ICC prosecutor rejects PMW report

Video Of The Week- Lies About Israel Lead to Lies About Everything-https://tinyurl.com/yd2uk7tr

Maurice Hirsch Adv. and Itamar Marcus  | May 14, 2020

For The Full Article Go To - https://palwatch.org/page/17911

In a highly irregular tweet, the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), Fatou Bensouda responded to the content of Palestinian Media Watch’s recent report, which demonstrated her improper collusion with the Palestinian Authority. Based on numerous sources, PMW documented different aspects of her interactions with them, including pictures from the meeting of Bensouda with PA Prime Minister Muhammad Shtayyeh. Among other things, PMW cited statements of PLO official Saeb Erekat, who chairs a special PA committee responsible for follow up with the court, which includes members of Hamas and other Palestinian terrorists groups. Shtayyeh’s meeting cited above with Bensouda, was after the prosecutor had already been notified that the PA committee included members of Hamas. (See below.)

Bensouda’s response does not mention PMW’s report, nor did she deny any of the evidence PMW supplied. Her tweet merely claimed that her “office is executing its mandate with utmost professionalism, independence & objectivity,” without explaining the need to all of a sudden emphasize that. However, referring to the public criticism following PMW’s report, she added: “Any insinuation or assertion to the contrary is simply misled and unfounded.” [Twitter account of Int’l Criminal Court, May 8, 2020] 

Specifically, she did not refute her contacts with the Palestinians, nor did she relate to the fact that the special PA committee headed by Saeb Erekat, whose purpose is to be the liaison with the ICC, includes members of Hamas and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – both internationally recognized terrorist groups. Both these terror groups have unquestionably committed crimes for which they could be prosecuted in the ICC. 

She did not deny the allegation in the Jordanian news report that she told PA officials that her application to the court was a sham, submitted only to protect the “ICC's public image” or that the decision of the court “is a foregone conclusion”. 

  

Similarly, she did not deny meeting with Palestinian PM Shtayyeh, who may himself be a suspect in the criminal court as the one who is personally responsible for the payment of financial rewards to terrorists. Bensouda herself has already confirmed that by paying terrorists the PA has “encouraged and provided financial incentives for the commission of violence through their provision of payments to the families of Palestinians who were involved, in particular, in carrying out attacks against Israeli citizens, and under the circumstances, the payment of such stipends may give rise to Rome Statute crimes.” (ICC Prosecutor Report on Preliminary Examination Activities, 2019)

     

In an interview with the Times of Israel after submitting her original request to the court, Bensouda was asked: “The PLO’s Saeb Erekat has said publically that the Palestinian committee dealing with the ICC was made up of all Palestinian factions, including Hamas and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Did you or members of your office meet with Hamas or PFLP representatives?” Bensouda responded: “My office has not met with any individuals identified as representing Hamas or the PFLP.” [Times of Israel, Jan. 13, 2020]

However, one month later, she violated that pledge. When Bensouda met in February 2020 with PA Prime Minister Shtayyeh (see picture above) it was already after she had been made aware that the PA committee to the ICC included recognized terrorists. Why did the ICC prosecutor agree to meet with Shtayyeh when she knew that the PA committee his government established and represents is made up of known Hamas and PFLP terrorists? This of course in addition to the fact that he is a potential defendant himself for his own crimes of paying salaries to terrorists.

It’s time for the ICC prosecutor to publish a serious response in which she doesn’t just claim impartiality and professionalism, but in which she answers all the serious questions pointing to collusion with the PA that PMW has raised.

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Learn To Speak Up For Israel

Video Of The Week - Miss Iraq drops bomb at U.N. - https://tinyurl.com/yycrm9uk

 We are pleased to share the lessons learned, and the language to use in addressing many myths and lies about Israel. This information comes from a workshop organized by the CAEF Event Committee with Dr. Mordechai Kedar, Arabic and Middle East specialist from Bar Ilan University, Israel. The 30 participants in the training, now have greater confidence to respond to challenging questions, often posed by friends, family members or colleagues in dialogue about Israel. We offer this Q & A to all readers.

Q.  If it’s a colonial project, does Israel have the right to exist?

A.

·        What is a colonial project? What is Canada if not a colonial project? 

·        The Jews were in Israel, for 3000 years, no other ethnic/religious group is still there from Biblical times.

