice thus voiced towards the Jews, what this amounted to was that, according to this ‘progressive’ cultural relativism, the people of the third world did not have the same right to life and liberty as those in the west. In my book, that’s racism pure and simple. And that’s what we are hearing in the silence of the ‘human rights’ industry over the Congo.

Love of the Land: The moral blindness of the 'human rights' industry

Love of the Land: The Voiceless Victims

The Voiceless Victims

Evelyn Gordon
Contentions/Commentary
14 February '10

In Friday’s post, I noted that due to their warped focus, Israeli human-rights organizations are increasingly leaving real victims voiceless. But the damage is incomparably greater when major international organizations do the same. To appreciate just how badly groups such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have betrayed those who need them most, everyone should read Nicholas Kristof’s devastating recent articles on Congo in the New York Times (see, for instance, here and here).

The civil war in Congo, Kristof writes, has claimed almost seven million lives over the last dozen years. It has also created a whole new vocabulary to describe the other horrific abuses it has generated – such as “autocannibalism,” which is when militiamen cut flesh from living victims and force the victims to eat it, or “re-rape,” which applies to women and girls who are raped anew every time militiamen visit their town.

Yet the world rarely hears about Congo — because groups such as Amnesty and HRW have left the victims largely voiceless, preferring instead to focus on far less serious abuses in developed countries, where gathering information is easier.


Video: FreeMiddleEast

Neither Amnesty nor HRW has issued a single press release or report on Congo so far this year, according to their web sites. Yet HRW found time to issue two statements criticizing Israel and 12 criticizing the U.S.; Amnesty issued 11 on Israel and 15 on the U.S. To its credit, HRW did cover Congo fairly extensively in 2009. But Amnesty’s imbalance was egregious: For all of 2009, its web site lists exactly one statement on Congo — even as the group found time and energy to issue 62 statements critical of Israel.

(Read full post)

Love of the Land: The Voiceless Victims

Love of the Land: You Know What’s a Human-Rights Violation?

You Know What’s a Human-Rights Violation?

Noah Pollak
Contentions/Commentary
08 February '10

Criticizing anti-Zionist NGOs, that’s what. In what is apparently not a parody, Human Rights Watch has issued a press release about the New Israel Fund controversy, apparently in the belief that making the association between the two groups explicit will help the NIF:

(New York, February 7, 2010) – The growing harshness of attacks by Israeli government officials on nongovernmental organizations poses a real threat to civil society in Israel, Human Rights Watch said today.

The most recent attacks center on the New Israel Fund (NIF). …

“What we’re seeing in Israel is a greater official intolerance of dissent,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. … “A clear pattern of official efforts to suppress voices critical of government policy is emerging.”

Note that HRW has done zero investigation into the clear pattern of official efforts to murder democracy activists by the Iranian regime. However, a thoroughly democratic debate in Israel about NGOs sends the group into hysterics about “threats to civil society.”

Aren’t there some actual dissenters in the Middle East who are actually being attacked who Human Rights Watch could pay attention to?

Love of the Land: You Know What’s a Human-Rights Violation?

Love of the Land: HRW’s Annual Report Continues Anti-Israel Bias, Ignores Internal Scandals

HRW’s Annual Report Continues Anti-Israel Bias, Ignores Internal Scandals

NGO Monitor
21 January '10

Jerusalem-based NGO Monitor charged today that Human Rights Watch’s 2009 World Report reflects a continuing and pervasive anti-Israel bias, repeating many of the unjustified allegations that the organization made in 2009.

As NGO Monitor’s annual review of HRW demonstrates, nearly 30% of HRW’s 2009 output on the Middle East condemned Israel for measures taken to defend its civilian population. HRW issued more publications critical of Israel than of Syria, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Libya combined.

Continuing this obsessive pattern, HRW’s 2009 World Report allots more pages to Israel than to any country other than China. The report includes:

HRW Executive Director Kenneth Roth’s comparison of “abusive” Israel “war crimes” to “atrocities in Guinea, Kenya, or Darfur.”

A repetition of baseless HRW allegations regarding white phosphorus, drone attacks, and “white flag deaths” in the Gaza war.

Continuing promotion of Richard Goldstone’s tendentious report condemning Israel’s actions in the Gaza war, and failing to mention that Goldstone is a former HRW board member. In 2009, HRW released 34 statements in support of the UN Human Rights Council/Arab League Goldstone “fact-finding” mission.

