Why do human rights groups ignore Palestinians’ war of words?

By Robert L. Bernstein, Published: September 27




Two dominant forces have defined Arab nations in modern times: autocratic leadership that has denied basic freedoms to its own people, and a deeply ingrained and institutionalized anti-Semitism, centered on a hatred of Israel. Freedom is a growing possibility in light of the Arab Spring, but for this freedom to lead to peace, progress must be made in ending hate speech and incitement to genocide. This is particularly true in Gaza, the West Bank, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Iran. Yet at this moment of possibility, the United Nations is fueling discord and anti-Semitism.

The United Nations is doing this by granting legitimacy to Hamas, a terrorist Islamic group, and the Palestinian Authority headed by Mahmoud Abbas. A vote to add to the United Nations a new member state that calls for the elimination of its neighbor and glorifies terrorism will make peace harder — not easier — to achieve. While Hamas’s calls for genocide most certainly should be condemned, those who would accept the position Abbas has taken, even as recently as Friday, when he submitted to the United Nations an application for statehood, should be aware of the work of Palestinian Media Watch. The group, an Israeli research institute focused on monitoring the messages of all aspects of Palestinian media, has detailed some of the deception of the Palestinian Authority, even during moments of peace talks. For example, while portraying himself to the West as a man of compromise, Abbas said flatly last October that “we refuse to recognize a Jewish state.”

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Most shockingly, human rights groups have become the unwitting accomplices of the United Nations as almost every mainstream human rights group has ignored hate speech and incitement to genocide, not only against Israel but against all Jews. The call to genocide has been accompanied by a sophisticated arms buildup along Israel’s Lebanon border over the past five years, defying Security Council Resolution 1701, which called in 2006 for an end to hostilities between Hezbollah and Israel. Even after the 2009 war in Gaza, particularly since the Arab Spring has opened up the Sinai, thousands more rockets continue to pour into Gaza, circumventing the Israeli blockade.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/why-do-human-rights-groups-ignore-palestinians-war-of-words/2011/09/26/gIQAWU5y2K_story.html

Robert L. Bernstein, the former president and chairman of Random House, is chairman of the group Advancing Human Rights and founding chairman emeritus of Human Rights Watch.

was just a okay with him and HRW was demonizing or was it delegitimizing I forget Israel by saying it wrong? and he became a true hero of Israel when he revealed the shocking fact that Marc Galasco who wrote the report on Israel's use of WP in Gaza as a collector of WW2 memorabilia including Nazi memorabilia some of which Galasco has the nerve to think looks 'cool', which conclusively proved that Galasco is ....... whyb a an antisemitic Nazi sympathizer of course? well it was good enough for some

Robert L. Bernstein, the former president and chief executive of Random House, was the chairman of Human Rights Watch from 1978 to 1998.

it is a really simple point.

Don't you realize that arabs are just inert mindless drones that lack any motivation or will of their own. They need a catalyst in the form of Jewish oppression before they are whipped into bloodlust. Many people on this forum state this, of course not in these terms. Instead they say poor wee arabs and those mean Israelis. But the greater meaning is still there.

James Bone in New York


Robert Bernstein, the founder of Human Rights Watch, one of the world’s leading human rights organisations, accused the New York-based group of anti-Israeli bias yesterday.

Mr Bernstein turned on the organisation he created in 1978 in a New York Times opinion piece questioning the group’s work in the Middle East.

“As the founder of Human Rights Watch, its active chairman for 20 years and now founding chairman emeritus, I must do something that I never anticipated: I must publicly join the group’s critics,” he wrote.

“Human Rights Watch had as its original mission to pry open closed societies, advocate basic freedoms and support dissenters. But recently it has been issuing reports on the Israeli-Arab conflict that are helping those who wish to turn Israel into a pariah state.”
Mr Bernstein’s defection comes amid a worldwide row over a UN report by South African judge Richard Goldstone, a former Human Rights Watch board member, accusing Israel of war crimes in the Gaza War.

Moves are under way at the United Nations in New York for the 192-nation General Assembly to ask the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court to investigate the alleged abuses, even though only the 15-nation Security Council has the power to refer cases for prosecution.

Human Rights Watch has battled charges of anti-Israeli bias for many years. The Israeli Government said last month that the group had sunk to a “new low” when it emerged that the its senior military analyst was an avid collector of Nazi memorabilia. Human Rights Watch suspended Marc Garlasco, an American, who said his hobby was inspired by a German grandfather who had been conscripted into Hitler’s Army.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article6883034.ece

but Galasco did resign from HRW even though HRW did not feel that it was necessary

Though Garlasco initially responded to the allegations under the pen name Flak88,<30> writing "I would reply, but I don't want to encourage them... Anyway, I doubt if they read my book. More than anything else, it is related to my work." <30> He subsequently apologized, writing on Huffington Post, "I deeply regret causing pain and offense with a handful of juvenile and tasteless postings I made on two websites that study Second World War artifacts". Garlasco added, "I've never hidden my hobby, because there's nothing shameful in it, however weird it might seem to those who aren't fascinated by military history". He also wrote that the allegations of Nazi sympathies were "defamatory nonsense, spread maliciously by people with an interest in trying to undermine Human Rights Watch's reporting," and that "I work to expose war crimes and the Nazis were the worst war criminals of all time". He added, "

recisely because it's so obvious that the Nazis were evil, I never realized that other people, including friends and colleagues, might wonder why I care about these things". He went on to say that "I told my daughters, as I wrote in my book, that "the war was horrible and cruel, that Germany lost and for that we should be thankful".<3>

