The Shafting of Palestinians and Human Rights by Pro-Palestinian Human Rights Organizations - by Bassam Tawil

...Each of the human rights organizations approached benefit immensely from the extremely generous support of foreign governments and charities such as the New Israel Fund and other well-known "liberal" foundations. The response the attorneys received speaks volumes.

Bassam Tawil..
Gatestone Institute..
21 May '18..

During the past 14 years, dozens of lawsuits have been filed in the Israeli judicial system by Arabs who have fled the Palestinian Authority (PA) and were given refuge in Israel. The sheer volume of cases and their remarkable similarity led the Israeli justice system to combine them and hear them as a unified case, heard in Jerusalem District Court, Justice Moshe Drori presiding, in 2017.

In each case, the victims, Palestinian Arabs living in PA-controlled areas, were suspected of collaborating with Israel -- a "crime" that can include anything from warning authorities of impending acts of terrorism to selling land to Jews.

These suspected "collaborators," after their abduction by the Palestinian Police, were imprisoned in the PA's dungeons and subjected to unspeakable torture. In their testimony before the court, the victims described brutal beatings, broken teeth, sexual assault, exposure to extreme heat and cold, being forced to sit on broken glass bottles, being hung repeatedly in various positions, and "medical treatment" by the Palestinian Authority's prison doctors that included injections of urine directly into their veins. In many cases, suspected collaborators were executed outright; other times, they were tortured to death and their family members raped and tortured. Even infants were not spared. These methods remain in force; this is how the Palestinian Authority deals with anyone suspected of cooperating with Jews: Death or torture.

During the trial, attorney for the Palestinian Authority changed their defense. First, they denied any involvement; later admitted that their police force had indeed "made arrests." They also tried to claim that due process had been adhered to throughout the period of incarceration.

A few months ago, Justice Drori found the Palestinian Authority directly responsible for the imprisonment and torture or murder of the 52 Palestinian plaintiffs, and required the PA to compensate the victims accordingly. In his decision, Justice Drori pointed to the overwhelming and incontrovertible evidence of torture, and the shocking similarity between the victims' testimony, which covers nearly 2,000 pages.

To collect compensation from the Palestinian Authority, however, the victims are required to submit a variety of medical and psychological assessments -- tests often expensive to run and which the Palestinians cannot afford. To help their clients, the Palestinians' attorneys, Barak Kedem and Aryeh Arbus, applied to 15 human rights organizations for assistance -- a "Who's Who" of human rights activism in the Israel-Arab conflict that are always the most vocal in the struggle against the Israeli "occupation," and regularly condemn the plight of Palestinian and Israeli Arabs under Israeli "occupation." These organizations are the greatest activists against demolition of homes belonging to terrorists' families, and the leaders of the fight against the "oppression" of Arabs by the Israel Police and the IDF, which they refer to as "occupation forces."

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Western European Governments and the Racism of Human Rights Organizations They Fund - by Judith Bergman

“Human Rights” organizations funded by Western European governments to fight for the human rights of Arabs, disregard violations of those very rights, when the violators are the PA.

Judith Bergman..
MiDA..
27 February '18..
Link: http://en.mida.org.il/2018/02/27/racism-human-rights-organizations/

The numerous foreign funded “human rights” organizations who operate in Israel do not actually care about human rights. In fact, recent events have shown that they do not seem to care about human beings as such, either. Instead, they are what most Israelis have always suspected them of being, namely political actors, who have organized themselves cleverly in benign sounding “rights” organizations in order to better pursue their nefarious agendas of destroying the state of Israel through “Lawfare“.

Last summer, the Jerusalem District Court determined that the Palestinian Authority (PA) was responsible for the kidnapping, torture and murder of dozens of suspected Arab “collaborators” within Israel, several of them with Israeli citizenship, between 1995 and 2002. The court proceedings unveiled grueling testimonies of Arabs who had been subjected to the most heinous torture in the cellars of the PA’s detention centers.

The PA naturally denied all allegations, but the presiding judge ruled that the accumulation of evidence made it clear that the PA was guilty of severe torture, as well as murder. The torture included the so-called shabah position — widely used in PA prisons — in which the victim is hung from the ceiling for several hours and beaten all over his body.

According to the verdict, the torture also included electric shocks, the pouring of boiling plastic on the body, tearing out nails and breaking teeth, sterilization, sleep deprivation, food and drink deprivation, sexual assault and the rape of family members. The PA also asked doctors to worsen the conditions of the prisoners, such as injecting urine into the prisoners’ blood veins.

The verdict concluded that the PA is responsible for the torture and therefore liable for damages to the victims, whose lives it ruined. However, in order to realize the compensation, the victims need to provide medical evaluations of their conditions by medical experts, which is a very costly procedure.

