Arab Prisoner of Arabs Says No Human Rights in Arab World

The usual suspects, Amnesty International and UN secretary-general Ban Ki-Moon, have been making the expected hypocritical comparisons of Gilad Shalit's treatment to that of the 1000 Arab prisoners, including hundreds of mass murderous terrorists, who were released today in a trade for Gilad Shalit. Ban, who is supposed to be neutral as UN secretary-general, made a equivalence, just like Amnesty did. How curious!! He told Reuters today:

"I am very encouraged by the prisoner exchange today after many many years of negotiation," Secretary-General Ban told Reuters today. "The United Nations has been calling for (an end to) the unacceptable detention of Gilad Shalit and also the release of all Palestinians whose human rights have been abused all the time."[UN Watch]

Omri Ceren summarizes the Amnesty statement [here]. More pro-Hamas propaganda. That is, more propaganda that equates the mass murderers of Hamas with the civilized state of Israel:

But Amnesty’s statement on the Shalit trade, titled “Israel-Hamas prisoner swap casts harsh light on detention practices of all sides,” is a barrel-scraping embarrassment even by the organization’s notoriously low standards. The vast majority of the press release is handed over to criticizing Israeli detention policies, while a grand total of two paragraphs are spent condemning Shalit’s ordeal.

Shalit’s name does not even appear below the fifth paragraph of the 20-paragraph statement, while alleged Israeli human rights violations- relevant to the swap or not – are repeatedly noted. Israel is explicitly and twice accused of Geneva violations.

Amnesty's statement is, again, clever propaganda.

NGO Monitor explains that neither Amnesty nor the ineptly named Human Rights Watch raised its voice in over five years of Shalit's incarceration under conditions illegal by int'l law. That is, he was not allowed any visits by the Red Cross [ICRC] nor was he allowed into the sunshine nor, it seems, outdoor exercise. Apparently, he was kept underground. We know about the lack of sunshine since it has been reported that he has a Vitamin D deficiency, a result of not getting sunshine [Ayala Hasson on Israel TV Channel 1 tonight]. Other so-called "human rights groups" too failed to demand that Shalit be treated according to the international law of war regarding prisoners.

On the other hand, let's hear the testimony of an Arab --a Palestinian Arab in fact-- who was the prisoner of an Arab regime. Ashraf al-Hajouj was a physician held prisoner in Libya for 8 1/2 years by the Qaddafi regime, along with 5 Bulgarian nurses. They were all charged with deliberately inoculating 438 Libyan children with AIDS virus in the Benghazi pediatric hospital. Dr Hajouj and the nurses were released in July 2007 by the intervention of President Nicolas Sarkozy of France. Hajouj said after his release:

In the Arab world, there are no human rights. . .
En el mundo arabe no hay derechos humanos. . .
[El Pais, 26 July 2007; tambien Pagina/12]

He spoke of

the corruption that rots away at Libya and many other [Arab] countries.

Since he had been brought to Libya when he was two years old and raised there, he was bitter over how the Libyans treated him:

I always considered Libya my country. . . If [Libya and the family members of the children who got AIDS] seek the truth about the AIDS contagion, they will have to look away from us [himself and the Bulgarian nurses] because we are all innocent. [El Pais, 26 July 2007]

Al-Hajouj was apparently abandoned by the PLO/PA who did not defend him or the nurses against the silly charges of deliberately infecting the children. Nor did the Arab League defend him. So he was granted Bulgarian citizenship and went to Sofia, capital of Bulgaria, after his release. Only al-Hajouj and two of the nurses --out of five-- were well enough to talk to the press. "We have returned from hell to paradise," one of the nurses said. "Only God knows that I will show the whole world that we were always innocent," Dr al-Hajouj added. One nurse tried to commit suicide because she could not tolerate the torture she underwent, including electrical shocks. Another nurse said that their first year was the worst when the women were kept in a tiny room in a police station with one single mattress as their only furniture. In that year they were allowed four visits with diplomats from the Bulgarian embassy -- but they were not allowed to talk to the diplomats. The husband of one of the women was also living in Benghazi. He too was incarcerated but only for five years up to 2004. After that, since he was not allowed to leave the country, he stayed in the Bulgarian embassy until leaving Libya at the same time as his wife.

