Anti-Israel Politics: Where human rights become acceptable collateral damage - by Evelyn Gordon

Palestinians’ rights matter when targeted by Israel, but not when targeted by the Palestinian Authority. And Israeli rights never matter, except when violated by Israel.

Evelyn Gordon..
JNS.org..
03 July '19..

Three seemingly unrelated incidents occurred last week, yet all share a common denominator: They exemplify the way anti-Israel politics has corrupted the concept of human rights.

Let’s start with best-selling British novelist Richard Zimler’s report that two British cultural organizations recently refused to host him for lectures about his new book, though he has lectured many times on previous books. “They asked me if you were Jewish, and the moment I said you were, they lost all interest,” he quoted his publicist as saying.

It’s not that these groups have anything against Jews per se. They simply feared that hosting a Jew would make them a target for anti-Israel protesters.

Zimler isn’t Israeli, has no relatives or investments in Israel and doesn’t write about Israel. His latest book is set in the Holy Land 2,000 years ago, but its storyline is Christian rather than Jewish (it’s called The Gospel According to Lazarus). So he wouldn’t seem an obvious target, given BDS apologists’ repeated claim that anti-Zionism isn’t anti-Semitic.

Unfortunately, much of the anti-Israel crowd hasn’t gotten that memo.

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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. 

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The Palestinian Story You Have Not Heard in the West - by Bassam Tawil

Had Abu Ghayyath been arrested by Israel, her name would have appeared on the front pages of The New York Times and in the broadcasts of the BBC and CNN. The only ones who picked up her ordeal and demanded her release, however, were a few Palestinian women's groups and, of course, her family.

Bassam Tawil..
Gatestone Institute..
05 June '18..

A Palestinian mother of five just spent 23 days in prison. During her incarceration, she was held in unspeakable conditions and denied family visitations. She was also prohibited from consulting a lawyer.

This is a story that no one has heard in the West.

Why? Because the Palestinian woman, Samah Abu Ghayyath, was detained not by Israel, but by Hamas, the Palestinian terror group that rules the Gaza Strip.

Abu Ghayyath would have been "fortunate" if she had been arrested by Israel. Then, the case would have reached the pages of major media outlets around the world and "pro-Palestinian" activists would have staged demonstrations and online campaigns to support her and denounce Israel.

By contrast, for instance, consider the example of Ahed Tamimi, a Palestinian teenage girl from a village near Ramallah in the West Bank. In December 2017, Tamimi was detained by Israeli authorities for physically assaulting an Israeli soldier. After agreeing to a plea bargain, she was sentenced to 8 months in prison.

Tamimi has since become a symbol of the Palestinian "struggle" against Israel. She is glorified by many in the mainstream media in the West and advocates of Palestinian human rights around the world, who have turned her into an icon.

Tamimi has won all this fame and glory because she and her family members have long been staging skirmishes with Israeli soldiers in their village of Nabi Saleh. The teenager and her parents have made it a habit to invite journalists -- or anyone carrying a camera -- to document their provocative actions against the soldiers.

Abu Ghayyath, however, the woman from the Gaza Strip, has been less fortunate than the golden girl from the West Bank.

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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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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. 

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Marching Their People Towards Yet More Harm and Grief. How Palestinians Silence Palestinians - by Khaled Abu Toameh

...Al-Dayeh is far from the main protagonist here -- although his personal story might make for interesting reading. This is about the silencing of critics. This is about human rights violations perpetrated not only by the Palestinian Authority, but by Hamas as well. This is about how Palestinian leaders continue to march their people towards yet more harm and grief. This is also about the ongoing failure of the international community to note any of the above. Al-Dayeh is just a bit player, then, in a much, much greater dictatorial drama.

Khaled Abu Toameh..
Gatestone Institute..
30 December '17..

Most people probably do not know him by name, but the image of Mohammed Al-Dayeh was a public one for many years. The tough-looking, mustachioed man in military garb served as the trusted bodyguard of former PLO leader Yasser Arafat.

His proximity to Arafat turned Al-Dayeh into one of the most powerful figures in the PLO leadership, especially during the 1990s and 2000s. If you wanted anything from Arafat -- from money to springing your son from prison -- Al-Dayeh was your man.

