Short course how to murder civilians and level some 4.000 homes.
Look at pictures:
http://www.hrw.org/photos/2002/jenin/pages/11.htm
http://www.hrw.org/photos/2002/jenin/pages/12.htm
http://www.hrw.org/photos/2002/jenin/pages/17.htm
About hate. Please read about the murders of civilians:
http://hrw.org/reports/2002/israel3/israel0502-05.htm#P234_38516
Henry B’s cite says, “… the organization did not find evidence of systematic summary executions.”
OTOH in the last 2 years, there have indeed been cases of systematic summary executions of Jews by Palestinians. In fact, there have been hundreds of such executions. Several mass killings were specifically aimed at children, like the recent bus bombing and the bombing at the ice-cream parlor. One mass killing was committed during a religious celebration.
Since the Palestinian behavior was far more heinous, a fair-minded organization would devote far more attention to those atrocities. However, HRW didn’t do that, so we they must be regarded as biased toward Palestinains or against Israelis.
I don’t understand. There are some pictures of the Jenin refugee camp and a couple of reports of incidents involving the Israeli Defense Force. What is the debate?
If these incidents are true, and I have no reason to believe that the HRW is making them up since I have heard similar reports on other reliable news sources, then what makes HRW a Fascist-Muslim-Communist organization?
December
Here You probably hit a new record (of explanations).
December wrote:
Henry B’s cite says, "… the organization did not find evidence of systematic summary executions."
Do You think the dead ones care about that? If a Palestinian or Israelian child dies, I do not think his last thoughts circles around these questions. But surely that is a good point and a very good thing among all murders & killings & executions.
December wrote further:
"OTOH in the last 2 years, there have indeed been cases of systematic summary executions of Jews by Palestinians."
The case here did not take 2 years, only a few days.
Very effective, very effective indeed.
But the number or time is not the question here. Every civilian death is horrible.
But do You think the levelling of houses were systematical? (If this is any point in this question. No, I think it has no point. The pictures tells more).
As far as I understand HRW is reporting what different countries/regimes are doing.
They are not reporting about organizations or individuals.
Not even terrorists.
But what do You think:
Are the reports false or true?
But do You think the photographies are false or true?
Why do You not believe they are e.g. communists?
Why muslimist?
Is there something in the report that You do not believe in?
I do not mean that You or anybody else has to answer all questions. The world is filled with questions.
Just answer some question.
Nothing to do with these Israelian/Palestinian questions. I just want to point out that the other reports from other countries are not very nice reading either. But very good for people to know about.
msmith537
Yes, I was not very clear in this question.
I meant, do You believe in these pictures and the report?
The facist-muslim-commie comment is a little bit sarcastic from my side. I hope I did not hurt anybody.
msmith537 wrote:
“…some pictures of the Jenin refugee camp and a couple of reports of incidents …”
You call it incidents if some twenty civilians are killed in different parts of the camp?
You must be joking?
I believe that the photos are true and undoctored. I believe that the text may be at least close to true.
Truth is not enough, when it’s one-sided. Here’s an analogy to help explain why.
Let’s imagine that the HRC had written a report about conditions in Mississippi 65 years ago. Suppose their report identified a number of white defendants who didn’t receive proper due process. Suppose the report also included photographs of white convicts who were being badly treated on a chain gang. However, suppose the report said little or even nothing at all about the lynching of African Americans.
What would you think of such a report?
Or, even worse, supposed the report ignored the lynchings, but criticized the tactics of those who were trying to end the lynchings? :eek:
That hypothetical report could have been totally true, but it would have obviously been bigoted.
Today, we see mass lynchings of Israeli men, women, and children. Hence, the analogy. Also, note that in the hypothetical example, suppose the HRC explained that they didn’t criticize the lynchings, because lynchings are actions of individuals, not governments. :rolleyes:
BTW Henry B, please don’t twist my statements. I said that the HRC is biased, not that I support the killing of Palestinians. If you want to start a thread on Israeli tactics, I’ll be happy to participate. This OP was about characteristics of the HRC.
december: Truth is not enough, when it’s one-sided. Here’s an analogy to help explain why. […] suppose the report said little or even nothing at all about the lynching of African Americans.
december, where on earth do you get the idea that HRW is saying “little or even nothing at all” about the killing of Israelis by Palestinian suicide bombers? Are you completely unaware that HRW has in fact been loudly condemning these killings?
And that’s just a few of the most recent condemnations. How the hell can you say that HRW (which I wish you would stop calling “HRC” :rolleyes: ) isn’t criticizing these actions?
