Israel Matzav: 'Human Rights' Watch comments on teenagers' kidnapping

Thursday, June 19, 2014

'Human Rights' Watch comments on teenagers' kidnapping

A 'Human Rights' Watch spokesperson had the following comment on the kidnapping of three Israeli teenagers by 'Palestinian' terrorists (Hat Tip: Mrs. Carl).

To ensure the proper response to the kidnapping by Palestinians of three Israeli teenagers last week, Human Rights Watch has hired a team of crickets, which will chirp at regular intervals to highlight the lack of condemnation emanating from the organization.

HRW is among the quickest to denounce alleged Israeli violations of Palestinian rights, often parroting Palestinian activists’ accusations without thorough investigation. To avoid the impression that the organization’s one-sidedness stems from incompetence or negligence, HRW specifically engaged a troupe of the musical insects to stress that it had a consistent approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and that the anti-Israel bias is not haphazard.

“It would be unprofessional of us to waffle on where we stand vis-à-vis Israel and Palestine,” said the organization’s executive director Kenneth Roth. “We made a strategic decision long ago that when it comes to those two entities, we must always consider a given case through the same lens: how can it be interpreted to depict Israel as immoral and unworthy of continued existence?” The crickets, he said, had experience filling the silence on other issues, notably the persecution of Christians in Palestinian areas, of homosexuals throughout the Muslim Middle East, and of antisemitism in Europe.

“Chirp,” said the crickets.

Hillel Neuer explains why Roth has hired the crickets: They do a better job of commenting than Roth does.

After repeated appeals from Twitter users for HRW Executive Director Kenneth Roth to end his silence on the abductions, Roth finally responded with this carefully-constructed tweet:

Attending school at illegal settlement doesn't legitimize apparent kidnapping of #Israel teens. They should be freed http://t.co/EO1jeWh8Ht
— Kenneth Roth (@KenRoth) June 14, 2014
But why would Roth even bother to mention that the youths — two of them aged 16 — studied in an “illegal settlement”?

In all of history, was there ever a case where the head of a human rights group issued a statement concerning innocent hostages — while they were still in the hands of kidnappers — which deliberately connected them to an “illegal” act, let alone devoting half the text to it?

Although Roth appears to insist that this fact “doesn’t legitimize” their kidnapping, the only possible reason he mentioned it was to equivocate his appeal, which amounted to nothing more than “they should be freed.”

HRW’s standard procedure is to call out actions as violations of international law.

Indeed, in other like cases, HRW has issued lengthy press releases and reports condemning the abductions of civilians as a war crime, citing chapter and verse of the Geneva Conventions.

Yet here not only does Roth’s tweet exceptionally fail to invoke the law against the perpetrators of the kidnapping, but he instead invokes the law against the victims — for attending school at an “illegal” settlement.

Read the whole thing.

The Obama administration has also hired the crickets to comment on President Obama's behalf....

Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, Hillel Neuer, Human Rights Watch, Kenneth Roth, kidnapping, Palestinian terrorism