Harry's Place

OK, so I only skimmed it, but the main article you quoted seems an entirely fact-free smear piece – presumably prompted by his criticism of the IDF.

HRW is part of the Inquisition against the Jewish State.

No, it looks as if it quotes a series of sources.

I don’t know this HRW author, but the views which are cited in the article are wholly unexceptional on the extreme Left. Read any thread on Socialist Unity for example, and you will see this sort of line being run, today.

By contrast, the author of the Maariv piece appears from his Wikipedia entry to be a progressive.

Assuming that this is all correct, hiring a very extreme Communist, with simply horrendous views about Israel/Palestine to produce a report of this sort is akin hiring a man who was formerly active in the KKK to write about black people and crime. Fundraising for this sort of work in Saudi Arabia is like taking cash for this enterprise from the old Apartheid South Africa.

Welcome to Human Rights Watch.

I was going to say, “here comes the shit-storm of denials and accusations against harry’s place,” but of course I’m too late as franco’s post was the first one.

Presumably if he can justify the massacre of Olympic athletes as a “morale boost” then fabricating stories about white flags as a similar sort of morale boost would be unproblematic.

What did you do in the war daddy when you saw some muslims grovelling in surrender and some firing simultaneously?

Slightly off the main thread but contrasts Muslim/Left opinion on Israel and its legitimacy and the right of return of Palestinian refugees with that of Pakistan, an Islamic Zion in effect.

‘At this solemn hour in the history of India, when British and Indian statesmen are laying the foundations of a Federal Constitution for that land, we address this appeal to you, in the name of our common heritage, on behalf of our thirty million Muslim brethren who live in Pakistan – by which we mean the five Northern units of India, Viz: Punjab, North-West Frontier Province (Afghan Province), Kashmir, Sind and Baluchistan – for your sympathy and support in our grim and fateful struggle against political crucifixion and complete annihilation. ‘ Choudhary Rahmat Ali

‘It is extremely difficult to appreciate why our Hindu friends fail to understand the real nature of Islam and Hinduism. They are not religious in the strict sense of the word, but are, in fact, different and distinct social orders, and it is a dream that the Hindus and Muslims can ever evolve a common nationality, and this misconception of one Indian nation has troubles and will lead India to destruction if we fail to revise our notions in time. The Hindus and Muslims belong to two different religious philosophies, social customs, literatures. They neither intermarry nor interdine together and, indeed, they belong to two different civilizations which are based mainly on conflicting ideas and conceptions. Their aspect on life and of life are different. It is quite clear that Hindus and Mussalmans derive their inspiration from different sources of history. They have different epics, different heroes, and different episodes. Very often the hero of one is a foe of the other and, likewise, their victories and defeats overlap. To yoke together two such nations under a single state, one as a numerical minority and the other as a majority, must lead to growing discontent and final destruction of any fabric that may be so built for the government of such a state.’ Quaid-e-Azam

‘….only two alternatives. Either the Indian majority community will have to accept for itself the permanent position of an agent of British imperialism in the East, or the country will have to be redistributed on a basis of religious, historical and cultural affinities so as to do away with the question of electorates and the communal problem in its present form. ‘ Allama Iqbal

‘Hundreds and thousands of Muslims throughout India, Bangal, Burma and Afghanistan voted with their feet by migrating to Pakistan. On the ideological front, it symbolized Muslims’ aspiration to develop a sanctuary where they could shape their lives in conformity with the principles postulated by Islam….
We have proved that we are an equally strong, impregnable nation with the superior nuclear technology in our hands. We can excel in every field and every walk of life. Friendship is acceptable only on equal and honourable basis, without losing our national and cultural identity.’ Pakistan Times

‘In a visit to Bangladesh in 2002, Pakistani president Musharraf said that while he had every sympathy for the plight of thousands of people in Bangladesh known as ’stranded Pakistanis’,(a mere 300,000) he could not allow them to emigrate to Pakistan, as Pakistan was in no position to absorb such a large number of refugees which shared no linguistic, cultural, or historical ties with Pakistan. He encouraged his Bengali counterpart not to politicize the issue and accept the refugees as citizens of the successor state of East Pakistan. Pakistani government officials have threatened to deport the more than 1.5 million illegal Bengali refugees living in its country if the issue is not resolved acceptably.’

I’m not surprised to learn this about Stork. HRW has been the most disreputable NGO for some time now. Of course, you don’t need to be a fanatical Marxist to be uncomfortable with some Israeli conduct in the recent Gaza conflict. The equivocation and wilful misinterpretation (or is it pure ignorance?) of established rules of war from the knee-jerk Israeli government apologists in the original thread below was, once again, an embarrassment to this blog.

Thank fuck for SO Muffin.

Is this really that much of a surprise? Not to me. But then, just possibly, I am a paranoid idiot who, based on meeting such people employed by similar organisations, expects them to hold these views.

Elsewhere (and who knows maybe it is worth a separate post?) some British firemen, who you might think are basically concerned about extinguishing fires in the UK and the work environment of people who carry out said firefighting, have followed British academics in calling on the TUC to reconsider ties with Histradut, the Israeli Trade Union Movement. Not the Chinese, Sudanese, Iranian, Saudi, Burmese or North Korean trade union movements, only the evil Israeli one. A Scottish pro-Palestinian group seems to be behind it somewhere, as well.

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1249418620589&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

B

I love the accusation that reporting what some one said accurately constitutes both “fact free” and a “smear”.

What really worries me is that if the Conservatives win the next election, Labour will start wooing the Socialist Unity/Respect type blocs as potential voters.

For instance, if Galloway does unseat Jim Fitzpatrick on a Respect ticket, how do you think Labour’s election planners will plan to take the seat back?

As funny as it will be to see Labour dog-whisling to BNP voters and Islamists at the same time, it will only strengthen the hand of Israel’s critics.

What has fuck to do with me, Brownie? I mean, in a non-recreational sense? :-)

However… The first, absolutely first principle of an organisation committed to monitoring or criticising human right abuses on universal grounds (as opposed to partisan organisations, using alleged human right abuses as a political and propaganda tool) is to lean over backwards to be studiously fair and, like Caesar’s wife, to appear to be beyond reproach.

It seems that HRW is nothing of this kind. Amnesty International is not perfect (who is?) but it is simply impossible to imagine them allowing an extreme, hate-overflowing, fundamentalist propagandist like Joe Stork within a mile of a position of responsibility on an issue on which he is as unbiased as Count Dracula was w.r.t. the blood of young virgins.

I am not terribly good on the history of HRW, so perhaps somebody more knowledgeable can enlighten me. I gather that they are a Johnny-come-lately, claiming more-or-less the same role as AI, but far less professionally and with a considerably smaller global reach. Is this a fair interpretation?

Finally… Brownie is of course right. Bigoted, hate-filled morons like Stork provide an alibi to those keen to accept any kind of IDF whitewash at face value – precisely like bigoted, hate-filled morons who post racist comments on Palestinians provide an alibi to those keen to delegitimise Israel.

Is this the same Joe Stork who wrote a piece for the Guardian about Hamas’ responsiblity for brutal sectarian attacks in Gaza?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/apr/22/hamas-killings-gaza

“We found the allegations of victims and witnesses that the perpetrators of these attacks were Hamas-affiliated to be consistent and credible. “

Which wilful (sic) misinterpretation of established rules of war Brownie? Oh and SO Muffin’s comments in the thread you were referring to were anything but commendable: for one he claimed that all the mainstream Israeli media agreed on a number of less than 400 Hamas combatants killed, which just isn’t true and then went on to provide a hollow critique stating that the IDF’s conduct in fighting Hamas in Gaza wasn’t moral enough based on his own experience and knowledge as an IDF soldier (appeal to authority), but couldn’t articulate what he would have done differently. You might find that persuasive but I find it weak to say the least. So sorry Brownie dearie, but saying that SO Muffin’s contribution in the last thread were weak and false does not make me a “knee jerk Israeli government apologist”. Given your fact free screed above it seems you ought to look in the mirror before calling others “ignorant embarrassment(s) to this blog”.

Where’s Conor Foley now?

As far as HRW, I told you so. I was completely right about it.

Meanwhile if this was 1943 S.O. Muffin would be whining about us treating Nazi Germany bad, such is his own vanity.

Poisoning the well…..bizarrely, their own well! Trashing the name of a formerly respectable organisation…it’s not new really.

Echos of the Moonbat Lancet editor – Dr Richard Horton in whose tenure the now infamous 2 batshit crazy inflated Iraq casualty reports were published.

Debasing their own currency and reducing their future effectiveness. It’s a shame really.

Moonbattary – there’s alot of it about, but it’s really silly to appoint moonbats to senior positions when you have a reputation!

Has anyone got any other sources to verify what’s been said in the original article?

Doing a quick google only picks up that article in various republished forms, and articles talking about that article.

Another Marxist hate filled bastard, who hates Israeli Jews, let’s be honest it’s not a surprise really, is it.

He works for HRW, no surprises there, this Joe Stork marxist is just another fucking Cowboy who wishes he was an Indian, another hater who longs for a rerun of the battle of the little big horn, with Israel as the 7th cavalry. Lots of other little indians will be turning up shortly so I will be brief, the Nazi’s thought they could overthrow the democratic west, they were wrong, the communists thought they could overthrow the democratic west, they were wrong and now the not so ‘braves’ of the Islamist/Marxist alliance think they can overthrow the democratic west, of which Israel is a part, but they, just like their predecessors, are also wrong, in fact I would go so far as to predict that it is this Islamist/Marxist alliance that will ultimately become the 21st centuries 7th cavalry. Galloway as Custer and this stork asshole holding the regiments Hammer, sickle and Scimitar flag, now that will be a movie I will definitely pay top dollar to see.

Marxists, Nazi’s, Islamist Lunatics, what disgusting people they don’t realize they are.

So sorry Brownie dearie, but saying that SO Muffin’s contribution in the last thread were weak and false does not make me a “knee jerk Israeli government apologist”.

Well, Lbnaz, you are a knee-jerk Israeli government apologist from Central Casting. Which is precisely why I find your arguments so hollow.

The problem with you or with, say, Hasbara Buster, is that you are so predictable. No matter what happens, no matter what the allegation, no matter what the background, the screed is the same. One side is spotlessly white, the other irredeemably evil. This, frankly, produces very little intellectual credibility and very little grounds for grown-up exchange of views.

none of the sources are verified, and they shouldn’t be as hard to track down as they appear to be, but hey, run it anyway.

i do like the way wikipedia is used as a credible source here, especially the self-aggrandizing bit in poor english about him being a widely-invited speaker amd ‘most translated israeli journalist’…

there’s an awful lot of ad hominem in the piece, in any case, unsupported by evidence.

What really worries me is that if the Conservatives win the next election, Labour will start wooing the Socialist Unity/Respect type blocs as potential voters.

The left is losing patience with the notion of democracy.

The Chinese model is going to look attractive to them soon.

Which wilful (sic) misinterpretation of established rules of war Brownie?

Right off the bat, the mistaken assumption that because side A ’started it’ and/or takes steps to ensure the civilian population is placed in the line of retaliatory fire from side B, then side A bears exclusive responsibility for anything that happens to said population and side B is absolved of all responsibility.

So sorry Brownie dearie, but saying that SO Muffin’s contribution in the last thread were weak and false does not make me a “knee jerk Israeli government apologist”.

I’m not your fucking “dearie” so take your schoolyard patronization elsewhere. But on the point, you need to re-read my comment if you believe the motivation for my labelling certain commenters “knee-jerk apologists of the Israeli government” has anything whatsoever to do with what they think of SO Muffin. I used that term because certain commenters warrant it based on comments in the thread under discussion and others made over a period of time. It is more than likely that such commenters will disagree with SO Muffin most of the time, but that is not the motivation for ascribing the term I did.

there’s an awful lot of ad hominem in the piece, in any case, unsupported by evidence.

Given that HRW is an organisation whose credibility is as good as its reputation for impartiality, and given that Israeli libel laws are pretty robust, I would have expected in that case either HRW or Joe Stork to sue Ben Dror Yemini and Maariv (the second-largest Israeli newspaper, with reputation to protect) for slanderous libel. The evident absence of any such suit, not even of an official rebuttal, is an evidence of sorts.

Joe Stork also wrote this article about Palestinian suicide bombings against Israeli civilians which…

“meet the definition of a crime against humanity. When these suicide bombings take place in the context of violence that amounts to armed conflict, they are also war crimes. Human Rights Watch unreservedly condemns these atrocities.”

http://www.hrw.org/legacy/reports/2002/isrl-pa/ISRAELPA1002-01.htm#P212_11800

Doesn’t sound from that like a “veteran supporter of Palestinian terrorism”.

Something very fishy about the original article in which the quotes are unsourced and only show up elsewhere on the web in reference to this same article.

Ohad,

The left is losing patience with the notion of democracy.

The Chinese model is going to look attractive to them soon.

This is one reason why Islamosceptics need to start owning the name Islamosceptic. If we want to start drawing the poison from the charge of ‘Islamophobia’, we need to create space for an alternative definition.

It’s a bit like pro-choice/pro-life. Whatever you think of either camp, they own their respective names and it helps with their P.R.

Doesn’t sound from that like a “veteran supporter of Palestinian terrorism”.

It is frankly irrelevant whether Joe Stork is a supporter of Palestinian terrorism against Israel and of the eradication of Israel, or whether he is a “reformed character”. A responsible human rights organisation would have kept him a mile away from any involvement with the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.

My guess is Joe Stork once thought it comradely and revolutionary to support terrorism, but has sicne grown out of this.

The point is that if a NGO loases credibility in its impartiality, it loses everything. It’s better all round if the people running NGOs are not and never have been political animals, let alone fiercely partisan political animals.

I did a search for other press mentions of Joe Stork. It’s fair to say he does appear on occasions to have attacked Hamas, and called for Saddam Hussein to be indicted by an international tribunal in 2001 (while calling for sanctions on Iraq to be dropped). After the Iraq war he is to be found denying that the US was targeting civilians.

However, he is quoted in The Scotsman (20 January 2003, p. 10) in these terms:

“The US administration has already been warned not to overplay human rights abuses in Iraq this time as it tries to build its case for war. Joe Stork, a Middle East monitor for Human Rights Watch said last month: ‘I do not think the human rights abuses in Iraq are systematic and serious.’ ”

That’s frankly an amazing statement.

