Robert Berstein has an Op-Ed in today's Washington Post that shows just how truly desperate Israel's cheerleaders have become. Bernstein, a founder of Human Rights Watch who now seems to hate human rights, responds to the push for Palestinian statehood by recycling the tired argument that it is Palestinian words that are driving the conflict, not the Israeli boot on their necks. Here's the nut:
The real obstacle to long-term peace is the endless and overwhelming words of hate and incitement to genocide effectively spread to Arabs and Palestinians. One example is the textbooks given to millions of children in Saudi Arabia, distributed in the Arab world and beyond, that label Jews “monkeys and pigs.” This continues to foment discord, radicalism and violence.
The "monkeys and pigs" link goes to a 2008 article about a book used in the UK. It's unclear whether they are still being used today, or how exactly this is relevant to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but it is too bad Bernstein doesn't mention that current Israeli school books do much the same thing.
Most notable in the piece is Bernstein's source. He commends the reader to "be aware of the work of Palestinian Media Watch," explaining, "the group, an Israeli research institute focused on monitoring the messages of all aspects of Palestinian media, has detailed some of the deception of the Palestinian Authority, even during moments of peace talks." What Bernstein doesn't mention is that Palestinian Media Watch is run by the Islamophobic settler Itamar Marcus.
Marcus has worked for years to present the Palestinian people as a homicidal death cult in an effort to derail a negotiated settlement to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. His work has been debunked multiple times, and he is quite open about his agenda. As he told the Daily Bruin:
The Palestinian media is the window to Palestinian society. We want to understand their society. What the teachers are telling the children is the way the next generation is going to see Israel – either as a neighbor or as an enemy to be fought. That’s why we study what we do and why we put so much focus on things like sporting events for children and summer camps for children. If the kids are growing up with the belief that Allah wants them to kill Jews, then the border adjustments today and the peace treaty are not going to hold water when these kids grow up.
He continues:
When you tell your children that their role is to die in this conflict, young children, that is child abuse. Particularly when you understand the political goals here: to make Israel look bad. You tell your children to get killed so you can … then say, “Look! The Israelis are killing our children.”
Sounds like a reputable source to me.
Well the Economist isn't buying Bernstein's article, and hopefully other readers aren't either. Having already made his biases known, it's no surprise Bernstein would rely on Israeli settlers for his sources. The scandal here is that the Washington Post gave him a platform to do so.
Not unlike Britain’s Guardian warning readers away from anti-Semites of a certain type.
link to counterpunch.org
Both Bernstein and the organisation he founded have given me pause recently. (Bernstein broke with HRW because he felt it should not report on “open societies” like Israel – they were somehow above criticism).
I was taken aback by this Guardian article:
link to www.guardian.co.uk
It is important to study Peter Bouckaert’s “bait and switch” presentation of this video, dramatic discovery of documents and film then a quick switch to the real subject – a video tape brought to him by the brother of the condemned who “wants it digitised so he can view it” (a service available in any Tripoli neighbourhood prior to the “rebellion”).
Bouckaert then shows the video pointing out the children in the crowd and “Huda the executioner”.
I was very surprised to find a different version of the video on Youtube:
link to www.youtube.com
In it you will see a different crowd. No children, an all male audience as far as I can tell and a different auditorium.
This raises a number of questions about Peter Bouckaert and Human Rights Watch.
Was he not aware that the video, far from being secret, had been screened on Channel 7 in 1984?
Did he or his organisation insert the (probably sports fan) crowd scenes being roused by Huda – the Minister of Sports? Notice that the angle of seating in the auditorium is much less acute than the almost vertical bleachers in the Buckaert version.
It could be that Bouckaert has been duped but HRW has been the leading the charge against Gaddafi with their “Abu Salim Massacre” story which, in their fine print, they admit is based on just one witness and “cannot be verified”. This is touted as the primary motivation for NATO’s action which, by all accounts, has now cost something like 30,000 lives.
Having often relied on HRW reports in the past, I find their recent activities rather disturbing and would appreciate other opinions on the above.
BREWER- Human Rights Watch is closely linked with “liberal” Democrats from the Clinton administration and was a cheerleader for the Yugoslavia “humanitarian” intervention as well as the Libya intervention. They do some good work, Finkelstein quotes them all of the time on Gaza, however, they are not truly independent and can be relied upon to support imperial aggression when performed by a Democrat.
Yes, that would explain a lot. I am afraid I have taken them off my “go to” list.
