Monday, July 28, 2008
- The French court’s dismissal of the libel case brought by France 2 TV, in response to evidence that the death of Muhammad al-Dura was staged, has increased the examination of the NGO campaigns that propelled this issue.
- The unquestioned repetition of claims by Palestinian “eyewitnesses” without further investigation reflects the standard pattern used by Amnesty International and HRW in condemning Israel for alleged human rights violations.
- Human Rights Watch (HRW) published a report that labeled al Dura’s alleged death as “a case of indiscriminate and illegal use of force.” HRW’s lengthy report based on “the accounts of eyewitnesses” simply repeated the claims of the Palestinian cameraman for France 2, without any independent verification.
- HRW’s press release (November 21 2000) ostensibly condemned a Palestinian bombing attack on an Israeli school bus, in which a number of teachers and children were killed and injured. But most of this document refers to the “indiscriminate or excessive use of force by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF),” citing the al Dura allegations, and anonymous witnesses.
- Amnesty International claimed that al Dura was deliberately targeted, and repeated Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) claims, with no supporting evidence.
- Amnesty also used this unverified case as evidence of “long-standing patterns of human rights violation suffered almost exclusively by Palestinians at the hands of the Israeli forces.”
- The image of al-Dura was a central icon at the NGO Forum of the 2001 Durban Conference, in which both NGO superpowers played a central role. The father, Jamal, was a featured speaker in Durban.
Being an NGO means never having to say you're sorry.
One of these days I will understand how the Left can make such lies and get away with it. When anyone else tells the truth, the Left calls it a lie, but they can't understand how to tell the truth themselves.
I am confused.
I guess that since I prefer to tell the truth, I can never be a reporter or a Leftist. kind of a good thing!
Thanks for this look at how these useful idiots work.
Bruce,
What's "true" for one person can be false for another. The wise person realizes that they don't have all of the answers and continues to search.
"I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing."
-Socrates
#2 David:
Daoud,Knock it off with the cultural relativism crap. We're not dealing here with differing descriptions an elephant by blind men. There are objective realities. Was Mahammed Al Dura shot by the IDF or not? The forensic evidence is unassailable, and it overwhelmingly rejects the claim.
The facts are that the Al Dura incident was staged, Charles Enderlin knew it to be false and the image of Al Dura was usefully employed by Islamists to foment violence -- a lot of murder and mayhem ensued from the pretext of Al Dura's "martyrdom."
To claim otherwise is to live in an alternate reality or have a very loose relationship to the truth, one where you accept a statement as true if it furthers your objectives, regardless of the facts.
If you believe the Al Dura story, you'll probably tell me about the Jenin massacre, about the Israeli shells that killed the family on Gaza Beach and other charges against Israel that have been proven to be false.
Continuing to suspend judgment on Al Dura puts you in company with those who "research" the question of whether the Holocaust happened or those who say JFK was not killed by Lee Harvey Oswald (there are so many wonderful conspiracy theories to choose from: Cubans, Mafia, Teamsters). Do you side with the truthers who say no Jews died on 9/11 or that the horrors in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania that day were an inside job?
Healthy skepticism is one thing. Giving the benefit of the doubt when dealing with uncertainty or ambiguity is healthy and reasonable. So is understanding that there are different narratives -- one man's revolutionary is another's freedom fighter, and all that. (Reuters' excuse for not using the T-word.) But ultimately, while you're entitled to your interpretation of the facts, you're not entitled to your own facts.
I belive the point stands, what true for one person is not necessarily true for others. Simple point. That's not culteral relativism, that's just relativism.