Surprise! Palestinian Center for Human Rights stops aiding Gaza patient transfers to Israel, preferring they die - by Elder of Ziyon

How much more evidence is needed that Palestinians – even Palestinian human rights groups – prefer to use sick and dying Palestinians as pawns rather than doing everything they can to save their lives? Their message to Israel is “submit to our demands to allow Gazans, including terrorists, to freely enter Israel without permits, or else we will allow our people to die and blame you.” It is an astonishingly cynical message from the PA, but doubly so from a supposed human rights group.

Elder of Ziyon..
29 June '20..

The words “human rights” means something much different to Palestinians than to the rest of the world.

For years, the Palestinian Center for Human Rights in Gaza Legal Aid department has worked with Israeli authorities to facilitate medical treatment of Gazans in Israel, the West Bank or abroad. According to the group, it has helped transfer some 700 patients in 2019 alone.

On May 19, the Palestinian Authority decided to stop all coordination with Israel, including cooperation on transferring patients to Israeli and foreign hospitals. Mahmoud Abbas has made the supremely cynical decision that this political act is more important than Palestinian lives. As a result, at least two babies have died so far because they could not travel outside Gaza, even though Israeli authorities are trying to help.

Israel, which does not want to see Gaza patients die, has been looking for alternative ways to help these patients. Israeli human rights groups are scrambling to find ways to coordinate patient transfers.

Someone in Israel suggested that the PCHR would be a good choice to take over the PA’s role in facilitating life-saving transfers, since they already know the system and they have been helping patients work with Israeli authorities on the legal front.

One would think that a human rights group would welcome such an opportunity to save human lives.

But that isn’t what happened.

(Continue to Full Post)

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Heads-up to the Media - Check Those Civilian Casualty Claims

Steven Stotsky..
CAMERA Media Analyses..
30 November '12..

Each time Israel mounts a substantial military response to escalating Palestinian attacks, Palestinians and their advocates accuse the Jewish state of carrying out attacks that mainly kill civilians. To support their accusations they cite casualty tallies provided to them by Palestinian officials and by various human rights groups with a presence in Gaza. These tallies consistently count most of the Palestinian fatalities and wounded as civilians.

Because the media has been loath to scrutinize the figures provided to them and are often inclined to favor Palestinian accounts over Israeli army accounts, it has fallen to non-media research groups like CAMERA (Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America) and ICT (International Institute for Counter Terrorism in Herzliya, Israel) to offer direct and circumstantial evidence that the ratio of civilian to combatant casualties is significantly exaggerated.

A leading Palestinian source of fatality information in Gaza is the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR). During hostilities, PCHR publishes daily reports identifying individual Palestinian fatalities in Gaza. During Operation Cast Lead (Dec. 27, 2008 to Jan. 18, 2009) and in Operation Pillar of Defense from Nov. 14 through Nov. 22, 2012, PCHR used a similar method of categorizing Gazan fatalities.

PCHR described individual fatalities as either a "member of an armed group", a "member of the Palestinian resistance", a "civilian" or simply reported a name and age without any label. However, in its summation of fatalities, those not labeled were automatically added to the civilian tally.

A substantial portion of those labeled as civilian and most of those not given any label were young men. In fact, adult males under the age of 40 described as civilians or not given any label make up nearly a third of the fatalities.

Pillar of Defense's first fake PCHR "civilian"

Elder of Ziyon..
22 Novenber '12..

As EoZ readers know, after Cast Lead I led a team that identified hundreds of people who were called "civilians" by the Palestinian Center of Human Rights - but were in fact terrorists.

We scoured through official jihadist websites and forums to see which of these "civilians" were called "mujahadeen." We crosschecked obituaries published on Hamas and other terror group websites, often months later, against the PCHR list.

In short, we showed that PCHR was happy to lie in order to make it appear that the IDFwas targeting civilians.

Looks like we have our work cut out for us again:

According to investigations conducted by PCHR, at approximately 17:45 on Tuesday, 20 November 2012, an Israeli warplane fired a missile at Hussam Mohammed Salama, 30, and Mahmoud Ali al-Koumi, 29, cameramen of the Gaza-based al-Aqsa Satellite Channel, while they were traveling in a civilian car clearly marked with ‘TV’.

Luckily, I just made a poster about Mr. Salama, along with a photo of the car where he had crudely spray-painted "TV".

(Continue...)

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Khaled Abu Toameh - How Come No One Wants to Help Gaza?

Khaled Abu Toameh..
Stonegate Institute..
21 February '12..