According to a report by Israel Hayom, attorneys Barak Kedem and Aryeh Arbus turned to 15 human rights organizations to obtain their assistance in paying for the costly evaluations. “These are broken people in their bodies and souls, who…cannot afford to pay professional opinions, which cost thousands of shekels for every opinion,” the attorneys wrote in their plea to the 15 organizations.

Among the 15 organizations were Adalah, Amnesty International, B’Tselem, the New Israel Fund, Rabbis for Human Rights, Yesh Din, Physicians for Human Rights and the Committee for the Prevention of Torture. Only the last two offered assistance, whereas the rest either ignored the plea or responded negatively.

Adalah said that the organization “only helps the Palestinians who are suing the State of Israel”. Amnesty International said that “the organization does not have the professional tools to address the needs” of the victims, whereas Yesh Din expressed “feelings of anger and pain,” but explained that they could not help because they “represent victims of violations when they are harmed by Israeli authorities or Israeli citizens.”

Surprise? Just an attempt to massacre scores of religious Jews. (And B'Tselem supports the side of the terrorists.) by Elder of Ziyon

...to B'Tselem, Palestinians are animals who literally cannot stop themselves from attacking Jews, and it is Jews who are responsible for being attacked by the unfortunate fact that they exist. This is not human rights. This is supporting terror and Jew-hatred. And for this reason alone, B'Tselem has discredited itself as any kind of moral authority.

Elder of Ziyon..
17 January '18..

From Times of Israel:

Army sappers detonated a cellphone-operated explosive device that was apparently planted by Palestinians at the entrance to the Joseph’s Tomb holy site in the city of Nablus early Tuesday morning, ahead of a visit by approximately 1,000 Jewish worshipers, the army said.

There were no injuries or significant damage caused by the controlled blast, and the pilgrimage to the shrine continued as planned, an Israel Defense Forces spokesperson said.

A remote controlled bomb is not something that a lone-wolf terrorist does. This was a well-planned terror attack, done under the noses of the Palestinian Authority (if not with their actual tacit support.)

Dozens could have been killed and wounded. And the people who come to worship at Josephs Tomb are by and large not big Zionists - just religious Jews who brave terrible conditions to visit late at night.

Of course, under signed agreements, the Palestinian Authority is supposed to allow free access to Jews to their holy places. In reality, the Jews would be torn limb from limb if they tried to visit on their own, and they need to be protected by the army and border police.

According to the military, as the group was leaving the area, local residents began to throw rocks at the troops and the buses, causing no injuries, but some light damage to the vehicles.

This is as pure an example of Jew-hatred as one can imagine.

But B'Tselem doesn't support freedom to worship. It supports the people who attack the Jews.

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Every NGO we turned to refused to help us. They said that they only assist people who sue Israel - by Michael Freund

...Here's hoping that the Palestinian victims of the PA get the justice and recompense which they seek and that the world finally realizes that the establishment of an oppressive and authoritarian Palestinian state in Judea and Samaria will not serve to free Palestinians, but rather condemn them to lawless and unconscionable brutality at the hands of their own leaders.

Michael Freund..
Pundicity/JPost..
14 September '17..
Link: http://www.michaelfreund.org/20317/palestinians-human-rights..

After more than two decades, one of the most underreported stories in Israel is at last beginning to garner the attention that it most assuredly deserves.

Thanks to a groundbreaking decision by the Jerusalem District Court in July, the sordid saga of the Palestinian Authority's treatment of alleged "collaborators" with the Jewish state is finally coming to light, and the picture is anything but pretty.

In a detailed ruling that is nearly 2,000- pages long, Judge Moshe Drori unambiguously concluded that more than 50 Palestinian plaintiffs could sue the Palestinian Authority in Israeli courts for their detention and mistreatment at the hands of the Palestinian security forces.

The "accumulation of evidence," Drori wrote, "shows that the Palestinian Authority used severe violence, including harsh torture, against the plaintiffs" because of suspicions that they been cooperating with Israel.

The cruelty which many endured is chilling and demonstrates the depths of inhumanity to which the regime in Ramallah is only too happy to resort in order to punish those whom it views as traitors.

Indeed, from the accounts offered by the plaintiffs, it would appear that the Palestinian Authority has treated detainees in ways that even the most infamous of Mafia gangsters would find appalling.

Prisoners reported being forced to drink from toilets and physically coerced to sit down on broken glass bottles and sharp objects. Fingernails were torn from their bodies and many were deprived of sleep, food and drink, as they were held incommunicado for extended periods. Others were stabbed with kitchen utensils, and some were tied to moving vehicles and dragged through the streets, adding to their pain and public humiliation. In an account published on the front page of this newspaper on Thursday, reporter Yonah Jeremy Bob movingly told the stories of two of the Palestinian plaintiffs, each of whom suffered unspeakable horrors.

