Among the most frustrating elements of the new war against the Jews, has been the complicity of many organizations that pretend to be protecting human rights.

Many of these, like Human Rights Watch, actually started out as what their name implies and over time shifted in attitude, until they became what they are now – blatantly anti-Israel/anti-Semitic.

Proof of this shift has been difficult to come by until now.

This week, the Associated Press reported that Human Rights Watch finally came clean – at least a little bit – when it rejected a Hamas claim that it did not target civilians during last year’s war against Israel.

It’s not likely the beginning of a move away from the dark side, but it may mean something.

It also didn’t get much attention in the international mainstream press, which has undergone its own transformation into something most old-school journalists – the ones that operated constrained by a set of ethical standards – would not recognize.

But to those of us closely watching the progression of this extremely dangerous, concerted effort by various factions to vilify Israel and the Jews, the recent story is a small but positive sign.

The story says that “the new claims against Hamas could carry extra weight because they came from Human Rights Watch, a group Israel has accused of unfair bias against the Jewish state.” It notes that until now, most international criticism has been directed against Israel. And this has translated worldwide into a widespread acceptance of outspoken expressions of anti-Semitism, some of it violent, which for decades would not have been tolerated.

The backdrop to all of this is the so-called Goldstone Report – the tainted results of a tainted, cynical, United Nations investigation into how Israel conducted it operation to stop nearly a decade of constant rocket fire into its cities. Even the unfortunate Jewish jurist contracted to conduct this farce, has publically, though under-reportedly, said that most of his findings critical of the Palestinian side was mostly ignored and context omitted from media reports.

Based on the Goldstone report, the notoriously anti-Semitic U.N. has instructed both Israel (a sovereign, democratic country surrounded and infested by hostile, violent neighbors) and Hamas (a murderous, Islamic terrorist organization) to respond to allegations of war crimes by Feb. 5.

Israel has said it will once again explain its position while an internal Hamas statement has tried to suggest that its “rocket and mortar fire were directed solely at military targets and that any civilian casualties were accidental.”

That was evidently too much for even Human Rights Watch to swallow. HRW notes that “most of the rocket attacks on Israel hit civilian areas, which suggests that civilians were the target,” and Hamas’ claim of aiming for military targets “is belied by the facts.”

HRW added “that statements from Hamas leaders during the fighting made clear that they intended to harm Israeli civilians,” and that “deliberately targeting civilians is a war crime.”

They also said Hamas committed war crimes by launching rockets from populated areas, which endangered the local population in Gaza by raising the likelihood of Israeli retaliation.

“Fighters intentionally fired rockets from near civilians in order to shield themselves from counterattacks,” they said.

This, of course, is what the findings should have been from the start, and exactly what Israel has been saying all along. So, what’s changed?

Until now, Human Rights Watch has saved its most serious criticisms for Israel. The three long reports it’s released critical of Israel have been widely reported and its findings used to justify calls for Israel’s destruction and violent attacks against Jews and Jewish institutions worldwide.

Israeli officials and pro-Israel groups have accused the organization of focusing excessive attention on Israel, but these complaints were mostly dismissed as somehow tainted because they came from pro-Israel groups. The party line has become that “critisim of Israeli governemt policy is not anti-Semitism” and that Jews are paranoid and should drop the whole Holocaust thing, already.

 But, according to the report, complaints against HRW ”gained some steam” after the organization’s fundraising in Saudi Arabia was questioned, and it was discovered the group’s senior military analyst was “an avid collector of Nazi memorabilia.” The analyst was reportedly subsequently suspended.

Reminds one a little bit of the “discovery” that U.N. Secretary General Kurt Waldheim was a Nazi war criminal, doesn’t it?

Anyway, the complaints reportedly prompted even Human Rights Watch’s founder, Robert L. Bernstein, to accuse the organization of anti-Israel bias.

In an Oct. 20 New York Times op-ed piece, Bernstein accused the group of condemning Israel for international law violations more than any other country in the region. And he said Israel was suffering because it is far more open than its Arab neighbors, making it easier for rights groups to work.

In its rejection of the allegation, HRW says it’s issued two reports critical of Hamas, but, and this is telling, they admit “we focused a lot on the Gaza war, but that’s because it was a war in which there was a lot of controversy.”

Rather than indicate impartiality to me, this proves that the Islamo-fascist propagandists know what they’re doing. They created the controversy.

Since both sides rejected a U.N. demand for independent inquiries into their behavior during the Gaza war, “both could open themselves up to international war crimes proceedings,” the story notes.

I can’t help wondering where these self-righteous diplomats were when millions of civilians were slaughtered during World War II by many of the same nations now calling for condemnation of the survivors of their war crimes for defending themselves against those bent on finishing the job.

 

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