A leading human rights group, Human Rights Watch, has rejected a claim by its founder that it is biased against Israel. The problem is that the founder, Robert Bernstein, claims that he restricted the focus of HRW to nondemocratic societies, not democracies like Israel. Presumably, Israel cannot be guilty of human rights abuses because it is a democracy.
This incredulous story was published by the BBC:
Rights group denies Israel bias
Robert Bernstein said Human Rights Watch had strayed from its original mandate to scrutinise closed societies, not democracies like Israel.
In an article in the New York Times, he said the organisation had helped to turn Israel into a pariah state.
In response, Human Rights Watch said its reporting on Israel was only a tiny fraction of its work.
Well, what would the Palestinian people say about the notion that Israel as a democracy could not commit human rights abuses, going back 60 years, or just recently, like the massacres that occurred in Lebanon and Gaza, especially Cast Lead late last year whose nature was fully revealed by the UN Goldstone Report?