A new rule that applies only to Israel: "Give free electricity" - by Elder of Ziyon

...But for some reason they aren't insisting that anyone in the world do anything to help Gazans except the one nation that Gaza has attacked with rockets thousands of times.

Elder of Ziyon..
27 June '17..






"Human rights" organizations have created a new rule that applies to Israel and Israel only:

Israel must provide free electricity to its enemies.

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The Real Humanitarian Travesty in Gaza - by Evelyn Gordon

That so many “human-rights organizations” now devote themselves to propaganda rather than exposing real human-rights violations is a tragedy for the many victims worldwide who have consequently been left voiceless. But as long as it remains the case, there’s absolutely no justification for continuing to endow them with money, attention, and above all, credibility.

Evelyn Gordon..
Commentary Magazine..
14 June '17..
Link: https://www.commentarymagazine.com/foreign-policy/humanitarian-travesty-gaza/

Gaza’s worsening electricity crisis provides a textbook example of why many so-called human-rights organizations no longer deserve to be taken seriously. The crisis stems entirely from an internal dispute between the Palestinians’ two rival governments, and since it can’t be blamed on Israel, most major rights groups have ignored it, preferring to focus instead on such truly pressing issues as—this is not a joke—playing soccer in the settlements. But the exceptions to this rule are even worse: They’re the ones so untroubled by facts that they’ve actually found a way to blame Israel for a problem entirely of the Palestinians’ own making.

A brief recap: Back in April, Gaza ran out of fuel for its only power plant because neither the Fatah-run Palestinian Authority nor Gaza’s Hamas-run government—both of which have plenty of money to spend on fomenting anti-Israel terror—would agree to pay for it. The argument focuses specifically on a tax the PA imposed on the fuel, which Hamas won’t pay but the PA won’t lower. The fuel shortage slashed Gaza’s power supply to about four hours a day.

That same month, the PA announced it would stop paying for 40 percent of the electricity Israel sends Gaza via high-voltage wires, and Hamas naturally refused to take over the payments. Israel continued providing the power anyway for about six weeks, but this week, it finally decided to stop giving Hamas free electricity. That will reduce Gaza’s power supply to three hours a day or less.

The power shortage is creating a worse humanitarian crisis in Gaza than Israel’s partial blockade ever did, yet neither Amnesty nor Human Rights Watch—both of which issued countless statements about the blockade—has published a single press release about the electricity crisis. Astoundingly, however, HRW did find time to issue no fewer than three press statements in May blasting the international soccer association’s refusal to take action against Israel over six soccer teams in the settlements. Apparently, playing soccer in a settlement is a much more serious humanitarian problem than being without power 20 hours a day.

So many wicked co-conspirators. But just one dead child, at least so far today - by Arnold Roth

...The moral depravity that brings government officials and ordinary folk to stand with, instead of against, the wielders of kitchen knifes and axes is mirrored by the strategic silence of the world's well-funded children's rights industry - UNICEF, Defence for Children International, Human Rights Watch, UNESCO, Child Rights International Network, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, the Washington-based Jerusalem Fund, Save the Children, Arab Council for Childhood Development to name just a few donor-supported, PR-savvy entities who have seem to have collectively lost their voices, their senses and their moral compasses when it comes to what Palestinian Arab society is doing to their own children.

Another Palestinian Arab child, and the outcome
 of his PalestinianArab education courtesy of
an UNRWA school [Background here]

Arnold/Frimet Roth..
This Ongoing War..
20 September '16..

We now know that the man and woman inside the pick-up vehicle that rammed into an Israeli bus stop this past Friday ["16-Sep-16: Vehicle ramming attack on Israelis near Kiryat Arba"] came from the Palestinian Arab village of Bani Na'im.

The hamlet is in the news again today because a child from there, presumably weaponized by the people who have ruled Bani Na'im since the nineties (it's located in Area A under the full control of the Palestinian Authority), was killed by the IDF soldiers he tried to stab to death this morning.

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Who actually cares that foreign aid is diverted from needy Gazans to terror? - by Arnold Roth

"...Hamas stole this money and passed it to its military wing to build bases, provide salary bonuses and dig the tunnels of death that have brought destruction upon you and the Gaza Strip... Hamas is burying you and your hope of living a normal life....

A Hamas/Gaza tunnel under construction,
October 2013 [Image Source]

Arnold/Frimet Roth..
This Ongoing War..
14 August '16..

Audit firms, governments and Christian aid groups are sorting out their post-exposé strategies following the arrests of several Palestinian Arabs on charges of illegally and surreptitiously siphoning vast sums into Palestinian Arab terror.

But strangely those who are most identified with doing humanitarian good for the Palestinian Arabs don't appear to be in the front lines of those expressing deep concern at the harm such diversions have caused. And that's an understatement.