The Palestinian Center for Human Rights announced that Palestinians -- not Israel -- were to blame for the electricity crisis.

Who is stopping the Palestinians from turning the Gaza Strip into the Middle East's Hong Kong? Is it Israel, the Palestinians themselves or the Arab countries?

In the past few weeks, Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh has visited a number of Arab and Islamic countries in a bid to secure financial aid for "rebuilding" the Gaza Strip. Haniyeh returned to the Gaza Strip this week with a suitcase full of promises from Iran, Qatar, Sudan, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates to help the Palestinian residents of the Gaza Strip.

Some of the Arab countries promised to provide cement and construction material, whiles others pledged to fund various economic and housing projects there. But the Palestinians have become used to empty promises from the Arab and Islamic countries.

Fresnozionism - PCHR smeared for being soft on Zionists

Fresnozionism.org
27 June '11

http://fresnozionism.org/2011/06/pchr-smeared-for-being-soft-on-zionists/



Yesterday I wrote about a declaration issued by 12 “human rights” groups condemning the treatment of Gilad Shalit, but pointedly not calling for his release.

One of them, the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR), has issued a furious communiqué denouncing its defamation by some local media outlets, which incorrectly accused it of — imagine — demanding Shalit’s release. PCHR writes,

On Monday morning, 27 June 2011, a number of local websites published a news item entitled “The Palestinian Center for Human Rights Demands Releasing Shalit.” In the article they claimed that a Palestinian human rights organization joined Zionist human rights organizations in their demand to release the Zionist solider, Gilad Shait, with total disregard both for the suffering of Palestinian prisoners and war crimes committed by the [Israeli] occupation against them.”


This assault followed PCHR’s signature on a joint statement by international and Israeli human rights organizations on 24 June 2011. The statement demanded that the Israeli soldier, Gilad Shait, who has been held by Palestinian resistance groups for five years, be treated as a prisoner of war according to international law.

The press release lists 10 points that PCHR wishes to emphasize. Here are a few of them:

Elder - There WAS an injury in last week's Qassam attack

Elder of Ziyon
24 June '11

http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2011/06/there-was-injury-in-last-weeks-qassam.html


Last week a rocket was shot from Gaza to Israel, ending a lull of no rockets landing in Israel since April. That rocket cause no damage when it landed in the Eshkol Regional Council.

What was not reported was that there were at least two rockets shot last Thursday - and one of them did cause extensive damage and significant injuries.

In Gaza.

From PCHR:

According to investigations conducted by the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR), at approximately 22:30 on Thursday, 16 June 2011, a home-made rocket hit the first floor of a 3-storey house belonging to Suleiman ‘Ayash Abu ‘Owaida in al-Maghazi refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip. As a result, Samia ‘Ayash Abu ‘Owaida, 18, was injured by shrapnel throughout his body, and the house and neighboring house belonging to Sameer Sa’id Abu Jayab was damaged. 

I wonder if the upcoming flotilla will protest against these continued examples of Gaza terror groups injuring their own people with rockets.

Or will these purported "peace activists" call for better quality control to ensure that 100% of the rockets land on Israeli civilians?

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Attack on UNRWA Summer Games Camp

Dr. Aaron Lerner
IMRA
23 May '10

PCHR
Palestinian Centre for Human Rights
Press Release

Ref: 39/2010
Date: 23 May 2010
Time: 10:00 GMT.

PCHR Strongly Condemns Attack on UNRWA Summer Games Camp

(Point #6 below really says it all. PCHR needs to paste their own words up on the wall with the reminder, "You get what you pay for".This is already well above the "Freedom Flotillas" ability to focus on the real needs." Y.)

The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) strongly condemns the attack carried out by a large number of masked gunmen on a summer games camp organized by UNRWA at a beach in the west of Gaza City. The attackers set fire to parts of the camp and damaged its contents in the early morning. PCHR calls upon the government in the Gaza Strip to seriously investigate the attack, which constitutes part of the state of security chaos and misuse of weapons plaguing the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT), and bring the perpetrators to justice.

According to investigations conducted by PCHR and the testimony of the camp guard, Ibrahim Kamel 'Eleiwa, at approximately 2:30 on Sunday, 23 May 2010, a large number of masked gunmen broke into the UNRWA camp designated for the summer games at the beach in the Sheikh 'Ejleen area in the west of Gaza City. They attacked the guard with gun butts, handcuffed him and took his mobile phone. They then began damaging the contents of the camp, tearing down the canvas walls and setting fire to the equipment used by children.