HRW Communications Director Emma Daly at first responded to the charge by saying, "Marc Garlasco is not pro-Nazi. These allegations are monstrous. He does not delve into Nazi memorabilia. Garlasco is a student of military history and he has an interest in military history". HRW later issued an official statement that the accusation against Garlasco "is demonstrably false and fits into a campaign to deflect attention from Human Rights Watch's rigorous and detailed reporting on violations of international human rights and humanitarian law by the Israeli government," adding that Garlasco "has never held or expressed Nazi or anti-Semitic views".<31> HRW associate director Carroll Bogert accused The Guardian of "repeat defamatory nonsense unworthy of newspaper," adding that "he allegations of pro-Nazi sympathies are part of a larger campaign to smear non-governmental organisations which criticise the Israel Defence Forces' conduct of the Gaza offensive".<32> Iain Levine, the watchdog's programme director responded by saying that "The Israeli government is trying to eliminate the space for legitimate criticism of the conduct of the IDF, and this is the latest salvo in that campaign".<33>

In what has been described by Ed Pilkington of The Guardian as an "abrupt change of tact" (sic) for Human Rights Watch,<33> Garlasco was "suspended with pay" from HRW pending an investigation.<1> According to Bogert, "e have questions as to whether we've learned everything we need to know".<34> Regarding the suspension, HRW has indicated "This is not a disciplinary measure. Human Rights Watch stands behind Garlasco's research and analysis".<4>

This page was last modified on 29 September 2011 at 04:23.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_Garlasco

however it did stand as an example of what can happen to Israel's perceived enemies much like Chaz Freeman

It is heartening to see their own founder recognize just how far the group has fallen.

Rights Watchdog, Lost in the Mideast


By ROBERT L. BERNSTEIN

Published: October 19, 2009


AS the founder of Human Rights Watch, its active chairman for 20 years and now founding chairman emeritus, I must do something that I never anticipated: I must publicly join the group’s critics. Human Rights Watch had as its original mission to pry open closed societies, advocate basic freedoms and support dissenters. But recently it has been issuing reports on the Israeli-Arab conflict that are helping those who wish to turn Israel into a pariah state.


At Human Rights Watch, we always recognized that open, democratic societies have faults and commit abuses. But we saw that they have the ability to correct them — through vigorous public debate, an adversarial press and many other mechanisms that encourage reform.

That is why we sought to draw a sharp line between the democratic and nondemocratic worlds, in an effort to create clarity in human rights. We wanted to prevent the Soviet Union and its followers from playing a moral equivalence game with the West and to encourage liberalization by drawing attention to dissidents like Andrei Sakharov, Natan Sharansky and those in the Soviet gulag — and the millions in China’s laogai, or labor camps.

When I stepped aside in 1998, Human Rights Watch was active in 70 countries, most of them closed societies. Now the organization, with increasing frequency, casts aside its important distinction between open and closed societies.

Nowhere is this more evident than in its work in the Middle East. The region is populated by authoritarian regimes with appalling human rights records. Yet 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.



http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/20/opinion/20bernstein.html

Sept. 27 (Bloomberg) -- Last week, Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, shared with me a list of the diverse steps the country has taken to protect Israel from what she and President Barack Obama consider to be scapegoating by the world body.

The list includes U.S. opposition to the “dozens of biased resolutions” directed against Israel in the General Assembly, and also notes the number of times the U.S. has fought for the appointment of Israelis to various posts within the UN, from which they are, as a matter of course, excluded.

It also offers a good illustration of the lengths the U.S. must go to in fighting the UN’s pathological, detestable and intermittently comical obsession with Israel -- one that prevents it from forcefully addressing many of the more dire problems confronting the Arab world.

At times, the list reads like satire. There is, for instance, this item: “The United States continues to call for the resignation of the UN Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights Situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Richard Falk. The United States has strongly condemned his anti-Semitic statements and web postings, as well as his deeply offensive statements in support of 9/11 conspiracy theories.”

The UN doesn’t consider it overly troubling that a top human-rights official has trafficked in anti-Semitic propaganda and is a Sept. 11 “truther.”

Then there was this uplifting episode, brought to us courtesy of Syria: “At the Human Rights Council, the United States forcefully opposed 2010 statements by a Syrian official that Israeli children are taught to sing songs about drinking the blood of Arabs. The United States worked with the HRC President to make clear that such language is outrageous and offensive and has no place in UN bodies.”

more...
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-09-26/as-muslim-world-frays-un-obsesses-over-israel-jeffrey-goldberg.html

Israel continues to get short shrift in the UN, whilst despotic states like North Korea, Sudan, and Zimbabwe are treated like family.