One of the most visible signs of where the cash goes (that's present tense - no one believes the scandal has been stopped) is the tunnels of Gaza. The latest news from there - just this month and just from Palestinian Arab sources indicates this vast engineering project is not going smoothly:

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The deafening silence of NGOs as an Arab hero is shunned for saving Jews - Elder of Ziyon

...they are silent. They condone Arab antisemitism by not saying a word when it manifests itself, and they shy away when given the chance to practice what they preach. And they certainly don't say anything when Arab murderers are honored. Their concern for human rights ends when the humans involved happen to be Jews - or even Arabs who don't consider Jews to be their enemy.

Rabbi Mark's funeral

Elder of Ziyon..
09 August '16..

In July, I reported about the Arab heroes who helped save the children of the fatally wounded Rabbi Miki Mark. Yet the names of the heroes were not publicized at that time. Only a little later did the New York Times report his name.

At the same time, Palestinians were honoring their versions of "heroes" - a group of children who had viciously attacked Jews with knives.

I wrote then:

The first set of Arabs, the true heroes, do not allow their names to be publicized [the NYT did publish their names afterwards - EoZ}. They don't want their neighbors and friends to know that they saved the lives of Jews.

The families of the second set of Arabs, terrorists who are treated as heroes, are very proud of their sons and are thrilled to announce the names and publish the photos of these murderers and would-be murderers to the world.

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Terrorist Aid Hijacking: Learning from the World Vision Case

..."World Vision's failures in Gaza highlight the problems of a multi-billion dollar NGO industry that remains largely unregulated and unexamined. While World Vision is currently the focus of attention following the arrest of El-Halabi and the scale of the allegations, this should be a cautionary moment for many other international aid organizations that have similar operations in Gaza, such as Oxfam, Care, Christian Aid, and UNRWA - the United Nations Relief and Works Agency."

Dr. Aaron Lerner..
IMRA..









NGO Monitor August 7, 2016
Terrorist Aid Hijacking and NGO Oversight Failure: Learning from the World Vision Case

On August 4, 2016, the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) revealed that Mohammed El-Halabi, manager of the Gaza operations of the international humanitarian NGO World Vision, funneled 60% of the World Vision Gaza budget to the terrorist group Hamas. The Israeli indictment and media reported that these funds were used in the construction of Hamas tunnels, military installations, and other terrorist activities.

In response, Prof. Gerald Steinberg, President of NGO Monitor noted, "To avoid enabling murderous Hamas attacks, and compounding the suffering of people in Gaza, aid groups need to apply surveillance and intelligence technologies, particularly regarding employees and their activities."

NGO Monitor identified World Vision as susceptible to aid diversion in its 2015 book, Filling in the Blanks, concluding that there is "little doubt as to World Vision's willingness to negotiate and coordinate with armed groups. This raises questions as to whether the group would prevent components of its aid from being misappropriated by terrorist organizations, if it felt that taking a stand would jeopardize the organization's ability to continue its operations in a given area."

Palestinian Arab ass being saved, once more, by concerned Israelis

...The self-incriminating silence of the thriving multi-billion dollar children's rights industry on what's being done to the Palestinian Arab children by their own ruling clique is an articulate expression of their priorities and of the ideology motivating many of the prime movers of those charities and NGOs. It's a scandal that ought to get more attention than, say, a plagiarized paragraph in a politician's wife's speech. But it gets close to none.

Arnold/Frimet Roth..
This Ongoing War..
20 July '16..

Thanks to Aussie Dave over at Israellycool, we just watched a brief video clip that, on its face, is about Israeli police confiscating Palestinian Arab property. It originates with Corey Gil-Shuster, who interviews subjects for his Ask an Israeli/Ask a Palestinian video project and who came across the Hebrew-only source on an Israeli channel for animal lovers.

In dry terms, it's a clip filmed recently by someone from Israel Police that graphically shows the mistreatment of a neglected, very badly-lacerated donkey. And the frightened, angry, frustrated boy in charge of the animal. And the animal being saved from a slow and awful death through the intervention of grown-ups wearing Star of David symbols on their uniforms.

Dave quotes Corey noting the significance of what's being shown, beyond the cruelty and the animal, and touching on truths that are central to the generations-long Arab/Israel conflict. Paraphrasing Corey,

An Arab child of 11 from the West Bank, despatched into Israel on his own to work illegally, almost certainly by his hard-scrabble family. He could have been hurt or killed. And it's certainly illegal to do this to a child of his age.

Indications, based on what we see the child do once the police move, that he gets beaten at home and will likely be beaten some more for losing the donkey to the Zionists.

And "this video will end up being edited to show that Israelis steal donkeys from Palestinian children".

Dave adds that "it shows the compassion of the Israeli police officers towards this illegal entrant into Israel, even though he has abused a donkey and is not cooperating with them". He's of course right. He could have also mentioned their admirable patience and forbearance.