The five nurses and the physician were taken into the elite military hospital in Sofia for a physical and psychological check up. The director of the hospital, General Stoyan Tonev, stated that they were suffering "submarine sailors syndrome," which affects people who have lived "enclosed for a long time in small spaces under bad conditions."

So it seems that these six prisoners in Libya were held under conditions closer to those of Shalit than to those of the terrorist prisoners in Israel. But Amnesty, Ban Ki Moon and HRW want to draw a false moral equivalence between how Israel treats prisoners and how Hamas treats prisoners. Recall that Shalit was never allowed a visit by the Red Cross, as required by the international law of war.

During part of the time of the nurses' and the Arab physician's imprisonment in Libya, Libya held the chairmanship of the UN Human Rights Commission. One does not suppose that the Commission ever criticized Libya on account of how the nurses and the physician were being treated.

Read All About It!! "human rights" watch's military and weaponry expert cum "human rights" investigator Is a Devoted Collector of Nazi Souvenirs

UPDATING link & photo added 9-10 & 9-11-2009

. . . Many lies resembling truth. . .
Hesiod, Theogony, v. 27

Marc Galasco, a top honcho at "human rights watch" and serial smear jockey against Israel in favor of the Hamas, is -- an avid collector and connoisseur of Nazi souvenirs and memorabilia. One of his jobs at hrw is to supply an authoritative mask for smears of Israel based on technical data about weapons and military affairs. He did once work for the Pentagon and is so expert in the Nazi memorabilia field that he published a book about it, with a special interest in the Luftwaffe, the Nazi air force. It makes sense that someone who objectively aids the genocidal aims of Hamas also admires the murderous Nazi armed forces that already carried out genocide against Jews.


Here is photo of Garlasco at a leisure moment. He wears a sweatshirt with an iron cross [eisenkreuz] on it. The photo was posted on a Nazi memorabilia website by Garlasco himself. I feel sorry for his child.

Special kudos go to Omri Ceren of Mere Rhetoric for his research and to Elder of Ziyon.

Garlasco's book is available at Amazon with a retail price of $100 dollars. His Amazon review page is here.

We are living in bizarre times indeed. Imagine a "human rights investigator" who is also a Nazi admirer/Nazi regalia collector. And "human rights watch" had to know who he was and what his pastime hobbies were. The moral corruption of "human rights watch" stinks to high heaven. See our earlier post on hrw here & here & herehere.

Read more on the Mere Rhetoric site.
Camera's comment here & here [referring to Israel-hater Helena Cobban]

& UPDATE 10 Sept 2009
HRW's press release in defense of Garlasco plus analysis and more details by NGOMonitor [here]
IsraellyCool here with photo.

Fake Human Rights Outfits like Human Rights Watch Form a Central Axis of the MSM's Anti-Israel Strategy

UPDATING link added 10 September 2009

. . . Many Lies resembling Truth. . .
Hesiod, Theogony

Sources of fake "information" that present themselves as ostensibly loyal to lofty ideals are part of a well-developed propaganda-cum-indoctrination machine. A fake outfit, ostensibly devoted to a lofty principle, such as human rights, uses its undeserved image of decency, idealism, truthfulness and impartiality to smear a target, a designated enemy. It doesn't use bullets or guns but words. Yet in the long run, the words are meant to play a military role too. The process entails a fake human rights group or fake "peace group" etc, like Human Rights Watch, drawing up a report falsely accusing Israel of killing civilians in warfare, either intentionally or negligently/carelessly. The report is passed on to the complicit Mainstream Media or --to use a somewhat dated term-- the Establishment media. The various media/press/broadcasting organizations --not all to be sure-- report on the report, perhaps further dramatizing it. A smear, a libel, a slander spreads throughout the world. The target has been effectively smeared. The smear is especially effective among readers or listeners who are weak in their knowledge of history, sociology, political science, comparative religion and so on and so forth, as well as being weak in their ability to carefully read what is written, to discount speculative accounts without well-identified credible witnesses, and so on. That is how Human Rights Watch and similar entities can operate.

