Did someone put something in the drinking water?

I don't know what's going on today or if this is just a case of a copycat "crime", but all of a sudden some of Israel's most vocal and supposedly unbiased opponents are jumping on the "Israel-is-not-so-bad" bandwagon. I don't know what's going on and frankly I am suspicious but I guess I might as well enjoy it for as long as it lasts -- or until the end of the world, which is what newly positive press coverage like this suggests.

Here is the text of a soft-pedalled mea cupla from the Jew-hating Jew who used to run Human Rights Watch. It was first published in the New York Times on October 20th (today) and then re-reported by the NGO Monitor.

HRW's Founder Condemns Moral Failure

Robert L. Bernstein, the founder of Human Rights Watch, published a very important critique of the organization in the New York Times (October 20, 2009). In declaring his decision to “publicly join the group’s critics,” Bernstein endorses the conclusion that HRW has lost all credibility over the Middle East.

Bernstein’s op-ed follows publication of NGO Monitor’s systematic report demonstrating HRW’s blatant bias and lack of credibility on the Middle East. These findings have been amplified by the recent call from leading experts including Elie Wiesel, Prof Alan Dershowitz and former CIA Director R. James Woolsey for HRW’s board members to “institute a full independent review and reform in the organization.”

HRW’s moral failures, as denounced by Bernstein, were highlighted by the effort to solicit funds in Saudi Arabia, and exposure of the organization’s Middle East division, dominated by anti-Israel activists Sarah Leah Whitson and Joe Stork. Meanwhile ‘senior military analyst’ Marc Garlasco, responsible for many claims used to condemn Israel, was revealed to be an obsessive collector of Nazi memorabilia.

During this time, HRW has played a leading role in lobbying intensively on behalf of the discredited Goldstone report. Richard Goldstone himself was an HRW board member until forced to resign when NGO Monitor noted the conflict of interest.

Rights Watchdog, Lost in the Mideast
Robert L. Bernstein
October 20, 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.

Israel, with a population of 7.4 million, is home to at least 80 human rights organizations, a vibrant free press, a democratically elected government, a judiciary that frequently rules against the government, a politically active academia, multiple political parties and, judging by the amount of news coverage, probably more journalists per capita than any other country in the world — many of whom are there expressly to cover the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Meanwhile, the Arab and Iranian regimes rule over some 350 million people, and most remain brutal, closed and autocratic, permitting little or no internal dissent. The plight of their citizens who would most benefit from the kind of attention a large and well-financed international human rights organization can provide is being ignored as Human Rights Watch’s Middle East division prepares report after report on Israel.

Human Rights Watch has lost critical perspective on a conflict in which Israel has been repeatedly attacked by Hamas and Hezbollah, organizations that go after Israeli citizens and use their own people as human shields. These groups are supported by the government of Iran, which has openly declared its intention not just to destroy Israel but to murder Jews everywhere. This incitement to genocide is a violation of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

Leaders of Human Rights Watch know that Hamas and Hezbollah chose to wage war from densely populated areas, deliberately transforming neighborhoods into battlefields. They know that more and better arms are flowing into both Gaza and Lebanon and are poised to strike again. And they know that this militancy continues to deprive Palestinians of any chance for the peaceful and productive life they deserve. Yet Israel, the repeated victim of aggression, faces the brunt of Human Rights Watch’s criticism.

The organization is expressly concerned mainly with how wars are fought, not with motivations. To be sure, even victims of aggression are bound by the laws of war and must do their utmost to minimize civilian casualties. Nevertheless, there is a difference between wrongs committed in self-defense and those perpetrated intentionally.

But how does Human Rights Watch know that these laws have been violated? In Gaza and elsewhere where there is no access to the battlefield or to the military and political leaders who make strategic decisions, it is extremely difficult to make definitive judgments about war crimes. Reporting often relies on witnesses whose stories cannot be verified and who may testify for political advantage or because they fear retaliation from their own rulers.. Significantly, Col. Richard Kemp, the former commander of British forces in Afghanistan and an expert on warfare, has said that the Israel Defense Forces in Gaza “did more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone than any other army in the history of warfare.”

