Human Rights Watch - Obsession with Israel

The Sunday Times (London) has just published an article on Human Rights Watch's most controversial ex-employee, Marc Garlasco (whose hobby was collecting Nazi memorabilia). The article also nails HRW on their obsession with Israel/Palestine above other conflict zones in the world.

Every year, Human Rights Watch puts out up to 100 glossy reports — essentially mini books — and 600-700 press releases, according to Daly, a former journalist for The Independent.

Some conflict zones get much more coverage than others. For instance, HRW has published five heavily publicised reports on Israel and the Palestinian territories since the January 2009 war.

In 20 years they have published only four reports on the conflict in Indian-controlled Kashmir, for example, even though the conflict has taken at least 80,000 lives in these two decades, and torture and extrajudicial murder have taken place on a vast scale. Perhaps even more tellingly, HRW has not published any report on the postelection violence and repression in Iran more than six months after the event.

When I asked the Middle East director Sarah Leah Whitson if HRW was ever going to release one, she said: “We have a draft, but I’m not sure I want to put one out.” Asked the same question, executive director Kenneth Roth told me that the problem with doing a report on Iran was the difficulty of getting into the country.

I interviewed a human-rights expert at a competing organisation in Washington who did not wish to be named because “we operate in a very small world and t’s not done to criticise other human-rights organisations”. He told me he was “not surprised” that HRW has still not produced a report on the violence in Iran: “They are thinking about how it’s going to be used politically in Washington. And it’s not a priority for them because Iran is just not a bad guy that they are interested in highlighting. Their hearts are not in it. Let’s face it, the thing that really excites them is Israel.”

Noah Pollak, a New York writer who has led some of the criticisms against HRW, points out that it cares about Palestinians when maltreated by Israelis, but is less concerned if perpetrators are fellow Arabs. For instance, in 2007 the Lebanese army shelled the Nahr al Bared refugee camp near Tripoli (then under the control of Fatah al Islam radicals), killing more than 100 civilians and displacing 30,000. HRW put out a press release — but it never produced a report.

Such imbalance was at the heart of a public dressing-down that shook HRW in October. It came from the organisation’s own founder and chairman emeritus, the renowned publisher Robert Bernstein, who took it to task in The New York Times for devoting its resources to open and democratic societies rather than closed ones. (Originally set up as Helsinki Watch, the group’s original brief was to expose abuses of human rights behind the iron curtain.)

“Nowhere is this more evident than its work in the Middle East,” he wrote. “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… than of any other country in the region.”

Bernstein pointed out that Israel has “a population of 7.4m, is home to at least 80 human-rights organisations, a vibrant free press, a democratically elected government, a judiciary that frequently rules against the government…and probably more journalists per capita than any other country in the world… Meanwhile the Arab and Iranian regimes rule over some 350m people and most remain brutal, closed and autocratic”.

Bernstein concluded that if HRW did not “return to its founding mission and the spirit of humility that animated it… its credibility will be seriously undermined and its important role in the world significantly diminished”. HRW’s response was ferocious — and disingenuous. In their letters to the paper, Roth and others made it sound as if Bernstein had said that open societies and democracies should not be monitored at all.

It turns out that even Garlasco was not as enthused about the anti-Israel line of HRW as his bosses in New York wanted him to be:

Associates of Garlasco have told me that there had long been tensions between Garlasco and HRW’s Middle East Division in New York — perhaps because he sometimes stuck his neck out and did not follow the HRW line. Garlasco himself apparently resented what he felt was pressure to sex up claims of Israeli violations of laws of war in Gaza and Lebanon, or to stick by initial assessments even when they turned out to be incorrect.

In June 2006, Garlasco had alleged that an explosion on a Gaza beach that killed seven people had been caused by Israeli shelling. However, after seeing the details of an Israeli army investigation that closely examined the relevant ballistics and blast patterns, he subsequently told the Jerusalem Post that he had been wrong and that the deaths were probably caused by an unexploded munition in the sand. But this went down badly at Human Rights Watch HQ in New York, and the admission was retracted by an HRW press release the next day.

Emphasis mine.

Israel - the "faith homeland" of Jews?

A columnist for the Dallas Morning News, Mark Davis, has written an article where he also presumes to tell American Jews what we should think about Israel and the Obama administration - American Jews and the Israel conundrum.

His article reveals a deep misunderstanding about the nature of Israel and what it means to most American Jews.

He writes:

There is something fundamentally wrong when I care more about Israel than the American Jewish community.