What really worries me is that if the Conservatives win the next election, Labour will start wooing the Socialist Unity/Respect type blocs as potential voters.

Not new really. They – the Labour party – do essentially this sort of thing right now, wooing Muslims on the basis of Islamic sectarianism. A wrongheaded, intrinsically socially divisive approach.

Hopefully they will pay for this dearly at the poles whilst we still have some vestige of democracy.

“It is frankly irrelevant whether Joe Stork is a supporter of Palestinian terrorism against Israel and of the eradication of Israel”

Except that is the specific charge against him here. The article claims he “further supported the Munich Massacre, which “provided an important boost in morale among Palestinians.””

That quote now seems to be taken from an early article from Middle East Report – ie it is part of an analysis, and not one he wrote. You could abstract a similar phrase from any national newspaper of the time. Yet that has been put into his mouth as his opinion because he also worked for MERIP.

This just seems to be an appallingly cack-handed smear. Is it not better to be informed and accurate in your criticisms than go along with this sort of thing?

And as I’ve pointed out he unequivocally condemned suicide bombing as war crimes, and there was no outcry against his impartiality then.

The evident absence of any such suit, not even of an official rebuttal, is an evidence of sorts.

not really. the original article was only published yesterday.

almost none of the quotes seem to be available online anywhere other than in reproductions of this article, or in places that aren’t nakedly, and openly, anti-HRW to begin with. if you google them, and dig a bit deeper, they link to a series of oddly similar-looking forum entries and blog posts which appeared before the piece was written.

actually, if you follow places the stuff appears before the ‘revelations’, it looks like they go back to this:

http://www.ngo-monitor.org/editions/v2n08/v2n08-2.htm

and this:

http://www.jcpa.org/

not exactly the neutral-est of sources, even the one-eyed on here will agree that, and as usual the claims aren’t actually verified other than thanking random names for their ‘research’.

even if you look to what the evidence is against him, it’s really not all that great. For example, this is the ‘neutrality’ claim in context:

The editor states that his intention was to make this a collection of scholarly and unbiased essays. The authors, almost all Westerners, are scholars. However, some of them are known for their previous scholarly but anti-Zionist writings. Academic neutrality would seem to me to be a false and status-serving claim. Rather than claim this dubious virtue, the editor might well have done better to explain the bias of his authors as one based on acquaintance with the basic issues as well as with the particular facts. (What Happened to Palestine, Journal of Palestine Studies, V1 #2, Winter 1972; p 105)

that’s actually the direct opposite of what he’s being accused of, isn’t it – and i found that in one of the hysterically anti-Stork articles there are in the pro-Israel wingnuttosphere! these things aren’t all that hard to chase up and they are far from convincing – this is as far from an ‘exclusive’; as you can get, it’s just a rewrite of a bunch of hokey, deliberately misinforming, stuff from teh internets.

this looks dangerously like research by partisan internet site to me. I’d hold back before jumping to any conclusions. i wonder why this ‘revelatory’ piece, based almost entirely on a bunch of stuff cobbled together from untrustworthy places on teh internets, suddenly appeared now? What have HRW done recently that the author (not really all that moderate, going against his fulsome wikipedia entry, if these are his sources) would want to call into question?

Hopefully they will pay for this dearly at the poles whilst we still have some vestige of democracy.

Yep, we can at least be sure that the Conservatives will not be making their own strategic alliances with extremists.

Oh, wait a minute…

a comment i just posted debunking a couple of the claims about Stork got deleted, i think, but if you google this stuff for a while it’s all public domain and has been for ages, and a lot of it seems to have been comprehensively misinterpreted by both the openly partisan places that hosted it before this journo wrote on it, and by him as well.

I think in future you need to check sources more thoroughly.

Something very fishy about the original article in which the quotes are unsourced and only show up elsewhere on the web in reference to this same article.

It’s called “something that happened before the world wide web was around”.

You’d be very surprised to know that before 1994 there were actually magazines, books, newsletters, and things like that where people used to disseminate information and express ideas.

“When these suicide bombings take place in the context of violence that amounts to armed conflict, they are also war crimes.”

Why didn’t he just say ‘these suicide bombings are war crimes’?

Is it because he thinks the poor resistance are not involved in an “armed conflict” in other words a conventional “war” but are simply using the only means available to them as poor oppressed proletariat freedom fighters.

Or in other words during the six day war suicide bombings would be considered war crimes because “When these suicide bombings take place in the context of violence that amounts to armed conflict, they are also war crimes.” But any other time they can be considered as what exactly, understandable actions of the desperate oppressed masses, is that what that statement implies.

Milliband said today that sometimes terrorism is warranted didn’t he? Is that what this guy stork means, that sometimes suicide bombings are warranted, because you see all he had to say was “suicide bombings are carried out by people who are fucking insane” No ambiguity. Tell it as it is, surely that would clear up which Humans Rights he wants to Watch. The victims of suicide bombers are Humans also aren’t they, whether they are involved in an armed conflict or not, aren’t they?

Thanks Ohad, I never realised that. That must be why there are no links.

Could you explain why there are no references to printed materials though? I’m no expert, but I think blog posting technology can handle that sort of thing.

“Why didn’t he just say ‘these suicide bombings are war crimes’?”

I suspect he thought that was covered by calling them crimes against humanity. He made the further point that in a war, they are war crimes. Hope that helps.

almsot all of it is directly lifted from this:

http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_context=8&x_nameinnews=224&x_article=1629

and if you look look closer at most of the material, it’s not entirely complimentary to either the author of this most recent article, nor the person who compiled the earlier one. and the author of the CAMERA one doesn’t seem to be quite as ‘good’ a guy as the wiki entry for Yemini lets on.

Overall though I think HRW’d be better off with someone less open to (at times unfair) criticism in this position but the extent of misrepresentation is quite simply breathtaking.

a lot of this is simply slander and wilful misreading. FFS the thing about him ‘not believing in impartiality’ is actually located in a statement which supports impartiality.

All of this stuff is from a very long time ago, too…

Mike, I’m commenting on the other accusations against Stork, but did you see David Boothroyd’s sourced Stork quote from Jan 2003?:

“‘I do not think the human rights abuses in Iraq are systematic and serious.’ ”

If a comment like this doesn’t disqualify you from NGO/humanitarian work, it’s difficult to think what would.

“But any other time they can be considered as what exactly, understandable actions of the desperate oppressed masses, is that what that statement implies.”

I think that might be slightly unfair, he said that in a situation of war they are “also war crimes.”

The “also” implies that even in situations other than war, suicide bombings remain war crimes.

@Anaximanders other sandal. Are you fick or something? A suicide bomb outside the context of war would be a terrorist attack, within the context of war, a war crime. That’s all the quote is saying, that even in the context of war, it’s a crime.

“Windter” wrote:but if you google this stuff for a while it’s all public domain and has been for ages,

Huh? Not that I can see. The material referenced is print stuff from the 70s. You will need to find it in a University library.

Doesn’t sound from that like a “veteran supporter of Palestinian terrorism”.

Yeah, but how does he define ‘civilian’? Does he adopt Yusuf al-Qaradawi’s formulation that no Israeli citizen is a civilian?

That should be “I’m not commenting on the other accusations”

Brownie – that quote is actually far more damning than anything else. Which just goes to show that if you research things properly you can get less froth and spittle down the front of your shirt and be far more effective than the sort of unhinged nutterdom on show in the original post.

And, I might add, on display in some of the comments. Greg – perhaps you should have read the report I linked to before joining the Anaximader club?

Mike wrote:
unhinged nutterdom on show in the original post.

by “unhinged nutterdom” you mean “things that are not particularly outrageous, but would disupt my worldview if they were true” ???

sorry, what i meant was, the allegations against him are all widely available online. and as i said, even the bits they quote as evidence seem to have been interpreted by somebody with no brain. His ‘argument against objectivity’ is actually a criticism of something for pretending to be objective when it isn’t.

And most of the evidence against him is stuff someone else said. you’d need to get a proper, unbiased journalist in to actually work out what the case against him is.

unfortunately, Yemini (despite being a ‘good guy’, based on a wikipedia entry) is not that journalist, since all he’s doing is rewriting a partisan think-tank report – and the authors of the reports against Stork are comprehensively biased too.

Let me rephrase my previous comment.

When Stork says that in the context of violence that amounts to an armed struggle, suicide bombings “are also war crimes”, it is clear that what he is saying is that in addition to being crimes against humanity they are to be regarded as war crimes.

Seemingly the intention of his words are to remove the argument that in a war context, suicide bombings are a legitimate technique.

even the bits they quote as evidence seem to have been interpreted by somebody with no brain.

What a preposterous slur.

“Are you fick or something? ” Maybe, it’s a possibility, credulous? maybe, you never know, but as credulous as you, no, definitely not. If this post is bullshit and this guy stork is innocent then I will forever hold my keyboard but until he or someone else ‘clears’ him then I will carry on being a bit “fick or somethink” Is that OK Oliver or don’t people such as you and mike like “fick” people.

Brownie wrote:

Yep, we can at least be sure that the Conservatives will not be making their own strategic alliances with extremists.

Fair point, so far as such comparisons go, which let’s be honest, isn’t very far, given we don’t have a problem with terrorism from European nationalists and the intelligence services are not – as far as I am aware – tracking 2,000 nascent European nationalist terrorist cells in Blighty, there are not 150 state subisdised European nationalist schools being set up in Blighty to promulgate further sectarianism. The British state, publishers and broadcasters are not visibly cowering in the face of European nationalist hair trigger sensibilities backed up by credible threats of violence, there is not a global issue with European nationalism informing violence pretty much the Word over and the British miltary is not engaged in 2 nasty wars informed by European nationalism.

The Tory party is dodgy too in lots of ways, I fully grant. To the fellow on the Clapham omnibus the current Labour party, I posit, has rather more of a fetid stench than the Tories.

Amazing. Muffin only contributes to this blog placid generalities about how there are bads on both sides, while LBNAZ has been contributing hard facts, and well researched since he has beginning to post here. And suddenly, LBNAZ is a knee-jerk something, while Muffin is some kind of Moises Mendelsohnn!

“placid generalities”

Sorry, “platitudes” is the word.

Let’s play the game, Google “Joe Stork”!

I better go to bed, Too many Chiefs hardly any Indians.

Marxists eh, what would I do without them.

NXSA

The Tory party is dodgy too in lots of ways, I fully grant. To the fellow on the Clapham omnibus the current Labour party, I posit, has rather more of a fetid stench than the Tories.

The Conservatives have Baroness Warsi, who is in all respects the anti-Yaqoob.

She will count for a lot.

The British state, publishers and broadcasters are not visibly cowering in the face of European nationalist hair trigger sensibilities backed up by credible threats of violence

“Cowering”? This would be the same British atate that has spent its last two terms being accused of tearing up Magna Carta? And you mention the two wars, yourself. What form has this “woo-ing of Muslims” taken?

I don’t somehow think the 1997-2010 Labour Party’s legacy will include a section about how it soft-pedalled on Islamic terrorism or prostrated itselft at the feet of the British Muslim community.

@Anaximanders other sandal: The use of ‘fick’ was a juvenile attempt at humour. You were obviously wilfully engaged in misreading his quote, rather than being stupid, I apologise.

“You were obviously willfully engaged in misreading his quote”

Now that Oliver is a definite possibility. “Willful” Hmm that will take some thought on my part, I don’t normally think of myself as “Willful” but maybe that is what I have become, maybe all this Islamofascist appeasement that oozes from the pores of the ‘Left’ has made me just another stubborn, willful bastard, possible I suppose, we do after all live in strange and troubling times, as I said it will give it some thought.

Goodnight to all.

So, no one actually knows anything about Joe Stork?

There’s absolutely nothing incompatible with Joe Stork being a long standing ultra extremist marxist supporter of marxist revolutionary terrorism whilst also being ready to condemn and label as war crimes terrorism committed by groups other than marxist revolutionary regimes and revolutionary groups. Hard line CP leftovers and older style Trots routinely condemned suicide bombing by Hamas because they were a group based on religious totalitarianism as opposed to secular totalitarianism, who needed to be fought against quite as vehemently and viciously as the democracies both were out to overthrow.

It’s only pretty recently the Trots and their fellow travellers have seen Islamists as their potential revolutionary vanguard, now that they’ve given up on “blacks” who they took up after they gave up on “the working class”.

Stork seems to be a clear example of a hard line old timer Marxist who seeks to aggrandise and apologise for/minimise the responsibility of the PA and its Fatah cohorts whilst developing the otherwise damaged credibility of HRW through labelling Hamas as war criminals.

QED.

What I find so depressing is DavidT and others’ methods of determining the probity of the Dror Yemini article by deciding that if he espouses the opinions DavidT most likes, then his credibility must be OK. This replicates the worst of traditional Marxist methods for validating/discrediting both individuals and what they write. It’s a marginally more intelligent approach than bleating, four legs good, two legs bad. It’s absolutely central to the methods used by Chomsky and Pilger, but it’s got no business on HP.

I said it once, I’ll repeat it again.

Suppose that Joe Stork has been slandered by Ben Dror Yemini and the Maariv newspaper. Suppose that all (or much, or substantive part of) whatever was published about him is a tissue of lies.

Now, Maariv is not an anonymous blog, it is a national newspaper, with offices on Karlibach Street, Tel Aviv. Libel laws in Israel are robust. If libel indeed took place, it is a moral obligation toward their functionary, as well as the politically smart thing to do, for HRW to initiate immediately libel proceedings.

If they do so, we should all suspend judgment until the case is considered in an open court. If neither they nor Joe Stork do so, we should draw our conclusions now.

What I find so depressing is DavidT and others’ methods of determining the probity of the Dror Yemini article by deciding that if he espouses the opinions DavidT most likes, then his credibility must be OK.

A monumental example of tunnel vision. The criticism of Joe Stork is precisely that: his (past?) views and track record disqualify him from being a believable commenter of human rights in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Well, if this criticism is sustainable then, by exactly the same token, one would expect the views of Yesha Council on land ownership in West Bank, say, or of Avigdor Liebermann on civil rights of Israeli Arab citizens to be tainted, rather than expression of impartial position. The fact that Ben Dror Yemini is apparently not sharing Judy’s right-wing fundamentalism is precisely what makes him more believable in this context.

