More dramatic revelations on Human Rights Watch: Senior Mid-East staffer has fanatical anti-Zionist past
The news about Human Right’s Watch (HRW) and its increasingly open bias against Israel just gets worse and worse. I wrote a few weeks back on the grisly revelations about an HRW delegation holding a fundraising dinner in Saudi Arabia in which ongoing clashes with pro-Israel groups were highlighted as a marketing device. In my previous posting I offered an analysis of the absurd claims (widely reported by the BBC and others) made by HRW about Israeli soldiers allegedly gunning down white-flag wielding Palestinian civilians in Gaza.
Now it has been revealed that Joe Stork, the author of those allegations and the deputy director of HRW’s Middle East and North Africa department, has the kind of past that would put a blush on the face of hardliners in the Palestine Solidarity Campaign.
An article by Noah Pollack in Commentary Magazine (see link below) draws on an expose in the Israeli newspaper Ma’ariv.
The key points are as follows:
** Stork was previously a leading figure at the Middle East Research and Information Project when it put out a statement about the massacre of Israeli atheletes at the Munich olympics including the following: “Munich and similar actions cannot create or substitute for a mass revolutionary movement …But we should comprehend the achievement of the Munich action…It has provided an important boost in morale among Palestinians in the camps.”
** ‘…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.’
** ‘…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.’
** ‘He also labeled Palestinian violence against Israel as “revolutionary potential of the Palestinian masses”—language that was typical of fanatical Marxists.’
** ‘And what about factual accuracy? Stork claimed that Menachem Begin said that, ‘The Palestinians are two-legged animals.” In fact, Begin said that those who come to kill children are “two-legged animals.”’
It is a genuine tragedy that it has come to such a pass at Human Rights Watch. I have said before that I had in the past held HRW in the highest regard and used their reports regularly. But this ongoing trail of revelations about a once respected human rights organisation serves to illustrate just how malign the anti-Israeli agenda can be. It is not only bad for Israel, it is bad for the people and organisations which participate in it.
To read the full article in Commentary Magazine, click here:
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/blogs/index.php/category/contentions
To read another expose on Stork, click here:
http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_context=2&x_outlet=118&x_article=1629
Tags: Israel