Doc's Talk: Israel criticizes Human Rights Watch for its fundraising from Saudi regime

Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Israel criticizes Human Rights Watch for its fundraising from Saudi regime

August 17, 2009
http://www.tomgrossmedia.com/mideastdispatches/archives/001047.html

* Saudi women’s campaigner: “We live in the world’s largest women’s prison”
* New York-based group Human Rights Watch forced to admit it solicited funds from members of the Saudi regime at a fundraising dinner in Riyadh in May during which it bashed Israel
* Human Rights Watch found that as it increasingly demonized Israel, its worldwide annual income “grew as fast as Bernie Madoff’s balance sheets” * Arab terrorists and their supporters recruit “human rights” organizations to their side
* Saudi Arabia closes TV station after on-air sex talk; interviewee faces death

* The Wall Street Journal: “A delegation from Human Rights Watch was recently in Saudi Arabia. To investigate the mistreatment of women under Saudi Law? To campaign for the rights of homosexuals, subject to the death penalty in Saudi Arabia? To protest the lack of religious freedom in the Saudi Kingdom? To issue a report on Saudi political prisoners? No, no, no, and no. The delegation arrived to raise money from wealthy Saudis by highlighting HRW’s demonization of Israel.”

* Ma’ariv: Supporter of Munich Olympics massacre employed by Human Rights Watch wrote last week’s outrageously biased HRW report on Israel

(This dispatch mainly concerns Saudi Arabia, and the so-called human rights organization Human Rights Watch.)

CONTENTS

1. Saudi Arabia: “The world’s largest women’s prison”
2. “From the day they are born until the day they die”
3. Israel criticizes Human Rights Watch for its fundraising from Saudi regime
4. Some of HRW’s founders distance themselves from the organization and its leader Ken Roth
5. Israel: we will fight back against the slander of so-called human rights organizations

6. Saudi Arabia closes TV station after on-air sex talk
7. Saudis crown “Miss Morality” – without showing her face or body
8. Saudi Arabia bans the opening of public cinemas
9. First few Saudi women become maids
10. Iran decries conduct of Saudi morality police

11. Iran bans Ramadan pilgrimage to Mecca over swine flu
12. Another $200 million pledged to Fatah by Saudis
13. Saudi military buys three more A330s from France
14. Saudi attitudes to Israel: then and now

15. “HRW: From Gulag liberators to Saudi retainers” (By Gerald Steinberg, National Review)
16. “Human Rights Watch goes to Saudi Arabia” (By David Bernstein, Wall Street Journal)
17. “Author of HRW report on Israel supported Munich Massacre” (By Ben-Dror Yemini, Ma’ariv)

[All notes below by Tom Gross]

SAUDI ARABIA: “THE WORLD’S LARGEST WOMEN’S PRISON”

In a bold article on the liberal website Minbar Al-Hiwar Wal-Ibra (www.menber-alhewar1.info), reformist Saudi journalist and human rights campaigner Wajeha Al-Huweidar has described Saudi Arabia as “the world’s largest women’s prison.”

But she added that unlike real prisoners, Saudi women have no prospect of ever being released, since throughout their lives, they are under the control of a male guardian – their husband, father, grandfather, brother or son.

In an article titled “Prisoners can be released from prison, but Saudi women can’t,” she wrote: “As is customary in prisons throughout the world, inmates are stripped of all authority and sponsorship over their lives. All their movements are monitored and controlled by the jailor. The prison authorities decide their fate and see to their needs, until the day of their release. This is also the usual situation of the Saudi woman. She has no right to make decisions, and may not take a single step without the permission of her jailor, namely her guardian. But in her case the term of imprisonment is unlimited.”

“FROM THE DAY THEY ARE BORN UNTIL THE DAY THEY DIE”

She continues: “The Saudi Mahram Law turns women into prisoners from the day they are born until the day they die. They cannot leave their cells, namely their homes, or the larger prison, namely the state, without signed permission...

“Although Saudi women are deprived of freedom and dignity more than any other women in the world, they suffer all these forms of oppression and injustice in bitter silence, and with an air of suppressed anger and death-like dejection. Saudi women are peaceful in the full sense of the word, but so far the Saudi state has not appreciated their noble souls, their patience, and their quiet resistance...”

“The clerics… suffocate the women in all areas of life by means of oppressive laws enforced by the religious police, who follow them everywhere as if they were fugitives from justice. The laws pertaining to women have turned them into objects on which sick men can release their violent and sexual urges.”

