Prof. Gerald Steinberg, IBA English News, Shalit and Failure of Human Rights NGOs - YouTube

German program uses Shoah funds to play down Holocaust

BENJAMIN WEINTHAL, JERUSALEM POST CORRESPONDENT 10/14/2011 (h/t Docs Talk) School program is vehemently anti-Israel, NGO Monitor says; main focus was devoted to alleging Israeli violations and immorality.

BERLIN – The German Holocaust Foundation “Remembrance, Responsibility, Future (EVZ)” has used public monies to finance a second anti-Israel high school program that includes elements of Holocaust denial, according to a new report issued on Friday by the Jerusalem-based watchdog organization NGO Monitor.
The new revelations add to the bombshell disclosure in late September that EVZ provided 21,590 euros to a dubious 2010-11 student exchange program between an east German high school (Gerhart Hauptmann) and an Israeli- Arab school in Nazareth (Masar Institute for Education) to produce brochures delegitimizing Israel’s existence. The brochure compared Israel to the former communist East German state and depicted Jewish pupils in distorted and biased terms.

The Jerusalem-based watchdog organization NGO Monitor issued to The Jerusalem Post in early October an eye-popping report about a second EVZ-funded school program in which Holocaust funds were ostensibly misappropriated to finance playing down the severity of the Holocaust and promoting hatred of Israel.
According to the report, between March-July 2011, EVZ contributed funds to a partner agency for a program titled “Human Rights – Rights of Occupation,” with the German (Anne Frank School in Gütersloh) and Palestinian (School of Hope in Ramallah) students.
The NGO Monitor document notes that “while Palestinian participants questioned “whether the Holocaust had really happened to that extent,” the main focus was devoted to alleging Israeli violations and immorality, not on Holocaust education.
In July 2011, the Anne Frank School hosted Hajo Meyer, a Holocaust survivor and anti- Israel activist. In his presentation, Meyer referred to the “criminal State of Israel.” He also “wanted to express that many Jews today feel that no one else suffered like them during the Holocaust, which makes them blind for the suffering of the Palestinians under the occupation.”
Meyer, who lives in Holland, argued that “the earliest cause for anti-Semitism is situated in Jewry.”
The prominent German-Jewish journalist, Henryk M. Broder, has slammed Meyer as an “expert on applied Judeophobia” who traffics in the “brown filth”of the Nazi era.
The head of NGO Monitor, Prof. Gerald Steinberg, told the Post that “the latest revelations about the Remembrance Responsibility Future Foundation are morally shocking and unacceptable. Instead of teaching young Palestinians who are taught to question whether the Holocaust ever happened, the Foundation has created programs that exploit this tragedy as part of the demonization of Israel. The role of Hajo Meyer, an elderly Holocaust survivor, in this effort adds to the moral abuse.”
Steinberg continued: “To say that this contributes to delegitimization of Israel and modern anti-Semitism understates the case. Instead of using the funding to educate about and compensate victims of the Holocaust, the EVZ sponsors programs for German students that reflect the political war against Israel, and greatly distort the Arab-Israeli conflict. German foundations and their officials have a particular obligation to be sensitive to such unacceptable activities.”
According to the website of the German school – named after German-Jewish teenager Anne Frank who was murdered in Auschwitz – from her name a program has been established as a “point of reference for value assessments.”
Post phone and e-mail queries seeking a comment from Gunnar Weykam, a teacher at the school who runs the exchange program, were not answered as to why the school participates in anti- Israel activities and permits the Holocaust to be downplayed. Weykam coordinates the school’s “Palestine Project.”
Anne Herzberg, NGO Monitor’s legal advisor, told the Post: “This program needs much more than changes and evaluation. EVZ must shut down immediately, and only begin again once the entire program, committee members, and staff has been entirely revamped.”
She added that “The German government not only has failed to compensate Holocaust victims – but by its onesided and obsessive focus on alleged Israeli ‘sins,’ it seems that the money has been used to minimize the Jewish experience, while at the same time heightening the inflammatory rhetoric and tension surrounding the conflict.”
Katja Wegner, a spokeswoman for the EVZ, told the Post, that EVZ doled out 17,100 euros for the program, which the Anne Frank school took part in. In a statement issued to the Post, EVZ defended the Anne Frank school exchange program, saying it contributes to a “different perception of Jews through Palestinians” and combats “anti- Semitism and hostility toward Israel.”
Jewish NGOs and academic experts on anti-Semitism in Germany accuse the EVZ with stoking hatred of the Jewish state and ignoring modern expressions of anti-Semitism in Germany.
The EVZ was founded in 2000 with a contribution of 5.2 billion euros by the Federal German government and German industry to compensate former slave and forced laborers during the Nazi period.
NGO Monitor cited in its report on the pro-Palestinian activities of the Anne Frank school that “as part of this program, the German students concentrated ‘on article 17 of the UN Human Rights Charter of 1948, in which the right to ‘own property by yourself as well as together with others’ was established. The German students have discovered and documented through conversations with victims, lawyers, human-rights workers and peace activists, whether, that and how the State of Israel violates this right.”
According to NGO Monitor: “During an August 2011 meeting with the mayor of Gütersloh, the students ‘discussed the question what our responsibility for the German past means and if it doesn’t implicate that we need to criticize all human rights violations, no matter who commits them.”
The German students met with Farida Amad in April 2011, during a visit to the “women’s society Inash-Il- Osra” in Al-Bireh. Amad said “Maybe we can’t liberate Palestine in 50, 80 or 100 years, but I’m 100 percent convinced that there will be a time when we get it back,” noted the NGO Monitor report.
Multiple e-mails and phone queries to Volker Beck, a Green Party deputy who sits on the EVZ Board of Trustees and frequently issues statements about countering anti-Semitism and hatred of Israel, were not returned in connection with financial mismanagement at EVZ.