·        If I return, when will you return to your homeland?

·        Jews did not exterminate people who were already there.

·        Jerusalem is the oldest capital in the world, the Jewish capital, and has never been the capital of any other nation.

Q.  How can you defend the occupation and settlements?

A.

·        What other country has given land back after a defensive war?

·        No other lands of a winning nation have ever been returned. e.g. Should Texas go back to Mexico? Do you support the occupation of Western Sahara, Tibet, Crimea, and if not, what are you doing about it? 

·        In order to be given sovereignty, land has to be taken from a sovereign entity. Judea and Samaria were not sovereign. There are many areas of border disputes, eg. Kashmir.  Are you lobbying for its return or conflict resolution?

·        In all other areas of dispute, countries maintain relations. 

·        “Occupation” is a claim which is a pretext for lack of peace. If Arab Palestinians believe they are rightly living on their own land, how can they claim an occupation? What of the lands illegally settled by Arabs in Judea and Samaria, in some cases creating towns with no residents?

·        Note the illegal “occupation” of Judea and Samaria by Jordan took place from 1948-67, when it was then liberated in defensive war after the massacre of Jews.

Q.  Shouldn’t Arabs have a Free Palestine?

A.

·        Yes, free from the “Arab occupation, Hamas and Palestinian Authority” which deny them basic human rights.

Q.  How can you say there is no Palestinian people?

A.

·        Are you referring to the Philistines? The Arabs living in Israel are not those people.

·        Are you referring to the various tribes? The people from other countries eg. Egypt, Iraq?

·        Are you referring to Arabs in Jordan or those Jordan expelled?

·        What is the Palestinian culture, language?

·        There is no ‘P’ in Arabic – so they could never have been called ‘Palestinian’.

·        There are numerous tribes, not a nation and these tribes are not cooperating with one another, and they are not likely to become a nation.

·        Nov 29, 1947, General Assembly voted on a Jewish State and an Arabic State, not a Palestine state. Both peoples lived in the Mandate for Palestine, formally called Syria Palestina by the Romans.  There are 2 Palestinian people – Israelis + Jordanians, though the latter are ruled by the Hashemite tribe.

·        Consider this: If it had been an Arab country, would Arabs give up the right of return after 50 years, 100 years, 1000, 2000? If not, you now understand the Jewish position as Israel was historically a Jewish country. It was however, never an Arab country, even pre-WWI, the interwar years or WWII. 

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The Accidental Zionist

Video of the week -  Africa: Through the Eyes of an Israeli 8 year old http://tinyurl.com/y7nffp4m

by Gary C. Gambill

The Jerusalem Post http://tinyurl.com/y7jsxw3m

4-9-2017

I was staunchly pro-Palestinian when I arrived at Georgetown University to begin studying for an MA in Arab Studies in the fall of 1995, or at least I thought so.

I had read Thomas Friedman's From Beirut to Jerusalem in college a few years earlier and accepted the basic conclusion that Israel's unwillingness to compromise had become the primary obstacle to Middle East peace.

If any place might have been expected to shepherd this eager young mind into accepting "progressive" orthodoxy on Israel, it would have been Georgetown's Center for Contemporary Arab Studies (CCAS).

There I received a solid grounding in post-colonial theory, revisionist historiography of Israel, and so forth.

Radical though their views may have been, I don't recall many CCAS faculty caring much what I thought of the Arab-Israeli conflict, and few were involved in the kind of campus activism that is de rigueur among academics today. The roster of guest lecturers hosted at CCAS's spacious, elegantly appointed boardroom was another story, however, and notices for anti-Israel events throughout the Washington, DC, area were routinely advertised on the center's bulletin board. Going to them was the cool thing to do, and I attended more than I care to admit.

However, while I remained sympathetic to the Palestinian experience, I found interacting with other sympathizers increasingly intolerable. My immersion into the anti-Israeli movement brought me face to face with peer antisemitism for the first time, primarily among European and American students who shared much the same liberal outlook as myself.

Oddly enough, I don't recall any disparaging talk about Jews (albeit plenty about Israel) from Arab students at Georgetown, some of whom went out of their way to befriend Jewish students and faculty. It was Western students who said the darndest things.