(Read full release)

Love of the Land: HRW’s Annual Report Continues Anti-Israel Bias, Ignores Internal Scandals

Love of the Land: Ken Roth vs. Israel: Another Embarrassment

Ken Roth vs. Israel: Another Embarrassment

NGO Monitor Staff
12 January '10

For Ken Roth and Human Rights Watch (HRW), the new year has begun much as the previous one ended – with exposure of another false accusation against Israel. In a vitriolic op-ed published on December 30 in the IPS’s online publication Foreign Policy in Focus, and reproduced widely, Roth accused Israel of “a campaign to undermine …. essential rules for protecting civilians caught in war.”

The article is based on falsehoods and distortions, including the allegation that MK Tzipi Livni, the former Foreign Minister and current leader of the opposition, urged Israeli forces to avoid distinguishing between combatants and civilians in the Gaza war. Roth highlighted Livni’s statement in the Knesset, “They don’t make a distinction, and neither should we” – a quote that would be quite damning, if it were accurate. But like most of Roth’s HRW’s claims regarding Israel, this one is more fiction than fact.

Had Roth and HRW’s “researchers” checked the transcript instead of again repeating distortions manufactured by the Palestinian NGO known as Al Haq (see NGO Monitor’s analysis), they might have avoided this mistake. The transcript shows that Livni was criticizing MK Ahmed Tibi’s Knesset statement for heightening tensions between Israeli Jews and Arabs. When read in context, Livni clearly was not referring to the citizens of Gaza; rather, she was encouraging Israelis to embrace a common identity in the face of indiscriminate attacks from Gaza.

(Read full post)

Love of the Land: Ken Roth vs. Israel: Another Embarrassment

Love of the Land: Holocaust projection

Holocaust projection

Soccer Dad
Yourish.com
07 January '10

Posted before Shabbat

Genocide is a messy business. Usually it involves a lot of killing. Also, as evidence that genocide occurred there will be an extreme drop in population.

For example:

The Jewish communities of eastern Europe were devastated. In 1933, Poland had the largest Jewish population in Europe, numbering over three million. By 1950, the Jewish population of Poland was reduced to about 45,000.

However an increase in population would be proof that no genocide was taking place. For example:

The population of the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip has passed 1.4 million people, an increase of nearly 40 percent over the past 10 years, an official Palestinian census said.

While conditions for the Palestinians in Gaza may not be pleasant, there’s certainly no genocide going on there. Rather than a 90% drop in population, the Palestinian population has increased over the past decade.

However, math won’t stop some people from imputing the worst to the Jewish state. Helena Cobban, the new executive director of Council for the National Interest writes (CNI):

From the point of view of victims it may or may not matter too much. Being killed, or having the foundations of the life of the group you belong to quite systematically destroyed, is certainly bad enough, with or without the additional genocidal intention on the part of the perpetrator. (Ask the survivors of various horrendous massacres in the Democratic republic of Congo or elsewhere about that.)

Love of the Land: Holocaust projection

Love of the Land: HRW New Middle East Board: Reinforcing the Bias

HRW New Middle East Board: Reinforcing the Bias

Gerald M. Steinberg
Executive Director, NGO Monitor
Hudson New York
12 November 09

In the face of intense criticism of its Middle East activities, Human Rights Watch has expanded itsMiddle East and North Africa (MENA) advisory board with the addition of ten members, largely based in the Middle East. While some are human rights activists in their own countries, (Iran, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, etc.), including woman’s rights, many also contribute significantly to targeting Israel through the language of human rights.

In particular, the addition of Ms. Asli Bali, and Aeyal Gross, who is known as an opponent of Israeli policies, will reinforce the political agenda of MENA heads Sara Leah Whitson and Joe Stork, as documented in NGO Monitor’s detailed analysis, “Experts or Ideologues?”. These changes reflect and strengthen what founderRobert Bernstein criticized as HRW’s role in “turning Israel into a pariah state”, as well as HRW’s role in ‘lawfare’, including the intensive promotion of the Goldstone Report. (Goldstone is closely linked to HRW, and was a member of the board until after his appointment to head the UNHRC’s “fact finding mission”.)

Another point of interest is the inclusion of Ahmad Zuaiter, who is a portfolio manager at Soros Fund Management. Soros’ Open Society Institute has become a major source of funding for HRW and for a number of other organizations that promote anti-Israel boycotts.