Human Rights Watch and the selling of Gaddafi

Gerald Steinberg and Anne Herzberg March 10, 2011 Jerusalem Post

To read the original article, click here.

In 2009, Sarah Leah Whitson, director of the Middle East and North Africa division at Human Rights Watch (HRW), visited Libya, where she claimed to have discovered a “Tripoli spring,” led by Muammar Gaddafi’s son Saif al-Islam. In two articles, she praised him for creating an “expanded space for discussion and debate.”
As a top official of a prominent human rights watchdog, Whitson’s endorsement gave credibility to this fictitious reform movement. Two years later, and weeks after the rebellion began and the Gaddafi regime had killed hundreds, if not thousands, Whitson belatedly reversed course, and in a February 24 Los Angeles Times op-ed acknowledged the façade of Saif’s human rights “reforms.”
In contrast to her earlier praise, Whitson wrote that “most Libyans we spoke with never had much faith that Muammar Gaddafi would learn new tricks, or that the announced reforms were anything more than an endless loop of promises made and broken.”
Clearly, this reversal came far too late to help the Libyans, and reflects the wider moral failure of HRW in the Middle East. In her wildly misnamed “Tripoli Spring,” (Foreign Policy, May 27, 2009), Whitson extolled Saif – who has since vowed to “fight until the last man, the last woman, the last bullet” against the Libyan protesters – as “the real impetus for transformation” via his Gaddafi Foundation and two semi-private papers.
Her embrace continued after a second visit in December 2009, when she referred to Gaddafi’s heir-apparent as one of the “forces of reform,” comparing his foundation to HRW (“Postcard from... Tripoli,” Foreign Policy in Focus, February, 11, 2010). Although HRW officials were placed under constant surveillance, and its press conference was cut short by government agents and ended in “pandemonium,” Whitson still spun her trip in a positive light.
In January 2010, when the regime imposed censorship on the Internet and blocked access to YouTube, Whitson was silent. At the same time, the government established a body to monitor journalists, and closed the two semi-private papers lauded by Whitson in “Tripoli Spring.”
But no correction was issued by HRW.
Whitson’s blindness was further reflected in the case of Fathi Eljahmi, Libya’s most prominent dissident, imprisoned, tortured and killed in 2009. His brother condemned both Amnesty International and HRW for hesitating “to advocate publicly for Fathi’s case” for fear they would “antagonize Gaddafi.”
He reserved special condemnation for Whitson’s reference to Saif ’s charity as a “spring,” observing that the foundation “is actively menacing my brother’s family. Some family members continue to endure interrogation, denial of citizenship papers and passports, round-the- clock surveillance and threats of rape and physical liquidation.”
But Whitson and HRW chose to remain silent.
In contrast to Whitson’s promotion of the “reformer” façade, others were not taken in. Journalist Michael Totten, who also visited Libya, compared the country to North Korea and Turkmenistan, pointedly noting that Saif “is ideologically committed to preserving his father’s prison state system... Gullible diplomats and journalists may sincerely believe he’s a reformer, but a close look at his own statements proves that he’s lying when he passes himself off as moderate.”
Whitson’s endorsement of Gaddafi’s son is not the only example of her cozying up to repressive regimes. In May 2009, Whitson led a fund-raising trip to Saudi Arabia where she marketed HRW’s work combating pro- Israel “pressure groups” to solicit funds from “prominent members of Saudi society” including the ruling Shura Council (the religious police).
In May 2010, Whitson had a meeting with Hamas Minister of Justice Faraj Alghoul. As in the Libyan and Saudi cases, Whitson took the soft approach to massive human-rights violations. Instead, she assured Alghoul that she was visiting Gaza “to listen to all parties directly so she will prepare more objective and impartial reports,” and promised that HRW’s next report would allege Israeli violations of international law.
Beirut was next on Whitson’s itinerary, and during a November 2010 trip she praised “the Lebanese sophistication for human rights.”
In contrast, HRW Lebanon director Nadim Houry condemned the lack of effectual and accountable state institutions, and the absence of political will to implement change. Two months after Whitson’s proclamation of support, Hezbollah took control of the government to block cooperation with the UN tribunal investigating the murder of prime minister Rafik Hariri in 2006.
In each of these cases – Libya, Saudi Arabia, Gaza and Lebanon – Whitson has displayed behavior completely lacking in moral leadership required for any organization claiming to support human rights. In addition, copying the strategy of the Arab dictatorships, year after year HRW has maintained an obsessive focus on allegations directed at Israel. Its website includes only 10 pages on Libya, but more than 40 on Israel.
As HRW founder Robert Bernstein stressed, the “plight of 350 million people” ruled by the most “brutal, closed and autocratic” regimes, “who would most benefit from the kind of attention a large and well-financed international human-rights organization can provide is being ignored as Human Rights Watch’s Middle East division prepares report after report on Israel.”
As long as ideologues like Whitson are responsible for HRW’s agenda in the Middle East, the spin will continue, at the expense of universal human rights.
Gerald Steinberg is on the faculty of Bar-Ilan University and president of NGO Monitor, the Jerusalem-based research organization. Anne Herzberg is NGO Monitor’s legal adviser.