What I find so depressing is DavidT and others’ methods of determining the probity of the Dror Yemini article by deciding that if he espouses the opinions DavidT most likes, then his credibility must be OK. This replicates the worst of traditional Marxist methods for validating/discrediting both individuals and what they write. It’s a marginally more intelligent approach than bleating, four legs good, two legs bad. It’s absolutely central to the methods used by Chomsky and Pilger, but it’s got no business on HP.

What does this mean? There is no International Court of Credibility. On what basis should DT or anyone else make an assessment as to another actor’s credibility and integrity other than by employing their own critical faculties and performing their own analysis?

if you look at the link i provided to what looks like the lone source for this article, i think you can see that these slanders are a) widely circulated on wingnut pro-Israel websites and b) based overwhelmingly on such poor research and such extremely questionable interpretations that the piece was, if not written in extremely bad faith, then certainly written with very little objective thought.

you can bleat all you want about moral responsibility for libel, but the fact remains that if you look into the majority of these allegations they fall apart. As such, you should be thinking a bit harder about truth etc than merely ‘if they don’t sue RIGHT NOW, it must be true’.

I am however guessing that the newspaper fact-checkers didn’t do much more than I’ve done, and thought it was ok. maybe so, but that proves that they’re happy with articles written in bad faith.

The fact that Ben Dror Yemini is apparently not sharing Judy’s right-wing fundamentalism is precisely what makes him more believable in this context.

The fact that he provides specific verifiable quotes and sources is what makes him more believable.

Rather than talk about ideologies, people can just go to a University library and look for the mentioned publications.

b) based overwhelmingly on such poor research and such extremely questionable interpretations that the piece was, if not written in extremely bad faith, then certainly written with very little objective thought.

Windter should give an example of a “questionable interpretation” from the Camera article. Til then he can be dismissed.

Ben-Yemini has at least one new piece of information – regarding the leaflet on Munich.

camera article says that this extract is ‘arguing in favor of anti-Israel bias’. only it isn’t. it’s arguing against the pretence of objectivity from partisans.

The editor states that his intention was to make this a collection of scholarly and unbiased essays. The authors, almost all Westerners, are scholars. However, some of them are known for their previous scholarly but anti-Zionist writings. Academic neutrality would seem to me to be a false and status-serving claim. Rather than claim this dubious virtue, the editor might well have done better to explain the bias of his authors as one based on acquaintance with the basic issues as well as with the particular facts. (What Happened to Palestine, Journal of Palestine Studies, V1 #2, Winter 1972; p 105)

such misreadings are in bad faith. and yet the journo at the top is happy to repeat them as fact.

such misreadings are in bad faith.

What’s clear is your inability to read.

Also clear is your agenda, which has little to do with finding the truth.

munich leaflet claim isn’t new, you can find it at this in-no-way partisan website:

http://www.ngo-monitor.org/digest_info.php?id=2127

but Stork isn’t necessarily the author of it and the original piece at the top doesn’t actually claim that he was, either.

“Rather than claim this dubious virtue, the editor might well have done better to explain the bias of his authors as one based on acquaintance with the basic issues as well as with the particular facts.”

I am sorry, does this mean that if you are an anti-Zionist, what you write is “based on acquaintance with the basic issues as well as with the particular facts”?

munich leaflet claim isn’t new, you can find it at this in-no-way partisan website:

What does “partisan” have to do with anything. That article actually gives the issue and page number.

Well with this background on Joe Stork, I now understand why HRW has virtually nothing to say about the awful THAT story should be front and centre when any human rights discussion are directed at the region. The Arab régimes use Israeli “aggressions” as a convenient smokescreen behich which they hide their egregious Human rights abuses.

Brownie:

“Cowering”?

Remember The Rushdie Satanic Verses business, and that started on the Tory’s watch. Blair relaxing spousal visa requirements (though fair’s fair…that could be argued to be whoring rather than cowring) The motoons – the state broadcaster and plenty of others, not showing the completely innocuous motoons, 150 state funded Islamic schools on the way, pinning a K on the Islamofascist Sir Iqbal Sacrine, not letting in Wilders – an elected Dutch MP following Lord Ahmed’s all too credible threats. Appointing the dodgy Shahid Malik as the first Muslim minister after he signed that letter, Islamic proto Jihadis engaging in direct incitement not getting arrested on all too numerous occasions….it goes on and includes the UK military’s white washed under performance in Iraq. I mean FFS, Maj General Salmon, the last UK commander in the South of Iraq – with whom I just happened to go through Officer and Commando training back when god was a boy – handed over to a US commander in Basra, not an Iraqi one!

Yup, sadly …’cowering’ is exactly it.

The fact that Ben Dror Yemini is apparently not sharing Judy’s right-wing fundamentalism is precisely what makes him more believable in this context.

What an absurd farrago of confused argument! The point I was making is that one should not assume one can demonstrate the credibility or otherwise of their report by reference to their political beliefs. SO Muffin chooses to reiterate and even enhance the “four legs good, two legs bad approach” by suggesting that (a) I am a right wing fundamentalist (doubly bad and evil) and (b) specifically on those grounds that if I disgree with Yemini, then he must really be right!

Brilliant totalitarian logic!

How wrong can SO Muffin be? I’m neither right wing, nor a fundamentalist, but if I were either of these things, it would be neither here nor there. The evidence is Stork’s track record which has been presented by Yemini, and, as SO Muffin himself states, remains unchallenged by Stork and HRW. I happen to agree with Yemini, because the evidence fits well with other available evidence (not least of which is the way Stork talks on clips of him from 2006 and 2007 which are available on YouTube) And despite the fact that I don’t share Yemini’s political views.

So SO Muffin is in danger of having painted him/herself into a corner. If I am the evil right wing fundamentalist he says I am and I agree with Yemini, then Yemini must be wrong! Oh dear, dear, dear. I think we have in Muffin’s way of conducting an argument a classic example of that old paradox of Bertrand Russell, which asks you to consider a piece of paper on one side of which is written “The statement on the other side of this paper is false’ and on the reverse of which is written “The statement on the other side of this paper is true”.

Another prime example of choosing to discredit someone by attributing what you believe to be obnoxious values to them, regardless of whether they actually hold them or not, and of course, drawing attention away from the views they express. Anyone who wants to characterise me as a right wing fundamentalist, read my blog. And even then, think about the proposition: no right wing fundamentalist can be right about anything political or factual.

It is a fact of existence that we all get our information about events during, say, Cast Lead from secondary and tertiary sources. This is precisely who the truthfulness and probity of these sources is so important.

Suppose, windter, that “The Independent” published a piece claiming that the IDF spokesman who has published the IDF rebuttal to HRW accusations has previously been an activist in Kahane Hai, with track record of racist pronouncements and extreme wingnut anti-Palestinian violence. Now, if this is true then this is damning evidence, completely putting into question the bona fides of IDF rebuttal, would you agree with me? And would you agree with me that IDF and/or Israeli Embassy in London, will be aware that this is so? Hence, if this happens to be a pack of lies, they will (a) rebut it publicly, and (b) issue libel proceedings again the newspaper in question?

Now, I’ve just checked the HRW website and Joe Stork’s page there. No rebuttal, nothing, nada. Please, explain why? After all, these accusations have been (as you yourself pointed out) been made some time ago… And HRW must be aware that they truthfulness and probity are their main asset…

Or is it that you are saying that you place lower standards of evidence upon those with whom you agree? This is a perfectly human weakness, but not a good modus operandi in this business.

Judy, besides much else, you also don’t understand Bertrand Russell’s paradox.

However the questions about Mr. Stork turn out, it seems that the other item mentioned by David T, that HRW sought funds in Saudi Arabia is true. Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic attempted (and succeeded) to confirm Ms. Whitson (the HRW person)’s attempts to raise money from the Saudis based on a mutual enemy, Israel. Goldberg’s back and forth with HRW shows, to me at least, that HRW was being quite evasive and only in the end admitted the basics of the allegation.

SO Muffin at 12:43pm

The fact that Ben Dror Yemini is apparently not sharing Judy’s right-wing fundamentalism is precisely what makes him more believable in this context.

SO Muffin at 1:28pm

Or is it that you are saying that you place lower standards of evidence upon those with whom you agree? This is a perfectly human weakness, but not a good modus operandi in this business.

LOL

So Christian Aid want a programme manager for Israel & OPT.

Hebrew’s not a desired language, but Arabic is:

http://tiny.cc/mEp1b

Why’s that?

It’s a shame when we have to watch Human Rights Watch; with a name like that you’d think they’d understand that concern for human rights should override allegiance to any political ideology, including the PLO’s.

I don’t consider an apparent absence of denials to really mean anything, aside from the fact that an organisation has decided not to publish a denial. silence does not imply guilt.

as you can see if you look into the claims made in the article at the top, they’re questionable at best, based on really very dodgy ‘research’, and if i ran a blog or a newspaper i wouldn’t publish them unless i was sure of their veracity.

since even the ones we can find evidence for are obviously misinterpreted and deeply suspect (as i showed up there where a criticism of something for not admitting it’s partisan is spun into a praise of partisanship, where it’s anything but), i think the editors of this blog should have looekd a bit closer before running this story. as should the newspaper in question.

that’s it.

After being castigated and deleted for suggesting that a man who supports terrorism and murder because it’s good for morale be given a taste of his medicine for precisely that reason, all I can suggest is that most of the “West is lost”. It’s over and out. And in 10 years when you’re rounded up in camps ‘for your own protection’ and told ‘convert or die, allahu akbar!’ I hope you feel your ludicrous tolerance has served you well.

That’s rubbish, windter, and you must know it.

Silence doesn’t imply guilt in a court of law. Silence implies at the very least that something fishy is going on in the court of public opinion. This is precisely why organizations have spokespeople and legal departments.

In any other situation I bet you would have taken silence as an evidence of guilt. Had an MP accused of taking bribes replied “no comment”, you would have taken it as an evidence of guilt (moral guilt, at least), wouldn’t you? Except, perhaps, had the MP in question been somebody with whom you agree, but in that case you occupy a very low moral ground.

S.O. Muffin: “Judy, besides much else, you also don’t understand Bertrand Russell’s paradox.”

Kudos. But it’s actually more of a Liar (similar structure, though).

sorry, just cos we disagree doesn’t mean i’m wrong.

unless you’ve actually rung up HRW to ask about all this, you don’t know what their response is, either. you’re extrapolating lal sorts from their lack of having sued for an article that came out yesterday, and not having put an immediate rebuttal up. rather than focus on that, why not work out for yourself whether there’s any substance to the allegations? most of them fairly suspect as i’ve shown. But they must be true if HRW hasn’t said otherwise, is your logic. Fine, but i disagree that this is an especially fruitful line of inquiry. otherwise, after all, anything written in any newspaprt must be true unless the person it’s written about has issued a public repudiation.

As i’ve shown, it’s a really very shoddy piece of ‘journalism’ indeed. If I worked there i’d probably think it wouldn’t even merit a response and it certainly doesn’t merit being hosted on this blog. but hey, the meme’s doing its job…

Judy is right here, and Muffin is squirming.

Too bad that we should unite against people with bad intentions like windster.

But pedantry is a though barrier for unity.

I am afraid, Fabian, that we have to agree to disagree.

Would I be wrong were I to surmise that you are quite happy for Joe Stork to be a terrorist-loving wingnut and for HRW to solicit funds from Saudi Arabia, that famous paragon of human rights? Well, I for one would be very sad and disappointed were this to be so.

There is an absolute, total imperative for the existence of organisations that monitor and defend human rights. Everywhere, impartially, without fear or favour, on universal grounds. Simply, because human rights are trampled in many places and because even enlightened governments cannot be realistically expected to defend them abroad as the only foreign-policy imperative. I want such organisations to exist and to be effective – but to be effective they must be impartial and must be seen to be impartial.

Since these allegations against Joe Stork came to light some time ago, and since the story about HRW and the Saudis appeared in the public domain, HRW – to put the best possible spin on things – behaved as if it has something to hide or doesn’t care whether it is seen to be impartial.

Of course, windter doesn’t care because he/she already decided that every criticism of Israel by HRW is both right and in good faith. And you don’t care because you’ve already decided that every criticism of Israel by HRW is both wrong and in ill faith. I decided neither, and here we part ways.

“And you don’t care because you’ve already decided that every criticism of Israel by HRW is both wrong and in ill faith. I decided neither, and here we part ways.”

Oh, no, I do care. I care because this is another nail to a hate-Israel organization called HRW.

I don’t have any problem with the appearance of a new organization truthfully dedicated to the defense of HR. But you are willing to drink new wine put into old and rotten bottles. I am not.

Asides from this, I remember very well a comment of yours months ago, which I really liked, in which you argued against the “cui bono” argument saying that, only evidence should be counted to support an argument. Here Judy is the one holding to that position, while you are undermining it by somehow imposing a believability test, that only left-wing people can pass.

somehow imposing a believability test, that only left-wing people can pass.

Wrong again. One of my surprises in Amnesty International meetings was that some of the most active and sincere members are not left wingers. Some are even card-carrying members of the Conservative Party. And, of course, we all know enough history to know that human rights have been very often trampled upon egregiously by self-described left wingers. I am perfectly happy to keep human rights out of the left–right divide.

But what is true – and, again, has nothing to do with the left–right scale – is that people are very vocal when their human rights are trampled upon. (That’s natural.) They are often vocal when the rights of people are trampled upon by a third party. But it takes more guts and moral spine to stand up and protest when your own side is involved in human right violations.

And this is the real test of your commitment to universal human rights.

Juicy headline catching claims get made (war crimes, phosphorus bombs, U.N. School bombed), and Israel researches and painstakingly debunks. The whole world immediately sees the Juicy headlines and virtually nobody reads the long drawn out debunking.

Now we see a new strategy. Go after the people that demonize Israel. Make them come up with the report to debunk if they can.
I am happy to see this new Hasbarah. It is vitally important to reverse the tide of bullshit put forth by Israel hating NGOs. They have become a key part of the military strategy of disgusting Islamist regimes such as Hezbulah and Hamas.

