HRW: Hamas 'Resistance' Watch? (Important Update)

Noah Pollak writes about the continuing evidence of the lengths that Human Rights Watch will go to eschew objectivity and demonize Israel.

Last month I blogged about Human Rights Watch and the extent HRW is willing to go to ingratiate themselves with the Saudis by demonizing Israel--in order to receive Saudi funding.

But let it not be said that Human Rights Watch is into Israel bashing just for the money. No, there are actually some at HRW who bash Israel on principle. Pollak writes that there is Joe Stork--the deputy director of HRW’s Middle East and North Africa programs and has praised the Munich massacre of Israeli athletes as the murder of Israeli athletes at Munich in 1972 because it provided “an important boost in morale among Palestinians.”

NGO Monitor reports that before joining HRW,

Stork was a highly visible anti-Israel political activist and ex-editor of Middle East Report (published by MERIP, the Middle East research and information project). MERIP's members distributed PLO buttons, posters, and flags, and its anti-Israeli rhetoric reflected the standard Marxist anti-imperialist ideology of the time. MERIP Reports carried laudatory interviews with terrorist leaders and other activists, and Stork's articles repeatedly condemned "the origins of the State of Israel and its war with the people of the Middle East."

This is the same Stork who gave a Human Rights Watch press conference claiming that the IDF gunned down Palestinian Arabs who were waving white flags.

The IDF has responded to Stork's report and its reliance on unsubstantiated claims from Arab Palestinians. An IDF article notes:

Merely displaying a white flag does not automatically grant immunity, and in cases of suspicion that a person holding a white flag is endangering security forces, they are authorized to take necessary precautionary steps and, in accordance with rules of engagement, to verify and neutralize the threat.

IDF forces received unambiguous orders prohibiting fire upon identifiable non-combatants and to assist, to the greatest extent possible, injured Palestinians, even under fire. Throughout combat operations, the IDF did all it could to warn civilian populations via the distribution of more than two million flyers, more than 300,000 phone calls to Palestinian homes, and warnings issued through local media outlets in an attempt to move residents as far as possible from combat zones.

The article also has a video of Hamas using Palestinians waving white flags as cover for their terrorist operations.

The clearest and most in-depth reporting of Joe Stork's long history of bias and outrageous statements is by Ben-Dror Yemini, whose Maariv report is available both in Hebrew and in English. Yemini reports in part that:

Stork, the person identified with the report, has a unique history of Israel-hating: He supported the murder of Israeli athletes in Munich, was an avid supporter of Saddam Hussein and more.

Several times in the past, Stork has called for the destruction of Israel and is a veteran supporter of Palestinian terrorism. Already as a student, Stork was amongst the founders of a new radical leftist group, which was formed based on the claim that other leftist groups were not sufficiently critical of Israel and of the United States' support of it. Already in 1976, Stork participated in a conference organized by Saddam Hussein which celebrated the first anniversary of the UN decision that equated Zionism with racism. Stork, needless to say, arrived at the conference as a prominent supporter of Palestinian terrorism and as an opponent to the existence of the State of Israel. He also labeled Palestinian violence against Israel as "revolutionary potential of the Palestinian masses" – language that was typical of fanatical Marxists.

In articles which he authored during the 1970's, Stork stated that he was against the very existence of Israel as an "imperialistic entity" and, to this end, provided counsel to Arab regimes on how to eliminate the Zionist regime. He also was opposed to any negotiations since this meant recognizing its existence: "Zionism may be defeated only by fighting imperialism," wrote Stork, "and not through deals with Kissingers."

On other occasions, Stork expressed his position that the global Left must subordinate itself to the PLO in order to strengthen elements that opposed any accord with Israel. It would seem that he has not changed his ways since then. He is still conceptually subordinate to those who have maintained their opposition to the existence of the State of Israel. Once the world's radical left supported the PLO. Today, part of the global Left supports Hamas.

Not to mention HRW, whose report omits mention of Hamas's part in this. Such is the lack of reliability that we have come to associate with Human Rights Watch.

Also check out Seraphic Secret's Death of Language = Death of Jews

UPDATE: At The Volokh Conspiracy, David Bernstein agrees overall on the degree of Stork's attacks on Israel:

However, one thing that Stork did NOT do, but that he has been widely accused of doing since an article in Ma'ariv accused him of it, is support the 1972 Munich massacre of Israeli athletes by Palestinian terrorists. I went back and read the relevant article. First of all, the article is billed as a a collective statement by the journal's editors, but is not signed by any of them. Therefore, one can't say for sure that Stork supported the entire editorial, or any given line in it. The most one can say is that he didn't publicly object.

Second, while the editorial does apologize for the Munich massacre, and does say that it gave Palestinians a needed morale boost, and further adds that Israel has engaged in much worse crimes, it ultimately says, as a bit of an afterthought, that all of these factors do not justify it. This hardly amounts to the sort of unequivocal condemnation one would expect from people with any decency, but it's simply inaccurate to say that this amounts to "supporting" the massacre.

I've noted before occasions on which critics of Israel have mistranslated, distorted, or otherwise mangled things to serve their political agenda (e.g.). Indeed, Stork's critics have noted that he once spread the lie that Menachem Begin called Palestinians "two-legged beasts" when Begin was clearly referring specifically to Palestinian terrorists who murdered children. It's not any better when "our side" engages in similar behavior.

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Hamas, HRW, Human Rights Watch, Joe Stork