via ngo-monitor.org

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EXPOSED: Sarah Leah Whitson, the head of 'Human Rights Watch

NGO Monitor has called on Sarah Leah Whitson, the head of 'Human Rights Watch's Mideast and North Africa division, to resign, on the grounds that she misled the public regarding the nature of the Gadhafi regime in Libya and the intentions of Gadhafi's son, Seif al-Islam.

Following Human Rights Watch's (HRW) neglect of brutal human rights violations in Libya and false claims and cover-ups about prospects for reforms there, NGO Monitor today called for the immediate resignation of Sarah Leah Whitson, HRW's director of its Middle East and North Africa (MENA) division. HRW's MENA division failed to devote the necessary resources to speaking out against human rights violations by oppressive Middle East regimes, including Saudi Arabia, Hamas, Lebanon, and most notably, Libya. Recent statements by Whitson regarding Seif Islam, a son of Moammar Qaddafi, demonstrate that she consistently whitewashed the reality in Libya and further embarrassed her organization.
"Human Rights Watch, and specifically MENA director Sarah Leah Whitson, has soft-peddled Qaddafi's oppressive acts and offered no help to the Libyan people," says Anne Herzberg, legal advisor for NGO Monitor, a research institution that tracks NGOs. "Whitson was well aware of the atrocities committed by the Qaddafi regime, but she chose to present the façade that Qaddafi's son was prepared to implement 'reforms.' The events in Libya over the past weeks reveal Whitson's gross incompetence. She has failed to retract her previously misleading statements. She cannot continue to head the MENA division, and we call for her immediate resignation."
NGO Monitor notes that Whitson held a press conference last year in Libya that was abruptly halted and ended in "pandemonium." Yet, Whitson spun her trip and the event in a positive light in her 2010 "Postcard from Tripoli," in which she said that Libya had a "moment of opportunity." Even more egregious is Whitson's enthusiastic marketing of the Qaddafi regime from 2009's Tripoli Spring (published in Foreign Policy):

For the first time in memory, change is in the air in Libya. The brittle atmosphere of repression has started to fracture, giving way to expanded space for discussion and debate, proposals for legislative reform, and even financial compensation for families of the hundreds of men killed in a prison riot a decade ago.
Many Libyans say the changes were unavoidable in the face of the open satellite and Internet access of the past decade.

These assessments differ sharply from the Libya Whitson now admits she saw, as part of her attempts to rewrite the record. In contrast to the earlier fiction, she recently wrote "most Libyans we spoke with never had much faith that Moammar Qaddafi would learn new tricks, or that the announced reforms were anything more than an endless loop of promises made and broken."
"What Sarah Leah Whitson admits she knew about the Qaddafi family's fraudulent reform agenda completely contradicts statements during her Tripoli trip," says Prof. Gerald Steinberg, president of NGO Monitor. "Reform was never on the horizon and Seif Islam was simply seeking to validate the eventual transfer of power to his hands, using allies like Whitson. Her attempts to give a facelift to MENA's treatment of Libya is indicative of the division's approach to many of the repressive regimes in the region, including Saudi Arabia, Syria, Hamas, and others."

Maybe Whitson was just trying to raise money from the Libyans. She's really good at that.
Read the whole thing.

via israelmatzav.blogspot.com

Another Feminist BITES THE DUST!

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Out of Context... but that is the point.  EXPOSED in a good way.  NOT in a stinky globalist way image via Daniel Ortega Muñoz