In terms of anti-Israel bias, the most problematic new members of HRW’s MENA board are:

1) Ms. Asli Bali -- editorial board of MERIP, a radical anti-Israel group (founded by MENA division deputy director Joe Stork in the 1970s); heads Princeton Committee on Palestine, whichparticipated in “ Israeli Apartheid Week”, co-sponsored Norman Finkelstein and ...

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Love of the Land: HRW New Middle East Board: Reinforcing the Bias

Love of the Land: Analyzing Human Rights Watch’s Defensive Response to Robert Bernstein

Analyzing Human Rights Watch’s Defensive Response to Robert Bernstein

NGO Monitor
04 November 09

Human Rights Watch founder Robert Bernstein’s highly critical op-ed in the New York Times (Rights Watchdog, Lost in the Mideast, October 19, 2009; see also Robert Bernstein’s rebuttal to HRW's response) led to a defensive campaign by Human Rights Watch (HRW) officials and supporters. Many of the press releases, opinion pieces, letters to the editor, and media interviews (14 to date, as listed in Appendix 1) use identical language and format, repeating claims made by executive director Ken Roth in Ha’aretz.

As shown below, the three main themes repeated by HRW’s defenders are: balance, methodology, and “open” and “closed” societies. These responses are misleading and do not address Bernstein’s most serious claims, including HRW’s role in “turn[ing] Israel into a pariah state” and its loss of “critical perspective” on Iran’s support for Hamas and Hezbollah.

1) “They say we disproportionately focus on Israel, and neglect other countries in the Middle East... Israel is a small fraction of what we do.” [1]

This response from HRW greatly distorts Bernstein’s statement that “in recent years Human Rights Watch has written far more condemnations of Israel for violations of international law than of any other country in the region.” Bernstein specifically discusses Israel within the context of the Middle East, where even HRW’s misleading response admits a disproportionate focus.

HRW claims that “Israel accounts for about 15 percent of our published output on the region.” [2]

Assuming this were correct, it would mean that HRW’s Middle East division, which covers 17 countries, focuses significantly more than the proportionate level of resources (6 percent) on Israel.

But the data show that this claim of 15 percent is highly misleading. In 2009 (through November 2), HRW has published 284 documents on the Middle East and North Africa. 88 (31 percent) of these documents have dealt with Israel, the Palestinian Authority, and Gaza. In comparison, only 39 documents focus on Iran. Of the 88 documents on Israel, the Palestinian Authority, and Gaza, 5 are full-length reports, versus only 3 on Saudi Arabia, 2 on the United Arab Emirates, and 1 each for seven other countries. ( HRW had completed and planned to publish yet another report, on “wanton destruction” by Israel in Gaza, in parallel to the Goldstone report. But the publication was shelved following the growing criticism. This is a tacit admission that the level of resources targeting Israel is excessive and unjustified.)

(Read full report)

Love of the Land: Analyzing Human Rights Watch’s Defensive Response to Robert Bernstein

Love of the Land: Human Rights Watch Unravelling: Helena Cobban's Immorality

Human Rights Watch Unravelling: Helena Cobban's Immorality

Gerald Steinberg

NGO Monitor Blog

29 October 09

While Human Rights Watch (HRW), headed by Kenneth Roth, attempts to defend itself from the powerful critique levelled by founder Robert Bernstein in the New York Times, Helena Cobban — on the board of HRW’s Middle East and North Africa division — added further evidence of total moral collapse.

In her October 22 posting, Cobban attacked Bernstein for ostensibly advocating an “old fashioned” view of human rights in which some kinds of societies (open and democratic) are better than others (closed and tyrannical). Continuing with an eerily similar kind of argument, Cobban then expounded her views on Hamas, demonstrating how this ostensibly stalwart defender of universal human rights is actually an apologist for terror. In her January 2009 blog post Cobban is quite convinced Hamas is little more than a social welfare and educational organization made out to be a “terrorist organization” [she uses those quotation marks herself] by the US State Department. Cobban praises Hamas for its “systems for educating successive generations of youth and for cultivating leadership skills in a broad array of skill-sets.” The mind boggles.

