Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Human? Rights? Watch?

Kelly Blair's great artistic interpretation for Robert L. Bernstein's sinking of Human Rights Watch:



Bernstein wrote:

AS the founder of Human Rights Watch, its active chairman for 20 years and now founding chairman emeritus, I must do something that I never anticipated: I must publicly join the group’s critics...But recently it has been issuing reports on the Israeli-Arab conflict that are helping those who wish to turn Israel into a pariah state...we sought to draw a sharp line between the democratic and nondemocratic worlds, in an effort to create clarity in human rights...Now the organization, with increasing frequency, casts aside its important distinction between open and closed societies.

Nowhere is this more evident than in its work in the Middle East...

...Israel, with a population of 7.4 million, is home to at least 80 human rights organizations, a vibrant free press, a democratically elected government, a judiciary that frequently rules against the government, a politically active academia, multiple political parties and, judging by the amount of news coverage, probably more journalists per capita than any other country in the world — many of whom are there expressly to cover the Israeli-Palestinian conflict...Human Rights Watch has lost critical perspective on a conflict in which Israel has been repeatedly attacked by Hamas and Hezbollah...

...Leaders of Human Rights Watch know that Hamas and Hezbollah chose to wage war from densely populated areas, deliberately transforming neighborhoods into battlefields.

...there is a difference between wrongs committed in self-defense and those perpetrated intentionally.

...Only by returning to its founding mission and the spirit of humility that animated it can Human Rights Watch resurrect itself as a moral force in the Middle East and throughout the world. If it fails to do that, its credibility will be seriously undermined and its important role in the world significantly diminished.


Anyone sent this to that judge Goldstone?

3 comments:

Unknown said...

More pro Israeli anti-Goldstone report propaganda. How about the NY Times do a little investigation into the influences AIPAC has on reports coming out of New York and Washington.

YMedad said...

We've had tons of those. Books even. All trash, though and unsupportable with facts. Too bad.

YMedad said...

We've had tons of those. Books even. All trash, though and unsupportable with facts. Too bad.