He was glued to Arafat night and day. He accompanied him on his persistent globe-trotting. You can hardly find a photo of Arafat without Al-Dayeh. Insiders say Arafat "adopted" him after he was orphaned from his parents during the civil war in Lebanon.

Al-Dayeh's fall from grace was rapid once his boss, Arafat, died in 2004. This is typical for dictatorial regimes that are run as a one-man show. Arafat managed the Palestinian Authority (and PLO) as if it were his private fiefdom. When the emperor falls, so do many of those around him, particularly his personal picks.

In the past week, Palestinians were surprised to learn that the man who was an icon of power of the Arafat era was now being held in detention in a Palestinian Authority prison in Ramallah. Reports about the incarceration of Al-Dayeh first appeared on social media, and many Palestinians were convinced that these were just rumors and gossip. How could the man once so loved by Arafat be behind bars? What crime did Al-Dayeh, who holds the rank of "brigadier-general" in the Palestinian Authority, commit? It would have to have been quite a misstep on Al-Dayeh's part.

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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. 

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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.

Having coffee and pastries with a Jew is a punishable offense? - by Liel Leibovitz

...To anyone truly interested in peace, the post should’ve been a cause for celebration: Here are two men, a Jew and a Muslim, putting aside their differences, enjoying each other’s company, and suggesting that there’s hope yet for something like a normal life for Israelis and Palestinians who believe in peace and reconciliation. The Palestinian Authority, however, had other ideas

Liel Leibovitz..
Tabletmag.com..
11 September '17..

Mohamed Jabir is a former member of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terror organization. He used to decorate his home in Hebron with photographs of Osama bin-Laden, and, at one point, considered becoming a suicide bomber. He had a change of heart, realized the evil of violence against innocents, and became a prominent peace activists. Yehuda Glick is an Israeli member of Knesset with the Likud party. He is an active promoter of the right of Jews to pray on the Temple Mount, and is a survivor of an assassination attempt by Jabir’s former terror group. He is also a firm believer in peaceful coexistence between Arabs and Jews, and when the Islamic holiday of Eid al-Adha rolled in, Glick traveled to Hebron to pay his friend Jabir a visit.

The two men sat on the couch, enjoyed some fruit and sweet pastries and the company of Jabir’s sweet children. Later that day, Glick posted a few photos of the afternoon on his Facebook account. “Inshallah,” he wrote, “may we all live here in peace. Happy holiday.”

To anyone truly interested in peace, the post should’ve been a cause for celebration.

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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. 

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Great Question. Why Don’t Supporters of Palestinians Care About PA Abuses? - by Mitchell Bard

If a Palestinian is persecuted, raped or murdered in the forest and no Jews are around, did it happen?

Mitchell Bard..
Algemeiner.com..
27 March '17..

On college campuses and beyond, support for the Palestinians has been portrayed as a human rights campaign. While the antisemitic BDS movement is — according to its founders and leaders — a crusade to make Israel disappear, it has attracted many naïve supporters who believe ostracizing Israel will somehow help the Palestinians achieve independence. BDS has been an unmitigated failure, but it has shielded the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Hamas from criticism for their human rights abuses.

Sadly, the people who loudly proclaim their concern for the Palestinians are silent when it comes to how Palestinians treat each other. The “occupation” imposes limitations on the freedom of Palestinians, but Israelis have no responsibility for the denial of civil rights that the residents of the West Bank and Gaza suffer on a daily basis.

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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. 

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Western Willful Neglect and the Palestinian Assault on Freedoms - by Khaled Abu Toam

...Many Palestinians used to say that their dream is that one day they would have a free media and democracy like their neighbors in Israel. But thanks to the apathy of the international community, the Palestinians have come to learn that if and when they ever have their own state, its role model will not be Israel or any Western democracy, but the regimes of repression that control the Arab and Muslim world.

Khaled Abu Toameh..
Gatestone Institute..
16 February '17..

A novelist, a journalist and a university professor walk into a bar. Sounds like a joke, but it stops being funny when these three figures are the latest victims of the Palestinian Authority's (PA) crackdown on public freedoms, above all, freedom of expression.
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The crackdown is yet more proof of the violent intolerance that the Western-funded PA has long shown its critics.