Are you just upset that anybody would have the nerve to criticize Israeli actions without rushing to excuse them by dwelling on the Palestinian provocations? Do you think that when HRW condemns the Palestinian suicide bombings, it’s also obliged to discuss Israeli provocations (which it doesn’t do)?
Why shouldn’t HRW go on issuing separate condemnations of separate actions by the two different sides? How the hell does that make the organization “Muslimist” or “biased” or “one-sided”?
It seems that according to you, december, any criticism of Israel whatsoever, or any demand that Israel change its policies—unless it’s simultaneously neutralized by excuses and justifications for Israeli actions on the basis of the Palestinian bombings—counts as “bias” against Israel and means that you can ignore the criticism. That’s got to be about the most glaring example of “victimhood ideology” I’ve ever seen.
I think that the critical aspect which HRW is stressing is making sure that the world is aware of the violence which Palistenians are being subject to. I don’t know about every action or publication made by HRW, but the links that you provide to the HRW website do not deny the actions of Palestinian bombers against Israel.
There are two sides to every story, and any debate of the current conflict would be incomplete without understanding every aspect of those conflicts.
When a suicide bomber attacks in downtown Tel-Aviv, CNN is there to take footage of the bodies and injured being loaded into ambulances. On the Palistenian side, the IDF obviously isn’t going to allow complete media access to the killings of Palestinian civilians, for whatever reason, even if they were provoked by the Palestinians, shot them by accident, or engaged in flagrant human rights violations.
Somebody needs to report that the current conflict is not entirely one-sided, Palestinians carrying out terror attacks against Israeli citizens. If you were to go body-for-body, you would probably find more Palestinian deaths, and from all parts of society, from actual terrorists, terrorist sympathizers, to average citizens, to innocent children, at any time of the year, Yom Kippur to Ramadan.
Failing to understand what lies at the heart of the current conflict for both sides will never lead to a Palestinian state or a secure Israel.
3mae: *There are two sides to every story, and any debate of the current conflict would be incomplete without understanding every aspect of those conflicts. *
And even more importantly, IMHO: The position of Human Rights Watch is that “international standards of human rights apply to all people equally” and “Any and all parties to conflict may find themselves the target of Human Rights Watch” (emphasis added).
In other words, HRW and similar human-rights organizations are not in the business of handing out mitigating-circumstances waivers to parties who, in their view, have violated human rights. The whole point of the concept of inalienable human rights is that “mitigating circumstances” do not mitigate the violation of somebody else’s human rights.
Not never, not nohow. Not if they bulldozed your house, not if they murdered your friends, not if they blew up your child. Violation of another party’s human rights is defined by such groups to be inexcusable under any and all circumstances. HRW’s mission is to identify and expose human rights abuses wherever they occur and whatever their provocation, not to adjudicate quarrels or to decide who started what or whose atrocities are the most atrocious.
They are not God or Santa Claus, deciding who deserves punishment or reward; they are simply referees. Commit a human rights violation, and they blow the whistle on you, irrespective of what made you do it or how much you would rather not have done it. It’s irrelevant whether or not the other guy is worse than you are: the topic in question is what you did. What the other guy did will be addressed in the report on the other guy.
If that’s “biased”, then I only wish we had a lot more of that sort of bias in the world today.
Because:[ul][li]Palestinian victims were individually named. Israeli victims were not named. []There was a discussion of each individual Palestinian victim. There was no discussion of any specific Israeli victim.[]There was no discussion of the Israeli wounded and the terrible nature of some of the wounds. []There was no discussion of the specific targeting of Israeli children. []There was no mention of the Palestinian hate-mongering going on, which is quite different from the ractice in Israel.[]There were no photographs of the Israeli victims, but there were photographs of Jenin.[]For Jenin, they had a lengthy report with 80 footnotes. All they had about the bombings of Israelis were a few paragraphs of boiler-plate condemnation, with few if any details.HRC wrote about Jenin, “However, the organization did not find evidence of systematic summary executions.” However, the suicide bombings were in effect systematic summary executions. So, by HRC standards, they were worse atrocities. They deserved greater attention, but they received far less.[/ul] [/li]threemae was perhaps acknowledging this difference in coverage, but I don’t agree with his/her explanation:
AFAIK Israel has allowed complete access after the battle was over. If they had kept the media out, they would have also kept HRC out.