(Translation courtesy of MEMRI, whose senior staff subscribe to this list.)

Huweidar and other women activists recently launched a campaign against the Saudi Mahram Law, which forbids women to leave their home without a male guardian.

She told the Kuwaiti daily Awan that the campaign, whose slogan is “treat us like adult citizens or we leave the country,” was officially launched at the King Fahd Bridge, connecting Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, which the women taking part threatened to cross in future without a male guardian.

ISRAEL CRITICIZES HRW FOR ITS FUNDRAISING FROM SAUDI REGIME

The once respected New York-based watchdog Human Rights Watch has become notorious for its invective and bias against Israel, criticizing the Jewish state (and only the Jewish state) out of all proportion for any misdeeds it might have committed. Now it has been revealed that some of its funding comes from official Saudi circles.

HRW, whose campaigns against Israel have become as nasty as those of its London-based counterpart Amnesty International, acknowledged its representatives visited Saudi Arabia in May this year and attended two private receptions, whose 50 guests included people “with governmental affiliations.”

The office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday said that what it characterized as HRW’s recent “fundraising activities” in Saudi Arabia “in tandem with the kingdom’s authoritarian government” raised questions as to the organization’s credibility.

Media organizations like the BBC regularly give great prominence in their news broadcasts to the attacks on Israel by groups like HRW, without (of course) including the Israeli side.

For example, last week the BBC highlighted the latest (completely unsubstantiated) HRW allegations about Israel murdering children in Gaza in January as the main story on the BBC website. The HRW report uses the term Israeli “war crimes” 15 times.

In an official response to the Israeli government on Friday, instead of attempting to offer any explanation as to why they went to Saudi Arabia to attack Israel, Human Rights Watch accused the Israeli government of waging “a propaganda war”.

HRW’s attempt to keep information about its Saudi fundraisers out of the American press was foiled when it was mentioned in the Saudi newspaper The Arab News. The National Review and The Wall Street Journal then reported on it last month, and then last week Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic Monthly asked HRW’s executive director Ken Roth in an e-mail exchange if this was indeed what the group did in Riyadh in May.

“Did your staff person attempt to raise funds in Saudi Arabia by advertising your organization’s opposition to the pro-Israel lobby?” Goldberg asked Roth, in the exchange that he posted on his blog last Wednesday. “That’s certainly part of the story,” Roth responded.

According to The Arab News, a delegation of senior members of HRW who traveled to Saudi Arabia were welcomed at a dinner attended by prominent members of the Saudi regime, for their work attacking Israel.

The Arab News added: “The group is facing a shortage of funds because of the global financial crisis and the work on Israel and Gaza, which depleted HRW's budget for the region”.

Roth admitted to Goldberg that various government officials and “someone from the Shura Council” were at the dinner.

The Shura Council is Saudi Arabia’s state-appointed religious leadership, which oversees, on behalf of the monarchy, the imposition in the kingdom of the strict Wahhabi interpretation of Islamic law. (See more on the Wahhabi interpretation further down this dispatch.)

SOME OF HRW’S FOUNDERS DISTANCE THEMSELVES FROM THE ORGANIZATION AND ITS LEADER KEN ROTH

As Prof. Gerald Steinberg, the executive director of NGO Monitor, points out in an article below (“From Gulag Liberators to Saudi Retainers: Human Rights Watch has betrayed its original mission”), Human Rights Watch, which was originally founded in 1978 in New York (as Helsinki Watch) with the goal of using public demonstrations and other forms of “naming and shaming” to free prisoners of conscience in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, has now lost its moral compass and become an organization committed to bashing Israel and America while downplaying human rights abuses all around the world.

Those who helped establish HRW, including its founder, the veteran human rights campaigner American Robert Bernstein (who was also former editorial head at the publishers Random House), and former Soviet political prisoner Natan Sharansky, have now voiced strong disagreement with HRW’s current direction.

One of the most depressing aspects of current world politics, in my opinion, is that Western human rights organizations have increasingly come to serve as a major propaganda tool for Arab terrorists and their supporters. Many ill-informed people who think of themselves as neutral (including news editors in New York, Paris and London) actually believe that groups like Amnesty International and HRW are reliable purveyors of news which present objective facts in a balanced way. As a result the mainstream media regularly cite them as a source of supposedly impartial data, as though what they said were self-evidently fair and true.