It is also a sad reminder that more than two decades after the foundation of the PA, Palestinians are as far from democracy as ever. In fact, the Palestinians seem to be marching in the opposite direction -- towards establishing a regime that is remarkably reminiscent of the despotic and corrupt Arab and Islamic governments.

PA officials like to boast that Palestinians living under their rule in the West Bank enjoy a great deal of freedom of expression, especially compared to the situation under Hamas in the Gaza Strip. However, a good look at the actions of the PA and its various security branches shows that they are not much different than those enforced by Hamas.

Sometimes it even seems as if the PA and Hamas are competing to see which one of them can most successfully silence critics and cracks down on journalists. This is the sad reality in which Palestinians living under the rule of these two parties have found themselves.

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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. 

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Where human rights violations must have a "made in Israel" sticker on them. - by Khaled Abu Toameh

...If the putative champions of the Palestinians in the West continue to disregard the trampling of Palestinian human rights by the PA and Hamas, there may not be any Palestinians left to champion.

Khaled Abu Toameh..
Gatestone Institute..
25 March '16..

These are the days when everything is backwards. The "pro-Palestinian" activists on university campuses throughout the Western world have gotten into the spirit: Palestinian students and academics in the West Bank and Gaza Strip endure daily harassment by the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Hamas, because all that gets the activists going are "Israeli abuses."

Apparently, today, to be "pro-Palestinian" one has to be "anti-Israel."

For the self-appointed advocates of the Palestinians at Western university campuses, the Palestinian issue is nothing but a vehicle for spewing hatred toward Israel. In good, backwards form, Israel is castigated, and the PA and Hamas are free to abuse their own people.

It seems that in the view of the anti-Israel folks, the Palestinians should not even hope for human rights under the Palestinian regimes.

So while the anti-Israel activists are busy protesting against Israel on Western campuses, Palestinian students and professors are left to be persecuted by their own governments.

Instead of campaigning for reform and democracy in the West Bank and Gaza, these activists spend precious energy trying to take down Israel. The Palestinian students and academics are left to their own devices.

Palestinians living under the Palestinian Authority and Hamas suffer an abysmal level of freedom of expression -- and always have. This is the grim reality that the international community and protesting students prefer to ignore. For them, human rights violations must have a "made in Israel" sticker on them.

Here is a suggestion: Let us redefine "pro-Palestinian." Instead of bashing Israel, the real pro-Palestinians will reveal themselves by demanding democracy for those they champion. True pro-Palestinian activists will scream for public freedoms for the Palestinians under the PA and Hamas regimes, which have always smashed dissent with an iron fist.

In the past few days, Palestinians on campuses in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip have once again been reminded that they remain as far as ever from achieving a state that would look any different from the other Arab dictatorships in the region. The campus incidents, which have hardly caught the attention of the international media and anti-Israel activists in the West, also expose the media double standard about human rights violations in the territories.

The World According to B’Tselem - Presumed Guilty Until Proven Innocent

...In other words, it admits that preventing civilian casualties under these circumstances is nearly impossible, but declares that unless Israel can accomplish the impossible, it effectively has no right to defend its citizens against a terrorist organization. And self-defense may be an even more fundamental human right than the presumption of innocence. But in B’Tselem’s view, evidently, Israelis have no rights. They are only and always guilty.

Evelyn Gordon..
Commentary Magazine..
28 January '15..

One of the worst things about many “human rights” organizations is the way they actually undermine some very fundamental human rights. A prime example is B’Tselem’s new report on Palestinian civilian deaths during this summer’s war in Gaza. Few people would disagree that the presumption of innocence is an important right, but when it comes to Israel, B’Tselem simply jettisons it. In fact, the group states with shocking explicitness that it considers Israel guilty until proven innocent.

Take, for instance, one incident the report discusses, an attack on the a-Dali building in Khan Yunis. B’Tselem doesn’t mention any combatants being present, but an alert Jerusalem Post reporter recalled that Amnesty International had identified one fatality as a combatant. He asked about this discrepancy, and here’s his account of B’Tselem’s response:

Without addressing the specific incident, a B’Tselem representative said there were cases where the group suspected that fighters may have been involved, but it was only reporting their involvement where the evidence was hard and clear.

