Reply #140: Actually I dont think it is wrong for human rights groups to ignore 'incitement and hate

[LeftishBrit]

indoctrination', because this has never been the remit of human rights groups. Human rights groups are concerned with violence and direct oppression - not incitements about other countries.

On checking the Human Rights Watch front page, I find that their main stories concern repression in China and Cuba, and the persecution of minorities in Iraq. Not 'incitements' or 'brainwashing' (except insofar as the latter may be associated with the suppression of legitimate media).

Direct use of children as combatants is and should be the remit of human rights organizations.

Perhaps there needs to be some international body that deals directly with incitements and threats between countries, before it reaches the point of war. The UN cannot fully be that body, because all its representatives have conflicts of interest by definition: they represent their *own* countries. Better the political haggling at the UN, than war every time something goes wrong - but a more objective 'court' might be better able to stop problems before they reach the point of wars. However, though setting up a 'quango' as the British call such organizations (quasi-autonomous non-governmental organizations) to deal with such matters in the world at large looks good on paper, I suspect that it would not work well, and just spend lots of taxpayers money with disappointingly little result.

Perhaps the UN needs to be just a little more objective than it is. But that isn't likely either.

I do not think that the 'incitements' should have been part of the Goldstone Report, as the implication of that would be that the verbal incitements justified OCL or some specific aspects of it. I strongly disagree with such a view. My problem with the Goldstone Report is not the report itself, but that such a report was commissioned only about Israel and not about other countries.

'I personally don't see the point trying to equate what Hamas does (or Hezbollah, both via Iran) to US and UK actions, as the comparisons are apples to oranges'

Not if we are talking about incitements that can lead to war and violence. The incitements by the US and UK DID lead to war and violence. The US and UK have much more democratic and less oppressive systems of government *toward their own people* than Hamas or Iran; that is very true; but as regards incitements, I do not think it's apples and oranges.

Do you consider that it is hypocritical to condemn OCL if you don't also condemn the invasion of Iraq? So do I. By the same token, I consider it as hypocritical to condemn warmongering 'incitements' by Hamas without condemning the warmongering incitements that contributed to the invasion of Iraq.


'You don't think that what's really going on disgusting?'

I think that a lot of things that are going on are disgusting, including that media and international bodies tend to focus on a few bogeynations (Israel is *one* of them but not the only one), and ignore lots of worse things going on in the world such as much of what is happening in parts of Africa. However, I don't think that the appropriate response to e.g.demonization of Israel as 'genocidal' is to retaliate by demonizing Iran, Hamas, Venezuela, North Korea and Sudan as a 'genocidal axis'! That also is disgusting demonization and incitement, and also leads to a lack of focus on the real genocide in Sudan. (The other governments are undemocratic and oppressive - Venezuela less so than the others but still not good- but they are not a 'genocidal axis'.)