For much more on Human Rights Watch and other groups, please see NGO Monitor: www.ngo-monitor.org. (I am on NGO Monitor’s International Advisory Board.)

(UPDATE: In reaction to all the criticism, Human Rights Watch hurried out a report on August 11, accusing Saudi Arabia of holding thousands of people in prison with no proof of their guilt.)

ISRAEL: WE WILL FINALLY FIGHT BACK AGAINST THE SLANDER OF SO-CALLED HUMAN RIGHTS ORGANIZATIONS

Last week, the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office said Jerusalem would begin waging a more aggressive battle against NGOs it deems biased against Israel.

Israel also criticized a number of European governments for funding the extreme left-wing Israeli group “Breaking the Silence,” which Israel said has made totally unsubstantiated claims about alleged Israeli policies of using chemicals against civilians or deliberately killing them.

The Dutch government has now acknowledged that “Breaking the Silence” is not a reliable human rights group and says it will cease funding them.

Dutch Foreign Minister Maxime Verhagen said last week that he had not known that the Dutch embassy in Tel Aviv was funding a radical group like Breaking the Silence; he instructed the Dutch Foreign Ministry to launch an internal investigation on how this came about. It revealed that the embassy in Israel gave Breaking the Silence 19,995 euros to help put together its 2009 report, which accuses Israel of various crimes and was released earlier this month. Had this figure been five euros higher, it would have required approval from The Hague.

But there has been no word yet about Breaking the Silence’s biggest funders – the British Embassy in Tel Aviv (which gave them the equivalent of about $60,000), the European Union (which donated Euro 43,514 towards its latest report), and the supremely naïve diaspora Jewish organization the New Israel Fund which gave them about $50,000. (The Israeli government has protested to the British ambassador to Tel Aviv and he justified his funding of such an organization.)

The Spanish Foreign Ministry has also given over 180,000 Euro to anti-Israeli NGOs.

How would Spain like it if Israel funded supporters of ETA? And what would Britain think if Israel funded an IRA support group?)

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The IDF’s Minorities in Numbers and Pictures

In honor of IDF Diversity Week, we present diversity through numbers and pictures. Each year, more and more Muslims, Christians, Druze, Bedouin and immigrants from around the world take on the responsibility of defending Israel.

MUSLIMS:

Muslim Arab Israelis are not required to draft in the IDF, but there are many who volunteer. In 2013, there were over 200 Muslims serving in the IDF and over 300 in the reserves.

Bedouins:

Bedouins are nomadic Muslims who were in Israel when modern borders were set in place and are now considered Israeli citizens. They are not required to draft but a growing number choose to enlist. In 2012, there were over 1,400 Bedouin Muslim soldiers doing regular IDF service and almost 1,500 in the reserves.

Read more:http://www.idfblog.com/2014/02/27/truth-idf-numbers-pictures/#more-34027

Are you aware that in 2013, Middle class taxes go up-significantly?

In January of next year, the federal income tax rate for middle-class taxpayers is scheduled to rise from 25 percent to 28 percent, and the payroll tax is scheduled to rise from 13.3 percent to 15.3 percent… This drives the marginal tax rate based on the aforementioned three taxes to 48.12 percent. Add in state and local property, corporate, excise, and other state and local taxes, and the percentage of each additional dollar that is taxed hovers around 50 percent… When half of each additional dollar earned is taxed away, taxpayers experience a disincentive to start businesses or expand existing ones. This leads to fewer jobs being created.

Why is HAMAS Inside Tampa Schools?

Clare Lopez

Kelly Miliziano, who teaches history classes at Steinbrenner High School in the Tampa, Florida area apparently thinks it’s perfectly OK to invite a senior official of a HAMAS-affiliated organization into her classroom to discuss Islam with her students. According to local media reports, not only has this been going on for years, but in spite of the civil and criminal proceedings that could result from such reckless negligence, the Hillsborough County school superintendent, Mary Ellen Elia, and the chairman of the school board, Candy Olson, also expressed approval for students under their responsibility to be exposed repeatedly to guest speaker, Hassan Shibly, who is the Executive Director for the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) in the Tampa area.
More...