In other words, if B’Tselem isn’t certain whether the victims were combatants or civilians, it lists them as civilians and then accuses Israel of war crimes. In fact, it does this even if it “suspects that fighters may have been involved.” In short, it presumes Israel’s guilt unless proven otherwise.

Moreover, the report stressed repeatedly that B’Tselem “has no way of knowing” why Israel struck any particular target, and evidently, it doesn’t care. But as NGO Monitor pointed out, the “why” is crucial: If, say, the building was used to store weapons or launch rockets at Israel, then it was a legitimate military target. Without knowing whether the building was targeted legitimately or indiscriminately, it’s impossible to accuse Israel of war crimes–unless, of course, you simply presume Israel’s guilt.

But B’Tselem goes beyond merely presuming Israel’s guilt; it also deliberately omits exculpatory evidence. Take, for instance, the attack on the Kaware home in Khan Yunis. As the report accurately says, the family left after receiving an IDF warning, but other civilians subsequently entered, and the IDF realized this too late to abort its strike. What B’Tselem left out, however, was that those civilians came deliberately to serve as human shields for the building, which the IDF claimed was a Hamas command center. The surviving Kawares said this explicitly, and several prominent media outlets reported it at the time. “Our neighbors came in to form a human shield,” Salah Kaware told the New York Times. Yet this all-important fact–that civilians had deliberately returned to serve as human shields, a development the IDF couldn’t have predicted–was simply omitted from the report.

When the terrorists say children are their main concern

Not for the first time, we are left to wonder aloud why UNICEF, Save the Children, Amnesty, Terre des Hommes, International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement and so many other well-funded, high-profile public interest organizations are taking so little interest in this unfolding tragedy. It's happening right under their noses.

Palestinian Arab child photographed at Hamas
"victory" eventin Nablus, August 29, 2014
[Image Source: AP]

Frimet/Arnold Roth..
This Ongoing War..
02 November '14..

Universal Children's Day takes place on November 20, less than three weeks from today.

The annual event was initiated by the UN General Assembly in 1954 as a way of encouraging states to "to promote mutual exchange and understanding among children" and similar blah blah. But also "to initiate action to benefit and promote the welfare of the world's children" which is a worthy and concrete goal.

Even the most cursory look at things that are done to children in many parts of the world serves to persuade of the need to take their welfare very seriously. Think of the millions of children cheated of education and forced into child labour, slavery, prostitution and pornography. And then there's the recruitment and training of child soldiers, a matter that has occupied us here on this blog often.

The UN adopted the Declaration of the Rights of the Child on November 20, 1958 and then the Convention on the Rights of the Child exactly 31 years later, on November 20, 1989. That convention is going to be 25 years old later this month. Pretty soon now the formalities, the issue of new postage stamps and theme posters and similar actions by civil servants are going to render the occasion even more meaningless than it probably is already. So allow us please to share a handful of observations about children in the Palestinian Arab world.

First some notes from a brief analysis triggered by the wave of violence that is currently on view here in Jerusalem from where we produce this blog. The Israeli Arab journalist and analyst, Khaled Abu Toameh ["Palestinians:Stop the Children's Intifada!", October 29, 2014] writes:

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The PA itself is the threat to the liberty of the Palestinians it rules

...It’s ironic that all those groups, especially in Europe, who consider themselves champions of Palestinian rights wish only to condemn Israel– while they continue to ignore the threat to Palestinians that emerges from their own officials and government bodies.

Elliott Abrams..
Pressure points..
28 October '14..

Palestinian Authority officials have given thousands of speeches over the years about removing the Israeli occupation, freeing Palestinians, self-government, and the like. But today –as in the days of Arafat– the PA itself is a threat to the liberty of the Palestinians it rules.

The most recent example is this information from the Jerusalem Post:

According to the Palestine Now news agency, documents show that Abbas ordered the monitoring of phone conversations of some of the more prominent political figures in the West Bank.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas ordered his attorney general to bug the phones of his political rivals within Fatah, according to a bombshell report posted on Saturday by a Hamas-affiliated website.

