— that he has Goldstone, as well as the poisoned HRW well from which he drank so deeply, well and truly in his sights:
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. [My emphasis]
It's hard to see how HRW can retrieve its reputation after this, from such a source. It is also a terrible indictment of Goldstone (himself a former HRW board member) for accepting the gross moral inversion of such tainted 'evidence'. But Bernstein's critique is more important even than as an attack on HRW or Goldstone himself. For Goldstone was merely delivering the brief laid down by the UN Human Rights Council. And the real point is that, in its fanatical animosity towards Israel and its aim of delegitimising and destroying it, the UNHRC represents the obscene corruption of actual human rights by the 'human rights' agenda, which turns third world aggressors into victims and their true victims into aggressors.
Its most high-profile target is Israel, whose attempts to defend its citizens against genocidal attack — in which it went to unparalleled lengths to protect Gaza's civilians — were wickedly represented by Goldstone as a deliberate attempt to kill those civilians. But it is not just the UNHRC, Goldstone or HRW which targets Israel in this way but most of the 'human rights' world. With the exception of those 'human rights' lawyers who are committed Jews, that world persecutes Israel and hounds it to hoped-for extinction on the basis that its very existence is an affront to 'human rights'. That's why in Britain, the cultural fons et origo of this moral corruption, no Israeli who has played a prominent role in Israel's military campaigns against Palestinian terrorism can set foot in the country because 'human rights' lawyers say that as soon as they do they will launch prosecutions against them for 'war crimes'.
What Bernstein says about HRW can thus be applied to this entire rotten 'human rights' culture which takes the side of genocidal fanatics and persecutes their victims. By laying this out in such a crude and conspicuous fashion against Israel in Gaza, Goldstone has inadvertently called the whole of 'human rights' into question. That is why his report has produced such anguished condemnation from the people from whom he least expected it, those in the 'human rights' community who understand very well the damage he has done to their cause. That's why they have turned on him, to his manifest bewilderment; which is why in turn he is trying to justify himself, claiming that he is 'saddened' by the UNHRC's blood-libel resolution on the back of his 'mission' — and even absurdly trying to distance himself from his own report by telling The Forward (http://www.forward.com/articles/116269/)
If this was a court of law, there would have been nothing proven. I wouldn't consider it in any way embarrassing if many of the allegations turn out to be disproved.
And yet on the basis of these allegations he accused Israel of deliberately targeting innocent civilians to be killed.
The man is digging his own professional grave — and helping to bury within it the credibility of the whole 'human rights' circus itself.
|
Editor's End Notes [1]
Rights Watchdog, Lost in the Mideast"
In repeatedly condemning Israel, and mostly ignoring closed regimes in the Middle East, Human Rights Watch is drifting from its core values, and its role as a global arbiter of morality. 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,[2] 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. [2] A video of Colonel Richard Kemp, the former commander of British forces in Afghanistan, addressing HRC is available here. (tip: Boris Celser) It is also available here. He said that "during Operation Cast Lead, the Israel Defence Forces did more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone than any other army in the history of warfare." The transcript is here. Other videos include one of an IDF captain explaining in Arabic that Israel went into Gaza because of what Hamas was doing. It includes interesting footage. Find it here. Another video features a disfigured Israeli, Dr. Mirele Siderer, a doctor who cares for both Jewish and Arab patients and who was invited early on by Judge Goldstone to testify. She did. Now that the report is out, she asks him: "Why Didn't You Tell Me Your Panel Declared Israel Guilty From the Start? Why Were You Silent When I Was Attacked?" (tip: Fred Reifenberg) See it here. This is an emotionally moving video, which sums up how Goldstone has ignored the human rights of Israeli sufferers of Hamas attacks. Also of interest is a video that presents the viewer with 12 situations that involve international humanitarian law during wartime? Try it. See how well you know the law. |
Melanie Phillips is a Daily Mail columnist. She also writes for the Jewish Chronicle and is a panellist on BBC Radio Four's Moral Maze. Her most recent book is 'Londonistan', published by Encounter and Gibson Square.
This article appeared October 20, 2009 in The Spectator
http://www.spectator.co.uk/melaniephillips/5455761/
how-human-rights-have-turned-into-inhuman-wrongs.thtml
_________________________End of
Story___________________________
| HOME | September-October 2009 Featured Stories | Background Information | News On The Web |