The Smoking Gun
The final proof of HRC’s bias is Kimstu’s second cite. This article describes a Palestinian bombing of an Israeli pool hall that killed 15 people. It says that this attack “resumed a string of attacks on ordinary civilians by armed Palestinian groups in recent months.”
Yet, the HRC headline is
Israel/PA: Armed Groups Should Halt Attacks on Civilians
I rest my case.
december: *HRC […] HRC […] HRC […] *
Say it with me, december: “Human Rights Watch, HRW; Human Rights Watch, HRW; Human Rights Watch, HRW”. I don’t know if you actually think the name of the organization is something different or if you’re consciously or unconsciously linking HRW with Senator Clinton, :rolleyes: but whatever the cause, I’m sure you can overcome this if you try.
Now, as to the objections in your bulleted points:
*Palestinian victims were individually named. Israeli victims were not named. *
You’re comparing a detailed report with a press release; see below.
There was a discussion of each individual Palestinian victim. There was no discussion of any specific Israeli victim.
You’re comparing a detailed report with a press release; see below.
*There was no discussion of the Israeli wounded and the terrible nature of some of the wounds. *
You’re comparing a detailed report with a press release; see below.
*There was no discussion of the specific targeting of Israeli children. *
WTF?? HRW says right there in a sentence that I quoted from the June 19th press release that “Again, suicide bombers have deliberately targeted civilians—this time a crowded rush hour bus carrying schoolchildren and office workers starting their day”. In other words, the bombers specifically targeted Israeli children, and HRW said so.
There was no mention of the Palestinian hate-mongering going on, which is quite different from the ractice in Israel.
WTF?? Where does “hate-mongering” come into it? Where is “hate-mongering” on either side mentioned? Hate-mongering is an evil and disgraceful thing, but it ain’t a human rights violation per se.
There were no photographs of the Israeli victims, but there were photographs of Jenin.
You’re comparing a detailed report with a press release; see below.
For Jenin, they had a lengthy report with 80 footnotes. All they had about the bombings of Israelis were a few paragraphs of boiler-plate condemnation, with few if any details.
Finally, you get to the point; you could have saved the other five bullets that have no purpose except to reiterate this objection. Given what I noted above about HRW’s purpose being to expose human rights violations, why would they do a detailed report on the grisly aftermath of a suicide bombing, which is in no way difficult to document and which is splashed all over the mainstream media? As threemae pointed out, it is nowhere near as easy to get detailed information about what happened during an Israeli military action as it is to get detailed information about what happened in a suicide bombing. In the latter case, the human rights violation is there for all the world to see, and the organizers don’t conceal it, they brag about it.
That doesn’t mean that HRW is unfairly scrutinizing what the Israelis do. After all, who is going to scrutinize Israel’s actions if not international watchdog organizations? Israel has plenty of troops and security agents to investigate very public Palestinian atrocities and human rights violations. But if Israel commits human rights violations against the Palestinians, how are they supposed to conduct an investigation of it? That doesn’t imply that HRW is “biased” against Israel; it simply reflects the extreme imbalance of power and autonomy between Israel and the Palestinians.
Moreover, when the Palestinians also commit human rights violations that are less public than suicide bombings, such as torture of prisoners by the PA, HRW does investigative reports on that too, such as this one.
HRC [sic!] wrote about Jenin, “However, the organization did not find evidence of systematic summary executions.” However, the suicide bombings were in effect systematic summary executions. So, by HRC [sic!] standards, they were worse atrocities. They deserved greater attention, but they received far less.
You’re comparing a detailed report with a press release; see above. I also call to your attention my earlier remark that HRW is not in the business of ranking atrocities; they simply expose them.
*The Smoking Gun
The final proof of HRC’s [sic!] bias is Kimstu’s second cite. This article describes a Palestinian bombing of an Israeli pool hall that killed 15 people. It says that this attack “resumed a string of attacks on ordinary civilians by armed Palestinian groups in recent months.”
Yet, the HRC [sic!] headline is
Israel/PA: Armed Groups Should Halt Attacks on Civilians
I rest my case.*
What on earth are you talking about? The article is about armed terrorist groups such as Hamas attacking civilians. Just the sort of thing you usually complain isn’t getting enough press. :rolleyes: What’s wrong with that headline for that subject?
Oh, wait a minute. Were you thinking that the term “Israel/PA” in the headline was some kind of attempt to imply that the condemnation was being applied to both Palestinians and Israelis? Allow me to hand you a clue, december: “Israel/PA” is the dateline of the article, indicating the region of the world where the reported events occurred! :rolleyes: Sheeeeee-eeesh.