But there's also this aspect:

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In the real world, without security, there can be no other human rights - by Gerald Steinberg

Like other universal moral values, human rights are not simply rules (real or imagined) and prohibitions, but encompass vital obligations. In the world of nation-states, the first job of the government is to protect its citizens, and when the officials fail at this task, as tragically seen in France and Belgium, they lose their legitimacy. In the real world, without security, there can be no other human rights.

Prof. Gerald M. Steinberg..
Times of Israel..
19 July '16..
Link: http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/terror-security-and-human-rights-fundamentalism/

Human rights, which has been referred to as the “secular religion of the 21st century” has failed, catastrophically. The first, most fundamental right is the right to life — the right be protected from murder, regardless of the cause that is proclaimed to justify the killing of innocent people, whether in Europe, America, Israel, Syria, or anywhere else.

When judged according to this basic truth, the religion of human rights has been a catastrophic failure. As the victims are buried and the families mourn, the high priests — leaders of powerful global organizations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, and the officers of parallel international bodies — stand exposed as sophists, preaching a rigid liturgy far removed from reality. The institutions that they direct, such as the United Nations Human Rights Council, are monuments to hypocrisy, promoting ideologies of incitement and discrimination.

These values and institutions do not exist in a theoretical vacuum, and when they are presented and marketed as if terrorism and mass murder did not exist, they lose all meaning. When people speaking in the name of human rights revile and demonize every step taken by governments and security forces to provide safety and security, nothing is acceptable, and many innocent lives are lost. This fundamentalist, uncompromising and distorted interpretation of human rights has destroyed its moral foundation.

Like other universal moral values, human rights are not simply rules (real or imagined) and prohibitions, but encompass vital obligations. In the world of nation-states, the first job of the government is to protect its citizens, and when the officials fail at this task, as tragically seen in France and Belgium, they lose their legitimacy. In the real world, without security, there can be no other human rights.

Refugees and the travesty that the “human rights community” has become - by Evelyn Gordon

...If Israel can’t be blamed, Amnesty isn’t much interested. That’s also why Israeli organizations helping Syrian refugees in Greece discovered that while no Syrian ever refused their help, members of international “human rights” organizations did, even though the Israelis were among the few volunteers who spoke Arabic: These international “humanitarians” viewed boycotting Israel as more important than communicating with the refugees they ostensibly came to help. Such politicization of human rights never bothered most Westerners as long as Israel was the only victim. But now that it’s being turned against Europe, perhaps the West will finally recognize the travesty that the “human rights community” has become.

Evelyn Gordon..
Commentary Magazine..
04 April '16..

Israel and its supporters have argued for years that many “human rights” organizations are far less concerned with human rights than with pushing a political agenda. But as long as that political agenda consisted mainly of attacking Israel, most Westerners remained convinced that these groups still deserved their credibility and moral haloes. Even initial forays into political issues unconnected with Israel – like Amnesty International’s controversial assertion last year that upholding human rights requires decriminalizing prostitution – didn’t destroy the halo. But by demanding that the European Union accept millions of Middle Eastern migrants rather than returning them to Turkey, these organizations have picked a political fight that millions of Europeans actually care about. And in so doing, they may be dealing their own credibility a long-deserved death blow.

The “human rights community” is outraged by the EU’s recent deal with Ankara, under which all migrants entering Europe via Turkey will be promptly returned there. The Council of Europe’s commissioner for human rights, Nils Muiznieks, declared that such “automatic forced return” is “illegal,” and the only acceptable solution is for EU countries to “ramp up the relocation of asylum seekers” into their own borders. Human rights groups similarly asserted that the deal violates international humanitarian law, inter alia, because they claim Turkey is unsafe for refugees. Amnesty, for instance, termed the deal “abhorrent.”

Then, angry over the EU’s refusal to accept their view, the organizations halted assistance to tens of thousands of migrants already in Greece. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Medecins Sans Frontieres, the International Rescue Committee, the Norwegian Refugee Council and Save the Children all suspended operations in Greek refugee centers to protest the deal.

There are numerous problems with the “human rights community’s” response to this deal, but let’s start with the biggest: the claim that it somehow violates international law, in the form of the 1951 Refugee Convention.

This convention was intended to ensure that anyone with a “well-founded fear” of persecution could find refuge somewhere, so as to prevent a repeat of the situation in which six million Jews were slaughtered by the Nazis because no country would let them in. But it never guaranteed anyone, much less tens of millions of people, access to the country of their choice.

Turkey, understandably, isn’t most refugees’ first choice. It’s an authoritarian country where basic rights like freedom of the press are ruthlessly suppressed; it has suffered numerous terror attacks in recent years; and it’s less wealthy than Europe. But all this makes it no worse than much of the rest of the world.

The one thing Turkey isn’t is unsafe for most refugees. It has hosted millions of Syrian refugees for years; the current tally exceeds 2.7 million. And unlike Syrians in Syria – where a brutal civil war has killed some 470,000 people since 2011 – the refugees in Turkey have survived. Turkey also grants full access to UN officials, so UNHCR could process refugee applications just as well in Turkey as it could in Greece.

