How 'human rights' have turned into inhuman wrongs

Maurice, MD

Bravo, Melanie.

An excellent analysis of the frauds and hypicrites who run the Human Rights Industry. It should be widely disseminated.

Neil Craig

However there is nothing in his critique which does not also apply to the the role of HRW in supporting wars to destroy Yugoslavia when he was still around. They continuously & deliberately pushed every unfounded claim by the Craoatian & Bosnian Moslem (ex-)Nazis & Albanian gangsters while making no mention of the open commitment of all 3 to racial genocide (theoretical & actual). In practice that meant they supported the Nazis in the genocide & ethnic cleansing of the Serbs who were overwhelmingly the victims of these Nazi & NATO wars.

Bernstein may feel more personal commitment to Israel but the wind he is reaping is one HRW sowed then.

Any Colour but Brown

Analyse a few of the HRW's reports (e.g. the supposed Israeli bombing of two marked ambulances in Lebanon) and you see that they are a tissue of lies and misinformation, mostly from extremely dubious sources.
The human rights community accepted the HRW version, without question.

Yet a few minutes, using the internet, and the HRW's house of cards is easily blown down.

Occasional Ostrich

Oh, dear, Melanie.

For a brief moment - - - we-ell, the title and first sentence, anyway, I'd hoped your article was going to address the appalling distortions being committed on our society by NuLab in the name of "Human rights".

badile

A commentator on a previous thread pointed out that Richard Kemp admitted on a BBC Hardtalk interview that he was not in Gaza during the conflict. Consequently, he has absolutely no proof for his assetion that the IDF:

did more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone than any other army in the history of warfare

Kemp merely repeats IDF propaganda. His thirty pieces of silver is infamy.

Stephen Rothbart

Goldstone is now of a pariah status where most sensible people are concerned, but just as his Jewishness was used to bolster the anti-Semitic UNHRW's case, no doubt Bernstein's Jewishness will be used to disqualify his views as that of being a biased contributor to the debate.

Tonight I have learned that Israeli doctors have just been banned from a Breast cancer conference in Alexandria Egypt by the Egyptian government.

I wonder which kind of doctor a woman with breast cancer would prefer to have treatment from, an Egyptian doctor whose hospitals are largely obsolete, or a doctor who has access to the best medicines in the world and the most modern facilities.

Ah! But then when it comes to the Jews, there can be no question. All must pay for the crime of being a Jew in the world of Islam.

Lucy

At last! Someone in the MSM with the integrity and guts to stand up and say this is wrong.

Carl

So basically, HRW was fine until it turned it's attention towards Israel?

I really can't think why.

C. Gee

badile:

You met a man who wasn't there,
He wasn't there again today.
You wish that man would go away.

Adam B.

No Carl, it was fine until it ONLY turned its attention to Israel.

Please read what Robert Bernstein is saying.

Bogdan of Australia

badile, I haven't been in Soviet Union when Lenin and Stalin were murdering all those millions. However I,ve lived under the whip of the "socialist", totalitarian regime for the most (and the best) part of my life, so I know exactly how those totalitarian regimes function; THEY LIE ALL THE TIME!

It is exactly the same with the Jasir Arafat/Abbas PLO totalitarian, criminal regime; THEY LIE ALL THE TIME...

Mary Seacole

Melanie. What's is going on, we'll have no trouble here.
Can't you be more like Rod "satirical" Liddle and turn a blind eye to hypocrisy. Some low calorie humour and cheap shots at toffs is enough for him, and he's a good all round bloke.
Perhaps you could say you're "working class" (=critical immunity) then claim the moral high ground with World Peace as your mantra. Or World Poverty. Or Anti-Fascism.
You can't lose!!! and you'll be trendy.

Peter Burman

Let's hope Goldstone's 15 minutes of fame are over. He is a pathetic loser.

Augustus

It is indeed surreal when human rights are turned into inhuman wrongs. And, of course, when anyone focuses on whatever is wrong with Israel and Zionism they are assured of an appreciative audience that can't get enough of this message. Oh, and isn't it unfair
to suspect people of anti-Semitism simply because they think the world would be a better place if Israel didn't exist? You see, facts don't matter in this surreal world. The legitimate Israeli security concerns are only forms of control and restrictions which Israel created to deny Palestinian Arabs their human rights. Never mind the thousands of rockets and mortars
launched against towns and villages up to 40/50km inside Israel, they are only pinpricks
by a repressed people. Groups like al-Fatah and Hamas aren't really terrorists at all, and Hamas doesn't really mean what they say in their charter, and if they do, their nostalgia for the good old days without Israel is only human. Whatever the Palestinians do anyway is only legitimate resistance against a cruel and inhuman occupation. Homemade fire-crackers are only meant to signal understandable frustration. Its's implied, and often stated, that any threat that Israel might face is only of it's own making. Well, if you think about it there's some truth in that: If Israel didn't exist, it wouldn't face any threats.