The final straw came when I arrived with friends at an Israeli embassy protest during the September 1996 Western Wall Tunnel riots, when organizers led the crowd in chanting "Bibi, Hitler, just the same / Only difference is the name." I left in disgust, then sent an email to CCAS students and faculty inviting anyone who felt Hitler was no worse than then (and current) Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to join me on a visit to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum on the other side of town. There were no takers, though several students – including two who had enthusiastically participated in the rally – privately applauded the letter.

Truth be told, though, the biggest problem with the pro-Palestinian movement wasn't so much the antisemitism as it was the varying degrees of willful blindness displayed by its foremost advocates both to the suffering of other ethno-sectarian groups in the region (particularly Kurds and Christians) and to Palestinian suffering at the hands of villains other than Israel, particularly those seen as leading the fight against the Jewish state. There was more than antisemitism at work here.

This blindness owed much to the fact that CCAS and other Middle East studies departments were becoming increasingly inundated with lavish grants from Arab governments.

Having fed their own citizens a steady diet of propaganda blaming all the region's ills on Israel, Mideast autocrats now promoted this narrative abroad very effectively.

This was painfully evident when Lebanese human rights attorney Muhammad Mugraby traveled to the United States in November 1997 for a short lecture tour at the invitation of Human Rights Watch. As it often does when hosting guests from the Middle East, HRW asked if CCAS would be interested in hearing Mugraby speak.

Yes, the answer came back from a CCAS administrator failing to see why a Muslim discussing Lebanon in the wake of Israel's devastating Grapes of Wrath campaign the year before would be a problem, so Mugraby was scheduled to speak at the center.

That was, until the day of the talk, when (I'm guessing) CCAS faculty learned that Mugraby was speaking about the abduction and incommunicado detention of Lebanese and Palestinians by Syrian forces then occupying all but a sliver of Lebanon (with the blessing of most Arab and Western governments). The location was abruptly changed from the CCAS boardroom to on ordinary classroom outside the center. No faculty were in attendance.

At that time, I was doing freelance web development work (a little html knowledge went a long way back then) for, among others, an NGO stridently critical of Israeli policy vis-à-vis the Palestinians, and got to know its Jewish-American director.

When I mentioned the Mugraby story, he confided in me that a longtime Palestinian friend of his had been imprisoned incommunicado for many years in Hafez Assad's Syria, which then held far more Palestinians in its prisons than Israel, and under far worse conditions.

Then why focus on Israel, I asked. "I can't do anything for him," he explained.

Alongside the antisemitism and the money, this idea of Israel as the low-hanging fruit for do-gooders wanting to improve the Middle East was the third foundation stone in what became a vast conspiracy of silence about how the region works during the 1990s.

The well-intentioned flocked in droves to the belief that Israeli-Palestinian peace was achievable provided Israel made the requisite concessions, and that this would liberate the Arab-Islamic world from a host of other problems allegedly arising from it: bloated military budgets, intolerance of dissent, Islamic extremism, you name it.

Why tackle each of these problems head on when they can be alleviated all at once when Israel is brought to heel? Twenty years later, the Middle East is suffering the consequences of this conspiracy of silence.

I don't have a particularly rose-colored view of Israel's history (or that of any other nation-state, including my own), nor do I put much stock in the religio-cultural attachments that make many Israelis resistant to sweeping concessions.

I just don't buy into the "theory of everything" where Israel is concerned. The particulars of when and how Israelis and Palestinians work out their differences don't matter that much, and insofar as they do Netanyahu is among the least of the complications getting there.

That makes me a hardline Zionist, liberal friends tell me.

All right, I guess.

PALESTINIAN TERRORISM AND ISRAELI SELF-DEFENSE ARE NOT THE SAME THING.

By Andrew C. McCarthy 17,10, 2015

For the full article go to:  http://tinyurl.com/npedha3

The next intifada is on, and the Obama administration, as one would expect, is on the wrong side.

There has been a spike in Palestinian terrorism over the past few weeks. One has to call it a spike because Palestinian terrorism is always thrumming — there’s never a real stop. About 70 Israelis have recently been mauled, and some killed, in over two dozen sneak attacks, mostly by stabbing.