When moral bankruptcy leads to having Palestinians tortured and executed

...Nawi might look at himself as a left-wing human rights activist, but if the report outlined by Ha’aretz is true, he is no different than the terrorist or death squad commander torturing an unarmed farmer or pulling the trigger to murder him in front of his family.

Michael Rubin..
Commentary Magazine..
08 January '16..

Many who dedicate their lives to the resolution of the Israel-Palestinian conflict or fighting the injustice or terrorism that can arise from the conflict sincerely seek to bring peace and security and resolve a conflict which has been ongoing for more than a century, before both even Israel’s birth as a nation and the notion of the Palestinians as a distinct national identity separate from Syrians. That holds true for activists on the left and right who might have honest disagreement as to ultimate blame and the question of specific grievance — such as land dispute — versus ideology and religious intolerance and who also might disagree with the other’s cynical read of the ultimate goal of the other.

Haaretz, a left-of-center Israeli daily widely-read among the elite in Israel and among Arab-Israeli conflict activists in Europe and the United States, today covers a distressing TV report about what happens when activists of either side — in this particular the left — lose their moral grounding. Ezra Nawi, a self-described human rights and anti-settlement activist, was taped collaborating with Palestinian security services to have Palestinians selling land to Israelis tortured and executed:

Footage aired on Channel 2 on Thursday shows a prominent Israeli leftist activist describing how he led to the death of Palestinians who sought to sell West Bank land to Jews. The activist, Ezra Nawi, of the Israeli-Palestinian Taayush group, was secretly recorded saying that he had turned in the land brokers to Palestinian security services, who would then kill them.

The report by the program Uvda looked into left-wing groups which operate in the West Bank. The footage was obtained by right-wing activists who infiltrated these groups in attempt to discredit them. The footage of Nawi was captured by a right-wing activist who reportedly became his close acquaintance. In the footage, Nawi, who is unaware of being recorded, is heard telling of four Palestinian landowners who contacted him, thinking he was also involved in the land trade.

“I give their photos and their phone numbers immediately to the [Palestinian] Preventive Security Force,” Nawi says in the recording. “The Authority catches them and kills them. But before they kill them they beat them up.” In another recording, Nawi is heard telling about a Palestinian who “made deals with the settlers.” The Palestinian, Nawi says, let the settlers till his uncles’ lands in return for farming other lands. Nawi goes on to say that he handed the Palestinian’s name over to the Palestinian security services, and that the Palestinian later “suffered a stroke.”

There’s more, and the scandal also allegedly involved B’Tselem, a frequent interlocutor for the U.S. consulate in Jerusalem and a favorite resource of groups like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. Frequent American commentators like Peter Beinart have also served on the B’Tselem advisory board.

The Ongoing NGO Campaign to Destroy Israel

...Israel, a beacon for human rights in a region of war, prejudice, denial of free speech and opposition to democracy, should be singled out for its humanitarian commitment to these values. Instead, the diplomatic jihad, which is the usual response, is -- let us be frank -- nothing more than the same old anti-Semitism, only on a national, gargantuan scale. Israel has every right to defend itself from what everyone knows is the oldest and most vicious hatred in history, and again in the world today.

Denis MacEoin..
Gatestone Institute..
17 July '15..

The Western world is full of charities that do nothing but good, such as fight disease; help the less fortunate, or offer legal protection. But there are other sorts of charities, the so-called non-governmental organizations (NGOs); these often work on the international stage, supposedly for human rights, humanitarian aid, and peace. These NGOs are funded by foundations, businesses, private persons -- oh, and governments. They exist in astonishingly large numbers: 1.5 million in the US, 2 million in India, and thousands in Europe, over 500 of which are lobbyists in the European Parliament. The total income of OECD-linked NGOs amounts to around $16 billion. Unfortunately, some of these betray their love of humanity by adopting discriminatory policies.

Many of these NGOs -- especially those heavily dependent on government money -- seem to be driven by an ideological or political commitment, and are inevitably drawn into political engagement.

In a desire to help the underdog, wherever he may be, many NGOs make ideological choices as to whom they place in that category, and who falls into the category of "oppressor." This view often means that their good work may be used as "air cover" for people and actions that are less admirable.

It is not uncommon to find NGOs ignoring human rights abuses in countries they seek to have as allies, or with whom they are obliged to work. Sometimes, NGOs adopt a political stance that is deliberately prejudiced or prejudicial. The vast majority of politicized NGOs, whatever their original remit, are those who condemn only one country and who do so time and time again. That country is, of course, Israel. Within Israel, the community they attack is, without exception, the Jewish community. Israelis, it seems, can never do right, while on their borders, the Palestinians, who are seen as underdogs and victims, can never do wrong.

