A leading human rights group, Human Rights Watch, has rejected a claim by its founder that it is biased against Israel. The problem is that the founder, Robert Bernstein, claims that he restricted the focus of HRW to nondemocratic societies, not democracies like Israel. Presumably, Israel cannot be guilty of human rights abuses because it is a democracy.
This incredulous story was published by the BBC:
Rights group denies Israel bias
Robert Bernstein said Human Rights Watch had strayed from its original mandate to scrutinise closed societies, not democracies like Israel.
In an article in the New York Times, he said the organisation had helped to turn Israel into a pariah state.
In response, Human Rights Watch said its reporting on Israel was only a tiny fraction of its work.
Well, what would the Palestinian people say about the notion that Israel as a democracy could not commit human rights abuses, going back 60 years, or just recently, like the massacres that occurred in Lebanon and Gaza, especially Cast Lead late last year whose nature was fully revealed by the UN Goldstone Report?
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“Human Rights Watch has lost critical perspective on a conflict in which Israel has been repeatedly attacked by Hamas and Hezbollah, organisations that go after Israeli citizens and use their own people as human shields.”
Richard Bernstein in New York Times
(BBC News) – A human rights group has suspended its senior military analyst after revelations that he collects Nazi memorabilia. New York-based Human Rights Watch said Marc Garlasco was on suspension with pay “pending an investigation”.
Mr Garlasco’s hobby was revealed by Mere Rhetoric, a pro-Israeli blog which said the activities reflected “an anti-Israeli bias”.
“I’ve never hidden my hobby, because there’s nothing shameful in it, however weird it might seem to those who aren’t fascinated by military history,” he wrote in an essay posted on The Huffington Post, a political website and blog.
Gaza Beach Deaths: ‘Incoming fire’ – HRW Expert
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."
Fixed.