Stan

“The fact that Ben Dror Yemini is apparently not sharing Judy’s right-wing fundamentalism is precisely what makes him more believable in this context”

Judy is not a fundamentalist, and you should do well in apologizing, Muffin.

Fabian: I seem to recall from Judy’s other posts that she is in favour of West Bank settlements and of Greater Israel. She also used language toward Palestinians which, frankly, had it been used against Jews would have been condemned by you (rightly) as anti-Semitic. So yes, in my book she is a fundamentalist.

Of course, where she to say that each of the three points above misrepresents her views, I’ll be happy to apologise.

windter – I think you might want to read that paragraph you quoted as being misinterpreted again.

“Rather than claim this dubious virtue, the editor might well have done better to explain the bias of his authors as one based on acquaintance with the basic issues as well as with the particular facts. (What Happened to Palestine, Journal of Palestine Studies, V1 #2, Winter 1972; p 105)”

He claims that the anti-Israeli bias is due to an acquaintance with what amounts to the ‘truth’. His argument is that only ignorant people would be anything other than ‘anti-zionist’.

What do you think it says?

Thank goodness for good Jews like SO Muffin.

But thank fuck for LBNAZ.

SO Muffin makes the essential point: that even if this is ancient history, even if Stork no longer believes any of this stuff, HRW fatally undermines its credibility by employing him to investigate and report on Israel.

“Fabian: I seem to recall from Judy’s other posts that she is in favour of West Bank settlements and of Greater Israel. She also used language toward Palestinians which, frankly, had it been used against Jews would have been condemned by you (rightly) as anti-Semitic. So yes, in my book she is a fundamentalist.”

None of those beliefs and attitudes fits the definition of “fundamentalism”. Not everything you dislike is “fundamentalism”, Muffin.

And to HRW’s credit, it regularly manages to rile up Hugo Chavez and Flanker.

Stalk the Stork

‘There were, to be sure, many contributing factors to this devastating defeat, and it would be a mistake to overlook, for example, the degree of imperialist collusion that lay behind the Israeli blitzkrieg. But the single most important cause lay with the failure of the regimes in question to mobilize their societies for the kind of protracted struggle that is critical for the liberation of Palestine. … the surplus extracted from the masses was used to construct a military machine that was completely inadequate to the task of liberating Palestine .’

Since he is speaking of the 1967 war, which predated Israel’s presence in the West Bank and Gaza, it is clear that Stork means by the “liberation of Palestine” the destruction of Israel.

Stork even opposes peace talks and negotiation:
One thing that is clear from this survey, but which has been conveniently shelved by the Arab regimes today, is that the struggle against Zionism can only be won by struggling against imperialism, not by striking deals with future Kissingers.

(the) question is: what can the Palestinian left do to negate a political settlement – either under the old leadership or independently.
So in fact the process of combating any movement towards a political settlement might result, in the initial stage at least, in more splitting within the Palestinian movement itself …

… spontaneous random outbreaks of violence [by Palestinians against Jews] … make apparent the revolutionary potential of the Palestinian masses …from 1976

…he refers to the “Zionist colonization of Palestine” , the “Zionist settler-colonial enterprise”, the “infamous Balfour declaration”, and the “Zionist theft of the property and productive resources” .

Though there is this in his defence:
‘Scholars and Middle East professionals interviewed for this article were most unhappy with the lack of a clearly articulated critique of Hussein in favor of a more negative, “anti-”US and anti-war rhetoric. Joe Stork, Middle East advocacy director for Human Rights Watch, believes that “the demonstrations were single-issue: stop the war. There was a clear ignoring, or even willful ignorance, about the realities of the Hussein regime.” While some groups and speakers did mention Hussein, by and large the largest groups either “ducked the question” or seemed “pretty apologetic” about the Hussein regime, and even dismissive of those who would focus on its crimes. ‘

None of those beliefs and attitudes fits the definition of “fundamentalism”.

What does an Israeli fundamentalist believe in, Fabian?

“SO Muffin makes the essential point: that even if this is ancient history, even if Stork no longer believes any of this stuff, HRW fatally undermines its credibility by employing him to investigate and report on Israel.”

Yes, Gene, but that is a point many have made here.
Muffin goes off road when he adds that Yemini is believable because he believes in two states, and Judy is not because she is -according to him- a right-wing fundamentalist.

“What does an Israeli fundamentalist believe in, Fabian?”

I don’t know. Fundamentalism as an ideology, is not of Jewish origin.

We are -for the most part- not literalists. Even the most religious Jews believe on an Oral Law and on the autority of rabbis to interpret it and add to it. That is not fundamentalism.

Stork appears to be an enigma.

For example, ask Judy if she believes that Israel should add the territories of the tribe of Gad, Reuben and the half-tribe of Manasseh to our domain.

Since there is some debate here about Ben Dror Yemeni and his reliability, here is a link that leads to some of his translated pieces, where the English translations also include links to the material he relies on:
http://www.gaditaub.com/eblog/war-crimes-and-propaganda/

BTW, Gadi Taub himself is also very worthwhile reading, IMHO.

There is also a somewhat chaotic mix of Ben Dror Yemeni’s original Hebrew pieces and some translations here:
http://www.geocities.com/byemini/yemini.html

A relevant commentary on the piece about Stork, and a number of further relevant links on HRW and Stork are here:
http://volokh.com/posts/1250513892.shtml

For example, ask Judy if she believes that Israel should add the territories of the tribe of Gad, Reuben and the half-tribe of Manasseh to our domain.

Why? If there’s no such thing as Jewish fundamentalism, that question is irrelevant.

Also, Brownie said “Israeli fundamentalist”, not Jewish one. I do so hate it when people confuse the two, don’t you?

“Also, Brownie said “Israeli fundamentalist”, not Jewish one. I do so hate it when people confuse the two, don’t you?”

I don’t.

Yes, Gene, but that is a point many have made here.
Muffin goes off road when he adds that Yemini is believable because he believes in two states, and Judy is not because she is -according to him- a right-wing fundamentalist.

I’ve asked this question of Judy once already, but why does this make SOM “off road”? There is no independent arbiter of fairness and credibility. You pays your money and takes your choice. If someone says the sorts of things that you as an individual would assess to be reasonable, you’re more likely to place faith in other things that peprson says – things that you are in no position to second-guess or about which there is no incontrovertible evidence to the contrary.

What is unusual or wacky about this?

If this is indeed true, it is very sad. HRW has been well ahead of Amnesty for a while IMO. While Amnesty has the typical European obsessions with Israel and the US, HRW was also criticizing African, Middle Eastern, and South American regimes. (even taking on Chavez!) There is a real need for an unbiased (or relatively so) Human Rights organization which can criticize Israel be trusted for it. Israel does commit human rights violations and should be taken to task for it, but no more or less than any other country.

As matter of interest, has the malodorous Mr Stork or his vile “human rights” pogrom so far reported on the mass rape and torture currently livening things up in Tehran (gosh, what these 12th imamniks do for kicks!)?

No, thought not.

My own approach to anti-semites is to ignore them as far as possible, and, when the opportunity or occasion arises, destroy them in argument (or with your fists, if need be).

Oh, and one more thing. Teach yourself not to care. So anti-semites don’t like us – big, bloody deal.

“I’ve asked this question of Judy once already, but why does this make SOM “off road”?”

Because Judy was right in criticizing the way in which HP measured the credibility of Yemini. Even in Yemini had believed in Greater Israel, it is his sources -and he sources his claims- that count. The credibility test was not-necessary, and the criterion, highly suspect.

Especially the criterion chosen.

The criterion could have been “does Yemini have years in his journalist profession in a respected Israeli newspaper”?

But the chosen criterion was: “Does Yemini think like me in the matter of Judea and Samaria”?

It is wrong, and Judy was right in noticing it.

Evidently, the criterion not chosen does not create a situation where you have “good Jews” and “bad Jews” like the second does.

The fact that this is the situation was created is evident from Muffin’s immediate comment accusing Judy of being a “right-wing fundamentalist” (a bad Jew).

SO Muffin says

I seem to recall from Judy’s other posts that she is in favour of West Bank settlements and of Greater Israel. She also used language toward Palestinians which, frankly, had it been used against Jews would have been condemned by you (rightly) as anti-Semitic. So yes, in my book she is a fundamentalist.

Of course, where she to say that each of the three points above misrepresents her views, I’ll be happy to apologise.

You grossly misrepresent and distort my views. And your **evidence is?

ecause Judy was right in criticizing the way in which HP measured the credibility of Yemini. Even in Yemini had believed in Greater Israel, it is his sources -and he sources his claims- that count. The credibility test was not-necessary, and the criterion, highly suspect.

I think the point in this case is that some of the sources are self-referencing and/or unverifiable and of those that aren’t the primary material is open to interpretation. In which case you decide to trust the judgment of the author or otherwise (as well as your own judgment, obviously). I don’t see that DT or SOM did anything other than say:

“This guy doesn’t appear to have a history of saying [what I consider to be] whacked out things and is generally regarded as a reputable journalist – so I’m inclined to believe him/give him the benefit of the doubt.”

I’m well aware that the “what I consider to be” qualifier is entirely subjective, for which see my comment above where I suggest we all make these judgment calls about the thoughts of others and choose to support or oppose.

A journalist who claims the planet’s ocelot population will take over the world in Spetember will enjoy support from those who’ve always suspected ocelots as having plans for world domination. You wouldn’t criticise the decision of others to play down the threat from megalomaniacal felines on the basis that they always reject these stories about small mammals usurping humans as the dominant species. Past evidence has shown we’d be right to reject such stories, wouldn’t we?

Brownie says:

I think the point in this case is that some of the sources are self-referencing and/or unverifiable and of those that aren’t the primary material is open to interpretation.

Since when is a magazine from the 70s/80s “self-referencing and/or unverifiable”?

Which primary source is “open to interpretation” that is significantly different from the one in Maariv?

“A journalist who claims the planet’s ocelot population will take over the world in Spetember”

That kind of journalist wouldn’t have years and years of work at Maariv.

The objectivity of its members may be in doubt, but HRW does actually seem to be doing some good work in Israel, Palestine and across the Middle East.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/8200001.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/8204853.stm

It is wrong, and Judy was right in noticing it.

Sorry, but the matter of whether it is “wrong” to base other consdierations on an assessment of whether a writer supports a one or two-state solution in the ME is one for the individual concerned. You can decide for yourself if this is sound logic, but it is an entirely subjective assessment and cannot be shown to be “wrong” or “right”.

Personally speaking, I am naturally inclined to place greater store by the claims and observations of a supporter of two states than by anything written or said by a one-stater. I don’t automatically assume everything a two-stater says is right and everything a one-stater says is wrong – I also look at the evidence. But in the absence of incontrovertible proof one way or the other, my natural prejudices – I’m happy to call them that…we all have them – hold sway.

If I’m in a pub and I hear someone talking about their affiliation to UKIP, I tend to assume they are irritating little-Englander types*. I’m might be wrong some of the time, but we make such judgments every day.

*For the record, I have a 100% track record on the UKIP thing.

That kind of journalist wouldn’t have years and years of work at Maariv.

We had a guy at the BBC for years who now claims we are ruled by lizard people (no, not Jews).

I know you’re probably thinking this is symptomatic of the BBC’s standards, but it just goes to show.

Does Benny Morris “believe” in a 2 state solution?

Judy: Can you be more specific, please? Which of your views am I misrepresenting? Specifically, my claim of your fundamentalism rests upon three assertions. Which one is wrong and why?

I see this “properly researched criticism” doesn’t appear to tell us what “new radical leftist group” Joe Stork might have been a member of as a student, or whether he still belongs.

I heard an interview with a member of a support group for Iraqi LGBTs on the BBC today in which he said the condition of gays in Iraq had been much better under Saddam. I would have thought that as those responsible for the murder of gays there are likely to be the co-religionists of those in Iran regularly castigated here for their treatment of gays you’d all be all over this issue.

Benny, are you reading this?

There has been here a great deal of exchange on whether we should take Ben Dror Yemini’s article at face value just because he writes for a national newspaper, or whether his (apparently moderate) views contribute to his credibility.

Now, Fabian’s point of departure, namely that it is the contents of Yemini’s article which are at issue, while his (i.e. Yemini’s) views are completely irrelevant to his credibility, is sustainable only if he (i.e. Fabian) is willing to apply it also to Joe Stork. He isn’t, I don’t, but I am consistent.

Apparently, Israelis would have to continue to believe that the Palestinians want to live with them side by side in two states, because the moment* that a majority of Israelis stop believing in the good intentions of the Palestinians, Israel -magically-becomes the bad guy. So a valid appraissal of reality becomes an indictment against Israelis.

It is as ridiculous as arguing that Jews during Inquisition times had to believe that Christians believed in coexistence with them. And better not doubting that, because then they would prove their unworthiness.

*I think we are past that moment. Nobody here believes a word the Palestinians say.

I’m trying very hard to think of any human rights organisation which has come up with constant and reliable objective assesments of the ME situation over the years. To be honest, I can’t even think of one.

I am amazed that you ever had faith in Human Rights Watch, David T.

After all, remember the palaver after the Gaza beach bombing (allegedly deliberate and by Israel) when HRW’s self-appointed munitions expert, Marc Garlasco, rushed in to blame Israel but then had to back track.

First this: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/5079464.stm

And then this: http://hnn.us/blogs/entries/26828.html

Note the “not technically qualified” bit

Fabian’s point of departure, namely that it is the contents of Yemini’s article which are at issue, while his (i.e. Yemini’s) views are completely irrelevant to his credibility, is sustainable only if he (i.e. Fabian) is willing to apply it also to Joe Stork.

In general, we should evaluate what people say rather than who they are. I thought all sensible people agreed with that.

The problem however is that we are being asked to rely heavily on the HRW halo, since the story of the IDF killing people holding white flags relies entirely on anonymous “eyewitnesses” who Stork has determined to be credible.

Yemini’s article OTOH has quotes that can be verified by visiting a library. It’s highly unlikely that these quotes are fabricated. Perhaps if you go check them out you might find that the context softens the indictment of Stork just a drop.

Fabian @4.44

Precisely. Very well put.