Before they left, one of gunmen put a letter and three bullets in the pocket of the handcuffed guard. The letter included a threat against three UNRWA officials, including John Ging, Director UNRWA Operations in Gaza. At
approximately 5:00, the supervisor of the camp arrived with an interrogator, who inspected the area and took the guard to the police station for questioning.

It should be noted that UNRWA began holding summer games, which target children aged 7-15 in the summer of 2008. The camps have been held at UNRWA schools and at camps on the beach and included sport and art activities. The camp that was targeted this morning consists of nine sites, each of which stands on a 2-donum[1] area of land, forming a total area of 18 donums. Each site offers services to a total of 500 children during two separate morning and afternoon periods. The camp serves 4,500 children every two weeks. It was decided that four camps were going to be held this
summer in order to serve 18,000 children in addition to providing job opportunities for 540 persons. The first camp was scheduled to commence on 12 June 2010.

.... PCHR strongly condemns this attack, which constitutes part of the state of
security chaos and misuse of weapons plaguing the (OPT), and:

6. Emphasizes the importance of the rule of law and completely rejects the notion that any party can claim to be the guardian of morals and values of this people, and carries out whatever attacks it deems appropriate, as such actions constitute the epitome of security chaos and misuse of weapons.

(Read full press release)

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When Dedicating a Synagogue Is a War Crime

Noah Pollak
Contentions/Commentary
17 March '10

Yes, really. The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights — one of a myriad of NGOs waging a war of delegitimization against Israel — has issued a press release declaring that:

The inauguration of a Jewish synagogue in East Jerusalem [sic] is considered a form of settlement activity, and thus constitutes a war crime under international humanitarian law.

Of course, this was not the inauguration of a synagogue — it was the rededication of a synagogue that dates to the Ottoman empire and was destroyed by the Jordanians during their occupation of Jerusalem. The Hurva synagogue was built in the 1860’s (even then on the ruins of a synagogue that had been built during the previous century) and demolished intentionally by the Arab Legion in 1948, during the War of Independence. Oh, and I almost forgot: it’s not in “East Jerusalem” — it’s in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City. Just a stroll away from the Western Wall, whose existence by this logic is also a war crime.

(Read full post)
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More Gaza "civilians" and more PCHR lies

Elder of Ziyon
22 January '10

Even though I haven't been spending too much time lately on looking for more dead Gaza "civilians" who were actually terrorists, other people (notably PTWatch) has been diligently digging through Arabic websites and we keep adding to the list.

As of right now, we have identified 358 terrorists who were categorized as "civilians" by the PCHR. Add together the rest of the police and the "militants" that PCHR counted, and we have 667 dead Gazans who were legitimate targets, quickly closing in on half of the dead not being civilians.

Many of the civilians were clearly being used as cover or were unavoidably killed in a legitimate operation. The latest "martyr" PTWatch found is a case in point.

#901, Usama Sa’id Mohammed Lubbad, was a recruiter for Islamic Jihad (who also evidently taught Islamic Jihad tenets to the terrorist equivalent of Cub Scouts in a mosque) and he was killed on January 9th. His obituary mentions that he was killed with a few of his Islamic Jihad friends - mentioned in PCHR as #897, 899, 900 and 909. That's five Islamic Jihad members in one shot, a legitimate target by any measure.

However, during the attack two other people were killed. One was a seven year old boy, the other a 55-year old man. Their deaths were unavoidable by the IDF, and very justified under international law.

(Read full post)
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How many Gaza civilians were killed by Hamas rockets?

Elder of Ziyon
18 January '10

Palestine Press Agency reports that the house of Ibrahim Naji Sumairi was damaged by a Qassam rocket that fell short in the southern Gaza town of Qarara, and that his family was saved from a "certain death" by sheer luck. The rocket sprayed shrapnel all around the home.

Which brings up a question that the PCHR and B'Tselem and Goldstone did not try to answer: How many of the civilians killed in Gaza were actually killed by fire from Palestinian Arab armed groups? In the days before Cast Lead, two girls were killed in Gaza, and others were injured in separate rocket attacks.

These were not isolated incidents. In fact, in the month before Cast Lead began about 6% of the rockets fired landed in Gaza itself. During Cast Lead, some 800 Qassams were fired towards Israel, and the percentage that landed in Gaza itself is unknown, but we can safely assume that the number would have been even greater than 6% as the people launching the rockets were in a greater hurry than usual.