The false conception of Palestinian statehood is a relatively recent addition to Palestinian aspirations. The original impetus was that of return, and reversing the so-
called loss of Arab land and patrimony, rather than a fulfillment of post-colonial self-determination via the statehood route; a complot designed after 1967 as a new Palestinian identity with at its core the notion of the armed struggle as a galvanizing force. Armed struggle, conceived to restore a sense of
'dignity' to the plot. Something to give these beleagered refugees a say in determining their future. Statehood didn't come into it at all. The first proposals to establish a state were even rejected as 'defeatist', and a betrayal of the national cause, because it didn't "offer the equitable and fair solution the Palestinian people deserve" (Ahmad Khalidi, after the Madid-Washington peace talks: 1993).
No matter how often Palestinians
say that even more than a state of their own they seek an imaginary 'justice', that even a two-state solution will not satisfy, the human rights brigade won't stop for a moment to ponder if it is really Israel's intransigence alone which has prevented the realization of the two-state solution. To them the whole conflict is just one big morality play about good and evil - the narrative of the classical victim now turned victimizer, which interests them.

Adrian Esplana

I think that warworld 2 is scary then warworld 1.So i like when the airplanes fight at per hober.The people in the war could win if they are in the Amarica teem they will win the war world 3.So i think that we should fight for oru contriy so COME ON!!!PEOLP and fight for our contriy so we can't die.

Adrian Esplana

I think that warworld 2 is scary then warworld 1.So i like when the airplanes fight at per hober.The people in the war could win if they are in the Amarica teem they will win the war world 3.So i think that we should fight for oru contriy so COME ON!!!PEOLP and fight for our contriy so we can't die.

Fuad

I spent lots of time reading your blog, thank you anyway, bookmark for it.

J. Isaacs

"It�s hard to see how HRW can retrieve its reputation after this..." Maybe so, but the BBC World Service is today quoting an HRW report as though its reputation was unimpaired. No mention, of course, of the story of HRW's Mark Garlasco, the Nazi memorabilia collector.

Any Colour but Brown

"Carl

So basically, HRW was fine until it turned it's attention towards Israel?

I really can't think why."

It would be one thing, if the HRW actually told the truth, but they embed unconfirmed propaganda from extremely dubious sources and pass it off as unequivocal fact.

Does the muslim world get the same treatment? No, it doesn't.

Anyone that continually does that has an agenda, which has nothing to do with truth or honesty.

Miranda Rose Smith

I have repeatedly suggested, including, if I remember correctly, in a letter to then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, that if the British ever arrest a visiting Israeli and charge him with war crimes, the Israeli government should find an English soldier, vacationing in Israel, who has been guilty of some kind of unboyscoutly behavior in Ireland or Kenya, arrest him, charge him with being a war criminal, and tell the British government "We will carry our farce as far as you carry your farce."

phil

Adam B.-- carl has never showed that he could read -he just puts out anti Semitic messages whenever he can ,I even wonder who types them for him -pointless here anyway as he is a figure of ridicule -There are no surprises from HRW either its again the same old stuff sent by the same old people -who cares ?,certainly not me ,as the intelligent know its not true and those that feed off it are never going to love us -the sickness has continued for thousands of years but never from healthy minds .

We all know who posts these messages of hate here ,carl ,patricia, badile and the indescribable derek blades ,they always remind me of dec7 ,1941 ,a day of infamy .I wonder why.

phil

Miranda Rose Smith no no no a thousand times no-you are letting emotion dull the senses ,We are better than that ,and before the inexcusable Sin arrives to tell us about the three Sergeants ,that was not an Israeli government ,just renegades .

Nicole S

Badile writes: 'Kemp merely repeats IDF propaganda. His thirty pieces of silver is infamy.' Ah yes, we must not forget Jews were responsible for the death of Christ. And anyone who defends Israel is in the pay of the IDF. Classic! Where do these people crawl out from?

tiki

Razor sharp, accurate and sublime comment. Bravo. Now let's watch how the HRW and UNHRC and all the rest of "Israel's friends" are wrigling themselves out of this one. Their "spin doctors" are making overtime already!

Miranda Rose Smith

Dear Phil: You're right.

Larry in Tel Aviv

a central point is missed. Bernstein only NOW points out that HRW has lost its way. HRW had lost its way on Israel long before this last year and the Gaza conflict. That much was obvious. It has a long history of whitewashing Palestinian terror and downplaying the security needs of Israeli citizens. Bernstein was asleep at the wheel.

You would think going by Bernstein that somehow HRW has done a u-turn or gone off the straight and narrow all very recently. Bollocks as you British say, HRW anti-Israel bias over Gaza was so predictable, saw it coming five miles off given HRW's previous track-record on Israel. HRW has like the other moral relativists on the Left been anti-Semitic/anti-Israel for a long time now.

Bernstein, in typical American Jew mode, has been in denial for a long time.