SO Muffin: all three of your representations of my views are gross distortions and misrepresentations of my views, and it is not for me to have to prove myself to you or anyone else. Find and present here valid, fairly quoted and representative evidence for your libels, if you can.

Well, Judy… There are two options. The first is that I’ll spend several hours looking through back HP threads and your own blog, reading your posts. The second is that you tell us all briefly which of the three views that I’ve ascribed to you are a gross misrepresentation.

Now, given that I am not a masochist and that I am quite busy with more exciting matters, you will hardly expect me to take the first option. Also, I seem to remember that cruel and unusual punishment is frowned upon. So, what about the lady protesting less and producing more facts?

So, S O Muffin, you feel you can freely label me as a right wing fundamentalist, a supporter of Greater Israel and an utterer of statements about Palestinians, yet you readily admit that you would have read through my blog and HP threads to be able to discover any such evidence, if any existed. Thus, you’ve made your statements off the top of your head, and you back off even trying to look for any evidence, because “you’re quite busy with more exciting matters” and I can hardly expect you to produce the evidence.

Well, yes, I expect people who libel and attempt to discredit others to be able to produce fair, representative and valid evidence for their statements. Once again, I ask you to do so in relation to what you’ve written about me.

I leave it to readers to draw their own conclusions from your coy and patronising evasions and attempts to throw off your responsibility for standing up what you’ve written about me.

Left a few words out in my post above which are rather crucial–should read “utterer of statements about Palestinians that if they were made about Jews would be considered anti-semitic, yet you readily admit that you would have to read through my blog and HP threads to be able to discover any such evidence, if any existed”.

Fabian – the Left, especially as it gets further towards the end of the scale, is notoriously bad at differentiating between the nuances of the grown-up world. We see quite easily how fond it is of black and white, good and bad, in the media the press and even in the comments on this blog. As the Stones once said -’he can’t be a man ‘cos he doesn’t smoke the same cigarettes as me’.
Of course we have long passed the point of reason in the case of the I/P conflict. Any leftwinger worth his salt is long convinced that if Israel just stopped being ‘held to ransom’ by the ‘evil settlers’ and pulled out of the WB unilaterally, the world would be hunky dory and anyone who thinks otherwise, or indeed may be just a little sceptical in the light of the Gaza experience, is branded a right wing reactionary and an obstacle to peace who’s opinions are beyond contempt and consideration.

Any leftwinger worth his salt is long convinced that if Israel just stopped being ‘held to ransom’ by the ‘evil settlers’ and pulled out of the WB unilaterally, the world would be hunky dory and anyone who thinks otherwise, or indeed may be just a little sceptical in the light of the Gaza experience, is branded a right wing reactionary and an obstacle to peace who’s opinions are beyond contempt and consideration.

It’s probably good that they think this. Because if they realized that for the near future the conflict cannot be resolved, but only be managed – they would probably conclude that it’s necessary to eliminate Israel so that the rest of the world can join hands and sing “Imagine” together.

They might call it “Ethnic cleansing for peace”.

Well, yes, I expect people who libel and attempt to discredit others to be able to produce fair, representative and valid evidence for their statements.

When I first started writing at HP, I was regularly accused of bieng a supporter of the IRA. I would often challenge my accusers to produce evidence, but at the same time I found saying things like “I am not a supporter of the IRA” to be a very effective form of rebuttal.

Look, Judy: My memory is quite good but you’ll appreciate that it doesn’t extend to dates and to exact quotes. So, can you please tell us which of the following sentences does not reflect your views:

1. Settlements beyond the Green Line are justified and should be encouraged.

2. Israel should exist within permanent borders extending from River Jordan to the Mediterranean and inclusive of Golan Heights.

3. Palestinians deserve less rights than Jews within Greater Israel and, irrespective of their willingness to accept Israel’s existence (or otherwise), they have no national rights or claims there.

So, with which sentences do you disagree?

By the way, I’ll be delighted were your answer to be “with all three”. In that case you’ll receive a most fulsome apology.

According to HRW
“Stork co-founded the Middle East Research & Information Project (MERIP) and served as chief editor of Middle East Report, its bimonthly magazine.”
MERIP, according to its website, was founded in 1971, and began to appear regularly in 1973.
It is quite inconceivable that a leaflet issued by MERIP in the wake of the 1972 attack in Munich was not condoned by one of the organization’s co-founders.

The leaflet in question is partly quoted and summarized in this 1984 article:

“Communophilism” and the Institute for Policy Studies
Journal article by Joshua Muravchik; World Affairs, Vol. 147, 1984
MERIP leaflet in question at p. 177 at:
http://www.paulbogdanor.com/deniers/ips.pdf

The relevant passage there reads:

“After the massacre of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics, MERIP issued a leaflet which said in part:
“The Western Establishment has freaked out. ‘Responsible’ newspapers and political candidates continuously reach new heights of absurdity and hypocrisy in the mad rush to condemn ‘international terrorism,’ especially when it upsets their fun and games… No number of actions similar to Munich can create or substitute for a mass revolutionary movement of Palestinians and other Arabs, but with this in mind, we should comprehend the achievements of the Munich action.”
The laudable ‘achievements’ were enumerated: raising morale in the refugee camps, foiling ‘Sadat’s intiative toward settlement’; and provoking ‘direct military confrontation between Israel and Lebanon and Syria.’”

Joe Stork’s views may have evolved; yet, this is where he is coming from, and I don’t think he has ever publicly distanced himself from the views expressed here.
Moreover, obviously, it would be simply unimaginable that HRW would employ anybody with a similarly militant pro-Israel background.

SO Muffin ascribes to me the following positions:

Look, Judy: My memory is quite good but you’ll appreciate that it doesn’t extend to dates and to exact quotes. So, can you please tell us which of the following sentences does not reflect your views:

1. Settlements beyond the Green Line are justified and should be encouraged.

2. Israel should exist within permanent borders extending from River Jordan to the Mediterranean and inclusive of Golan Heights.

3. Palestinians deserve less rights than Jews within Greater Israel and, irrespective of their willingness to accept Israel’s existence (or otherwise), they have no national rights or claims there.

So, with which sentences do you disagree?

By the way, I’ll be delighted were your answer to be “with all three”. In that case you’ll receive a most fulsome apology.

Absolutely outrageous. I have never agreed with statements 1,2 or 3 and I challenge you or anyone else to find any evidence that I have done so. Incidentally, I don’t believe any serving Israeli government since the days of the first treaty agreement with Egypt has supported them either.

I look forward to a most fulsome apology.

Judy: Most fulsome apology. Which I am delighted to tender to you (had it been possible to accompany it with a bunch of flowers, I would have done so :-) ) wholeheartedly.

Got to http://scholar.google.com and enter search terms: waskow merip munich massacre

The document returned is a rejoinder that someone wrote to Merip about Munich.

The clue to him being an arse was in:

“He…opposes the settlements in the West Bank.”

I want someone to pull a Stork and tell me about all the GOOD things that black slavery in America accomplished. Or how beating you wife is a morale booster. Because that’s not even the half of what he’s saying.

If someone wants to defend him on that basis, feel free. I couldn’t possibly think any less of you for saying it aloud.

This seems to be the MERIP article about Munich: http://www.jstor.org/pss/3012224

Perhaps someone has access.

I have access, I am reading it.

The quotes are accurate. MERIP, co-founded by Stork supported the terrorist atrocity in Munich.

The article is an eye opened in its own way, because so many of the memes of the far-left were already there in 1972.

Some quotes from the article:

“Israel, rather than accede to the demand to release more than 250 Palestinians jailed for political reasons, preferred to sacrifice its athletes on the altar of national sovereignty and then used this as a pretext for reprisal raids against Palestinian refugee camps and Lebanese and Syrian villages which have so far killed more than 300 people, including many women and children. The Manchester Guardian of September 16, 1972 reports that in Hama*, a village…. more than 60 persons were killed. Most of them were families picnicking on the river bank, machine-gunned from Israeli war planes as they ran for cover. We have not yet heard of any “memorial service” here for the dead of Hama.

*Somehow, I remember a massacre in Hama which was kind of forgotten by the far left, and it wasn’t this one…

“Israelis talk about… too blind to understand that Palestinians are terrorists precisely because Israel has taken over and expelled them from their land.”

“Hussein of Jordan…. this is the same “Arab moderate” who murdered 3.500 Palestinians in Jordan in September 1970 with US bombs, napalm, weapons and advisors, and Israeli military support on call.*

*You really have to blame Israel for just being… well… somewhere near. You can always say that they were on call… even when the Palestinian terrorists asked permission to enter Israel on their way to Lebanon while running from Jordan.

“Now, following the ouster of Soviet advisors from Egypt, the stage is set for the Arab governments to recognize Israel.” (!)

“No number of actions similar

The quotes are accurate. MERIP, co-founded by Stork supported the terrorist atrocity in Munich.

The article is an eye opened in its own way, because so many of the memes of the far-left were already there in 1972.

Some quotes from the article:

“Israel, rather than accede to the demand to release more than 250 Palestinians jailed for political reasons, preferred to sacrifice its athletes on the altar of national sovereignty and then used this as a pretext for reprisal raids against Palestinian refugee camps and Lebanese and Syrian villages which have so far killed more than 300 people, including many women and children. The Manchester Guardian of September 16, 1972 reports that in Hama*, a village…. more than 60 persons were killed. Most of them were families picnicking on the river bank, machine-gunned from Israeli war planes as they ran for cover. We have not yet heard of any “memorial service” here for the dead of Hama.

*Somehow, I remember a massacre in Hama which was kind of forgotten by the far left, and it wasn’t this one…

“Israelis talk about… too blind to understand that Palestinians are terrorists precisely because Israel has taken over and expelled them from their land.”

“Hussein of Jordan…. this is the same “Arab moderate” who murdered 3.500 Palestinians in Jordan in September 1970 with US bombs, napalm, weapons and advisors, and Israeli military support on call.*

*You really have to blame Israel for just being… well… somewhere near. You can always say that they were on call… even when the Palestinian terrorists asked permission to enter Israel on their way to Lebanon while running from Jordan.

“Now, following the ouster of Soviet advisors from Egypt, the stage is set for the Arab governments to recognize Israel.” (!)

“No number of actions similar to Munich can create or substitute for a mass revolutionary movement of Palestinians and other Arabs, but with this in mind we should comprehend the achievements of the Munich action, and thus, in part, its motives. First, it has provided a boost in morale among Palestinians in the camps. This, in our view, is not justification for it, but we understand why those who have been and are once again the targets of Israeli bullets and bombs reject the charge that Munich was “barbaric”.”

“Second, the action has exposed Egyptian President Sadat’s initiative toward settlement.”*

*Peace with Israel is bad.

“Third, by provoking direct military confrontation between Israel and Lebanon and Syria, the Black September action has succeeded in forcing the Arab regimes, however timidly, to re-enter the battle. The action has temporarily halted to [sic] open collaboration for “settlement” between Israel and the Arab regimes. It is, of course, regrettable when people are killed, Israeli or Palestinian or Lebanese or Syrian, but at the very least we should know where to put the blame“.

Don’t you find like me a serious contradiction between the first paragraph, in which Israel is accused of not surrendering and instead reacting violently to the attack with the last one in which the reaction is welcomed because it provokes a confrontation?

Israel haters for you, gentlement.

Well, Fabian, it certainly seems that there is a big, fat case to answer.

The HRW website bills Joe Stork as an “expert” in Middle Eastern affairs. Quite an expert…

Incidentally,

with US bombs, napalm, weapons and advisors, and Israeli military support on call.

is a direct, straightforward lie. Israel was not involved at all in Black September, except for providing shelter to few hundred fleeing PLO operatives. (Who, reasonably, preferred Israeli to Jordanian jail.) “Support on call”? Zero evidence (are Stork and his colleagues privy to secret military plans?) except for the standard assumption of Stupid Extreme Left (and Stupid Extreme Right) that obviously Jews are to blame for everything.

It is a great pity. The world needs organisations fighting for human rights. But the world doesn’t need bigots and hypocrites.

Fabian:

Is there a byline on the article? Does Stork appear on the masthead?

Also: the article is discussed again here: http://www.jstor.org/pss/3011504

Wait, a communist, Islamist “Humanitarian”? Must be a Mossad plant.

“In general, we should evaluate what people say rather than who they are. I thought all sensible people agreed with that.”

Yes, there are tons of rules written about these called logical fallacies. That said…

“Yemini’s article OTOH has quotes that can be verified by visiting a library. It’s highly unlikely that these quotes are fabricated.”

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, he needed to explain when and where these claims were made. As it stands this is just quotes that may or may not be taken out of context.

That said it is my personal opinion that people are just looking for an excuse (any excuse really) to ditch the scathing report I presented here months ago. Paranoia is the perfect reaction for those that seek to avoid painful subjects.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, he needed to explain when and where these claims were made.

So your royal progressiveness refuses to pay attention to direct quotes from magazines – even with dates and page numbers provided????

Why not just admit you are deeply in love with your progressive religion/belief system?

S.O. Muffin: The PLO gunmen and operatives who in 1970 fled across the Jordan River did so because they quite naturally preferred Israeli jails to Jordanian firing squads.

That part about Israeli military assistance for King Hussein during the 1970 Jordanian Civil War is correct. When the Syrian Army invaded Jordan to aid the PLO, the Israeli Air Force buzzed the Syrians in order to make clear that if Syrians did not stop, the Israelis would bomb them. The Syrians did stop and held their positions in northern Jordan while the Jordanian Army defeated the PLO’s attempt to take over Jordan and rescued several hundred people from three hijacked passenger planes that were held hostage by the PFLP. After the fighting was over with, the Syrian Army quietly withdrew to Syria.

About Joe Stork: All of his terrorist supporting comments seen to be from the 1970s. Is there any evidence that he still shares them?
I agree that Stork should at least explain his past statements supporting terrorism and tell whether or not he still stands by them.

Note: I am extremely suspicious about anything “Commentary” prints, particularly about the Arab-Israeli Conflict. They have distorted statements and events to uphold their hard right view in the past.

<iAbout Joe Stork: All of his terrorist supporting comments seen to be from the 1970s. Is there any evidence that he still shares them?