Libya troubles me. It is surely unprecedented for a populace that enjoyed free Health, free education, 92% home ownership, subsidised food staples and a Human Development Index rating in the top third of the World to spontaneously rebel against their Government without outside interference is it not?
HRW were in the vanguard, trumpeting Gaddafi’s “crimes”, particularly the Abu Salim “massacre”. I don’t want to hijack this thread into a discussion of that affair, suffice to say I have strong doubts about their version and the use to which it has been put, even though they themselves admit it “can’t be verified.
The “mass grave” recently discovered was visited by CNN reporters:
“A CNN team was brought to the site, a muddy field, with other media, and found only what appeared to be animal bones.”
Maybe its my age but I am finding it hard to know who to trust.
Brewer,
Believe it or not, oppression comes in more than one way. Perhaps economically the people of Libya were doing well but they wanted more than that. The dissent in Libya was not sudden, it has a loooooonnnngggg history. Gaddafi’s jails were filled with dissidents.
Gaddafi was not a nice person or a nice dictator. He has to answer for many of the disappeared Libyans, some dissenters living outside of Libya also vanished over the years. One Libyan dissident, someone my father knew, from Houston met the same fate. No one knew where he went, what happened to him.
You don’t have to like Human Rights Watch, the Democrats, US foreign policy, NATO’s role in wars around the globe; and your points may be legitimate, I probably agree with many of them, but please don’t denigrate Libyan people’s intellect by saying they desired nothing more from life than to live as mute and blind citizens under a leader they did not chose as long as they were getting meals and an education.
Believe it or not, the Muslim street, globally speaking, is not happy with their governments, with their systems and their power structures. Some Muslims are willing to do something about it, finally.
Oh and did I also mention that Gaddafi was a pariah in more ways than one? As an example, he would buy influence in internal Pakistani politics with his wealth, he likes to think himself the benevolent leader of Muslims everywhere. He also financed and armed a terror group in he 80s in Pakistan, that went around bludgeoning people with hammers, that were opposed to Bhutto after Bhutto had been hanged.
The guy is a douchebag and I hope he gets caught and hung live on TV as he did to university students in Libya to teach the rest of the country a lesson in the 80s. I hope his progeny rots in hell. I’ll leave the fighting to the Libyans and how they want to conduct it and with who’s help.
Neither of your links work.
“This is touted as the primary motivation for NATO’s action which, by all accounts, has now cost something like 30,000 lives.”
link
You might want to be a little bit skeptical of that 30,000 figure. Maybe it’s true, maybe not. I’m a little surprised that you accept that one and reject the prison massacre figure, when so far as I can tell the evidence for both is tenuous.
I think HRW does a good job on the I/P conflict, but they might be biased in the case of Libya. OTOH, your own view of Libya under Gaddafi seems awfully rosy. One can have one’s doubts about the pro-intervention rhetoric without going that far.
When the NYT began charging viewers for viewing, I bolted. Yet nominally progressive WaPo is the last place I can find refuge. It’s difficult to tell WaPo from the Washington Times these days, at least on I/P.
RE: “The real obstacle to long-term peace is the endless and overwhelming words of hate and incitement to genocide effectively spread to Arabs and Palestinians. One example is the textbooks given to millions of children in Saudi Arabia, distributed in the Arab world and beyond, that label Jews ‘monkeys and pigs’.” ~ Robert Berstein
FROM TED KOPPEL, in the Wall Street Journal, 04/29/11:
SOURCE – link to mondoweiss.net
P.S. ARTICLE: We do use books that call Jews ‘apes’ admits head of Islamic school , thisislondon.co.uk, 07/02/07
SOURCE – link to thisislondon.co.uk
P.P.S. SEE: With Egypt, Turkey Lost as Israeli Allies, Where to Turn?, By Richard Silverstein, 9/12/11:
SOURCE – link to richardsilverstein.com
Israel is also busy as hell courting China in anticipation US whole-hearted protection and funding of Israel might go the way of France’s former support b4 US became Israel’s host major power to suck dry.
In his conversations with Alan Hart, Ilan Pappe discusses, with despair, how Israeli school children are taught zionism from a very early age.
link to youtube.com
Hence we have that archive photo here of Jewish Israeli school girls writing Hallmark hate notes on IDF missiles.
children shouldn’t be militarized at any age.
Wapo is a disgrace 2 the memory of real American journalism I remember in the MLK, Vietnam War & Nixon Eras. Ditto for NYT. Never expected anything from Wall St Journal.