Smearing Human Rights Groups

Perhaps the saddest thing about the "pro-Israel" political mobilization in the United States is that it's spurred a lot of demagogic and insane attacks against human rights organizations around the world. New Republic editor in chief Martin Peretz, for example, lights into them for hypothetically failing to report hypothetical human rights violations in Lebanon:

But be sure that neither Human Rights Watch nor Amnesty International will be there to accuse and denounce. After all, the U.S. is not at all involved and neither are the always culpable Israelis. This is war among Arabs so no one really cares who kills whom and how. That is, no one of the professional careers.

This notion that HRW and Amnesty only criticize Israel because they exclusively criticize Israel is ridiculous. Here's an item attacking the government of Bahrain. Here's one attacking the government of Iran. Here's one attacking the government of Egypt. That's all within the past week. And right here is the HRW item about Lebanon that Peretz says HRW would never release -- in English, in Arabic, and in French. These outfits criticize Israel when they believe Israel is committing human rights violations, just as they criticize Egypt, Bahrain, Iran, the United States, Russia, China and everyone else.

This article available online at:

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2007/06/smearing-human-rights-groups/42302/