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Denis MacEoin is a lecturer in Arabic and Islamic Studies. He has an MA in Persian, Arabic and Islamic Studies from Edinburgh University, a PhD in Persian Studies from Cambridge (King's College) and an MA in English Language and Literature from Trinity College, Dublin.

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work as well as a big vote to follow our good friend Kay Wilson on Twitter, 

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Israeli ‘Human Rights’ Groups and How They Threaten Our Very Existence

...The appropriate name for these organizations is actually “organizations for the exploitation of the issue of human rights as a political objective.” Not only the State of Israel, but also its supporters all over the world, must understand the threat that hangs over it from foreign funding intended to prejudice the country’s identity.

Shimon Ohayon..
The Algemeiner..
12 May '15..

The State of Israel was established during a period of intense focus on human rights issues. All the leading political movements during that period dedicated a significant part of their platforms to human rights.

The institutions and laws established in Israel reflect the central place of human rights at the heart of the State’s ideological foundations. It is therefore not surprising that human rights organizations have always been prominent and active in Israeli society.
However, in recent years we have seen the rise of new organizations which, while they call themselves “human rights organizations,” are in fact of a completely different ilk from the tradition. Contrary to what one would assume, these organizations’ activities raise questions as to the sincerity of their concern with human rights, questions that are motivated by the agendas and goals that are guiding them.

These organizations constitute a coordinated coalition, and they have selected a limited number of core issues in which they have invested the greater part of their resources. One major issue is that of the migration of infiltrators into the State of Israel. ‘Human rights’ organizations are doing everything possible to eradicate the Israeli State’s ability to stop this flow of illegal migrants: petitions to the Supreme Court, demonstrations, information centers, and categorical opposition to any law that imposes sanctions on people who cross the border.

Masterminding these efforts is the New Israel Fund, which has created a forum in which members of organizations such as ASSAF (Aid Organization for Refugees and Asylum Seekers in Israel), Physicians for Human Rights, the Hotline for Refugees and Migrants, and others can work together and sometimes operate as a single entity. The stated purpose of the forum is to grant permanent resident status to these migrants. The funding for this forum comes from foreign entities such as the EU, the U.S. State Department, and from the budgets of various European governments.

The result has been the accumulation of approximately 100,000 illegal migrants in Israeli cities, living in poverty and dire conditions and turning entire neighborhoods into hubs of crime. Despite the clear evidence that indicates that these infiltrators were not being persecuted by the regimes in their home countries (for example, masses of migrants were guests at an event in their support held at the home of the South Sudanese Ambassador), these organizations have chosen to present them as “refugees,” and have demanded that Israel should grant them permanent status.

Ironically, recent findings only confirm the true ideological agenda of these organizations. In late march the British Home Office issued a report stating that Eritreans, by far the largest component of the infiltrator population, are actually not subject to persecution in Eritrea by virtue of their having left the country to escape military service.

They are able to return, subject to paying a tax for the service they missed. And since the infiltrators make far more money in Tel Aviv than they would in Eritrea (their real reason for being here), paying a tax is no impediment to their return.

This undercuts the idea that these people are endangered refugees, rather than economic self-seekers. Yet to Israeli NGOs they are stateless, helpless refugees. Of course, what they really represent to these NGOs are ways to diminish the Jewish character of Israel, the ultimate agenda of the NIF and its many funded human rights NGOs.

Understanding the relationship between the industry of lies and the discourse of human rights

...But groups that spread lies, sometimes also called rights organizations, will continue to spread lies. And as long as someone like Richard Falk is a senior adviser to the Human Rights Council, and as long as human rights organizations cooperate with that body and its anti-Semitic adviser, they are complicit in the crime.

Ben-Dror Yemini..
I24 News..
09 January '14..

Professor Richard Falk is a top UN official. Recently he declared that Israel wreaks carnage upon the Palestinians, harboring what he termed "genocidal intent." If we want to understand the relationship between the industry of lies and the discourse of human rights, we could do worse than examine the case of this bad man, perhaps a Jew, who is an embodiment of this link.

Let us gauge the genocide claim. In 2013, 36 Palestinians were killed, according to the human rights organization B'Tselem. At least 30 of those were either involved in clashes with IDF soldiers or were members of terrorist organizations. Only a few innocents were killed. The death of each one of them is to be deeply regretted. Yet one should add that there isn't another conflict in the world where the fatality rate among civilians is as low as in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In other conflicts it is estimated that between 60 and 90 percent of fatalities are innocents. In the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, they are a minority.

In fact, the annual fatality count in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is lower than a daily terror casualty toll in Iraq, Somalia, Syria, Yemen, and other countries, where 1,153 people died as a result of terror attacks. This does not include the daily toll from the massacre perpetrated by the Syrian regime.