 The ultimate cause of the rampage is the Palestinian determination to eradicate Israel’s existence as a Jewish state by a two-track campaign of internal violence and international political pressure. As I’ve previously detailed, this is the “one-state solution” preferred by Islamists and Leftists. It is abetted, wittingly or not, by the “two-state solution,” a bipartisan Beltway obsession that entails pressuring Israel to accommodate next-door neighbors who will be satisfied with nothing less than burning its house down.

The proximate cause for the current bloodletting is incitement by Palestinian political leadership, particularly Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas (also known as “Abu Mazen”).

The ugly reality is that Islamists and the radical pan-Arab Left — those in the Nasser-Arafat mold — are in competition to prove who is the most anti-Semitic, a coveted distinction in their culture. Abbas and his Fatah party must compete with Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood’s Palestinian terror branch, whose charter explicitly frames the destruction of Israel and the killing of Jews as dictates of Allah.

Over the past few weeks, he has incited rioting at the Temple Mount in the Old City of Jerusalem, falsely accusing Jews of defiling and attempting to seize the site. Among his gems is the admonition that Jews “have no right to desecrate [the al-Aqsa Mosque and other Temple Mount sites] with their filthy feet.” The purported secular moderate went on to out-Hamas Hamas, lauding Muslims who physically attack Jews attempting to tour the area:

Each drop of blood that was spilled in Jerusalem is pure blood as long as it’s for the sake of Allah. Every shahid [i.e., martyr] will be in heaven and every wounded person will be rewarded by Allah’s will.

Abbas’s diatribe can have had no purpose but to ignite yet another round of attacks — not a “cycle of violence,” as the State Department describes it, but a unilateral terror campaign. Indeed, Abbas is merely repeating his performance of a year ago, when he exhorted Palestinians to prevent Jews “from entering the holy site in every way possible” — a summons to jihad that was broadcast repeatedly on Palestinian television.

To describe as utter nonsense the claim that Israel is trying to seize the Temple Mount would be an insult to utter nonsense.

The Old City’s iconic edifices are among the world’s holiest sites for Jews, Christians, and Muslims. Under Israeli control, the sites have been opened to tourists of all faiths. Yet, in deference to Islam’s notoriously hair-trigger sensitivities, Israel placed the Temple Mount under the management of a Muslim waqf (a Jordanian trust). Furthermore, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly and emphatically committed to maintaining the status quo.

So what did the Obama administration do? As the violence raged, a top State Department spokesman, retired Navy admiral John Kirby, addressed the situation. “Well, certainly,” he claimed (the word is a verbal tic for this highly uncertain man), “the status quo has not been observed, which has led to a lot of the violence.”

This statement was patently untrue and, under the circumstances, recklessly irresponsible — so much so that Kirby ended up retracting his “certainly” statement on Twitter, burbling about how he “did not intend to suggest” what he had so clearly said.

 Yup, those Israeli terrorists have only themselves to blame.

Well, if moral equivalence is the order of the day, we should add that Kirby’s boss, John Kerry, was just as reprehensible as Kirby. In a speech at Harvard University, our redoubtable secretary of state opined that the Palestinian rampage was catalyzed by . . . wait for it . . . “a massive increase in settlements” purportedly built by Israelis over the past two years. This, he says, threatens — all together now — the “two-state solution.”

 Of course, Israel is not massively increasing settlements; it is constructing additional housing on existing settlements for growing communities. Moreover, the fact that the settlements are unrelated to the ongoing violence is open and notorious: Abbas incited the attacks, he is quite proud of having done so, and he continues to lionize the attackers.

An outraged Netanyahu sized up the situation this way:

As far as settlements are concerned — this is not a result of a massive wave of settlements because there’s not been a massive wave of settlements. . . . And second, . . . the facts count. It is the very killers themselves who explain why they’re doing what they’re doing. They leave behind Facebook pages in which they cite and repeat Palestinian incitement about the al-Aqsa Mosque. All the lies that are said about us trying to bring down the mosque or change the status quo, they cite that as the reason for their activity. And you can’t fit a false template on reality. . . .

This is what is driving this current wave. I’m sorry. The old models don’t apply. There’s a Palestinian attempt to inflame violence based on the false allegations that we are changing the Temple Mount, now on the false allegations that we’re executing innocent civilians. It doesn’t wash. And I expect our friends around the world to look at these facts, recognize them for what they are and, I think, to condemn these Palestinian attacks and to demand from Abu Mazen to stop the incitement and to restore calm.