A commenter on the Augean Stables site, which was founded precisely to deal with frauds and distortions in the media, sees the link between the media and the fake "NGOs" and groups with ostensibly lofty goals, as follows. He points out part of the strategy of the MSM in promoting false "news":

Denting the credibility of ‘trusted sources’ like HRW is precisely what the MSNM carefully tries to avoid even while pretending balance. It regularly uses apparently neutral sources which are actually deeply committed players to force a covert agenda on the audience as a magician forces a card on a dupe. [Lorenz Gude at Augean Stables 8-14-09]

By the way, Gude goes on to mention the impact of the Internet and intelligent blogs on MSM/Establishment control of the "narrative."

Now an unruly audience gets to point out when the magician is pulling a fast one.

That is probably true but the MSM still have more power than the blogs.

Another trick is to pretend that one is neutral, maybe merely interested in having the law obeyed or that one is opposed to one's own ally and allied with one's enemy. This trick is often used against Israel, with the MSM and State Dept pretending to defend Israel against Arab enemies while the truth is the opposite. The Israeli govt also plays along with this lie, which is another problem.

Academic international relations specialists Walt & Mearsheimer were well regarded in the United States in their profession and specialty. They were also both State Department consultants. The State Dept has almost always been hostile to Israel and Jews since before the rebirth of the State of Israel. However, public opinion in the United States has often been sympathetic to Israel and this sympathy has sometimes thwarted State Dept policies hostile to Israel. It seems that one purpose of Walt & Mearsheimer's notorious book, The Israel Lobby, was to create a hostile atmosphere for Israel in the United States, a hostile body of public opinion in order to replace or counter the body of opinion sympathetic to Israel. In that way, the State Dept would be less restricted by public opinion in what it does to harm Israel. W & M falsely claimed that Israel had controlled even dictated American Middle East policy through the so-called Israel Lobby which is at best a very amorphous body of public opinion, often pulling in different directions.

They went so far as to claim or insinuate that the US-led invasion of Iraq --in which Israel's old nemesis, the UK-- took a major role-- had been dictated or forced on America by Israel. W & M knew that this was a lie. Indeed, Mearsheimer went on at length in an interview on National Public Radio [the US Govt broadcaster; also see here] that when Israeli officials had learned of the US intention to invade Iraq and overthrow Saddam Hussein, they --the Israelis-- had tried to dissuade the Americans from doing this and to convince them [the Americans] that, if they were going to go to war anyway, it would be better to attack Iran than Iraq, since Iran was more dangerous in the Israeli view, with its undisrupted efforts to develop a nuclear bomb, etc. Needless to say, the Israelis did not succeed in convincing the Americans and the invasion of Iraq went ahead. This admission by Mearsheimer, probably inadvertent, did not stop W & M from lying afterwards about Israeli control of US policy. And of course the MSM routinely claim that Israel is a favored ally of US policy whereas, especially under Obama, Israel is a target, an enemy meant to be attacked. While doing their "book," W & M, overlooked the close ties and cozy financial relationships between the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, American administrations, the State Dept and -- former State Dept employes who had worked in Saudi Arabia and later got on the Saudi payroll. Charles Freeman, whom Obama had originally wanted to appoint to a highly sensitive intelligence post, was one of these. Of course, W & M were aware of the Saudi-American connection, especially close under the two Bush administrations [Sr & Jr], as described in detail in Craig Unger's book on the House of Saud.

In another example, Pres Obama has been denouncing "special interests" such as insurance companies and big pharmaceutical outfits for being opposed to his so-called health plan. In fact, he is already allied with Big Pharma [see here too] and seems to have the insurance industry on board as well. This is a blatant example of this technique. He denounces the big drug companies, whom he and his advisors knew were disliked and distrusted by the public, in order to win public support for his program. They, the Big Pharma firms, are against Me, against Little Me. Meanwhile, Obama and Big Pharma are allied.