In this moral twisted universe, Helena Cobban seems to think that all violence is equal, and equally bad. In a December 2008 post she argues that Israel and Hamas are morally equal because they both use violence. For Ms. Cobban, it would seem that Israel’s attempts to defend its citizens from murderous attack are indistinguishable from the actions of those who violently strive to kill Israelis and Jews. This moral equivalence is repugnant, and is akin to condemning a woman for fighting a would-be rapist, since both use violence.

All rights, all countries, all violence, cannot be equal simply by virtue of their all being rights, countries, or violence. Universal human rights are based on the ability to make such fundamental moral distinctions - in which we acknowledge that freedom is better than tyranny, health is better than suffering, choice is better than coercion. For a HRW Middle East Division board member to erase the critical differences between immoral aggression and self-defense is simply another sign of the profound moral confusion in this organization that exploits the rhetoric while destroying the substance of human rights.

Hat tip to AugeanStables, “Hullo, Can you see Florida from here?”: Helena Cobban opens a window onto the “global hamoulah” of progressives

Love of the Land: Human Rights Watch Unravelling: Helena Cobban's Immorality

Israel Matzav: Human Rights Watch's 'finite resources'

Human Rights Watch's 'finite resources'

It seems that 'Human Rights Watch' is having a little trouble finding Mauritania on the map.

The Islamic Republic of Mauritania is quite notorious, however for human rights violations. The government only criminalized slavery in 2007 and the enslavement of the black African population there remains rampant (estimates put the number around 600,000). A cached version of what appears to have been at one time HRW’s “Mauritania” page only lists two publications– one from 2003 and one from 2001 – and neither of these address slavery. Its only report documenting the repression of Mauritania’s black population by white “Moor” rulers dates back to 1994 – FIFTEEN YEARS ago. Even Amnesty International has several reports from 2008 on the systematic torture that is routine in the country.

Hmmm….Twenty Eight statements (and counting) in six months lobbying for the Goldstone mission and Zero reports on slavery in Mauritania in fifteen years? I guess the slaves of Mauritania will continue to suffer because as Ken Roth admitted in an interview in the Tablet, “’Why are we more concerned about the [Gaza] war rather than on other rights abuses?’ Well, we’ve got to pick and choose-we’ve got finite resources.”

I wonder why they can't get the Saudis to give them more resources. Maybe because the Saudis are only interested in having them probe Israel.

Heh.

Israel Matzav: Human Rights Watch's 'finite resources'

Love of the Land: HRW's Iron Cross Up

HRW's Iron Cross Up

Media Backspin/Honest Reporting
13 September 09

Human Rights Watch's Garlasco situation is taking a turn towards the absurd. Now,Harry's Place exposes what appears to be HRW sock puppetry on blogs critical of their colleague:

I would like to know if staffers at Human Rights Watch created a fake ‘activist’ with a Middle Eastern sounding name to forward its statements, to support arguments made by HRW officials, and to smear critics. I can’t tell you any more than this: but I think that someone at Human Rights Watch ought to investigate.

Were Human Rights Watch to be found to have engaged in such immoral and unethical behaviour, it would call into question their suitability as a monitor of global human rights abuses. The type of sockpuppetry that I suspect may have taken place at Human Rights Watch amounts to the propagation of a fiction.

Not everyone associated with HRW is amused with Garlasco's Nazi memorabilia collection, which Garlasco defends. Collecting World War 2 medals and uniforms isn't illegal, but Helena Cobban is notanbly rankled. The journalist, who is associated with HRW, writes:

But to have him doing work on human rights in the daytime, while carrying on with this intensively pursued hobby in the evening? That is bizarre, and disturbing.

Even more so when you realize that a lot of the work he has done has involved dealing with Israeli officials and citizens, and analyzing the IDF's operations . . . .

Now, as y'all no doubt know, I'm on the Middle East advisory committee of Human Rights Watch. And I've been very disturbed indeed by the attacks the young, aggressively rightwing Israeli organization NGO Monitor has launched against the work HRW has done on the IDF's combat behavior.

But right now, I'm looking at this page on NGO Monitor's website, and agreeing with much of what they have there on this topic.

