Nadene Goldfoot
Residential Neighborhood in Ramallah
Al Haq is an independent Palestinian human rights organization based in the city of Ramallah in the West Bank. Founded in 1979, Al-Haq monitors and documents human rights violations committed by parties to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, issuing reports on its findings and producing detailed legal studies. Human Rights Watch also does this, but they are an international group but with divisions to cover the Palestine-Israel fighting.
In the 1990s, Israel's Ambassador to the United States, Moshe Arad, accused Al-Haq of being a front for Arafat's PLO and stated that "most of its members are supporters of Fatah and other members of the PLO terrorist organization".
The Jerusalem Post, commenting on Al-Haq's position on the PLO killings, noted that the "mutilation-murders of young boys and girls, housewives, pregnant women and old men...did not fit the pacific image the PLO was trying to project". The Post also noted that although Al-Haq did not condone the killings in its human-rights report, it did not condemn them either.
Al-Haq's position on PLO assassinations of collaborators has been the topic of discussion. Al-Haq claimed that, because the authorities were responsible for keeping order, the killings were not human rights violations and were at worst common crimes.
"On August 17, the Israeli Government Press Office issued a statement that as part of the ongoing efforts to combat terrorism, particularly in relation to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), Defense Minister Benny Gantz had ratified a designation made in October 2021 to declare the following groups terrorist organizations: The Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association, Al-Haq, the Bisan Center for Research and Development, Defense for Children International–Palestine, the Union of Agricultural Work Committees, and the Union of Palestinian Women’s Committees." (Jerusalem Post)
Al-Haq and its counterpart, the Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem, were co-recipients of the Carter-Menil Human Rights Prize in 1989, and of the Geuzenpenning, a Dutch human rights award, in 2009.
What side will he choose in watching Humans err if he's a terrorist himself?
Shawan Jabarin, the General Director of (Al Haq), also sits on Human Rights Watch's (HRW’s) advisory committee for its Middle East and North Africa Division. This is highly relevant information for viewers to be able to properly assess the credibility of the allegations made by Ms. Bashi. The man has one foot in a terror group while the other foot is in another terror group he uses to back the 1st foot up. Clever man! Watch out!
Respected as a human-rights activist by HRW, Amnesty International, and various Palestinian human-rights groups, and condemned by many Israeli and other organizations, Jabarin has been described as “an activist to some, a terrorist to others.” While he has won many human-rights awards and contributed to such journals as Foreign Policy, Israel's Supreme Court has called him a "senior activist" for the PFLP, which is considered a terrorist group by 30 countries. Jabarin has been barred from entering Jordan on security grounds, and was banned from international travel by Israel between 2006 and 2013.
Last week on CNN International’s “Connect the World,” host Becky Anderson brought in Sari Bashi of Human Rights Watch (“HRW”) to discuss Israel’s decision to close 7 organizations due to their connections with the terrorist organization Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (“PFLP”).
Sari Bashi, Program Director at Human Rights Watch, leads the organization’s research, supervising a staff of 270 people in 50 countries, working on 18 regional and thematic human rights areas. Prior to joining Human Rights Watch, Sari co-founded and ran Gisha, the leading Israeli human rights group promoting the right to freedom of movement for Palestinians in Gaza. She has taught international humanitarian law at Yale Law School and Tel Aviv University and supervised research at Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN). She is the author of Maqluba: Upside Down Love (Hebrew), an award-winning story about love in the shadow of the Israeli occupation, and she has worked as a correspondent for the Associated Press. Bashi earned her B.A. (summa cum laude) from Yale University and her J.D. from Yale Law School. She is a marathon and ultra-marathon runner and author of the Umm Forat blog about raising her children in the occupied West Bank. (www.ummforat.com).
She's a writer. I note that all her articles are against Israel's handling of Palestinian Arabs. " It’s painful to consider this in the context of Israel’s law barring citizens like me who are married to Palestinian residents of Gaza and the West Bank from bringing them into the country. In the nine years since our wedding, the Israeli government has rejected or ignored requests to grant my partner even a temporary permit to join me in Israel." My comment is that, Sari, have you noticed that Israel is constantly bombed by Gaza? Where do you live in Israel? Ashkelon and S'derot are bombed almost every day. Gazan have Hamas (a terrorist group) as their governing party. Your husband is not part of an angelic group, then. You cannot expect Israel to bless your marriage. What has he done to show he's fighting the Hamas dictum and is trying to bring peace? Is he also a writer? How did you ever marry in the first place? Are you in a Palestinian village now?