Further, Obama's supporters throw out the label "astroturf" to smear opponents of his plan. Astroturf is a brand name for a kind of imitation grass used in some sports stadiums. The label is meant to say that opponents of his plan do not represent the real "grass roots" but are fake grass, astroturf, organized by the Republican Party or the Big Interests, such as Big Pharma [as insinuated]. There couldn't possibly be anything wrong with Obama's health plan.

In tsarist Russia, the government conducted an anti-Jewish campaign in various ways. One way was to finance and encourage a group called the Black Hundreds [tshernotentsy] that blamed the Jews for all of the Russian Empire's troubles and carried out anti-Jewish pogroms. When such pogroms broke out, often instigated and organized by the Black Hundreds, the police often did little or nothing to protect the Jews. They pretended to be helpless before such a "spontaneous" outburst of popular hatred of Jews.

Getting back to "human rights watch," it pretends to objectivity and impartiality. These pretenses have been easily disproven by a number of serious reports in various publications and blogs. Among these, see the Augean Stables blog and --especially-- the NGO Monitor blog, both linked to on our blog roll. Emet m'Tsiyon has considered hrw's tragi-farcical charade several times in the past [see here & ici & aqui & qui ]

HRW ought to be severely discredited due to recent revelations that it sent some of its top officials to Saudi Arabia for fundraising [see here & NGO Monitor & Augean Stables], with three Saudi officials present at meetings [according to an AFP report]. Bear in mind that Saudi Arabia, with its Wahhabi Muslim ideology and legal system, rejects the whole notion of human rights in principle. Likewise discrediting is the fanatically anti-Israel career of top HRW operative Joe Stork, who has not changed his extreme anti-Israel views since he openly identified himself as a "radical leftist" years ago. This too ought to discredit HRW. See Stork's background here.
- - - - - - - - -
UPDATING link added on 10 Sept 2009
David Bernstein on HRW seeking funds in Saudi Arabia, from the Wall Street Journal [published 16 July 2009].
- - - - - - - - - - - - -
Coming soon: Arabs and State Dept helping to fund the "J Street" lobby outfit, Lies supporting the "peace process" and Obama/State Dept policy.

fake hr outfit hrw drops its mask, raising dough in saudiarabia by promising to fight israel, downplaying saudi hr cirimes

The fake "human rights" outfit, "human rights watch," has lately hit a new low. It sent a delegation to Saudi Arabia of all places to raise funds, telling the Saudis of how eagerly they had smeared Israel's good name over the Gaza war in January of this year. This fund-raising mission was written up in the Arab News published in Saudi Arabia. The Arab News report was then discovered by NGO Monitor which was shocked by the blatant hypocrisy of raising funds to fight alleged Israeli violations of human rights by seeking donors in Saudi Arabia, a land where the laws explicitly deny human rights, instead embodying traditional Islamic supremacy which has long oppressed scores of millions, indeed hundreds of millions of non-Muslims since the Muslim conquests began in the seventh century.

The controversy ensuing on the revelations of hrw's unscrupulous acts was covered by NGO Monitor, by a column in the Wall Street Journal, by Jeffrey Goldberg's blog in the Atlantic Monthly, and on many web sites including Augean Stables. It is interesting in this context to note that at least two Saudi government officials were present at one of the hrw fund-raising meetings in Riyadh, according to the admission of Kenneth Roth, HRW executive director. Note the cutesy deceit employed by hrw when referring to Saudi Arabia.

The organization recently called on the Kingdom to do more to protect the human rights of domestic workers [in the Arab News report].

As far as I know, the Wahhabi Kingdom of Saudi Arabia violates the human rights of domestic workers, particularly foreigners, rather than protecting them. Indeed, wealthy Saudis belonging to the kingdom's elite often have slaves. One Saudi couple brought a young girl as a slave with them to live in the United States, in Colorado, I think. This was discovered a few years ago and the couple had to go to jail. Seems to me that the Saudis have an awful lot of human rights improvement to do right there in the kingdom before they point their fingers at Jews whose human rights are rather explicitly rejected by Saudi law.

