I oppose holding the FBI to a higher standard than a Mafia crime family, too. If the FBI starts acting like the Mafia, they shoud receive the same treatment (jail time) the Mafia does, and if the Mafia starts meeting the moral and ethical standards the FBI meets, however unlikely that is, they should no longer be treated like criminals.

The entire principle of law is based on this. The only reason anyone would defend the Mafia because “they can’t be expected to meet the same standards as the FBI” are people who, for their own selfish reasons, want to end the rule of law. People who would rather be nobles in a dark age, than mere citizens in a golden age.

But still, sure, the same number of releases on Iran brutally repressing a civilian revolt, and Israel refusing to open the Gaza crossings should absolutely merit the same number of releases from Human Rights Watch.

Starting to see why I’m saying that HRW concentrates on Israel to the exclusion of the rights abusers in her neighborhood yet?

That’s proof that HRW is exaggerating Israel’s flaws and minimizing her rights-abusing neighbors.

HRW is not the UN, which I never mentioned. Please deal with my actual arguments rather than rebutting things I have never said.

And it is simply not true that HRW has “finds more faults with Israel’s human rights records than China, Cuba, Egypt, Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Russia, and Libya (to name a few) combined.” This is an outrageous exaggeration of even NGO Watch’s findings. Please review the definition of “combined.”

Are you aware of the fact that when Israel kidnapped Adolf Eichmann out of Argentina in 1960 and spirited him to Israel to pay for his crimes, the UN passed a resolution condemning Israel for violating Argentina’s sovereignty?

This was in 1960, seven years before the UN was able to use the excuse of “occupation” to bash Israel. Are you starting to see a pattern? I sure have.

I am not imagining HRW’s obsession with Israel. It’s real. Stop denying it.

a) At the same time that I refrained from counting the joint Israel/Hamas denunciations against Israel’s total, I refrained from counting them against Hamas. If you’d prefer to add those joint Israel/Hamas denunciations to Israel’s total, you’ll have to simultaneously add them to Hamas’s total… which (obviously) makes HRW no less even-handed on the question than before.

Once again, Israel is one nation. Her neighbors equal four, plus the Palestinians. So HRW’s even-handedness would be shown by parity of news releases about Israel and about her neighbors, all of whom are far worse abusers of human rights. That is the argument, that HRW concentrates on democracies like Israel, to the detriment of dictatorships like Syria, autocracies like Egypt, and pretend democracies like Lebanon and Jordan, not to mention the thugocracies of the Palestinian territories.

The rest of your post is misdirection, exaggeration, and untruths. I’m not accusing you of lying. Just of passing along the lies that have been presented to you. For instance:

her suffocating blockade on Gaza that amounts to collective punishment against Gaza’s citizenry

That suffocating blockade doesn’t seem to be working very well.

Goods Flood Gaza’s Tunnels, Turning Border Area Into a Shopping Mecca
At Nijma market, refrigerators, flat-screen televisions, microwaves, air-conditioners, generators and ovens filled the tents, all at inflated prices, having been spirited into this town on the border with Egypt through tunnels under the sand. Some Gazans have even purchased cars smuggled in parts into the isolated Palestinian enclave.

As for the rest of your arguments, well, try reading some other sources for the true number of civilian deaths (note that Elder used Hamas sources for the identity of those killed, not the NGOs that have an agenda in reporting civilian deaths).

nor have any of Israel’s contiguous neighbors killed hundreds of innocent civilians over the past 12 months…

Oh, it’s only deaths that counts, is it? Not random rocket attacks on the civilian population, day after day after day? Let’s take a look at the monthly rocket calendars that Elder has been keeping for the past several years. 268 kassams have been launched since the end of the cease fire. The Gaza war did not happen in a vacuum. Over 8,000 missiles were launched from Gaza before Israel said enough and did something about it. And then there’s the fact of Hamas shooting from within the civilian population, hiding within the civilian population, and using civilians as human shields. Here’s a British Colonel who was the former commander of British troops in Afghanistan saying that the IDF did more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone than any other army in the history of warfare. I don’t suppose you’ve taken the time to listen to or read Col. Kemp’s words?

No. Because that wouldn’t fit the narrative, which you repeat verbatim, that Israel is the worst offender of human rights in the middle east, and quite possibly in the world today.

You focus on July-present, Ms. Yourish. In that time, as Cliff noted above, there were 10 press releases focused on alleged Israeli abuses. In the same time period, there were 12 that focused on Iran. Of course there has been a lot going on in Iran in the last 4 months. Similarly, there has been a lot going in and around Israel at various points in recent years.