Dream on, Mr. Prime Minister.

 As to Kerry’s claim that settlement building provoked the violence, it was left to Kirby to rationalize that the secretary did not really mean what he said — an occupational hazard for Kerry spokesmen, but one Kirby “certainly” is the perfect guy to handle. The problem, alas, is that Abbas means exactly what he says: What Israel’s enemies want is the one-state solution.

 Video of the day: A Muslim Zionist Speaks out in the Knesset! http://tinyurl.com/plp8n8r

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WHAT ABOUT ARAB WAR CRIMES AGAINST PALESTINIANS?

by Khaled Abu Toameh, 5/1/2015

http://tinyurl.com/p9zt6hu

And who ever heard of the case of Zaki al-Hobby, a 17-year old Palestinian who was shot and killed last weekend by Egyptian border guards? Had he been shot by Israeli soldiers on the other side of the border, the EU and UN would have called for an international commission of inquiry.

The stories of the Palestinians tortured to death in an Arab prison have also failed to win the attention of the Western media. Nor have the EU and the UN, which called for an investigation into the death of Abu Ein -- who died of a heart attack while in a confrontation with an Israeli soldier -- deemed it necessary to tackle the plight of the Palestinians being killed and tortured to death in Syria and other Arab countries.

As far as the Palestinian Authority is concerned — and the media, the EU, the UN and human rights groups — the only "war crimes" are being committed by Israelis, and not by Arabs who are killing, torturing and displacing tens of thousands of Palestinians. And all this is happening while the international community and media continue to display an obsession only with everything connected to Israel.

More than 2,500 Palestinians have been killed since the beginning of the conflict in Syria three years ago, according to a report published this week by the Working Group for Palestinians in Syria. It revealed that 2,596 Palestinians have been killed since the beginning of the conflict in that country in 2011.

But this is a news item that has hardly found its way into mainstream media in the West. Even Arab media outlets have almost entirely ignored the report about Palestinian casualties in Syria.

The reason for this apathy, of course, is clear. The Palestinians in Syria were killed by Arabs and not as a result of the conflict with Israel.

Journalists covering the Middle East do not believe that this is an important story because of the absence of any Israeli role in the killings.

Arabs slaughtering, executing and torturing Palestinians is not sensational enough to grab a headline in a major Western or Arab newspaper. That is why most Middle East correspondents have chosen to turn a blind eye to the report.

According to the report, the victims include 157 women who were killed in the fighting between Bashar Assad's army and various opposition groups in Syria. It also said that 268 Palestinians were killed by snipers, while another 84 were summarily executed. Another 984 Palestinians were killed when their homes and neighborhoods were shelled by the Syrian army and the opposition groups.

The report also reminded the international community that the Palestinian Yarmouk refugee camp near Damascus has been under siege by the Syrian army for the past 547 days. Approximately 160 residents of the camp have died as a result of the siege, the report said.

It also pointed out that the camp has been without electricity for more than 620 days. Camp residents have also been cut off from water for the past 117 days, the report added.

In addition to the deaths, some 80,000 Palestinians have fled their homes in Syria due to the ongoing conflict. Nearly 15,000 have crossed the border to Jordan, while another 42,000 have fled to Lebanon, the report disclosed.

As if that were not enough, last week Muslim terrorists executed six Palestinians from Yarmouk camp after finding them guilty of "blasphemy."

A senior PLO official in Syria, Anwar Abdel Hadi, said that the Palestinians were executed by the Al-Qaeda-affiliated An-Nusra terror group.

Abdel Hadi said that only 15,000 Palestinians remain in the refugee camp, which until three years ago was home to some 175,000 people.

Another report published recently revealed that 264 Palestinians have died as a result of torture in Syrian government prisons over the past few years.

The most recent deaths in Syrian prisons occurred last month, when three more Palestinians died after being tortured. The three were identified as Bila al-Zari, Mohamed Omar and Mohamed Masriyeh.

These Palestinians were arrested by the Syrian authorities on suspicion of helping anti-Assad forces in different parts of the country.

The stories of the Palestinians tortured to death in an Arab prison have also failed to win the attention of the Western media. Had any one of them died in an Israeli prison or in a confrontation with Israeli soldiers, his story and photo would have appeared on the front page of many newspapers and magazines in the U.S., Canada and Europe.