According to this link: http://www.volokh.com/archives/archive_2009_08_16-2009_08_22.shtml#1250513892 the stuff Stork wrote in the 80s and afterward was milder ie. standard leftist drivel …

I agree that Stork should at least explain his past statements supporting terrorism and tell whether or not he still stands by them.

Yes, but the point is that Stork claims that he has proof of particular incidents that happened in Gaza, and that the proof is eyewitnesses who he considers to be reliable. With his background, I don’t see why I should believe him.

“So your royal progressiveness refuses to pay attention to direct quotes from magazines – even with dates and page numbers provided????”

Where are they provided?

“In articles which he authored during the 1970’s”

This is hardly academic.

“Why not just admit you are deeply in love with your progressive religion/belief system?”

Great another logical fallacy: argumentum ad hominem, religio reductus.

I sure wish Harrys Place would do a post about this:

http://www.slate.com/id/2225504/

Mesquito – seconded.

Have you got any more links?

I agree with Mesquito and Right Not Racist; this latest Submission to Islamic Terror by Yale University Press is “a surrender without fighting”. (To quote or paraphrase Churchill on the Dismembarement of Czechslovakia at Munich in 1938)

Have you got any more links?

There was a rather bizarre New York Times story a couple of days ago.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/13/books/13book.html?_r=1

Just google around with it and you’ll find lots.

“About Joe Stork: All of his terrorist supporting comments seen to be from the 1970s. Is there any evidence that he still shares them?’

So you would not object to a former member of the BNP becoming a school teacher, or police officer or an MP then; on the grounds that he had given it up?

This article is reminiscent of a Michael Kelly broadside published in the WaPo attacking Joschka Fischer some years back, causing shock and consternation amongst the US right. It was mostly based on an article by Paul Berman (link) and focused on Fischer’s politics of 30 years ago. It goes without saying (although Power and the Idealists is worth a read for those interested) that many of the views attributed to Fischer he now renounces wholly: both in word and deed.

There is a slight parallel here, especially as it is not clear from the article exactly when he made some of the statements attributed to him. That he is not a major German politician makes tracking the shift (if any) of his political compass since the 1970s somewhat trickier. However, a little digging at NGOMonitor suggests he has not exactly changed his stripes. Thus the Commentary article, whilst short on references, appears to hold more weight than one might initially have thought.

“Is there a byline on the article? Does Stork appear on the masthead?”

No. It is not signed.

It has a section in the end that says this:

Ghassan Kanafani Memorial Prize
In memory of the Palestinian novelist and resistance leader, assasinated on July 8, 1972, the Fifth of June Society is offering a prize of (Lebanese Lira) 3000 for an unpublished novel or play on Palestine in English or French.

For further details write to the Fifth of June Society, P.O. Box 7037, Beirut, Lebanon.

A couple more links regarding Yale University Press:

http://www.slate.com/id/2225504/

http://pajamasmedia.com/rogerkimball/2009/08/15/yale-the-danish-cartoons-the-plot-thickens/

I am in favor of the settlements in Judea and Samaria. The Arabs must be forced to pay a price for starting wars.

I do understand that some accommodation will have to be reached, so I am not in favor of the numerous spontaneous hilltop outposts, not because I don’t think the people have the absolute right to build them, but because they are ultimately indefensible in military terms. Anything behind the security fence, however, is Israel as far as I am concerned.

According to wikipedia, Ghassan Kanafani was a leader of the PFLP and appeared in a picture next to one of the Japanese terrorists that attacked Israel’s Lod airport.

Just catching up with this thread

I don’t know Judy, but used to read her blog before she stopped really updating it.

I think SO Muffin’s behaviour on this thread was absolutely ludicrous.

Im sure Judy neither needs or appreciates my support, but chucking a load of accusations about half arsed and then saying you haven’t got the time to back them up is pretty ridiculous.

Also, familiar with Judy’s blog, the accusations themselves were total crap and thrown simply (I assume), because someone had the temerity to voice disagreement.

Apology is fine (and very belated). But Im afraid credibility long since gone Muffin.

MattG

So you would not object to a former member of the BNP becoming a school teacher, or police officer or an MP then; on the grounds that he had given it up?

First I would like to apologize for referring to Brownie as “dearie”, which was patronizing.

I was reacting to Brownie’s comment where he decided that because some commenters in a previous thread pointed out that Hamas built bunkers exclusively for their elites and to store their weapons while deliberately using the civilian population as human shields by storing arms inside and firing from civilian structures expecting IDF retaliation and in some cases calling on civilians including children to gather on rooftops of buildings that the IDF informed them would be targeted, to list a few examples, that according to Brownie this represents: “equivocation and wilful misinterpretation (or is it pure ignorance?) of established rules of war from the knee-jerk Israeli government apologists… and … once again, an embarrassment to this blog” and supposedly was a tactic to “absolve [the IDF] of all responsibility” with regards to the heeding of established rules of war. And tacked on to that Brownie added: “thank god for SO Muffin”

I do not count myself as someone who would absolve the IDF from heeding the established rules of war, if in fact there is conclusive evidence that their conduct violated those rules and if all military campaigns are subjected to UN and NGO investigations to determine whether or not jus ad bello fell within what is permitted by international law.

But those are big ifs and judging by the conduct of the UN and NGOs who claim to be investigating jus ad bello but who instead provide a series of witness allegations, always made under the watchful eyes of Hamas handlers, in lieu of conclusive evidence and who are clearly nowhere near as vigorous in acting as prosecutors against violations of the established rules of war with regard to the conduct of Hamas (or any other military campaign for that matter) as they are towards the conduct of the IDF, then it becomes imperative to point out the obvious which is that Hamas far more flagrantly violated the established rules of war than did the IDF and that prima facie, Hamas does not even consider the established rules of war an authoritative body of law, but the IDF does.

Now we know as well that HRW hired two veteran ideological antizionist activists, Joe Stork and Sarah Leah Whitson, while the UN appointed veteran antizionist Richard Goldstone to investigate and judge IDF conduct, thereby compromising the credibility that their reports are anything other than highly politicized antizionist activist campaigns.

But rather than attack the circus that is the UN and NGO politicization of international law in the service of antizionist activism which denigrates deference to the laws of war, Brownie takes issue with those who have the temerity to hold Hamas’ conduct in far more egregious violation of international customary law with regard to jus ad bello than the IDF and heaps praise upon SO Muffin whose contribution to the discussion included the false claim that mainstream Israeli media share a consensus that less than 400 Hamas combatants were killed and the unhelpful notion that between the extremes of indiscriminately carpet bombing all of Gaza and having no right whatsoever to self defence, the IDF didn’t find the golden mean of conducting their operations in Gaza, without specifically stating what the IDF should have done differently in terms of tactics or strategy to meet SO Muffin’s vague criteria.

So the lesson here apparently is that SO Muffin’s comments on this issue are sacrosanct no matter what and if you question or criticize what he says, or are more concerned with the ramifications to the rules of war from the UN’s and NGO’s circus of politicization of those rules in the service of antizionist activism than with blog comments holding Hamas exclusively responsible for what befell them because of their egregious conduct, you will be deemed a knee jerk apologist for the Israeli government and have the sacrosanct one equate you with the proud antisemitic racist, Hasbara Buster.

I don’t know what this reveals other than showing that Brownie needs to hear some measure of criticism of Israel before taking a comment seriously and that SO Muffin resorts to wild hyperbole and stigmatizing ad hominems when his comments are confronted with deserved criticism.

while the UN appointed veteran antizionist Richard Goldstone

This is really sums up… You mean, the same Richard Goldstone who is a member of the Board of Trustees of Hebrew University?

Your capacity to lie and to label everybody who refuses to toe the line-de-jour of the Israeli government as an anti-Zionist is well known, lbnaz. In usual matter of things I would not have bothered with you precisely for the same reason I don’t bother with Hasbara Buster or DD. But, once you are caught in a straightforward smear – well, I can’t resist. I am only human.

SO Muffin you have certainly caught lbnaz out. However, have a look at this link http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1249418620191&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
Was this mission tainted to the core. I don’t know but things are rarely without nuances.
The link between lbnaz and the hasbara buster is certainly not clear and seems to me to be in the smear category.
I would have loved for you to engage with what LBNAZ wrote. A rational debate between the two of you would be very interesting in clarifying some of the issues.

“You mean, the same Richard Goldstone who is a member of the Board of Trustees of Hebrew University? ”

I am sitting right now in an office at the Hebrew University, Muffin, and I can tell you that I know several anti-Zionist proffesors here (I cannot call them my colleagues, yet). So your point is?

Board of Trustees of the HU or not, Richard Goldstone agreed to head a UN Human Rights Council sponsored investigation that was charged with and I quote:

“investigat[ing] all violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law by the occupying power, Israel, against the Palestinian people throughout the Occupied Palestinian Territory, particularly in the occupied Gaza Strip, due to the current aggression [Cast Lead].”

Anyone who agrees to cater to a circus in which one side is prejudged to be guilty of crimes against international law by the lovely people on the UN Human Rights Council and the other belligerent side is rendered outside the remit of investigation, except to be viewed as innocent victims, may well be a friend of yours SO Muffin, but is no one I would respect.

Oh and I wouldn’t have bothered to respond to your base stupidity and hyperbole: calling me a liar, claiming that it is well known that I label anyone who doesn’t agree with the Israeli government an antizionist and equating me with a racist antisemite, but I am beginning to enjoy seeing you getting more and more irate every time I show you up to be the thin skinned egomaniacal fuckhead you are.

SO Muffin you have certainly caught lbnaz out.

Yup he hurled abuse and insults at me non-stop for having the temerity to challenge his comment that the Israeli mainstream media agreed that 400 and perhaps fewer Hamas combatants were killed during Cast Lead certainly caught me out. Some people here are priceless.

Prof. Asa Kasher on the subject of the morality of Cast Lead and international laws of warfare:
http://haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1062127.html

Lbnaz I suggest you read what I wrote. I referred to an article in the Jerusalem post which raises questions re the mission of Richard Goldstone.
And if you reread what I wrote you will see my main goal was to get a reasoned debate on the issues between you and SO Muffin.
Not a slanging match.

To LBNAZ and SO MUFFIN instead of the gross insults how about a serious debate between the two of you. Where you respond to the points made by the other. Not just trying to win an argument at all costs.

And if you reread what I wrote you will see my main goal was to get a reasoned debate on the issues between you and SO Muffin.
Not a slanging match.

Fine, then there was no need to say that SO Muffin “certainly caught me out”. And if you agree that he did “catch me out”, please provide me with some quotes of mine that show that I label anyone who doesn’t “toe the Israeli government line” an antizionist, or that I am a liar, or that I am to be equated with a former commenter who says on his own blog that he’s proud to be an antisemite racist.

Well Camsky

I have repeatedly mentioned the 2 instances where I challenged SO Muffin: First on his claim that Israeli mainstream media shared a consensus that 400 or fewer Hamas combatants were killed by the IDF during Cast Lead. Second, I challenged SO Muffin on what I consider a far too vague and unhelpful criticism of his that the IDF didn’t conduct its operations morally enough based on his experience as a former soldier, but without him ever articulating what strategy or tactics the IDF should have employed differently than they did to meet his gold ribbon standard for morality.

Those were the only two criticisms I had of SO Muffin’s comments, but rather than address either, the hyperbole and ad hominems began to fly. Anyone can check this thread to see who began the slinging match.

I have apologized for referring to Brownie as “dearie” which I agree was patronizing, but I am not about to have a reasoned debate with someone who has charged me with being a liar, being a stigmatizer of anyone who does not agree with the Israeli government about anything and being comparable to a racist antisemite, unless he retracts all of that or conversely proves that his ad hominems are accurate.

If he retracts all three of these slurs on my character I will gladly retract my one slur against him (thinskinned, egomaniacal fuckhead) and from there, he can address the two points I made above about the number of Hamas combatants killed during Cast Lead and about what kind of military tactics and strategy would gain his approval as being ethical since he apparently doesn’t believe the IDF was ethical enough in their conduct during Cast Lead, but has yet to say what he would have done differently.

OK, camsky, you want a reasoned debate. Fine. Lbnaz labeled Richard Goldstone as “veteran antizionist”. I claim that this is straightforward lie and that, regardless of his role in the UN “Human Rights” Commission (which is nothing but…) investigation, Goldstone is not an anti-Zionist, certainly not a “veteran” one. It is certainly sustainable to accept that Goldstone believed (naively, in my view) that he can conduct fair investigation even under the auspices of an unfairly-managed UN organisation.

This can be easily sorted out, given that Richard Goldstone has been round the block for a while and certainly left enough traces, written or electronic, to expose his “veteran anti-Zionism”, were there one. (Of course, there is always the possibility that Lbnaz confused Richard Goldstone with Richard Falk, who is indeed a veteran anti-Zionist wingnut.)

This, mind you, is not primarily a matter of defending Goldstone’s honour. It is all about using epithets to shut up a debate, and this is precisely where the comparison with Hasbara Buster comes in. The way Lbnaz sees it, given that Goldstone is probably unhappy with some actions of the Israeli government, this makes him (and, by implication, anybody else criticising Israel or IDF) into an anti-Zionist. By the same reasoning, anybody defending Israel is becoming according to Hasbara Buster a racist defender of imperialism. This reasoning is not just flawed in both cases, it exposes the individuals in question for what they are. And, as far as I am concerned, places them outside reasoned debate.

Unless Lbnaz can comprehend that people can be Zionists, committed to Israel and its security, and at the same time fiercely critical of some Israeli policies, I see little point in discussing anything with him.

PS: For Fabian: yes, there are anti-Zionist professors at HUJI. But there are no anti-Zionist members of the Board of Trustees.

According to his Wiki page, Richard Goldstone sits on the board of Directors of……Human Rights Watch.

Indeed, the only mention of the Hebrew Univ. is that he holds and honorary degree from there (here).

Muffin, Goldstone keeps some dodgy company that much is clear.

The way Lbnaz sees it, given that Goldstone is probably unhappy with some actions of the Israeli government, this makes him (and, by implication, anybody else criticising Israel or IDF) into an anti-Zionist.

