The lifeblood of ‘Human Rights’ organizations like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International is that people believe that their ‘more ethical than thou’, ‘more impartial than thou’ reputation is well-earned. And in some corners of the globe, it is.
But while these organizations often perform valuable work in certain places, the problem is that this ‘halo effect’ serves to mask those times when they are anything but ethical, and far from impartial.
NGO Monitor has some valuable background info on why, when it comes to Israel, organizations like HRW and AI are not quite the bastions of objectivity they purport to be. There is already more than enough evidence in those links to call their objectivity into question (or more accurately, to answer that question with an emphatic “no”). But being the energetic young go-getters that they are, instead of resting on their anti-Israel laurels, they’ve been hard at work, further tarnishing their halos in 2011:
JERUSALEM – With 2011 concluding, NGO Monitor today released a list of the most outrageous and absurd NGO actions from the past year, demonstrating the political nature of NGOs involved in the Arab-Israeli conflict. Prof. Gerald Steinberg, president of NGO Monitor, commented, “This shows how the NGO network consistently fails to uphold universal human rights, while also distorting international law beyond recognition.” The list:
1. Amnesty International’s new Israel Researcher has a history of radical anti-Israel activism.
2. HRW’s Sarah Leah Whitson race-baited American Jews and ignored the embarrassment of having praised Saif-Islam Qaddafi as a human rights reformer.
3. German NGO “Remembrance, Responsibility, and Future (EVZ)” exploited government funding designated for Holocaust reparations and education in order to join the delegitimization campaign against Israel and added to new antisemitism.
4. Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) condemned as “war crimes” the IDF response to the terror attack in Eilat.
5. A number of NGOs attacked Judge Richard Goldstone after he honestly admitted the need to “reconsider” his UN report.
For 6-12, read the whole thing.
UPDATE: Speaking of 6-12, Israel Matzav’s post reminds me of just how revolted I was when I first saw #7:
And for those of you who didn’t get the relevance of the image accompanying this post: Halo