I did take a look at the NGO Monitor Report (http://www.ngo-monitor.org/hrw.pdf). A plot on p. 43 shows relative HRW activity in the middle east furing 2004-08, based on a particular weighting scheme developed by NGO Watch. This shows that Israel ranks higher than any other country in 2004 and 2006, but ranks third in 2005, third (just ahead of fourth) in 2007 and second (just ahead of third) in 2008. Attempting to add the numbers over the whole five-year period, it looks like Israel mentions are 15% – 20% higher than Egypt and Iran.

Does this support “far more condemnations”? I would say not conclusively.

First is the issue of the particular weighting scheme used. Generally this seems roughly reasonable, and to my brief review the report looked largely defensible, but it is just one arbitrary weighting scheme, and NGO Monitor appears to be focused (like Ms. Yourish) in defending Israel in particular from criticism.

Second is the issue raised above – how much of this HRW activity represents responses to criticism of HRW from those who dislike its criticism of Israel? One might pick 10% as a rough but conservative estimate of this, based on discussion above. This gets the differences down pretty close to being in the noise.

a) At the same time that I refrained from counting the joint Israel/Hamas denunciations against Israel’s total, I refrained from counting them against Hamas. If you’d prefer to add those joint Israel/Hamas denunciations to Israel’s total, you’ll have to simultaneously add them to Hamas’s total… which (obviously) makes HRW no less even-handed on the question than before.

b) For all of the human rights crimes of Israel’s contiguous neighbors (and those crimes are many, and ghastly, and all amply categorized by HRW), none of Israel’s contiguous neighbors is currently occupying one foreign land (in violation of international law) and blockading a second foreign land (in violation of international law), nor have any of Israel’s contiguous neighbors killed hundreds of innocent civilians over the past 12 months… all things that, sadly, cannot be said about Israel at present.

“Your criteria is that a press release must “solely” concern Israel enables you to remove releases that are ultimately critical of Israel from the queue.”

How is that you categorize a joint condemnation of Hamas and Israel as something that is “ultimately critical of Israel”? If an HRW press release calls for “justice for the civilian victims on both sides of the Gaza war” and demands that experts “monitor how Israel and Hamas conduct domestic investigations of alleged laws-of-war violations” and bemoans “war crimes and possible crimes against humanity by both Israel and Hamas” and calls for accountability for the “serious crimes by all sides in the Gaza war” and says that “Mortar and rocket fire from Gaza by Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups, the report says, was deliberate and calculated to cause loss of civilian life and to terrorize Israeli civilians” (all quotes from HRW’s Oct. 12 release), is that “ultimately critical of Israel”? Of course not. So, again, if you wanna pile that release onto Israel’s queue of HRW condemnations, then you gotta pile it on the Palestinians’ queue as well. Each pile will increase by exactly one, and your case for HRW’s anti-Israel bias will remains as weak as it is currently.

“Even so. Let’s take your crazy criteria and compare: 33 releases on Israel. 51 on four nations plus the Palestinians. Sure. That’s totally even-handed, considering that Jordan has laws allowing “honor” killers to spend no time in jail, Egypt arrests bloggers and political opponents, Lebanon’s free TV station was burned down by Hezbullah, which is also building up with impunity its rockets aimed at Israel (under the nose of UNIFIL, no less), and, of course, there are the summary executions by Hamas, the laws repressing women that spring up regularly, the rocketing of Israeli civilians, the lack of the rule of law, and… well, you get the idea.”

All of the above are terrible crimes against humanity, and all of the above are vociferously criticized on the HRW website, as they should be. Now stack those crimes (horrible as they are) against Israel’s apartheid apparatus in the West Bank, her suffocating blockade on Gaza that amounts to collective punishment against Gaza’s citizenry (in violation of international law), and her murderous bombardment of a trapped and powerless people early this year and that statistical breakdown (51 condemnations of Israel’s contiguous neighbors vs. 33 condemnations of Israel) seems almost generous to Israel, on HRW’s part.

“Say, when was the last time HRW mentioned Egypt’s political prisoners? Just wondering.”

Most recently? Oct. 9. Just in the year 2009 (so far) I count 7 HRW press releases and reports in which HRW voices opposition to Egypt’s practice of imprisoning dissidents (Oct. 9, Aug. 17, Jun. 4, Jun. 2, Jun. 1, May 13, Mar. 4).

Any other questions?

Patrick Meighan
Culver City, CA