Only by returning to its founding mission and the spirit of humility that animated it can Human Rights Watch resurrect itself as a moral force in the Middle East and throughout the world. If it fails to do that, its credibility will be seriously undermined and its important role in the world significantly diminished.

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

Bite me, World!

Since I am not technologically skilled enough to download the YouTube video directly, I am sending a link to a speech given by Col. Richard Kemp, previously the British forces' commander in Afganistan. He was speaking at the Human Rights Council Special Session on the Goldstone Report. Anyone who follows world politics with any degree of consistency knows how frighteningly bias the UN Human Rights Council is. The fact that Col. Kemp said what he said is worth acknowledging. He isn't a Jew and sticking his neck out for Israel in such an unfriendly environment deserves mention.

Here's the link: www.youtube.com/watch?v=NX6vyT8RzMo

Is a seat upgrade worth two kosher meals?

I am willing to bet that you have never asked yourself this question. And frankly, neither did I until last week when I thought I was faced with precisely that dilemma.

On the first leg of our return trip to Israel midway through last week, Ari and I realized too late that for some inexplicable reason we were not on the list of people who requested kosher food. Mid-air there isn't a lot one can do about this and despite the flight crew's first instinct to blame it on me, they then tried to make amends by offering us non-kosher food!

When I declined their offer I suspect that they simply mentally filed me as an uncooperative passenger whom they had tried to appease and then, they washed their hands of me.

Obviously they didn't know me very well. In such situations I would compare myself to grease -- not so easy to scrub off. And that's when I went on my second plane-related rampage of the trip. Fortunately Ari is well versed in his mother's scene-making skills so it didn't phase him when, upon entering the plane for the second leg of our return trip, I told him to go ahead and sit down because I wanted to speak to the stewardess.

He knew enough to hightail it out of there no questions asked. (You have to train kids to do this; it's not their natural instinct.)

I then proceeded to question the poor unsuspecting stewardess about my kosher food for this segment of the journey. Naturally she checked her list and naturally, we weren't on it. First she tried to blame it on me saying that I must have been very late buying my tickets, but when I presented my ticket receipt dated July 26 and with "kosher food" listed in bold letters, she was hard pressed to continue with that tact. And that's when I went in for the kill.

I will spare you all the details because yes, they are gorry. Suffice it to say that two other kosher passengers were so taken with my performance that they offered me their meals. I declined. That would have let the airline of the hook way too easily. Plus, taking other people's kosher meals just transferred the problem from my "plate" to theirs. That didn't seem fair.

Now while the stewardess was busy trying to solve what I had pretty much positioned as a minor hate crime on the part of the airline, Ari was walking through the economy section of the plane. As I neared him he turned around and said: "Ema, turn around, our seats aren't here. I went too far."

With a quick glance I realized that seats 11a and 11c were not in Economy. We quickly turned around and found our fabulous seats in what BMI calls Premium Economy or something like that. Without going into details once again, it was simply too good to be true.

The problem was that I couldn't figure out if the airline had made a mistake or not. And considering that I had just made a bit of scene at entrance of the plane, I didn't feel like I was in any position to inquire. So I sat there for the rest of the flight trying to figure out what must have happened and what it could possibly mean. Was it a cruel joke from a higher power or just a fluke? And if it was a fluke, had I lost my ability to complain about my kosher food issue from such a fancy seat? Or was I simply going to be perceived as an overindulged complainer? Was I going to be found out and sent to the back of the plane or would the airline totally overlook its error? All this thinking was exhausting (although I had a great seat for an exhausted person).

I have no idea what the answers to these questions are, but I have to tell you that getting the big, fancy, cushy seat changed everything and left me perplexed for the rest of the trip home. Oh yes, and in the end, we also got kosher food. Speculate away. I sure am.

How far do we have to walk to find a cure?

When I got up today I was looking forward to the first annual Breast Cancer Awareness Walk that was held in Ra'anana in honour of two wonderful local women who succumbed to the awful disease in the past few years. Now that the walk is over, all I can remember is how sad I am.

The first woman honoured today was Mindy Greenberg who died at 43, four years ago. I didn't know her very well but everyone who did liked her a lot. The first time I met Mindy she called me to ask me to please have my son Zeve stop trying to drown her son Noam when they played together in the local pool. At the time I was mortified because we all know how much everyone loves getting calls from strangers telling them that their five-year olds are potential murderers! The biggest irony of that call was that pretty much ever since then, the boys have been very good friends. Such good friends in fact that Mindy commented on it to me about a week before she died.