"CNN International failed to disclose Human Rights Watch's conflict of interest on their program."
Human Rights Watch is an international non-governmental organization, headquartered in New York City, that conducts research and advocacy on human rights. The group pressures governments, policy makers, companies, and individual human rights abusers to denounce abuse and respect human rights, and the group often works on behalf of refugees, children, migrants, and political prisoners.
Human Rights Watch in 1997 shared in the Nobel Peace Prize as a founding member of the International Campaign to Ban Land mines and it played a leading role in the 2008 treaty banning cluster munitions.
Key people are Kenneth Roth-Executive Director and James F. Hoge Jr., Chairman., Though Roth is Jewish, Roth is criticized by the Jerusalem-based NGO Monitor for allegedly being biased against Israel. Kenneth Roth is the executive director of Human Rights Watch, one of the world's leading international human rights organizations, which operates in more than 90 countries.
Prior to joining Human Rights Watch in 1987, Roth served as a federal prosecutor in New York and for the Iran-Contra investigation in Washington, DC. A graduate of Yale Law School and Brown University, Roth has conducted numerous human rights investigations and missions around the world. He has written extensively on a wide range of human rights abuses, devoting special attention to issues of international justice, counterterrorism, the foreign policies of the major powers, and the work of the United Nations. Leaders in Human Rights Watch are:
- Kenneth Roth. Executive Director. ...
- Tirana Hassan. Deputy Executive Director and Chief Programs Officer. ...
- Wisla Heneghan. Deputy Executive Director and Chief Operating Officer. ...
- Philippe Bolopion. Chief of Staff. ...
- Colin Mincy. Chief People Officer.
- Barbara Pirto. Finance Director.
- Bruno Stagno Ugarte. ...
- Lauren Camilli.
Steinberg has served as a consultant to the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs and to the Israeli National Security Council. He also served as a legislative adviser to Likud Knesset Member Ze'ev Elkin.
Professor Gerald M. Steinberg (founder of the Institute for NGO Research, which runs the NGO Monitor project) is a long-time critic of what he refers to as Roth's obsessive targeting of Israel as head of Human Rights Watch from 1993. In a 2004 Jerusalem Post article, Steinberg rejected Roth's op-ed which accused NGO Monitor of "fictitious allegations of bias" and a "fantasy-based discourse" which "does a deep disservice to Israel". NGO Monitor also criticized Roth for recruiting a staff that hold anti-Zionist views and for his attitude towards antisemitism, as he declined to participate in the Global Forum on Antisemitism.
This history was analyzed in detail by Gerald M. Steinberg in "Human Rights Watch's anti-Israel Agenda", published in the journal Israel Affairs (2021). Gerald M. Steinberg. a professor of politics at Bar Ilan University, is an Israeli academic, political scientist, and political activist. He is founder and president of NGO Monitor, a policy analysis think tank focusing on non-governmental organizations.
Steinberg has been a longtime critic of Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, Christian Aid, Oxfam and other organizations that he accuses of having "contributed to the hatred, rather than supporting peace". Writing in a 2004 Jerusalem Post article he said, "HRW's press statement exposes it as a biased political organization hiding behind the rhetoric of human rights." Later he accused HRW of "exploiting the rhetoric of human rights to delegitimize Israel". Human Rights Watch accused Steinberg of "sleight of hand" in his reporting of its activities, and of ignoring its condemnations of Palestinian militant actions.
What we learn here is that there are groups professing to be for peace that are biased , and that we must not be so naive. Israel has been at the wrong end of the sticky lollipop since forever, being constantly criticized and even envied or hated. Chances are such groups are against Israel and use devious methods to keep their power. It's sad, but Human Rights Watch isn't really counting in Israel as being one of the Humans. Too many eagle-eyes have caught them attacking Israel.
8/26/22: Syrian state media reported that Syrian air defenses intercepted "hostile targets" over Hama's countryside on Thursday and that 2 civilians were killed in the attack. The UK based Observatory for Human Rights, a Syrian opposition group, said that among the targets was a scientific research facility as well as Iran backed militias including Hezbollah. I might mention that Hama is a town, not meaning the terrorists, Hamas.
Resource:
https://www.camera.org/article/a-serious-ethical-lapse-cnn-international-fails-to-disclose-human-rights-watchs-conflict-of-interest/
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-715587
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_Roth
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Haq#:~:text=Al-Haq's%20position%20on%20PLO,were%20at%20worst%20common%20crimes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Haq
https://www.hrw.org/about/people/sari-bashi
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