(Read full post)
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You’re Not Going to Believe This, But…

Noah Pollak
Contentions/Commentary
12 January '10

Yet another “human rights” NGO has been caught trafficking in made-up statistics. As Yaacov Lozowick and Elder of Ziyon report, Addameer, a Palestinian “prisoners’ rights” NGO, has been inflating the number of Palestinians it claims have been arrested by Israel to a point of total absurdity:

For Addameer’s numbers to be accurate, Israel would be arresting some 10,000 people a month. Yet the PCHR [Palestinian Centre for Human Rights -- no PR operation for Israel by any stretch of the imagination] says that the number of arrests was 23 last week, 26 the previous week, 23 the week before and 17 the week before that – for a total of less than 100 people a month.

And B’Tselem says that “about 6,831 Palestinians were held in Israel as of the end of December ‘09.” How could only 6,800 Palestinians be held in Israel if the IDF is arresting 10,000 Palestinians per month?

Addameer not only made up the initial numbers but they keep grossly inflating them, confident that their anti-Israel audience will lap them up without question.

(Read complete post)
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PR fails again

Jonathan Dahoah Halevi
Israel Opinion/Ynet
04 January '10

The Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) published in its weekly summary a report on an incident in which three Palestinians were killed by IDF fire: “On Saturday, December 26, 2009 at around 00:30 Israeli forces opened fire on a number of Palestinians who approached the border. As a result, three of them were killed. They were unarmed and apparently trying to infiltrate Israel in order to look for work.”

The organization thus accuses the IDF of killing three innocent Palestinian civilians. In order to further exacerbate the Israeli “crime”, the organization added details in the service of Palestinian propaganda in relation to the economic distress in the Gaza Strip, which it claims is the reason that the group of Palestinians attempted to enter Israel to find work.

Stories of this kind, about young people who were killed in an attempt to cross the border to find work in Israel, can be found in abundance in reports issued by Palestinian human rights groups as well as in reports on Palestinian victims issued by B’Tselem.

This case allows one to learn about the conduct of terror organizations, Palestinian propaganda (sometimes with the assistance of Israeli human rights organizations) and the ineffectiveness of Israeli public relations. In this relation it should be clarified that not a single Palestinian terror organization claimed responsibility for the incident. Does this mean that these were civilians and not terrorists? Not necessarily.

The IDF Spokesperson’s Office issued a statement on December 29, 2009, which sheds some light on the incident:

“On Friday night an IDF force identified four terrorists approaching the border fence in northern Gaza in a military crawl, apparently in order to carry out an attack in Israel. The force fired at them using the ‘see and fire’ system, with the help of Air Force jets and forces from the Golani Brigade. The fire killed three terrorists and an additional terrorist was injured… In patrols held after the incident soldiers discovered a rope ladder and three explosive devices, among them a powerful device.”

The story of the incident, as it is revealed by the IDF’s version, is totally different from the report published by the Palestinian human rights group. The four Palestinian youths, three of whom were killed by IDF fire, were not trying to find work in Israel due to economic distress, but were sent either by a Palestinian terror organization or the Hamas government’s security forces on a mission – to plant powerful explosive devices on the border with Israel.

(Read full article)

Jonathan Dahoah Halevi is a senior researcher and fellow at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs and Director of Research at the Orient Research Group
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NGOs claimed Nizar Rayan was a civilian

NGO Monitor
01 January '10

Nizar Rayan, a senior Hamas military commander, and members of his family were killed in an IDF airstrike on January 1, 2009. Rayan was involved in the planning of many deadly suicide attacks on Israel and was an architect of the Hamas take-over of Gaza in 2007. He sent his own son out on a suicide bombing mission in 2001 that killed two and wounded many. Journalist Jeffrey Goldberg called Rayan, “one of the more bellicose Hamas leaders I have known”. Rayan told him in a 2007 interview that the “only reason to have a hudna is to prepare yourself for the final battle . . . Israel is an impossibility. It is an offense against God."

Rayan’s home was part of a complex that served as a weapons storage site and command center for Hamas. Prior to the attack, the IDF issued several alerts that the buildings would be targeted including specific telephone calls and warning shots “13 minutes and 9 minutes before the strike.” Other residents heeded the warnings, but Rayan and his family decided to stay. After the strike, secondary explosions were observed, confirming the presence of a weapons cache in Rayan’s home. It is not known whether the initial IDF attack or the secondary explosions caused the resulting casualties.

Despite Rayan’s status as a leader in Hamas’ Qassam brigades and the weapons stockpile in his building, the European-government funded Palestinian Center for Human Rights(PCHR) called Rayan’s death a “heinous crime” and that its “perpetrators and their military and political leaders must be prosecuted.”