Ben-Tsiyon (ha rishon)

Neil Craig, absolutely right ! The Serbs are the Israelis of the Balkans, and the Israelis the Serbs of the Middle East.

Kosovo was virtually stolen from the Serbs and given to the Albanian infiltrators.

phil

Miranda Rose Smith thanks I knew you were better than those words ,and I do understand the emotions :)

Miranda Rose Smith

Dear Phil: Thank you.

ahad ha'amoratsim

Carl, your October 20th, 2009 9:44pm message would be even more accurate if you had left out the last word of your final sentence.

Drakken

Why not declare these so-called human rights orgs as enemy combants and I garentee you they would be singing a very different tune.

AJB

Typical right-wing moral relativism.

"It's not torture when WE do it."
"It's not a violation of human rights when WE do it."
"It's not a war crime when WE do it."

Jerimiah

"The man is digging his own professional grave �“ and helping to bury within it the credibility of the whole �human rights� circus itself."

Thank you Goldstone.

Awamori

�All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal"(c)

The United Nations Human Rights Council's permanent obsession with Israel has nothing to do with human rights protection.

UNHCR has become politicized - it has become another battlefield in the Arab-Israeli conflict, as Palestinians and other Arabs constantly bring charges against Israel to the UNHCR. Given the fact that such violators of human rights as China, Cuba, Russia, Malaysia and Egypt are members of the UNHCR, it should not be seen as surprising that politics, not human rights, dominates discussions at the council, despite the fact that the United Nations' charter calls for the organization to prevent or stop conflicts, not to exacerbate them as the UNHCR has done. Indeed, by 2006 the anti-Israeli bias in the UNHCR had become so bad that then-U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan criticized it for "disproportionate focus on violations by Israel," while neglecting other parts of the world such as Darfur, which he termed a "graver" crisis.

Banafsheh Zand-Bonazzi

Superb piece! Thank you Melanie Phillips.

Alan

The world saw the abuses on international tv coverage. What is he talking about no evidence? Israel is on occupied territory! Hamas can hardly fight IDF on equal terms now can it? Stupid man

Sergey

The whole concept of "human rights" is inherently rotten. They can not substitute legal principles, but try to do so. This notion was useful in combating Communism, but after its collapse it is superfluos, at best, and a source of gross abuses otherwise. Can this notion be a basis of a sound legal system? The answer is negative, even if honest people try to use it. But if they are leftist hacks, the result is evident.

Adam B.

Alan which "abuses" did you see on TV?

Please be specific. And Gaza is not "occupied".

tudor lomas

what other nation in the world has invaded every one of its neighbours and retained territory?
what other nation has claimed as its own for ever territory it has taken by force, in the defiance of interntional law?
and what other nation then has the brass face to use that law to try to delegitimise those who question and object to its behaviour?
If you undermine the rule of international law in this way what alternative do those who have lost everything by this process have?
Israel has become the victim of its own past -- a classic example of searing rationality destroying the humanity necessary for long-term sustainable peaceful existence. . .

Adam B.

tudor lomas, perhaps you could point to a country which has been invaded several times by every single one of its neighbours, including some it doesn't even share a border with, a country which was almost strangled at birth, despite having the right to live afforded it by "international law" - a country which has faced terror attacks, either "successful" or unsuccessful, every day for the past 61 years? And a community in that land which has faced terror attacks for the past 120 years?

Pehaps peace will come when the genocidal impulse towards the Jews of Israel from the Arab and wider Islamic worlds is replaced by tolerance and acceptance that a non-Islamic nation can exist in the Middle East.

Linda Smith

tudor lomas: what other nation in the world is vilified in the holy book of every one of its neighbours. What other nation in the world has neighbours committed to its destruction on religious grounds?

�humanity necessary for long-term sustainable peaceful existence� - discuss with reference to the above. Rational? You don�t know the meaning of the word.

MRKing

THX so much 4 a great article. Another point, the 53 (52?) nation league of Muslims (AUI? summat. Sorry.), has not taken in 1 "Palastinian refugee". While Isreal has taken in many thousands.

wonderer

Tudor Lomas overlooks that Israel handed back a huge swathe of territory to Egypt as part of a peace deal. Gaza was offered as part of the same deal but Egypt refused to accept it.

phil

Alan-the world saw the abusers being stopped from abusing ,but of course they continued to ensure the abuse of their own people with their own wickedness , if you have a better plan and more patience than the Israelis ,perhaps you will let us all into that secret

stanley Jerusalem

In excess of 900,000 MR King, all from the Arab countries which drove them out penniless in the late 40's and early 50's. Any of our discussion group here care to quote me the Articles, Resolutions and documents of protest on that subject emanating from the UN since 1950?

tudor lomas

i would suggest to Adam B and Linda Smith that they think about the words of Prof Avi Shlaim of Oxford who served in the Israeli army. These days he describes Israel as a rogue state that habitually violates international law. . . and practises terrorism --the use of violence against civilians for political purposes. . .