My issue with Goldstone unlike the words SO Muffin wants to put in my mouth have to do with him agreeing to lead an UNHC “investigation” whose very terms of reference prevent any mention of Hamas or Palestinian militant belligerence. Muffin can go on and on about my calling Goldstone a veteran antizionist, whom I indeed confused with Richard Falk in the comment in question, but that mix up does not make me a liar or a stigmatizer of anyone who doesn’t agree with any Israeli government policy or comparable to Hasbara Buster except in the mind of a man who can’t address or deal with criticism at all except to throw a hissy fit and a slew of disgusting and false ad hominems.

Anat – 6.17 a.m. – talks of “paying a price” for starting wars.

Who pays the price for starting wars?

The totally innocent, almost always.

The Germans of Danzig, Koenigsburg, Marienbad and Memel, the Italians of Istria and Fiume and the Japanese of Kunashiri and Karafuto and the Finns of Viborg paid a price for events which were not of their choosing.

As for me, I’d close down Israel completely; all the Jews would be resettled in the E.U. and – in gratitude – the 57 countries of the Muslim ‘Umma’ would accept and resettle every Muslim from the E.U.

A good deal for all concerned?

Yes!

George Galloway would be unhappy, of course.

But one simply cannot please everyone!

Lbnaz and SO Muffin are both committed to the survival of, and, when necessary, the military defense of Israel (Muffin has demonstrated the latter personally). I hope that gives them enough of a basis to disagree more respectfully.

Ben Dror Yemini was the first Israeli journalist to expose Israel Shamir, back in 2003. Sadly, the piece doesn’t appear to be on the Ma’ariv website anymore, but I do recall that it contained a classic “where did I go wrong?” quote from Shamir’s mother.

Indeed, the only mention of the Hebrew Univ. is that he holds and honorary degree from there (here).

Ah so Goldstone isn’t on the board of trustees of the HU after all. Well then using SO Muffin’s method of argument, clearly SO Muffin = Hasbara Buster and is a liar to boot.

Muffin -have you read this research into the casualties of Cast Lead?

http://www.ict.org.il/Portals/0/Articles/ICT_Cast_Lead_Casualties-A_Closer_Look.pdf

Israelinurse: I’ve now read it.

It is not a whitewash or simply a propaganda document, that’s for certain. At the same time, it is a polemical document that frames the discussion in a specific manner and addresses specific allegations originating in the hard core of Hamas supporters.

The main point of contention I have with it is that it addresses successfully, I believe, and authoritatively the allegations of pro-Palestinians like Galloway, namely that IDF targeted Palestinian non-combatants deliberately, massively and in an indiscriminate manner. This is indeed an entirely false allegation and nobody with real knowledge of facts and of IDF soldiers, and without an axe to grind, would claim it. Certainly, this was not the claim of soldiers interviewed by “Breaking the Silence”, to give one example.

The substantive allegation is not of deliberate and indiscriminate targeting of civilians, but of strategy and tactic that led to inordinate civilian casualties. Essentially, the “Rules of Fire” were to prevent IDF casualties by targeting massively anything and anybody even remotely suspicious. In the circumstances of close-quarter urban warfare this often means shooting at anything that moves or anything that can move, with predictable outcome.

On a different thread a thoughtful contribution said that the rules in modern “asymmetric” warfare have changed. It is no longer an encounter between two armies in a theatre from which non-combatants have fled. This is fair enough. The standard MO in urban warfare is to take out everything in sight that can serve as a shelter for enemy snipers or RPG operators or whatsoever. But in this sort of situation, where civilian population neither fled nor, indeed, has had where to flee, this obviously would lead to monumental civilian casualties.

Had IDF used standard urban warfare tactics, like it used, say, in Suez (empty of non-combatants) in 1973, there would easily have been more than 10000 non-combatant fatalities at the very least. The very fact that there are not is an obvious refutation of claims of people like Galloway. However, this is not what we are talking about. And, interestingly (and honestly) enough, the IDC document is entirely consistent with the “Breaking the Silence” criticism in explaining why, for example, the age distribution of casualties can be explained by several factors, the preponderance of combatants among them being just one.

Muffin -we both know that the old protocols for urban warfare and anti-terror warfare had to be torn up and discarded at the beginning of the second intefada and that new ones were established to a great degree through the experiences of the soldiers on the ground. In fact that period constituted an enormous shake-up in the entire structure and modus operendi of the army.
I think we definitely need to take into account when judging the IDF’s aim to protect its soldiers the constant ‘promises’ by Hamas in the months leading up to Cast Lead as regards the horrors awaiting any Israeli soldier who entered Gaza. They know where our soft belly is, particularly on the issue of kidnappings, and have no qualms about using it to their advantage.

From the moral perspective, I am in total agreement with Prof. Kasher on this issue -see both the article I linked to above and the following one. I don’t think one can brand Asa Kasher as a right-wing reactionary or a knee-jerk defender of Israeli government policy.
http://www.azure.org.il/article.php?id=502

I don’t think one can brand Asa Kasher as a right-wing reactionary or a knee-jerk defender of Israeli government policy.

No, absolutly not. Asa Kasher is a honourable and humane man. Sadly, his son was killed (I believe, in the first Lebanon War) and this has led to a big change in his outlook. Who am I to judge him?

Viz. “asymmetric warfare”, we agree on the essentials. Definitely, fighting in the midst of population is different to encounter of armoured divisions in the Sinai. Except that this didn’t start with the second Intifada, this sort of stuff has been going round the world day in, day out. The WWII logic was “go on fighting as if there are no civilians, they are not our concern” – cf. St Lo or Stalingrad or Berlin or Okinawa. Since then the consensus, at least in the civilised world (we are not talking here Papa Assad in Hama), is different and ways and means have emerged to deal with this, much more difficult situation. It is not like if IDF has to rediscover the wheel.

My view is that, in a mixture of reasons, some good some bad, IDF got it wrong this time and the Rules of Fire and tactics of Cast Lead have led to inordinate number of avoidable non-combatant casualties. I might be right and I might be wrong, but I refuse to accept the judgment of biased or interested parties – and this includes not just Mr Stork with his chequered past, but also IDF commissions of inquiry which, sadly, don’t have a proud record of going for the truth and punishing the guilty. On a different thread I proposed an official Israeli Commission of Inquiry, constituted with judicial powers and chaired by a Supreme Court judge. Such commissions in Israel have mostly excellent track record of going after the truth. Would you agree?

‘It is not like if IDF has to rediscover the wheel.’
I don’t know if that’s true. Any comparisin with WW2 has to be faulty because of the conventional nature of that warfare. Maybe a more legitimate comparisin would be the NATO action in the Balkans where of course the levels of civilian casualties were proportionately considerably higher than those of the Gaza campaign. But even that comparisin has to be faulty because civilians in NATO countries were not subject to reprisals by the forces the NATO soldiers were fighting, as is true of course of Afghanistan, where civilian casualties are also proportionately considerably higher than in Gaza.
I think that Israel very often finds itself in positions not covered by conventional rules of warfare and existing international law and that to some extent we are on the ‘front line’ in more ways than one in that respect.
I find it very sad that you feel you cannot trust an IDF commission of enquiry, which I understand to be still ongoing at this time into Cast Lead. Personally, I think the responsible thing to do is to await the results of that enquiry and only then to pass judgement. If it is deemed by serious people within the Israeli judicial system to be unsatisfactory, I would then fully support a further investigation by an official investigatory committee such as the one you describe above.

Israelinurse: No, I don’t trust IDF commissions of enquiry, for two reasons. The first is a matter of principle: organisations that, by law, have monopoly on the use of force (armed forces, police, prison service) should not be allowed to investigate their own alleged abuse of force, at least not in severe cases. For the same reason I don’t want Metropolitan Police to investigate itself, I don’t want IDF to do so. The second is that I am familiar with the system. A commission of enquiry would be dominated by high-ranking combat officers who are likely to know personally other high-ranking combat officers involved with alleged events. They are coming from the same frame of mind and from an organisation where, rightly, loyalty to your mates is a highly-praised virtue. Time and again, IDF investigated alleged abuses of human rights in the occupied territories and during warfare and its track record is abysmal. At worst, a corporal will be sent for 35 days to Jail 6 or, in an extreme case, a lieutenant will be demoted to sub-lieutenant. Sorry, but this is a nod-and-wink culture in which the system supports “our boys” against “the Arabs”.

You might say that the British record in Basra isn’t any better – perhaps. You might say that the record of any other country of actor in the Middle East is egregiously worse. I agree. You might say that it is a disgrace that human right organisations don’t focus sufficiently on these other actors. I agree. But all this doesn’t diminish anything from my misgivings.

Binkstein, I seem to recall Jews having a little problem in Europe in the past? Hmmm…..

SOMuffin, the IDF brief I focused on in my last piece includes a description of how Israeli military investigations work, and compares this system with those of other countries, like e.g. the US. Have you read this, and is your notion that this is not reliable enough based on a rejection of the claims made there?

WRT the dilemmas Israel faces when fighting groups like Hamas or Hezbollah, I think it has to be taken into account that, different from the presumably rational state-actors of conventional warfare that are interested in the survival of their state, those groups use their “resistance” against Israel to undermine their own (pre-)state authorities, and the damage that their population suffers in the fighting is of no consequence to them. In the case of the Lebanon war, Hezbollah’s claim of a “divine victory” was widely accepted by the people in the region who were transfixed by the casualties and damage Israel sustained in this war.

As I have said before, particularly the Palestinians — and polls from the time prove that — were wildly in favor of “cloning” this “divine victory”; i.e. the Palestinians themselves were completely unimpressed by all the reports about the supposed devastation of Lebanon, and apparently, they thought it’s a price worth paying if Israeli soldiers get killed in sufficient numbers.
Against this background, I would suggest that your “rule of the moral thumb” would have to include the consideration of the likely effect if Israel sustains a certain number of casualties in order to perhaps reduce the risk to non-combattants.
The fact of the matter is that each Israeli soldier for whose death Hamas or Hezbollah can claim “credit” enhances not only the popular appeal of these groups, but also their claim that continued “resistance” is a worthwhile cause. Moreover, as you probably know, the doctrine of “resistance” to which Hamas and Hezbollah subscribe holds that Israel can be worn down, i.e existentially weakened, in a war of attrition, where the strategy is to make a normal life impossible (Sderot) and to make the defense of areas that are constantly attacked too costly in political terms, i.e. undermining Israel’s right to self-defense and its international legitimacy.
In the wake of the Gaza campaign, studies like the one IsraeliNurse has linked to, point to the conclusion that the IDF’s claim that I quoted in the previous thread, i.e. that the ratio of combattant/non-combattant death was better than in any comparable military campaign in history (including recent history, e.g. Fallujah), is an entirely justified claim.

You have produced nothing to show that this claim is not justified; but, like the “Breaking the Silence” members, would still like, in an unspecified way, to see Israel doing not just better than any other army in the world, but doing the impossible, namely, fighting in an urban environment with the primary concern not to endanger any non-combattants whatsoever, irrespective of the fact that the other side does everything possible to endanger non-combattants.

If you would like to argue that it would help Israel’s international standing if we demonstrably fight in a way that puts our soldiers at grave risk in order to spare enemy civilians, I can only say that we saw how this works at Jenin.

SOMuffin, I see only now your previous post that basically answers my first point to you.

Petra: As the Irishman replied to the question how to get from here to Dublin, “Had I wanted to go to Dublin, I wouldn’t have started here”.

So, you want to prevent victory of Hamas. Good, so do I. And you want, ideally, the fascist blighters to go away. Good, so do I. Given that we are probably agreed, here are a number of issues on which you should support me:

1. Demonstrate to Palestinians that there is a third way: neither being subject to Israeli occupation or the misery of refugee camps nor joining fundamentalist wingnuts on their Crusade (oops, Jihad) to destroy Israel. Make it clear that the quid pro quo for recognition, peace and security for Israel is a Palestinian state, free and secure and sustainable (rather than a collection of Bhantustans). That the challenge for Palestinians is to be a partner for this sort of agreement, while any act of terrorism delays their deliverance.

2. Talk with the moderates among Palestinian nationalists – not because they are signed-up members of WZO but because, with all their faults, it is possible to reach an agreement with them.

3. Don’t withdraw from territories like Gaza Strip without suitable arrangements with Palestinian Authority, willfully handing them over to the mob and to Hamas.

4. Don’t impose economic siege on Gaza, a siege that helps Hamas by punishing precisely the natural opposition to Hamas, the middle classes. A siege that hands over control over economy (through control of the smuggling tunnels) to Hamas. To the contrary, use smart sanctions, that don’t impact on daily lives of Gazans, while sealing the supply of weapons to Gaza.

5. Divide and conquer even your worst enemies. Make it clear that even elements of Hamas can be part of the political process, provided that they are willing to shell out the political price. (E.g., it is fairly pointless to negotiate peace agreement with a party that declares at the outset that they will never agree to… a peace agreement.) And if this means that Hamas splits between moderates and extremists – well, tough.

I could have gone on and on. Look, Petra, one difference between, say Brits in Afghanistan and Israelis round Gaza is that Brits can always up the sticks and go – Israelis intend to hang around in the foreseeable future. Given that so do the Palestinians, it is a betrayal of Israel’s future not to embrace a long-term strategy leading to a compromise peace. If this means taking risks, then risks must be taken. If this means seeing military options as a mean to an end, rather than a sole end in itself, so be it.

The challenge is not to persuade the readers of Comment is Free (not even HP posters, whose forgiveness I beg for mentioning them in one breath with CiF). The challenge is to change hearts and minds of Palestinians and of Israelis.

PS I do appreciate your reasonable and civilised tone in this discussion. Many here can learn from it, perhaps even I.

Muffin, Asa Kasher’s son was indeed killed during his time in the army but not in an army related incident. During a hike in the Sinai he slipped and fell to his death off a high cliff. It had affected his father deeply but not necessarily in the way you suggested.