According to the Palestine Now news agency, documents show that Abbas ordered the monitoring of phone conversations of some of the more prominent political figures in the West Bank, including chief peace negotiator Saeb Erekat; PLO bigwig Yasser Abed Rabbo; Jibril Rajoub, the former head of the Preventive Security Service; and Tawfiq Tirawi, the commander of the Palestinian intelligence apparatus.

Even Human Rights Watch, whose bias against Israel is notorious, had to acknowledge basic facts about the PA:

Palestinian Authority Human Rights Violations? Where's the Coverage?

Evidently, most Western governments, journalists and human rights organizations have chosen to endorse the Palestinian Authority's stance that the only evil-doers are the Israelis. And that is precisely why the ICHR report on the anarchy, lawlessness and human rights violations by the Palestinian Authority and Hamas will be completely ignored in the West.

Khaled Abu Toameh..
Gatestone Institute..
11 February '14..

A report issued by the Palestinian Independent Commission for Human Rights (ICHR) this week criticized the Palestinian Authority [PA] and Hamas for assaults on human rights and freedoms in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

The report, which has been ignored by mainstream media and human rights organizations in the West, reveals that 10 Palestinians died in January 2014 in the West Bank and Gaza Strip as a result of anarchy, lawlessness and misuse of weapons.

The report also lists cases of torture and mistreatment in PA and Hamas prisons. ICHR pointed to an increase in the number of torture cases in prisons belonging to the PA's much-feared Preventive Security Service in the West Bank.

During January, ICHR wrote that it received 56 complaints about torture and mistreatment in Palestinian prisons: 36 in the Gaza Strip and 19 in the West Bank. In addition, the human rights organization received innumerable complaints about arbitrary and unlawful arrests of Palestinians by the PA and Hamas.

ICHR wrote that it also received complaints from Palestinians who accused the Palestinian Authority security forces in the West Bank of unlawfully seizing their money.

The organization also received complaints about assaults on freedom of expression and the media, as well as on peaceful protests and academic freedoms.

Of the 10 Palestinians who died during January, the report found that half of them died as a result of violent disputes between clans. One Palestinian was killed while working in a smuggling tunnel along the border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt. Three Palestinians died in what the organization describes as cases of "security anarchy and misuse of weapons." In the Gaza Strip, the report said, a 13-year-old girl named Wisam Ashour committed suicide by hanging herself in her family home.

With regards to torture, the organization stated that it received complaints from Palestinians who said they had been tortured while in detention in Palestinian Authority and Hamas prisons.

ICHR related that it received 85 complaints during January concerning unlawful and arbitrary arrests by the two Palestinian governments. Many detainees said they were taken into custody for "politically-motivated" offenses.

Hornik - The Palestinian Human Rights Nightmare

P. David Hornik..
frontpagemag.com..
27 March '12..



The notion that Israel is victimizing the Palestinians is one of the cardinal—perhaps the cardinal—paradigms of international politics since the 1967 Six-Day War. Not only the left, both in Israel and abroad, subscribes to it, but also a large part of the U.S. foreign policy establishment, and just about all of official Europe. It goes without saying that the paradigm is regnant in the Arab and Muslim worlds.

It is hard, then, to get anyone interested in Palestinians victimizing Palestinians—suggesting that the seeming preoccupation with Israeli-ruled territories has something to do with the great value many people find in the Jew-as-victimizer prototype. Similarly, once the United States—supposedly the oppressor—had left Southeast Asia in the early 1970s, it was hard to get any but a few of the opponents of that presence interested in the ensuing horrendous victimization of Vietnamese and Cambodians by other Vietnamese and Cambodians.

Last week, though, an Israeli outfit called the Jerusalem Institute of Justice (JIJ) tried to buck the trend. It presented to the European Parliament a report on “The Status of Human Rights on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.” The reports notes that “a surprising silence prevails regarding the violation of human rights by the Palestinian government authorities in the Territories,” and that, even though these are by now widely documented, “the EU continues to push for full and immediate statehood for the [Palestinian Authority].”

And while the JIJ focuses mainly on Europe, it could, naturally, also have said similar things regarding the Obama administration’s preoccupation with getting statehood for the Palestinians—fast; which seems to have waned only recently in an election year.