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.

Are you threatening us?

So the wolf is finally starting to slip out of its sheep clothing. Oh goody.

For the past few months I have been receiving emails saying that I should stop complaining about all the things I complain about, and start focusing on what really matters. And what is that you ask? Well, I think the answer is plain and clear in today's Jerusalem Post. The new Democratic government in the US, according to The New York Times, is telling Israel: "you either start doing things our way or we are going to withhold support for you in the United Nations."

First of all, that is simply not nice. It seems to me that the US is being childish. "You either do it our way or we are going to get you back," is in essence what Obama and his Jewish chief-of-staff, Rahm Emanuelle, are saying. I think that's what happens when you put people in positions of huge power when they don't have the credentials for the job. This isn't an Affirmative Action program. This is the real deal and unfortunately, the lives of many innocent people in many places around the globe are depending on the president to actually understand foreign policy and real politik. (I haven't used that phrase since fourth year undergrad. Never thought I would use it again.) Obama might be a good guy if you meet him on the street and he might have done some wonderful things in Chicago, but Barak Hussein Obama: WE AREN'T IN KANSAS ANY MORE!

Second of all, are you Americans going to stand by while your newbie president threatens the only real democracy in the Middle East? I suspect that after all the media get their two cents in, the answer would be a big fat YES. I don't blame you because I am sure it is difficult to tell who the good guys are and who the bad guys are at this point in this convoluted mess of a story we call the Middle East Peace process. I, for one, am waiting for Armageddon -- it's playing out in Meggido you know and that isn't too far from my house. About a two hour drive and voila, you can be there when it all happens.

Third, I know that this is just a technicality for the Americans, but you are bullying an independent country. You can't ride shipshod over another nation-state because you don't like what they are doing. I realize that all the power is on your side -- you can withdraw your financial support and heaven knows that would be painful; you can reverse your rhetoric and within days the entire Islamic world would be knocking at your door inviting you to a sleepover; and if all that doesn't work you can implement trade sanctions and encourage political and market isolation. Agreed. You can do that. And if all else fails, you can drive down to New Mexico and fire up one of your nuclear war-heads. We're a small country, you wouldn't need many to wipe us off the map entirely.

And then my friend, Mr. Obama, you will have played into the hands of the exact people you are supposedly trying to bring around to your way of thinking. You will be the next Saddam Hussein (you already carry that name) or Ahmadinejad. And you think you have your foreign policy ducks lined up nicely now. Just wait until Israel isn't there to save you!