Human Rights Watch and the demand for honest facts

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The 48 page Human Rights Watch report is available at:
http://hrw.org/reports/2002/israel3/israel0502.pdf

Human Rights Watch has confirmed that at least fifty-two Palestinians were killed as a result of IDF operations in Jenin. This figure may rise as rescue and investigative work proceeds, and as family members detained by Israel are located or released. ... At least twenty-two of those confirmed dead were civilians, including children, physically disabled, and elderly people. At least twenty-seven of those confirmed dead were suspected to have been armed Palestinians ... Some were members of the Palestinian Authority’s (PA) National Security Forces or other branches of the PA police and security forces.

PA police and security forces killed in the line of their duty are classified as combatents. It makes boring or depressing reading as each of other 23 innocent civilian deaths are detailed.

95% killed were not combatants as Israel claims. Human Rights Watch (HRW) and Nightline both say that a massacre in the conventional sense of the word did not occur. However Nightline implies the 'massacre' instead occurred one victim at a time. From the HRW report:

When the bomb exploded, we were all screaming, calling for an ambulance. The soldiers were laughing. We saw the right side of her face was destroyed, and the left side of her shoulder and arm was also wounded.

Human Rights Watch found no evidence to sustain claims of massacres or large-scale extrajudicial executions by the IDF in Jenin refugee camp. However, many of the civilian deaths documented by Human Rights Watch amounted to unlawful or willful killings by the IDF. ... Among the civilian deaths were those of Kamal Zgheir, a fifty-seven-year-old wheelchairbound man who was shot and run over by a tank on a major road outside the camp on April 10, even though he had a white flag attached to his wheelchair;

HRW also found no evidence of mass graves as claimed earlier by Palestinian sources. Nightline also interviews Israeli Defense Force (IDF) soldiers who claim emphatically and with total knowledge that civilians were not used as human shields. HWR and Nightline both claim that this crime was often used by Israeli soldiers.

Kamal Tawalbi ... described how soldiers kept him and his fourteen-year-old son for three hours in the line of fire, using his and his son’s shoulders to rest their rifles as they fired.

HRW quotes a NY Times interview of Israeli soldiers:

... they had used Palestinian civilians to open the doors of homes out of fear of booby-traps: "... We let them [Palestinian civilians] open the door. If he knows it is booby-trapped, he won’t open it."

Page 6 makes these demands on us:

To the government of the United States:
...
· Support efforts to address human rights and international humanitarian law violations by all parties in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, including the establishment of an international presence there whose responsibilities include monitoring, verifying, and reporting publicly and regularly on the compliance by all parties with international human rights and humanitarian law, and provide experts for such an international presence.
· Treat serious and systematic violations of international human rights and humanitarian law by any party as requiring immediate remedy, and ensure that enforcement of human rights and humanitarian law protections are not made subordinate to the outcomes of direct negotiations between the parties to the conflict.
· Seek written assurances from Israel that weapons of U.S. origin, including but not limited to Apache and Cobra helicopter gunships, D-9 armored bulldozers, and TOW anti-tank missiles, are not used to commit
violations of international human rights and humanitarian law in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
· Conduct and make public the results of a comprehensive review of Israeli use of U.S.-origin weapons in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and update this review not less than every six months.
· Restrict Israel’s use in the West Bank and Gaza Strip of any U.S.-origin weapons found to be used in the commission of systematic violations of international human rights and humanitarian law.
· Inform the government of Israel that continued U.S. military assistance requires that the government take clear and measurable steps to halt its security forces’ serious and systematic violations of international human rights and humanitarian law in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. These steps should include conducting transparent and impartial investigations into allegations of serious and systematic violations, making the results public, and holding accountable persons found responsible.
· Monitor and report publicly on the use of U.S.-origin donor resources to ensure that such resources do not support PA agencies or Palestinian groups responsible for serious and systematic violations of
international human rights and humanitarian law.

Israel has already made all such recommendations impossible. HRW, in essence, has called for International troops in Israel to bring about peace. Clearly with Sharon in power, only international troops can bring about peace. The alternative path to peace is tens of deaths daily and equally, on both sides. Arafat's people desperately want international peace keepers. But again, Sharon and Likud are the obstinate and aggressor parties. HRW says that if the US provides weapons, then we have the obligation to verify those weapons are not being used in crimes against humanity. But George Jr demonstrates no backbone to perform this task.

What does Israel describe as a biased UN commission to investigate Jenin - as directed by Human Rights Watch? From The Economist of 4 May 2002:

Israel challenged the impartiality and expertise of the team appointed by Mr Annan: Martti Ahtisaari, a former Finnish president, Sdaka Ogata, a former UN high commissioner for refugees, and Cornelio Sommaruga, a former head of the International Committee of the Red Cross. ... [Israel] also insisted that the team should not call Israeli witnesses independently, but only in co-ordination with the Israeli authorities.

Sound like a coverup? Nixon attempted a similar strategy with White House tapes. The difference. That crook had to answer to legal authorities - the Supreme Court. The Prime Minister of Israel, historically a mass murder, can conduct crimes with impudence since he is the only legal authority and since most Jews will not stand up for human rights and against this racist.

What and why those top level decisions were based upon is detailed in the next post.