Here are several links on the issue which I will follow with my own comments made first on Augean Stables.
1. The Arab News report here

2. The first NGO Monitor report here.

3. The CAMERA report ici, later CAMERA report [7-28-2009]

4. Law professor David Bernstein in the Wall Street Journal.

5. Jeffrey Goldberg in the Atlantic [qui] . Goldberg also interviewed Kenneth Roth, executive director of hrw, who revealed that two Saudi govt officials were at one of the fund-raising sessions.

We certainly weren't soliciting Saudi government funds and would never take them. As for whether any government people were there, the closest was a guy from the national human rights commission and someone from the Shura Council

Now, isn't Roth being just a bit too disingenuous? Isn't the very presence of govt officials [one from the human rights commission no less!] in a state that violates human rights regularly in accord with its own laws compromising when the emphasis of the fund-raising appeal was Israel's alleged hr violations, not those of Saudi Arabia, which I repeat rejects the very idea of human rights??

6. NGO Monitor article of May 27, 2009, report of 16 June 2009 and NGO Monitor fact sheet on hrw & fresh article by NGO Monitor director, Gerald Steinberg כאן

7. Posts and discussion threads on the Augean Stables blog on this issue.
a) here - b) aqui c) ici

Here are some of my own comments on the hrw/Saudi scandal first made on Augean Stables:

Here’s a sincerity test for whitson and roth. Whitson says the following, insinuating that she may have harshly criticized Saudi anti-human rights policies while in the kingdom. [In an interview with the Jerusalem Post,]

Whitson dismissed the impression left in the Arab News report that the organization’s sales pitch in Saudi Arabia had been based on its work slamming Israel, saying there was Saudi press censorship, and it was clear that HRW’s work in Gaza was the angle that the authorities in Riyadh would want to highlight.
Most of this sentence is true enough and I agree that the Riyadh govt would want to highlight critiques of Israel. But, if she did criticize Saudi practices and policies, and such criticism was omitted from the Arab News report, then why did she not make it forcefully clear once she had returned to the USA that she strongly disapproved of the ban on religious worship other than Muslim worship in Saudi Arabia [isn’t this an HR issue?] and she disapproved of the severe limits on women’s freedom, and cruel treatment of foreign workers, especially, but not only, non-Muslims, etc???
Since she did not make such a critical attitude towards Saudi practices clear once she had come back to the US [as far as I know], one must assume that she had little if anything to say about these matters while in the kingdom. Hence, her insinuation about omissions in the Arab News Report was meant to mislead, that is, to lie.

I would go further. Why do we hear so much about HRW “reports” and “critiques” of Israeli policy in the media but so little, if any, about “reports” and critiques of Arab regimes practices, including those of Saudi Arabia, which is near an extreme even within the Arab world?? Then, in the course of criticizing alleged Israeli violations in Gaza, has hrw ever discussed the anti-human rights implications of the Hamas charter [inc. Article 7] which now governs Gaza??

RL sarcastically remarks, “And, of course, the HRW fundraisers paid no attention to Saudi preferences.” Obviously. Further, making a funds appeal to the Saudis on the grounds of HRW’s leading role in anti-Israel propaganda or, if you like, “information” warfare or agitprop or perhaps “public spirited, disinterested, testimony to Congress based purely on principled concerns, already shows a bias on hrw’s part. That is, stressing anti-Israel efforts to Saudi donors implies that hrw has taken sides.

One of the problems here is that the US MSM are already in the pockets of the anti-Israel, pro-Arab forces in the establishment.

By the way, while we’re on the subject of HR policies by Arabs govts, what about genocide going on in the Sudan since independence in 1956?

To continue:

The Hamas charter is clearly a pro-genocide document. This is very clear in Article 7, which quotes a medieval Muslim Hadith fable foretelling the genocide of the Jews at Judgement Day, a genocide to be performed by Muslims. The loyal Muslim, reading that fable, might logically ask, Why wait till Judgement Day. Now, if HRW still considers genocide an offense against HR, if it ever did, then Hamas’s pro-genocide position ought to be taken into account in any treatment of the Gaza War of January 2009. In other words, Hamas is a political/religious body that is blatantly opposed to human rights. The Gaza War has to be seen in that light.