Most of the victims are Muslims killed by radical Islamists. In Pakistan in the course of last year alone, 5,366 people were killed in acts of terrorism. Almost 3,000 of them were civilians. In Iraq in 2013 alone, 8,868 were killed in terror acts, including 7,818 civilians. The war on terrorism waged by coalition forces claimed between 227 and 300 thousand lives in Iraq and Afghanistan, most of them innocents.

Even if the number of casualties of Israeli operations was 10 or 20 times higher, this would still not constitute genocide. A broad historical examination supports this view. Since 1967, less than 10,000 Palestinians have been killed. Most of them were terrorists. You can call it many things, but genocide it ain't.

Any reason "Human rights organizations" are ignoring Rafah crossing?

...From reading the material on these sites, no one would have any idea that Egypt has turned Gaza into a prison - the wording routinely used to describe Israel. The situation is clearly familiar to these organizations and they are deliberately ignoring it, while writing dozens of reports condemning Israel. Its reveals that the human rights of Gazans takes a back seat to condemning Israel, in the eyes of these NGOs.

Elder of Ziyon..
05 December '13..

Maher Abu Sabha, Hamas' director of the Rafah crossing into Egypt, said that Egypt promised to open the crossing next week, although it was unclear exactly when or for how many days.

The crossing, the only direct connection between Gazans and the Arab world, has been closed for seven days in a row and has been open only sporadically for months. Even when it is open, only a fraction of the daily passenger traffic allowed under the previous Egyptian regime has been allowed to trickle through in both directions. The average number of travelers allowed to cross in June averaged over 1800 people daily, but in November during the days Rafah was open the number of people allowed across averaged closer to 100 a day - in either direction. This includes patients who need to go to Egypt for medical reasons. This is far less than the number allowed to cross the Erez crossing into Israel.

This is roughly a 95% reduction in the ability of Gazans to travel to Egypt.

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Does the Western media ignores Palestinian Arab domestic violence completely?

...So how many of the hundreds of NGOs that fill Gaza and the West Bank are concerned with domestic and school violence? How many of the violent acts in schools occurred in UNRWA schools?

Elder of Ziyon..
04 June '13..






Buried in the middle of an April report "Palestinian Children –Issues and Statistics" by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, we see:

Children Exposed to Violence in Educational Institutions

More than one fifth of students aged 12-17 years were exposed to psychological violence at school during the 12 months that preceded July 2011: 21.6% in the West Bank compared to 22.7% in the Gaza Strip. The results indicated that psychological violence was the most common abuse against students by their colleagues or teachers: 25.0% by friends and 27.6% by teachers. Physical violence by teachers was reported by 21.4% compared to 14.2% who reported fellow students.

Parents First to Practice Violence Against Children

In 2011, 51.0% of children aged 12-17 years were exposed to violence inside the household by an individual member of the household: 45.8% in the West Bank compared to 59.4% in the Gaza Strip. Of these children, 69.0% were exposed to psychological violence and 34.4% to physical violence by their parents compared to 66.4% exposed to psychological violence and 34.5% to physical violence by their mothers.

Where was the outcry?

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International Human Rights Day 2012 - From Tragedy to Farce

Gerald M. Steinberg..
Times of Israel..
10 December '12..

2012 was another dismal year, and there is little to celebrate on International Human Rights Day. The carnage in Syria has destroyed more than 40,000 lives, and in Egypt, a new dictatorship has replaced the previous one. In Iran, last year’s democracy protesters are forgotten, and the Stalinist show trials designed to intimidate these advocates are ignored. On these and other cases of blatant human rights violations, the self-appointed moral guardians in the UN and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) respond with little more than lip service.

Tragically, Human Rights Day, which marks the anniversary of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Genocide Conventions, now serves as a reminder of the abject failure of organizations that claim to promote these principles. Ignoring the pleas of victims around the world, the UN Human Rights Council routinely exploits the rhetoric of international law as a weapon in the political war targeting Israel. The nation-state of the Jewish people is a convenient diversion from so many real abuses, which explains the obsessive “war crimes” claims, as illustrated again during the recent Gaza conflict.

To make matters worse, the human rights NGOs that were founded optimistically in order to promote universal moral behavior have become accomplices in promoting this immorality. The leaders of powerful groups like Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Oxfam, the Paris-based International Federation of Human Rights and others with multi-million-dollar budgets, work closely with and support the agendas of the UNHRC and other corrupt international frameworks.

Instead of speaking truth to this blatant abuse of power, officials of these wayward human rights groups are part of the problem. For the so-called “human rights community”, Iran’s supply of Fajr missiles to Hamas and Hezbollah, for use in targeting Israeli civilians, is not even on the agenda. And, as recently noted in the Wall St. Journal, Ken Roth, the head of Human Rights Watch and an obsessive anti-Israel ideologue, cannot bring himself to condemn the genocidal rhetoric of the Iranian regime.