At the CST blog, Mark Gardner best articulates why Garlasco's hobby remains problematic for HRW:

But, if Garlasco wants to immunise his daughter (and all our children) from Nazism, then fetishising Nazi medals for public consumption is a stupid way of going about it. You do not fight Nazism by helping to promote the marketplace for Nazi medals and trinkets and accoutrements. You do not fight Nazism by presenting its soldiers as brave, handsome, fresh faced youths – and you most certainly do not fight Nazism by normalising the wearing of Nazi-themed sweatshirts as Marc Garlasco does in this picture:

Does he wear this sweatshirt in front of his daughters? Does he wish more people would walk about wearing such items? Does he – or his HRW colleagues – think that it is appropriate for a man with his role to do so? Does he wear it when he meets Israeli Army officials?

Worst of all, however, is not Garlasco’s behaviour in all of this. Worst of all, is the reaction of Human Rights Watch. None of the concerns that I have outlined above seem to matter to HRW. Their defence is all embracing, and their condemnation of his critics lacks the remotest empathy with why Jews, or any other people, might express concern at Garlasco’s behaviour in view of his role as one their leading (anti) Israel experts.

Instead of engaging with the issues, HRW resort to the public equivalent of giving Jews the finger.

Read Gardner's

Love of the Land: HRW's Iron Cross Up

Israel Matzav: Human Rights Watch defends a Nazi fetish

Human Rights Watch defends a Nazi fetish

Shavua tov, a good week to everyone.

NGO Monitor rips Human Rights Watch's defense of HRW investigator Marc Garlasco's Nazi fetish.

HRW’s defense seeks to justify Garlasco’s behavior by claiming, “many military historians including former and active-duty US service members, collect memorabilia from [the Nazi era].” But the collecting of Nazi memorabilia is not simply an innocent hobby engaged in by “students of military history.” It is highly controversial and in many European countries, it is illegal. Such trade is banned on many internet sites and from auction houses. Christies’ Chairman has stated that Nazi memorabilia, is “the only thing we categorically will not sell.” Writer Susan Sontag likens its collection to pornography and the Simon Wiesenthal Center notes it “glorifies the horrors of Nazi Germany.”

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According to HRW’s response, “Garlasco’s own family’s experience on both sides of the Second World War has led him to collect military items related to both sides . . .” While Garlasco’s interest may have been a result of his family history, his hobby borders on the obsessive and is one-sided. He has posted thousands of comments on Nazi memorabilia sites including Germancombatawards (981 posts) and Wehrmacht-awards (7735 posts). In one post, he notes that he takes his collection of medals (many of which are swastika-adorned) out on a yearly basis to admire and photograph. He has even gone so far as to say he would “kill” to obtain a piece. [2] HRW claims Garlasco also collects US Airforce memorabilia. Research conducted by NGO Monitor could not find any evidence that Garlasco’s interest in US military memorabilia approaches the level to which he is devoted to Nazi paraphernalia.

HRW’s defense also claims that Garlasco collects “German Air Force medals and other objects (not from the Nazi Party or the SS, as falsely alleged).” Yet, Garlasco’s screen logo is a picture of a German badge with a swastika. In a 2005 comment, responding to a posting of a photo of a leather SS jacket, Garlasco wrote, “That is so cool! The leather SS jacket makes my blood go cold it is so COOL!” The jacket owner replies, “Great feedback mein Freund! . . . Gott mit uns [God is with us]!].

Most disturbingly, Garlasco’s screen moniker is Flak88. While this is the name of a German anti-aircraft gun (alarming on its own), the number 88 is a code for “Heil Hitler” and is used by neo-Nazis to identify themselves. The same screen name, Flak 88, was adopted by a poster at the white power website, stormfront.org. It is reasonable to conclude that Garlasco would have been fully aware of this symbolism when he chose this name. He even uses it on his license plate (a practice which is banned in Germany) and as a screen name on websites unrelated to his Nazi collection.

It is bizarre enough for a “human rights” activist to choose the name of a gun as an internet screen name and for his car license plate. Coupled with the neo-Nazi iconography, however, the adoption of “Flak88” as Garlasco’s alter ego is evidence at the very least of highly questionable moral judgment.

Read the whole thing.

The next time you read a Human Rights Watch report that is critical of Israel, please think about the chances that someone like Marc Garlasco is going to give Israel a fair hearing.

Israel Matzav: Human Rights Watch defends a Nazi fetish

Israel Matzav: HRW researcher Marc Garlasco: Nazi fetishist or ‘serious military historian’?

HRW researcher Marc Garlasco: Nazi fetishist or ‘serious military historian’?

You decide:

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Israel Matzav: HRW researcher Marc Garlasco: Nazi fetishist or ‘serious military historian’?