As I said, december, your conditions for avoiding the charge of “bias against Israel” are so extreme that they appear to be simply an excuse to ignore or dismiss any criticism of Israel at all. The fact that HRW flatly and volubly condemns Palestinian suicide bombings, that it issues investigative reports exposing other Palestinian rights abuses…none of that seems significant to you next to your far-fetched, nitpicking, contradictory complaints that HRW just doesn’t criticize the Palestinians enough. Because those complaints are what give you your excuse to believe that “they must be regarded as biased toward Palestinains or against Israelis”. And so you can comfortably ignore what they say.
OK, but where’s the comparably detailed report on each of the suicide bombings? There is none, right? So, my point stands. HRW has provided far more attention to Israeli atrocities than to Palestinian atrocities.
You are correct, but that’s a pretty lukewarm condemnation.
If that’s your POV, then you must be a big opponent of hate crime laws. 
I think that when a state consciously sets out to promote hatred against certain people, and when that hatred results in hundreds of murders, then the state’s hate-mongering ought to be specifically condemned.
This is a strange argument. By this theory, since a major human rights violation typically has widespread publicity, you would say that HRW should give it less attention than some minor violation. Extending this argument, HRW should totally ignore an Israeli nuclear attack on the Palestinian camps.
Frankly, I find this argument bogus. If the Israeli government intentionally blew up a busload of Palestinian children, I believe HRW would give it much more attention than a brief 5-paragraph press release.
For one thing, Israel scrutinizes itself. It’s an open, democratic government, with numerous political parties, a free press, an independant judiciary, and widely shared power.
However, I don’t object to HRW scrutinizing Israel. They deserve praise for that, if they do it accurately. I object to their bias.
There it is in a nutshell. As I see it, this so-called “reflection of relative power” is indeed bias.
Incidentally, it’s always speculative to attribute motives. Who knows what HRC’s actual reasons are? However, when one looks at actions, it’s clear that HRW treats the two sides quite differently.
Well, it’s not exactly the dateline. The dateline is (New York, May 9, 2002). Still, you may be correct that the heading “Israel/PA” is merely some sort of a regional classification. BTW the attack took place in Tel Aviv, israel, so I’m unclear what “Israel/PA” is supposed to convey.
Note that another cite of yours has a heading Jerusalem Bus Atrocity Condemned, (datelined New York, June 19, 2002). This one has no “Israel/PA” or other regional classification.
december: Note that another cite of yours has a heading Jerusalem Bus Atrocity Condemned, (datelined New York, June 19, 2002). This one has no “Israel/PA” or other regional classification.
No, because the reader can be expected to know where Jerusalem is. Similarly, if you scan through other HRW headlines in the same list, you’ll notice identically-used regional identifiers (you’re correct that they’re not exactly datelines, fuzzy writing on my part) in headlines like “Nigeria: Cease Sponsoring Vigilante Violence” and “Albania: Media Freedoms Still Suffer”. On the other hand, headlines like “U.S. in New Fight Against War Crimes Court” or “Sexual Violence Rampant, Unpunished in DR Congo War” (god, what a lot of horrible things are going on all over the world! :() don’t start out with separate regional identifiers, because the reader can place them from information elsewhere in the headline, as in “Jerusalem Bus Atrocity Condemned”.
OK, but where’s the comparably detailed report on each of the suicide bombings? There is none, right? So, my point stands…since a major human rights violation typically has widespread publicity, you would say that HRW should give it less attention than some minor violation.
HRW’s stated mission is to “investigate and expose human rights violations”. If a violation is already fully exposed, as the suicide bombings are, what is the point of doing an investigative report on it? It still needs to be condemned—and, as you did not seem to realize at the start of this thread, HRW does vigorously and repeatedly condemn the suicide bombings—but it doesn’t need to be investigated. That’s why there isn’t a “comparably detailed report on each of the suicide bombings”.
You are correct, but that’s a pretty lukewarm condemnation.
You want stronger condemnations from HRW about Palestinian suicide bombings? Here you go:
And in less notorious attacks of Palestinians against Israelis, HRW is there with the detailed information and investigation too. Consider this excerpt from their report on human rights abuses from both sides in Hebron:
Names, ages, descriptions of wounds, all the (rather gruesome) detail you complained you weren’t getting enough of. And this is completely leaving out all the reports and condemnations about Palestinian-on-Palestinian rights abuses.
