Israel Matzav

Human rights hijacked

Professor Avi Bell rips 'Human Rights Watch's Sarah Leah Whitson - head of the group's 'Middle East and North Africa' (MENA) division - who was the featured speaker at an event at the University of California - Davis earlier this month. This is from the first link.

Whitson's actions in Libya are particularly revealing. Only a year and a half before the International Criminal Court indicted Saif al Islam Gaddafi for crimes against humanity for his role in the torture and massacre of Libyan civilians, Whitson hailed him for helping to create a supposed "Tripoli Spring." Though Saif al Islam is the son of Moammar Gaddafi and was one of the tyrannical regime's top officials, Whitson focused on his leadership of a quasi-governmental charity foundation and his establishment of two semi-private newspapers. Committed to marketing "a shift in the Libyan winds," Whitson did not mention that the Libyan regime had already closed the papers and was censoring the internet. Eight months later, Whitson called Saif al Islam one of Libya's "forces of reform" and praised a "hard-hitting" human rights report released by his foundation.

While lauding tyrants, Whitson was measured in her advocacy on behalf of Fathi al-Jahmi, Libya's foremost dissident. Al-Jahmi died in 2009 after years of torture and solitary confinement. His family continued to suffer persecution from the Libyan regime following his death, with his brother singling out Whitson, Human Rights Watch, and Amnesty International as illustrations of the corrupted human rights complex in Libya.

Whitson's statement in 2010 that HRW "appreciate[s] the Lebanese sophistication for human rights," even as the Hezb'allah terrorist group continued its marching takeover of the state, reaffirmed her determination to whitewash human rights abuses that lie outside her political prejudices.

No wonder, then, that Whitson focuses her criticism obsessively on Israel, the Middle East's only Western-style democracy and a country with an excellent record on human rights.

Whitson achieved special notoriety in 2009 while fundraising among leaders of one of the world's most oppressive countries. Speaking to a group of potential donors in Saudi Arabia, including a member of the advisory body to the repressive Saudi monarchy, Whitson underscored HRW's clashes with "pro-Israel pressure groups in the US, the European Union, and the United Nations." She also solicited funding to help promote the Goldstone Report -- a now-discredited document that falsely accused Israel of misconduct in military operations in Gaza in 2009, while downplaying or ignoring abuses by the Hamas terrorist organization.

Read the whole thing. You will never take another report from MENA seriously.

Labels: California, Human Rights Watch, Sarah Leah Whitson

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 3:34 PM