Did You Know... Ignoring the Call to Islam will Bring Jihad

‘Conquest through Da’wa [proselytizing] that is what we hope for. We will conquer Europe, we will conquer America! Not through sword but through Da’wa.’
-- Yousef al-Qaradawi , Muslim Brotherhood spiritual leader The Arabic word ‘Da’wa’ means the “call to Islam.” But do not think that Da’wa is the same thing as an invitation to an optional holiday event. The classical Islamic doctrine of jihad mandates that enemies must be given the opportunity to convert to Islam or pay the jizya tax before it is permissible to attack them.
Clare M. Lopez

Who is being discriminated-facts tell the truth

Religious bias

Hate crimes motivated by religious bias accounted for 1,409 offenses reported by law enforcement. A breakdown of the bias motivation of religious-bias offenses showed:

65.4 percent were anti-Jewish.
13.2 percent were anti-Islamic.
9.5 percent were anti-other religion, i.e., those not specified.
4.3 percent were anti-Catholic.
3.8 percent were anti-multiple religions, group.
3.3 percent were anti-Protestant.
0.5 percent were anti-Atheism/Agnosticism/etc.

http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/hate-crime/2010/narratives/hate-crime-2010-incidents-and-offenses.

On March 31, 1977, the Dutch newspaper Trouw published an interview

with PLO executive committee member Zahir Muhsein. Here's what he said:

"The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct "Palestinian people" to oppose Zionism.

For tactical reasons, Jordan, which is a sovereign state with defined borders, cannot raise claims to Haifa and Jaffa, while as a Palestinian, I can undoubtedly demand Haifa, Jaffa, Beer-Sheva and Jerusalem. However, the moment we reclaim our right to all of Palestine, we will not wait even a minute to unite Palestine and Jordan."

In March 1977, Zahir Muhsein, a PLO executive, said:

"The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct Palestinian people to oppose Zionism."

"For tactical reasons, Jordan, which is a sovereign state with defined borders, cannot raise claims to Haifa and Jaffa, while as a Palestinian, I can undoubtedly demand Haifa, Jaffa, Beer-Sheva and Jerusalem. However, the moment we reclaim our right to all of Palestine, we will not wait even a minute to unite Palestine and Jordan."

The Arab Apartheid

Ben-Dror Yemini
In 1948, the Arab countries refused to accept the UN partition proposal and they launched a war of annihilation against the State of Israel which had barely been established. All precedents in this matter showed that the party that starts the war - and with a declaration of annihilation, yet - pays a price for it. Between 550,000 and 710,000 Arabs fled because of the war and a larger number of 850,000 Jews were expelled or fled from Arab countries (the "Jewish nakba").
Population exchanges and expulsions were the norm at that time, occurring in dozens of other conflict points and affecting about 52 million people. In all the population exchange precedents that occurred during or at the end of an armed conflict, there was no return of refugees to the previous region, which had turned into a new national state.
Only the Arab states acted completely differently from the rest of the world. Instead of assimilating the refugees, they crushed them despite the fact that they were their coreligionists and members of the Arab nation - instituting a regime of apartheid. So the "nakba" was not caused by the actual dispossession, which had also been experienced by tens of millions of others. The "nakba" is the story of the apartheid, oppression, abuse and denial of rights suffered by the Arab refugees at the hands of the Arab countries. (Maariv)

International Law and Military Operations in Practice - Col. Richard Kemp

"Islamist fighting groups study the international laws of armed conflict carefully and they understand it well. They know that a British or Israeli commander and his men are bound by international law and the rules of engagement that flow from it. They then do their utmost to exploit what they view as one of their enemy's main weaknesses. Their very modus operandi is built on the correct assumption that Western armies will normally abide by the rules, while these insurgents employ a deliberate policy of operating consistently outside international law. "

Lost Historical Moments

What Rabin’s last Knesset speech really said:repudiation of a Palestinian state

Rabin ruled out a fully sovereign Palestinian state :

“We view the permanent solution in the framework of State of Israel which will include most of the area of the Land of Israel as it was under the rule of the British Mandate, and alongside it a Palestinian entity which will be a home to most of the Palestinian residents living in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. We would like this to be an entity which is less than a state, and which will independently run the lives of the Palestinians under its authority.”

Rabin ruled out a total withdrawal from Judea and Samaria and thus a return to the pre-June 1967 borders :

“The borders of the State of Israel, during the permanent solution, will be beyond the lines which existed before the Six Day War. We will not return to the 4 June 1967 lines.”