Since HR are supposed to be universal, then opposing Jews’ HR means opposing HR as such. Also, supporting Hamas means opposing Jews’ HR. This applies to HRW’s wealthy Saudi donors too, obviously. Now, we come to another point, which no doubt bothers many critics of HRW. Was hrw’s ostensible concern for “civilians” in Gaza merely a pretext for supporting Hamas’ war against Israel, Hamas’ genocidal war on Israel??? No doubt, this belief caused some previous hrw donors to stop funding the fake HR body. I have not closely examined hrw’s indictment of Israel regarding that war. However, if hrw accepted false claims made by Hamas and other Arab interested parties that members of the Hamas armed forces [inc. the Hamas Gaza police] were “civilians”, then hrw not only lacks credibility but is consciously supporting Hamas’ genocidal efforts. This is because various sources identified persons claimed by name by Hamas and other Arab sources as civilians as being in fact Hamas policemen or members of other Hamas armed forces. Hamas had even claimed that commanders of its armed forces that had been killed were civilians. Since such claims by Hamas were belied, then hrw is taking the Hamas side by accepting its claims.

Next, what are the human rights bona fides of hrw’s Saudi donors? Are they supporters in good faith of human rights in Saudi Arabia while living in luxury in their palaces in Riyahdh, with their servants, foreign and domestic –or slaves, dare we ask?? Do these people accept the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of the UN, for example??? Or do they adhere to the Cairo Declaration of human rights in Islam, which is a clearly anti-hr manifesto??? More particularly, do these donors accept the traditional Islamic doctrine that Jews are not only kufar [unbelievers] but the worst of unbelievers?? That Jews are destined to be humiliated by Muslims, slaughtered at Judgement Day, etc?? Do they agree with the endorsement of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion in the Hamas charter??

In short, I would like to see proof in both word and deed that the Saudi donors to hrw are supporters of human rights as such, and not merely cleverly using HR against Jews and Israel. Until Whitson and Roth supply convincing indications about the hr commitment of their Saudi donors, then whitson, roth and hrw should be considered human rights fakers.

--end of my comments on Augean Stables--

To sum up about hrw's Saudi donors. Here are a few questions for hrw to answer about them:
Did or do hrw's Saudi benefactors acknowledge the humanity of Jews; are these contributors in Saudi Arabia people who believe in universal humanity? In the humanity of Jews in particular?
Or do hrw's Saudi donors believe in regime propaganda, in the Saudi school system, in the official Saudi Wahhabite creed which dehumanizes sectarian Muslims, let alone Jews and other non-believers in Islam?
Do the Saudi benefactors of hrw accept the Islamic prejudices against Jews that go back to the early days of Islam?

Or do they just see the utility and expediency in smearing Israel with the fake "human rights" brush?

As far as hrw is concerned, what has it done for violations of the human rights of Jews?? This is a big subject, but let us just ask about the human rights of Jonathan Pollard. Did hrw ever defend his rights? Pollard received a sentence that violates the 8th Amendment to the US Constitution which forbids "cruel and unusual punishments." Pollard life sentence --in practice-- is much longer than that of other persons convicted of espionage by the United States. Where was the voice of hrw to protest this miscarriage of justice?

Of course, our fake "human rights" outfit, hrw, went to Saudi Arabia in order to raise money against Israel. They did not ask for money for general human rights advocacy but for anti-Israel advocacy in particular. So the human rights of some are more equal than the hr of others.

Now, far be it from me to criticize HRW alone and neglect other phoney "human rights" outfits. Another one is Amnesty International. Here is a truly shocking example of "amnesty" deploring a film against stoning of women in Iran. This film exposed the ugly reality of that phenomenon. In short, amnesty international defends hr violations, provided that authorized human rights violators do the violating. In this case, the government of Iran and Muslim bigots there are allowed to violate the human rights of women.

"Human Rights" is very often a corrupt racket, just a political, propaganda club for beating designated targets, like Israel, while Hamas and Iranian Muslim bigots are allowed to get away with it.