I don’t know where the hell you’re getting the idea that HRW is being unjustifiably soft on the Palestinians, december; it certainly can’t be from a careful and thorough reading of what HRW actually writes. Instead, what you seem to do is pick through any fragmentary excerpts that somebody else posts, combing them for anything that can be read in any way as not exactly parallel in references to Israel and the Palestinians. Then you insist that those differences—however trivial, contradictory, or nonsensical they are, or whatever the actual reason for them—have to be interpreted as bias against Israel.
This is a pretty tedious, and frankly rather sickening, game to play with the testimony of human tragedy, and I for one have had about enough of it. For heaven’s sake, if you want to start threads vociferously condemning Palestinian human rights abuses, and demanding that more notice should be taken of them and stronger condemnations uttered by various governments and NGOs, go right ahead. Please. There’s lots of information about them provided by an organization called Human Rights Watch that you can use as a starting point.
But please, ease up on the whining whenever somebody posts a criticism of Israel (one that you yourself consider to be “at least close to true”, moreover) that the critic must be “biased” because they didn’t provide what you consider adequately generous excuses for Israel’s actions. Bleccccccchhh. What I was taught about what it means to be a Jew is, for one thing, that we don’t hide behind wrongs other people do to us as an excuse for our doing wrongs to them.
december thinks killing Arabs is OK. Nothing is going to change his mind. Hell, even Sharon is showing a semblance of restraint that december lacks.
Do I believe them? The reports would not surprise me. I would like to hear both sides of the story though.
Uh…yes. Don’t jump on my ass just because I don’t refer to them as “Israeli Death Force kill-o-rama rampages” or use some other inflamatory language.
While I agree that the intentional killing of innocents is wrong, I am not going to condemn the Israelis for getting out of hand from the comfort of my desk thousands of miles away from the nearest suicide bombing. For months, these bombers have been trying to provoke an Israeli response. Now they have one. It’s like some kid constantly calling you names and throwing stuff at you suddenly crying “bully” when you turn around and beat the living shit out of him.
Just my two cents…
IIRC, those pictures only represent a small segment of the Jenin camp. The article says 4000 displaced which is 25%. I don’t have any figures to refute that so what I read before may be incorrect. But if you look around in the pictures, it looks like an area the roughly the size of a football field was leveled. So the pictures are kind of incendiary.
HRW has been decrying both sides. I can see how the detailed report is, of course, more specific. However, there did seem to be the air of politics around the report. It was almost as if they didn’t want to ruffle feathers. But that’s just my opinion.
I think a much better question to be asked is if the U.N. is biased against Israel with all their special resolutions and committees devoted to Israel.
kimstu notes an important characteristic of Human Rights Catch … I mean Watch
HRW has one issue only. And their standards are extremely high. Difficult to meet that standard. Consequently there has never been an anti-terrorist action by any country that has not been criticized by them because it is impossible to carry out such an action without some violation of their standard of human rights. Heck, Atlanta violates human rights by HRW standards. (Search their site for it,along with a long list of prisons in the US that are condemned and so on)
With that understood, what did HRW say? That there was no massacre. (Unsaid that many “witnesses” to such a nonevent had been clearly lying). That most of the deaths were of combatants. That about 24 deaths were of noncombatants. That they believe without question the versions of the circumstances of these two dozens deaths as described by Palestinian witnesses. That some of these deaths may have been avoidable with greater care by the IDF. And that the Israeli government should investigate further. (Which is in progress.) The level of additional risk needed to avoid any noncombatant death is irrelevant to HRW. The need for an action is irrelevant to HRW. “Not nohow.”
Most of Jenin is still standing. An intense house to house operation was undertaken in an extensively boobytrapped environment where a sniper could be (and often was) around any corner and children and old men were potentially rigged up as weapons of choice and only 24 noncombatants were caught in the crossfire. I understand HRW’s mission, I understand the application of their standards. Nevertheless, wow, that was some good work by the IDF to keep the noncombatant toll so low. The US should do so well with its precision bombing approach.
Were there things to object to? Duh. Put a bunch of humans in that kind of environment under those circumstances and no doubt poor decisions with disastrous consequences will be made. Such episodes need to be investigated by the Israelis (as suggested by HRW) and dealt with. Israel has a record of doing just that. Not used as a case study “about hate” … if Israel wanted to do a massacre they would’ve bombed the town like the US does, not put its own people in harm’s way. This was an operation performed well given the need for its objectives and its circumstances (none of which are relevant to HRW).