As a Christian, I have the most fundamental of differences with my Jewish brothers and sisters. I believe Jesus is the Son of God, and they don't. But when it comes to the precious value of Israel as an ally that needs protection and support, we have another disagreement. I am passionate about it, and they are not.
I mean that collectively. To the Jewish readers who truly care about their faith homeland: I know you exist. And I ask you: Why aren't you in the majority?

The basis for my observation is the whopping 77 percent of the Jewish vote garnered by Barack Obama in 2008. This is roughly the same percentage won by Democratic presidential nominees John Kerry and Al Gore
I have no problem absorbing the apparent fact that America's Jewish population leans sharply liberal. Fine. So do America's black community and its Hispanic community. But in siding with Democrats– and this president in particular – Jewish voters placed a leftist agenda above the interests of the nation that is their faith homeland.

Mr. Davis appears to be unaware that the Democratic Party has, historically, been just as supportive of Israel as the Republican Party. President Harry Truman recognized the state of Israel minutes after its founding in 1948. It was President Dwight Eisenhower (Republican) who in 1956 told the Israelis that they had to leave the Sinai Peninsula (after they seized it in collusion with the British and the French). Richard Nixon, who seems to have been an anti-semite, airlifted arms to Israel after the Yom Kippur War broke out. President George H.W. Bush threatened to withhold loan guarantees from Israel in order to get Prime Minister Shamir to the negotiating table. President Bill Clinton tried to make peace between Israel and the Palestinians at the end of his term in 2000. President George W. Bush supported almost everything the Israeli government wanted, but refused Israel permission to fly over Iraq on the way to bomb the Iranian nuclear installations. But all of these presidents, and the U.S. Congress, have for many decades supported Israel, regardless of their party affiliations.

Barack Obama may be more liberal than the current crop of hard-right Republicans, but that doesn't make him any less supportive of Israel. And unlike them, he recognizes that the settlements are an obstacle to peace negotiations with the Palestinians. (On their side, the Palestinians also have many obstacles to peace negotiations with Israel, including the fact that they are split into Hamas and Fatah).

The second problem with his essay is his reference to Israel as the "faith homeland" of American Jews. I must admit this is the first time I have heard this curious phrase. In all of my reading about Zionism, Israel is referred to as, among other things, the national homeland of the Jewish people, or as the state of the Jewish people. That is, all the Jewish people, regardless of whether they are religious or not. Being Jewish does not mean that one belongs to a particular "faith." There are Jewish atheists and agnostics who are Zionists. Being Jewish may mean that one practices the Jewish religion - but unlike Christianity, Judaism as a religion is not centered around faith. From the Protestant standpoint, in fact, Judaism is centered around works, which classic Protestant theology has a lot of problems with.

By calling Israel the "faith homeland" of the American Jewish community, Mr. Davis is denying the way that many Jews define themselves - as members of a worldwide people, as members of the Jewish nation. He is trying to force Jewish identity into a Protestant model. There are some Jews who probably would agree with him - this was certainly the model of the classic Reform movement in the United States - but I suspect that most Jews would find this term as strange as I do.

Obama not an insult to all Jews

Zionist Organization of America: Obama's Israel stance 'an insult' to all Jews.

Well, no. Maybe an insult to very right wing Jews who don't want to compromise at all to make peace, but not an insult to all Jews.

Naomi Klein comes to Ithaca College

Naomi Klein, whose visit to Israel I blogged about last summer, is coming to Ithaca College to speak on her book, "The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism."

For some interesting blogposts on Klein's advocating boycotting Israel, see a series of posts by David Schraub on his blog The Debate Link.

Read Jonathan Chait's takedown of Klein's book - Dead Left.

Needless to say, I'm not looking forward to her visit.

I'm going to Tartu!

I just made my plane reservations for my summer journeys this year. I'm going to Israel for a little over a month, and then I'll be heading north - very far north - to Latvia, Estonia, and Denmark. The reason I'm traveling there is because the international Society of Biblical Literature conference is in Tartu, Estonia, in the last week of July. My paper proposal was accepted and I decided to go. I haven't been to the international SBL yet and thought it would be interesting.

When I called my travel agent yesterday, she had quite a job on her hands, trying to figure out a reasonable itinerary for me that wouldn't break the bank. When I leave Israel on July 21, I'll be flying on Air Baltic to Riga (there's a direct flight from Tel Aviv, who knew), staying there for a couple of days, and then flying to Tartu, where I'll be spending about a week. After the conference, I'll be taking another Air Baltic flight to Copenhagen, where I'll spend another couple of days, and then back to Ithaca, New York.