SO Muffin you write,”You might say that the British record in Basra isn’t any better – perhaps. You might say that the record of any other country of actor in the Middle East is egregiously worse. I agree. You might say that it is a disgrace that human right organisations don’t focus sufficiently on these other actors. I agree. But all this doesn’t diminish anything from my misgivings.” This is at the heart of much that troubles me. For example, I see so little coverage of the current problems of the Tamils in Sri Lanka,so little action in the UN,not a lot from the human rights organizations although to be fair they have little access to the Tamils in the camps. Where are the investigations of possible war crimes in Sri Lanka. I understand your point of getting to grips with what happened during operation cast lead. I also see a questioning of Israel that is totally disproportionate to other countries whether it be in the media,human rights organizations and the UN. And it makes my head spin.
I do think that HRW if they are motivated by ideological considerations are an obstacle to any peace initiatives. What is the point of picking over Israeli action if the same thing is not done with every Hamas action. Not just the firing of rockets. Did they use human shields,who did they use, how often etc. Did they locate munitions in peoples houses,how much did they do this etc. Did they kill other palestinians during this conflict just because they were members of a different political group.
The focus just on Israeli actions will in my opinion not help any future negotiations between the different sides in this conflict.

camsky: Well, these are two discussions intertwined. One is the fairness of focusing the spotlight of publicity on a single actor (not by any means the worst) in a single conflict. Here we agree. The UN Committee on “Human Rights” didn’t take a blink to declare that there were no human right abuses in Sri Lanka and there is nothing to enquire – this is total disgrace. But the other discussion is specifically on the actions of IDF during Cast Lead. The fact that others are worse or behave worse is neither here nor there and it doesn’t mean that we cannot discuss it – or criticise IDF actions – before other, worse abuses have been addressed.

But let us agree that organisations committed to expose human right abuses should hold themselves to the highest standards of probity, transparency and fairness. And that HRW’s behaviour in allowing somebody like Joe Stork fronting their Middle East operation is, at best, unwise.

Binkstein
18 August 2009, 1:12 pm

I’m not sure whether your “bold proposal” is made knowing full well that about half of Israel’s Jewish population were resettled from Muslim countries that aren’t part of the EU or not, but the inference of your “good deal for all” is that Jews are alien to the middle east and Muslims are alien to Europe and neither are true.

It’s I think important to point out that the findings of the internal IDF investigations into the conduct of the IDF during Cast Lead have to be presented (if they have not already been presented) for review to Israel’s Attorney General and the Ministry of the Attorney General (MAG) and that any affected party — Israelis and Palestinians alike, as well as non-governmental organisations — can appeal the decisions of both the MAG and the Attorney General to the Supreme Court sitting as the High Court of Justice, as they frequently do in other cases. The Supreme Court’s decisions are a matter of public record.

The principal objections as far as I can tell to external inquiries of the type suggested by foreign funded NGOs like Rabbis for Human Rights, not only external investigations into IDF conduct, but external investigations into any military’s conduct during wartime are both that the external investigators would have to obtain security clearances in order to be able to requisition the documentation and persons they would require to conduct their inquiry and that external investigators would not be concerned about releasing information they were privy to as a result of their investigation that would put IDF soldiers and possibly Israeli civilians at greater risk in future confrontations.

Supposing these concerns could be managed to the satisfaction of the IDF (or any other military), to allow for an externally led inquiry, critics would undoubtedly cite these adjustments (i.e. vetting investigators by having them obtain security clearances and vetting the releasing of military information), as evidence that such an external inquiry was as inherently compromised and tainted, as they claim the IDF’s internal investigations can never be regarded as reliable.

Swedish newspaper: IDF kills Palestinians for their organs
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1108384.html

(That’s a lie! we only drink their blood! and only on passover!)

SO Muffin – re. your 4:49 post, I understand your point of view, but I feel that you have fallen into the trap that so many on the Left have succumbed to -treating the Palestinians as though they were a bunch of children.
It is as much their interest as ours that there be peace and economic co-operation between two separate states on this tiny patch of land.
I really do feel that we have bent over backwards. That doesn’t of course mean that we should stop trying, but we can only take 50% of the responsibility for the present state of affairs.
If Oslo had been allowed to progress as planned and not aborted by the second intefada, we may already have been in an entirely different position. If, after the evacuation of Gaza, something positive had been made of that move, it would have seriously helped shift Israeli public opinion towards making serious moves as regards the WB.
I also think you grossly underestimate the importance of the other, much more powerful player in the region -Iran.
With regard to the economic sanctions, if you read the link above to the Azure article, you will see that they had to be employed.
Israel has stretched out its hand in peace time and time again, only to have it bitten. We need to see some positive action from the other side.
My personal view is that we should also not be continually beating ourselves up (especially in public) over a failure which is at most half our responsibility. Maybe I’m just naturally more of a ‘half full glass’ person, but I think we have much to be proud of in our society considering that we have been at war almost non-stop for 61 years and more. That doesn’t mean that we can be complacent or stop our introspections, but neither does it mean that we should take the words of every NGO or UN committee as though they were etched in stone. The state of morality in our society is an internal matter and should be treated as such.
You know, when I was a child at infants school in England, some 15 years after the end of WW2, all the boys used to bring comics to school with stories about heroic British soldiers fighting and beating ugly, evil Germans in them. I have never seen such a comic or book or film or children’s TV programme in Israel. I think that is one reason among many for great pride.

if you are connected with an institution that provides access to JSTOR, you can read articles by Joe Stork in the Journal of Palestine Studies and MERIP. A group interview with stork and a couple of other leading HRW staffers here, Reed Brody, Jacinda Swanson, Joseph Buttigieg, Arvind Ganesan, Neve Gordon, Smita Narula, Joe Stork. Human Rights and Global Capitalism: A Roundtable Discussion with Human Rights Watch. RM 13(2):52-71 RM is the postmidernist, neo-marxist journal called Rethinking Marxism.

Israelinurse (wherever you are :-) ): Allocating blame, whether 50% or more or less, is immaterial. Both sides have blundered time and time again (no sooner that the ink on the Oslo Agreements dried, both sides started to act against its spirit, often against its letter) and each, in Abba Eban’s immortal phrase, never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity.

What is required is not to seek blame (from either side). Apportioning blame to the other side is not just counterproductive, it is an easy defensive device to point out a jabbing finger rather than examining what you can do. Both sides have been doing this for much too long.

What is required is a strategy for peace, a strategy that takes a long-term view and that realises that one side’s action leads to other side’s reaction. (And reactions can be good or bad: the future is not predetermined and what you do changes and influences it!) All too often both sides are simply lashing at the other side, rather than conducting rational policy. One can understand the emotional reasons but this is counterproductive as well as wrong.

And, by the way, the main incentive should not be moral (to be nice and just toward “the Other”) but it should be an enlightened self interest. It is in the vital and urgent interest of both Israelis and Palestinians to reach a peaceful modus of co-existence. It might leave few hate-filled idiots inside and (mostly) outside the region gnashing their teeth, but this is just an added benefit.

SOMuffin, I don’t have much of a quarrel with the political views you set out. However, I feel about them probably a bit, or indeed quite a bit, like IsraeliNurse. First, I think you ignore the fact that if you face a party that believes it has a military/terrorist option that will advance its aims, you have to do something that demonstrates that this is not the case…

Secondly, I think there is a lot of truth in what Agha/Malley wrote in their recent NYReview of Books piece about the Palestinian stance — though I was truly astonished that they wrote it, because I would have thought that this would widely be regarded as “politically incorrect” by their many admirers:

“The idea of establishing a Palestinian state alongside Israel has an unusually interesting, troubled, and—from the British plan of the 1930s to the United Nations partition plan of 1947—mainly foreign pedigree. What it is not and, save for a brief period in the recent past, has not been is an indigenous Palestinian demand … Palestinians do not judge the idea of a state on its merits. They judge it by the company it keeps. The new millennium began with the near-universal acceptance of the idea of a Palestinian state, which is precisely when its support among Palestinians began to slip.”
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/22731

I should add that I greatly respect Agha/Malley’s expertise when it comes to assessing the Palestinians; I don’t have similar respect for what they write about Israel, because that seems to me very often to reflect a desire to construct a parrallel “narrative”.

“In the circumstances of close-quarter urban warfare this often means shooting at anything that moves or anything that can move, with predictable outcome.”

The correct tactics are for fighting close-quarter in a urban setting, with all manner of (illegal) landmines and (illegal) suicide bombers is to………..

what was the correct way for the IDF to act? I would have preferred something along the lines of the Battle of Berlin myself.

I think that there has been a confusion about the two Richards. I believe that Judge Richard Goldstone is from South Africa, and is considered a fair man. Richard Falk, the special UN rapporteur is a true anti-Zionist, anti-Israeli, and anti-Semite for all of the fact that he is nominally Jewish himself. He is the one who has called Israelis Nazis. The Israelis have refused to talk to him (good thinking, the man is beyond the pale), and do I remember that they wouldn’t allow him to enter Israel?

Binkstein,

Perhaps you mean well, but most Jews are pretty tired of being told where to live and how to live. The Israelis want to live in Israel, they don’t want to live in Europe. Israel runs according to the Jewish year, and Jewish life is not always subject to being fit into other peoples’ values.

I am used to being a minority in my own country, but I can see the pleasures of living in a country where one’s expectations are the norm. It would be wonderful for the High Holidays, for example, to be secular holidays as well.

DocMartyn: Well said! It will probably take that, eventually, like the Sri Lankan government did with the Tamil Tigers; or the US in Japan.

Yes Anat I called Richard Goldstone a veteran antizionist which he is not because I confused him with Richard Falk who is a veteran antizionist. SO Muffin used this mix up to insist on these threads that I am a liar, a mirror version of the antisemite Hasbara Buster and a shill for the Israeli government who stigmatizes anyone who doesn’t “toe the line” for any Israeli government policy. Richard Goldstone however, is no longer entitled to a reputation of being a “fair man” after agreeing to lead a UNHRC circus investigation that makes a mockery of international law by politicizing the terms for the investigation which predetermined Israel to be guilty of violating international law and proscribed any mention of Palestinian belligerence. And SO Muffin, were he a “fair man”, would be so ashamed by his despicable performance on this thread that he would retract every one of the odious, undeserved and false slurs he made against my character.

Lbnaz, the only “reputation” that you have to defend is of somebody that always, absolutely always, supports the policies-de-jour of the Israeli government and that always bends facts to suit his-or-her view. The slur upon Richard Goldstone might have been due to confusion, but it is highly symptomatic confusion. (And, you know, it would have been not a bad idea to apologise for it, in particular if this was an innocent confusion.) Once you have a predetermined slant on everything, once you accept uncritically everything that supports your world view and reject facts that conflict with it, even if they stare you in the face, you are highly likely to confuse facts to suit your line.

This is also why it is so frustrating and counterproductive discussing anything with you. Your mind is shuttered and all you can is to mouth platitudes. And this is precisely the difference between you and, say, Fabian or Israelinurse.

I really wish that, for once, you’ll try to read this and take it to heart. If this is not your self-image then just ponder why this image comes across. This might do much more good than shooting back off the hip.

SO Muffin look in the mirror. You put words in my mouth which have no basis in reality, allege things about me which are all bs, all because apparently you can’t take any criticism whatsoever. I expect a full retraction from you for all the slander and abuse you heaped upon me. Nothing less and nothing more.

And maybe it’s about time you check your own image and reputation which you damaged by your despicable performance on this thread and to which sadly you seem to be entirely oblivious. Look in the mirror SO Muffin. Your behaviour on this thread toward me was shameful and entirely baseless. And your efforts at justifying your behaviour, by further attempting to psychologize me and put words in my mouth, only reveals you to be a conceited jerk who is too insecure, thin skinned and emotionally immature to deal with being called out on your own prevarications and poorly argued claims: namely your asserting that mainstream Israeli media shared a consensus that 400 and fewer Hamas combatants were killed during Cast Lead and your indifference to articulating how the IDF should have conducted themselves in terms of tactics and strategy to meet your approval.

Look in the mirror Muffin. You psychologize that my mix up between Richard Goldstone and Richard Falk is symptomatic of some distorted world view of mine that you claim to be an expert about. What should we psychologize about your mistaken claim that Goldstone sits on the Board of Trustees of the HU? That you have a predetermined slant on everything? That you reject facts that conflict with your world view, even when they stare you in the face? That you are very likely to confuse facts to suit your line?

Additionally Muffin, why don’t you put your money where your mouth is? You ape the position of Rabbis for Human Rights who call for an external investigation of IDF conduct in Gaza. Well you are an Israeli citizen are you not? Assuming you are, you have every right to request the review of the IDF internal investigations from the Attorney General and Ministry of the Attorney General and to launch a suit in the Israeli Supreme Court if you feel the A-G review was in error or evaded facts. Why don’t you do so, instead of complaining on a blog?

Finally Muffin, I will borrow your own language to repeat that you owe me a full retraction for the slanderous bs you accuse me of and if you aren’t enough of an emotionally secure and honest individual to do so, I see no reason in the world to engage with you further, as to do so would be an excercise in frustration and entirely counterproductive. Grow up Muffin and drop your smug and conceited manner, retract your unfounded slander against my character and give your bullshit psychologizing a much deserved rest if you want to be respected. Oh and don’t draw any other commenters into this as you attempted to do with Israeli Nurse and Fabian, it is yet another indication of how desperate you are to grasp at straws in order to rationalize and justify your despicable behaviour towards me on this thread.

Doc Martyn and Commodities Interest: “So you would not object to a former member of the BNP becoming a school teacher, or a police officer or an MP then; on the grounds that he had given it up?”

Yes, if the person could show that he or she no longer believed in the BNP and its racism and had completely turned against it, I would have no problem having a former member of the BNP as a teacher, police officer or elected public official. Of course, this turning away from the BNP and other racist groups would have to be shown as sincere and geniune and not just a tactical maneuver to publicily disassociate from an unpopular extremist group.

(Sorry this is late, I have been away for two days and did not have a chance to reply untill this evening.)

As for Joe Stork, although the evidence is mixed, he may still more or less believe what he wrote in the 1970s. At the very least he should be asked to make clear his current views on the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict before he continues on as head of HRW’s Middle East division.

http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0AWXYV56qlacKZGdwYzRoYzlfMTMzaG5mamJ3Y2o&hl=en

“HRW is part of the Inquisition against the Jewish State.”

In a way. More accurately remnants of the Soviet Anti-Zionism campaign still rattling around in Western European minds. Plus, for HRW, a fund raising technique aimed at those same minds.

“So, a good guy.”

It’s sad that you have to say that still. I know you encounter many English (not Scottish, Welsh) people who perfunctorily question and tune out anything that comes from an Israeli source. I encounter them too.