The second woman was my very good friend Diane Taragin. Diane died almost a year ago and not a day goes by that I don't think about her. She was a special woman -- she was very serious about her Judaism but you could always count on her to say such outrageous things that you thought you would choke with laughter. Of course, all those outrageous things were probably things that the rest of us were thinking -- she just had the guts to put her thoughts into words and throw them out there for public consumption.

There's so much I miss about her that I couldn't make a list even if I wanted to, but the one thing I want to mention is that not long after her funeral I was back in the Ra'anana graveyard again for another funeral. On the way out I stopped by her grave to leave a stone and on the way into her row I noticed that very near by was the grave of one of Israel's most notorious mobsters who had, just prior to Diane's death, died when his car inexplicably (?) blew up on the streets of Tel Aviv.

I burst into laughter because all I could think was that if Diane knew that such a dubious character was in her hallowed row she would have started a campaign to have him moved elsewhere. And if she had come across him in the Netherworld (which I guess would have been unlikely since she is with the good guys and he definitely is NOT), she would have given him a piece of her mind about his behaviour and its impact the country.

And that's why I came home today much sadder than when I left. I don't want to talk about these women in the past tense. I don't understand why, despite their access to excellent medical care and their families' willingness to do anything to help them, there was nothing that could be done. I don't understand why bad things happen to good people. I don't understand why good things happen to bad people. There's a lot of things that I just don't get.

However, since there probably are no satisfactory answers to these questions, those of us left behind will keep telling stories, laughing at the memories, and walking to find a cure.

Now I know why we should let sleeping dogs lie

Apparently I have watched way too many Disney movies in my day because I really thought that dogs talked to each other -- in English. I was acutely aware of this preconceived notion yesterday as we left the dog kennel section of the local dog pound with our new puppy.

After our friend and pound veterinarian Sarah (the same Sarah from the Half Ironman Weekend) had let our new puppy out of her cage, all the other dogs started barking as our new puppy strutted down the pound corridor for the last time. I am sure beyond a shadow of a doubt that all the other dogs were barking: "good luck pal, and come back for us if things are good on the outside." And I am pretty sure that my new puppy barked back: "I'm off to brighter pastures boys!"

I refuse to retract my speaking dog theory but since I was forced back into reality once we got home I now see that real-life dogs are nothing like those fake movie dogs. Beethoven was very independent and so were Lady and the Tramp. They went out for a spaghetti dinner as I recall. And what about all those clever dogs in Cats & Dogs? Humans seemed almost inconsequential in their lives beyond providing some food and shelter. This does not appear to be the case in real life.

Oh, and I must seguay for a second to THANK (not) everyone I bumped into yesterday who said: "Are you crazy?" or just burst into laughter when they saw us walking our new dog. If I hear the phrase: "you're in for a month of hell" again I am going to knock someone off. You all know who you are and I strongly advise that you keep an eye open when you see me and my dog coming. If not, he is going to pee on you once I teach him how to pee-on-demand. I would like to say that he will bite you if you aren't nice but he weighs all of three kilos and he has a sweet temperament so I am not counting on much in the tough-dog department.

Regardless of what I thought dogs were like, I am happy to say that we have survived the first 24 hours without a major incident. Of course, peeing on my beautiful Italian ceramics wasn't exactly the best thing that happened yesterday. And I am sure that the dog would be happier if Yael would stop trying to dress her up in doll clothes and carry her around.

Either way, I feel like our transition to Israel is nearing completion. The dog is really the icing on the cake.

(A few side notes... first, you will notice that I didn't mention the dog's name and that's because it has changed twice since we brought her home. Poor dog is going to end up with multiple personalities. I wanted to name her Tellulah but no one else would agree to that. Then we moved to Rocky but that was perplexing to some people because it's a she-dog (for now). We think we have finally arrived at the name Pepper, but you will have to wait until my next post for confirmation.

(Second of all, I would have posted a photograph of the dog IF WE HAD A CAMERA! But thanks to some thoughtless person on the 16 bus that stops in Picadilly Circus, we no longer own one.)