I was looking online for some interesting photo of Tartu to include in this post, and stumbled across an amusing blog about Estonia written by Justin Petrone, an American who lives there and is married to an Estonian - Itching for Eestimaa. He's also written a book about his experiences in Estonia - My Estonia: Passport forgery, meat jelly eaters, and other stories.

Malkin Award Nominees - Hagai Ben-Artzi and Andrew Sullivan

Andrew Sullivan gives Netanyahu's brother-in-law the Malkin Award nomination, which he richly deserves for his idiotic statement that Obama is an anti-semite. But Sullivan himself equally deserves it for his own idiotic statement about the fact that Hagai Ben Artzi's interview was on Army Radio. He says: "Army Radio? Not good. But it's only a matter of time, I have learned, between anyone actually criticizing the policies of Israel and being deemed a you-know-what."

What does Ben-Artzi's interview being on Army Radio have to do with anything? Sullivan is revealing his abysmal ignorance of Israeli society with this remark. Army Radio (Galei Zahal) is staffed by young draftees who are often challenging to authority and by no means always follows the government "line" on an issue. It is not a rigidly government-run radio station that interviews people like Ben-Artzi in order to covertly express government policies or opinions, which seems to be what Sullivan is implying.

I wouldn't accuse Sullivan of being anti-semitic, but I do hold him responsible for his headlong run into the right-wing/left-wing convergence that believes that Israel can do no right. I wonder when he'll start blogging about the U.S.S. Liberty - when he does, we'll know he's disappeared into the black hole of reflexive anti-Israelism.

He is increasingly revealing his real ignorance of Israel, Israeli society, and the complex history of Palestine/Israel in the 20th century. Before he shoots off his mouth more, he needs to sit down and do some serious reading for a few months. He should take a hint from his fellow Atlantic blogger, Ta-Nehisi Coates, who when he wants to write about something serious, like the Civil War, sits down, reads a lot, visits Civil War sites, talks to people who know a lot, and then writes very insightful and thoughtful posts about contentious topics.

Day of Rage over the Hurva?

Apparently there's something truly offensive about Israel rebuilding a synagogue in the Jewish Quarter: Jerusalem on high alert after Hamas announces 'day of rage.'

Warnings of widespread violence in Jerusalem on Monday proved to be unneeded, but police say the real test will be Tuesday.

Hamas announced a "day of rage" in response to the dedication of the restored Hurva synagogue in the Old City's Jewish Quarter, police said. Large forces will continue to be deployed throughout the city, with 3,000 police and border police officers stationed in East Jerusalem and neighboring villages.

Police on Monday attributed the relative quiet to the limitations placed on entry to Temple Mount and to the extensive police work. Palestinian commentators said Monday the general Palestinian public seems to disapprove of the leadership's attempts to fan the flames.

The quiet does not appear to have been affected by attempts of senior Hamas and Fatah officials to ratchet up the violence. On Sunday, Fatah's Mahmoud Dahlan and Hatem Abdelkader called on residents of East Jerusalem and Israeli Arabs to arrive and defend the Al-Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount.

Palestinian Liberation Organization Executive Committee chairman Yasser Abed Rabo called on Israel to refrain from dedicating the Hurva synagogue. Hamas, too, warned of bloodshed if the synagogue is dedicated, and similar warnings have been made by Egyptian and Jordanian diplomats.

So let me get this - Hamas, Fatah, Egypt, and Jordan all say that if a synagogue is dedicated, it will lead to bloodshed. Why? Nobody pretends that the Hurva was anything but a synagogue, and that it was destroyed in the fighting in 1948. Why should its rebuilding and rededication cause anyone a problem? It's nowhere near Al-Aqsa, it's in the middle of the Jewish Quarter. Any final status agreement, regardless of what else it says, will give the Jewish Quarter to Israel. It won't be under Palestinian sovereignty.

I think that Jeffrey Goldberg is right:

The fact that Hamas -- and even some in Fatah -- are protesting this rededication means that we might still be at square one, which is to say, where Arafat was in 2000, when he denied the historical Jewish connection to Jerusalem. This is not about building apartments for Jews near Arab villages on the outskirts of Jerusalem. I think Arab East Jerusalem should be the capital of Palestine, and if the price of peace is turning over those apartment buildings to the Palestinian Authority, then so be it. But this is about denying the right of Judaism to exist in its holiest city.