UK raises concerns over Israel's treatment of Palestinian children

[shira]

66. So you don't believe Annan and Ban WRT the UNHRC focusing on Israel....

....way to much to the detriment of others suffering abuse worldwide? Or am I misunderstanding you? Obama is trying to make a difference in the UNHRC. He was very clear the when the US entered the UNHRC, one of the main goals was to stop the delegitimization of Israel there. So that's the opposite of what you're trying to peddle here.

Now WRT false reports, I'll give you just one example in which all the major NGO's like HRW and AI, along with the UNHRC falsified allegations vs. Israel. It's an easy one. Look no further than Goldstone's retraction of the charge that Israel intentionally targeted civilians as a matter of policy. Now you may not believe him, but that crushes UNHRC credibility. That was the main conclusion of the report. The UNHRC stood by that even though they had no evidence backing it up. Worse, AI and HRW didn't argue against Goldstone. And in fact, they DISTANCED themselves from their earlier allegations of Israeli malice WRT targeting civilians. THEY fed Goldstone's commission with all those allegations. They NEVER once commented critically against that major allegation once the Goldstone Report was released. Only when Goldstone spilled the beans did they try to clumsily cover their tracks.

It's all here in this one damning article that footnotes all the lies...
http://volokh.com/2011/04/06/human-rights-watch-lies-re-goldstone-retraction/

As I noted a few days ago, Justice Richard Goldstone wrote a Washington Post op-ed last week in which he states that contrary to the implications of his eponymous report, Israel did not deliberately target civilians in Gaza during Operation Cast Lead.

Human Rights Watch contributed heavily to the content of the Goldstone Report, and has been among the most ardent promoters of the Report. Kenneth Roth, HRW’s director, suggests that HRW has nothing to apologize for because “HRW promoted the Goldstone report’s recommendation for investigations, pushing both Hamas and Israel to investigate its own war crimes. We never endorsed the report’s finding of an Israeli policy to target civilians.”

I originally referenced lying in the title of this post, but that proved to be a distraction, because, as I noted, Roth’s statement isn’t quite a lie, but perhaps a dishonest obfuscation. Roth chose his words carefully, and I suppose it’s technically true that HRW never explicitly endorsed a Goldstone Report finding that Israel had a policy of targeting civilians (although, see below, on Oct. 1, 2009, Roth himself pretty much did).

But let’s review some of the statements (I read some, but not all, of HRW’s many reports on Cast Lead to find these) that HRW did make, and see whether a reasonable observer would conclude that HRW publicly and loudly agreed with the premise that Israel deliberately targeted civilians during Operation Cast Lead. I think the answer is obvious, and it’s yet another blow to HRW’s credibility, both because of its conflict with Goldstone’s current position, and because of Roth’s current misrepresentation of HRW’s views. (In none of the statements excerpted below did HRW provide any caveats to the effect that the incidents in question may have involved rogue soldiers or units, as opposed to being Israeli policy).

Let’s start with Mr. Roth himself, writing in the Jerusalem Post on Aug. 25, 2009:

Israel could have conducted the war by targeting only combatants (editor: if Israel could have but didn’t target only combatants, doesn’t that mean she targeted noncombatants, i.e., civilians?) and taking all feasible precautions to spare civilians, as required by international humanitarian law. That is mandated even though Hamas often violated these rules, because violations by one side do not justify violations by the other.

Instead, as Human Rights Watch has shown through detailed, on-the-ground investigations, Israeli forces fired white phosphorous munitions indiscriminately over civilian areas, shot and killed Palestinian civilians waving white flags, attacked children playing on rooftops with precision missiles fired from aerial drones and needlessly destroyed civilian property.

(Update: Roth again, Dec. 29, 2009 : “Israel’s view that one prevails in asymmetric warfare by pummeling rather than protecting civilians is not only illegal but also counterproductive.”

And one more time, Oct. 1, 2009: “Richard Goldstone’s charge that Israel implemented a deliberate and systematic policy to inflict suffering on civilians in Gaza is not, as you said, the ‘central organising premise’ of his report. Rather it is the conclusion of the report arrived at after a serious examination of the evidence.”

Then there is Sarah Leah Whitson, director of HRW’s Middle East division, speaking in Saudi Arabia in May 2009: “Human Rights Watch provided the international community with evidence of Israel using white phosphorus and launching systematic destructive attacks on civilian targets.”

<snip>

more at the link above...