Rabin ruled out withdrawing form the Jordan Valley:

“The security border of the State of Israel will be located in the Jordan Valley, in the broadest meaning of that term.”

Rabin ruled out uprooting settlement blocs, like the Gush Katif bloc in Gaza (which was subsequently uprooted by former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon):

“The establishment of blocs of settlements in Judea and Samaria, like the one in Gush Katif.

AND

Rabin ruled out removing any settlement before coming to a full peace agreement with the Palestinians:

“I want to remind you: we committed ourselves, that is, we came to an agreement, and committed ourselves before the Knesset, not to uproot a single settlement in the framework of the interim agreement, and not to hinder building for natural growth.”

Rabin insisted on Israel retaining full security control of the borders with Egypt and Jordan, contrary to Israel’s relinquishment of the Philadelphia Corridor on the border with Egypt:

“The responsibility for external security along the borders with Egypt and Jordan, as well as control over the airspace above all of the territories and Gaza Strip maritime zone, remains in our hands.”

Correcting Oslo Myths-Part 2

3) Kuttab laments that the post-1993 Oslo process resulted in a Palestinian Authority "whose ministers and legislators are not guaranteed passage between Gaza and the West Bank ...."

Before free passage or other perquisites, PA leaders were obligated, among other things, to eliminate the terrorist infrastructure in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, end anti-Israeli, antisemitic incitement in schools, mosques, and communications media, and resolve all outstanding issues through peaceful negotiations. They met none of these commitments, sometimes bolstering terrorism and greatly increasing incitement.

4) Kuttab complains that under Oslo the PA got "lightly armed police ---- but no real sovereignty over the land or contiguity between our communities in Gaza and the West Bank."

Oslo agreements repeatedly were revised, regardless of Palestinian non-compliance, until the authorized number of police grew from 8,000 to 40,000. Though they were to be the only armed forces in the territories, Israeli estimates early in the second intifada put the number of gunmen - police, "security services," terrorists, and armed gangs - at 85,000. Their armament reportedly included not only heavy machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades, but also anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles.

Sovereignty was to be negotiated in the envisioned 1998 "final status" talks - after a five-year period of confidence-building. Palestinian leadership chronically undermined the process. Palestinian terrorism made the 1993 - 1998 Oslo period more deadly for Israelis than the 15 years preceding it.

The United States doesn't have contiguity between the lower 48 states and Alaska and Hawaii; territorial contiguity between the West Bank and Gaza Strip - that is, through the 20 miles of Israeli territory between them - was never promised and would destroy Israeli contiguity.

5) "Palestinians have been made to endure hundreds of checkpoints in the West Bank, an eight-foot wall deep in our territories, and tight Israeli control over borders."

The security barrier is not "deep in Palestinian territories," but rather encompasses less than 8 percent of Judea and Samaria, and is mostly a fence, rarely a wall; the land in question is not "our [Palestinian] territories" but disputed territory to which, according to the authors of U.N. Security Council Resolution 242, Jews as well as Arabs have claims; and there are no international borders, only the 1949 armistice lines with Jordan. Under 242, borders remain to be negotiated. As for checkpoints - like the security barrier and "tight Israeli control" - Palestinian Arabs precipitated these measures themselves. No terrorism and there would be no fence or tight Israeli control and few checkpoints - like before the first intifada.

Correcting Some Oslo Myths

1) In Oslo "Israeli, Palestinian and other world leaders promised that ... Palestinian sovereignty would be solidified."

No, they didn't. The 1993 Declaration of Principles and subsequent Oslo agreements outlined a process by which final status negotiations about the West Bank and Gaza Strip would be reached. The process required an end to anti-Israel terrorism and incitement and a commitment to peaceful negotiations. The PA, Fatah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and other terrorist groups, sabotaged the process from the start.

2) "The reality is that, in defiance of U.N. Security Council Resolution 242, which states that it is inadmissible to occupy land by force, Palestinian territories are still under foreign military occupation."
Wrong again. Resolution 242 (1967) does note "the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war." It also affirms the right of every state in the area "to live in peace with secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force." There were no "Palestinian territories." Jordan occupied the West Bank, Egypt controlled Gaza. Israel did not have "secure and recognized boundaries," so retention of some of those territories was possible under 242. Israel is not a "foreign" military occupier in the West Bank but, pending final negotiations, the lawful military administrator as a result of a successful war of self-defense.

Doc's Talk