As the logistical organizer for the Arab League’s Gaza “Fact Finding” mission, PCHR also facilitated an interview with two of Rayan’s sons, one of whom dubiously claimed, “My father couldn’t imagine he would be targeted like this.” Even the Guardian noted, however, that “Rayan appeared to believe himself invincible. He refused to leave or allow his enormous family to leave their home in the Jabalia camp.”

PCHR continues to list Rayan as a “civilian” and “university professor” in its casualty statistics from the war – calling further into question the organization’s credibility.

(Read full article)

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Palestinian Group Blasts Hamas; Washington Post Misses News

CAMERA/Snapshots
09 December 09

The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) condemned “external travel restrictions imposed on the population” by the Gaza Strip’s Hamas rulers. It said Palestinian police on December 7 “prevented 37 patients and their companions from heading towards the [Erez] crossing to travel to hospitals” in the West Bank and Israel.

PCHR called on the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip government to cancel Interior Ministry provisions announced on November 25. Lengthy forms, multiple identification, photocopies of Israeli permits and a requirement that individuals obtain permission to travel abroad three days in advance “have obstructed their travel to hospital, raising concerns regarding their health,” the organization charged.

The Washington Post did not cover the story. In a letter to Executive Editor Marcus W. Brauchli, retired McClatchy Newspapers Washington bureau chief and CAMERA member Leo Rennert noted that the newspaper “has devoted extensive space to Palestinians discomforted by Israeli travel restrictions .... while ignoring or paying at best minimal attention to Palestinian abuses of Palestinian human rights.”

It should be noted that PCHR, funded by the European Union, Norway, Denmark, the Ford Foundation, and George Soros’ Open Society Fund, among others, routinely refers to Jerusalem a part of the West Bank, the Israel Defense Forces as the Israel Occupation Forces, and falsely claims that “a very limited number of [Palestinian Arab] patients” have been permitted to cross at Erez for treatment in Israel when thousand do annually. That would seem to make its criticism of Hamas’ regulations as “illegal measures violat[ing] international human rights standards” and medical threats especially newsworthy.

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House of Cards: NGOs and the Goldstone Report

NGO Monitor

October 01, 2009

• The NGO network actively promoted the Goldstone inquiry, supported claims of a “balanced” mandate, and attacked Israel for not cooperating. In turn, Goldstone bolstered NGO credibility by relying on their publications, ignoring biases and false claims, praising their “high professional standard,” and defending them against “repression” from the Israeli government.
• The report includes more than 500 direct citations from politicized NGOs that lack credibility, as well as 120 references to or citations from UN agencies, such as OCHA, which often repeat NGO claims.
• The reliance on statements, publications, and submissions from highly politicized and biased NGOs is inconsistent with the claim to have conducted a “fact finding mission.” By adopting the flawed methodologies and false claims from the NGOs, Goldstone renders his entire report and its conclusions invalid.
• Conflicts of Interest: Goldstone and other members of the commission have close links to HRW, Amnesty International, PCHR and other politicized NGOs. Staff researchers Sareta Ashraph has been involved with pro-Palestinian NGOs and “lawfare” campaigns.
• Goldstone, following many NGO publications, ignored the international legal prohibition against incitement to genocide, and the evidence submitted that included many examples of Hamas and Iranian incitement against Jews.
• The report cites to a PCHR report condemning the closing of Hamas “humanitarian organizations” as a “flagrant violation of the right to association.” This is in direct opposition to the international legal obligation to fight terrorism and its financing.
• The report duplicates HRW and other NGO allegations regarding the Abed Rabbo family, describing family members as “credible and reliable witnesses.” In contrast, NGO Monitor found more than 14 different recorded versions of the family’s story.
• The radical NGO affiliations of some witnesses were hidden. For instance, Jonathan Pollak, referenced on 5 occasions, is a leader of Anarchists Against the Wall, and has ties to the International Solidarity Movement which provokes violent confrontations with the Israeli military.

Contents:

1. Number of NGO citations in the report
2. NGO Conflicts of Interest among Goldstone Mission Staff
3. Adoption of NGO Interpretations of International Law
4. Distortion of NGO statements that did not fit Palestinian narrative
5. NGOs and Factual Claims
6. NGO quotes in the section on “Repression of dissent”
7. Quid pro quo: The symbiotic relationship between NGOs and Goldstone
8. Appendix 1: Listing of NGO statements of support for Goldstone
9. (continue)