By contrast, when a top Fatah official, Ziad Abu Ein, recently died of a heart attack after an altercation with Israeli soldiers in the West Bank, his story immediately caught the attention of the international media and human rights organizations. Many foreign journalists covering the Middle East covered the story of Abu Ein from every possible angle and conducted interviews with his family members and friends.

In an incident widely reported by international media, Fatah official Ziad Abu Ein (center) is shown suffering a heart attack while sitting on the ground, moments after an altercation with Israeli soldiers. Abu Ein later died.

But the Palestinians who are being killed and tortured to death in Syria and other Arab countries have never received the same attention from the same journalists and human rights activists. Nor have the EU and UN, which called for an investigation into the death of Abu Ein, deemed it necessary to tackle the plight of the Palestinians in Syria.

And who has heard of the case of Zaki Al-Hobby, a 17-year-old Palestinian who was shot and killed last weekend by Egyptian border guards? The Palestinian teenager was killed because he came too close to the border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt. Witnesses said he was shot in the back and died instantly.

Once again, Al-Hobby's story has hardly received any coverage because Israel was not involved in that incident. Had he been shot by Israeli soldiers on the other side of the border, the EU and UN would have called for an international commission of inquiry. But the teenager was unfortunate because he was shot by Egyptian soldiers, making his story "insignificant" in the eyes of the international community and media.

That Palestinians are being killed by Arabs does not seem to bother even the Palestinian Authority, whose leaders are busy these days threatening to file "war crimes" charges against Israel with the International Criminal Court. As far as the Palestinian Authority is concerned — and the media, the EU, the UN and human rights groups — the only "war crimes" are being committed by Israelis, and not by Arabs who are killing, torturing and displacing tens of thousands of Palestinians. And all this is happening while the international community and media continue to display an obsession only with everything connected to Israel.

BLACKLISTING OF PRO-ISRAEL ORGANIZATION BY ASSOCIATED PRESS

By David Bernstein 2/12/2014

For the full article see; http://tinyurl.com/nllnlz7  

Former AP journalist Matti Friedman wrote an article this past Summerabout how the media frames the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians for an online magazine called Tablet. To his surprise, it went viral, with almost one hundred thousand Facebook shares. It was recommended at the VC by David Post and me. Many people think it’s the single best article ever written on the topic, in part because it provides a rare insider perspective, from someone who actually worked for a major media company’s Jerusalem bureau.

Friedman is back with an even longer and, I think, even more revealing article on the same topic, this time in The Atlantic. Among other things, he ruminates about how many Israel correspondents act not as objective journalists, but as part of class of mostly foreign elites who live in Israel or the territories and have taken up the Palestinian cause. This class includes the employees of international organizations based in the Palestinians territories, and several left-wing Israeli NGOs.

Friedman points out that these highly influential organizations are almost never subjected to any real scrutiny by the reporters who rely on them as objective sources. And indeed, the Associated Press, according to Friedman, actually banned its journalists from interviewing Gerald Steinberg, an American-Israeli professor who runs the watchdog organization NGO Monitor out of Jerusalem. Here’s the relevant paragraph:

Around this time, a Jerusalem-based group called NGO Monitor was battling the international organizations condemning Israel after the Gaza conflict, and though the group was very much a pro-Israel outfit and by no means an objective observer, it could have offered some partisan counterpoint in our articles to charges by NGOs that Israel had committed “war crimes.” But the bureau’s explicit orders to reporters were to never quote the group or its director, an American-raised professor named Gerald Steinberg. In my time as an AP writer moving through the local conflict, with its myriad lunatics, bigots, and killers, the only person I ever saw subjected to an interview ban was this professor.

Long-time readers will recall that I’ve relied on NGO Monitor’s work in the past. Indeed, one of the most consequential “scoops” I’ve had as a blogger, that Human Rights Watch Middle East director Sarah Leah Whitson fundraised among rich Saudi Arabians with a pledge to use the money to counter pro-Israel forces in the West, came from NGO Monitor. My blog post on this, reprinted at the Wall Street Journal’s website, set off a controversy about HRW’s anti-Israel bias that has yet to fully recede (and assuredly won’t until someone less maniacally anti-Israel than Whitson and her boss Kenneth Roth is in charge).