Correspondence
Correspondence Watching Human Rights Rather than address the detailed and troubling evidence that Israel recently turned much of southern Lebanon into a free-fire zone, with predictable deadly...
...Roth asserts that Israel "hasn't produced a single fact" proving its innocence...
...This, after all, is what our own customs officers do...
...Never mind that many civilians couldn't flee because of infirmity, the skyrocketing expense of transportation, or legitimate fear of becoming another roadway casualty of Israeli bombing...
...But again I said the opposite, namely, that HRW's bias against Israel is akin to its bias in favor of the Nicaraguan Sandinistas in the 1980s...
...Correction In "The Case of the Missing Crime" (Sept...
...I said the opposite, namely, that various human rights organizations, his especially, include people genuinely devoted to the cause and others with ulterior agendas...
...Finally, Roth asserts misleadingly that HRW has produced fewer reports on Israel than on some of its neighbors...
...For Muravchik, the killing of 39 Israeli civilians by Hezbollah rockets is in the same league with such real genocides as the slaughter of six million Jews in the Holocaust or the murder of up to 100,000 Iraqi Kurds by Saddam Hussein...
...senators responsible for his future confirmation—acted in a similar fashion...
...Bolton I read Fred Barnes's "Second Time's a Charm...
...Sept...
...HRW produced many times more documents aimed against Israel than against the Palestinian Authority, Syria, Libya, or Saudi Arabia...
...Pro-Profiling My personal experience supports Philip Terzian's point that the petty tyranny of political correctness befuddles our thinking about national security ("Profiles in Correctness," Sept...
...In short, HRW compounded its big deception of making Israel out to be the region's main culprit with petty deceptions to hide the evidence of its own record...
...When I was employed by the State Department, I worked in an office that oversees the expenditure of millions of dollars to provide training and equipment to help foreign governments protect their borders and ports from the spread of weapons of mass destruction...
...25), we mistakenly reported that Bob Woodward's conversation with Richard Armitage took place on June 12, 2003, and that Woodward "bumped into [Scooter] Libby" that same day...
...Correspondence Watching Human Rights Rather than address the detailed and troubling evidence that Israel recently turned much of southern Lebanon into a free-fire zone, with predictable deadly consequences for civilians, Joshua Muravchik summarily dismisses the evidence as the product of one big leftist conspiracy with origins going back to the Cold War ("Human Rights Watch vs...
...Never mind that this logic would entitle Hezbollah to "warn" civilians to flee northern Israel and then claim justification for firing away...
...But that means learning the lessons from this recent war, not summarily dismissing them with cheap charges of bias and Cold War conspiracies...
...But Israel issued warnings because it was endeavoring to separate civilians from military targets whereas Hezbollah sought no such justification because it was deliberately and unashamedly aiming at civilians...
...ambassador to the United Nations...
...Without even bothering to visit Lebanon, Muravchik is somehow certain that there was no truth to the scores of victim and witness accounts describing Israel's repeated targeting of civilian homes and vehicles where there was no Hezbollah military presence...
...He contradicts himself when he next imputes to me sarcastically the view that HRW's methods "suddenly don't work when the focus is Israel...
...Bolton has both...
...Finally, he falls back on a Byzantine grading scheme devised by "NGO Monitor," an organization set up by a security consultant to the Israeli government that has never found a single criticism of Israel to be valid but routinely concocts facts to dismiss criticisms as the product of bias...
...Regarding my point that HRW ignored Hezbollah's genocidal intent, Roth argues that Hezbollah has not committed genocide yet...
...In fact, Woodward testified that his conversation with Armitage took place on June 13, 2003, and that he had a phone conversation with Libby on June 23 of that year as well as a June 27 interview in Libby's office...
...The Weekly Standard welcomes letters to the editor...
...He continues to exhibit these characteristics in the straightforward manner with which he approaches his responsibilities at the United Nations...
...All the "careful probing" and the like with which he regales us is worthless if the investigators are biased...
...Inexplicably, the detailed, painstaking methods that Human Rights Watch has used successfully in countless war zones worldwide to cut through any attempt to color the facts—the careful probing of witnesses, the cross-checking, the corroboration, the physical inspection of sites—suddenly don't work when the focus is Israel...
...Identical procedures should apply to airport passenger screening...
...Assisting in solving the world's problems requires leaders with a clear vision and courage to express that vision...
...Nuts vs...
...Failing to employ intelligent targeting (or "profiling") of cargo and passengers is a feckless waste of precious resources and a dangerous distraction from the serious business at hand...
...Ironically, the IDF has responded to Human Rights Watch's reporting on Lebanon with far more seriousness than the reflexive defenders of Israel like Muravchik...
...Meanwhile, he never mentions HRW's detailed, on-site study of Hezbollah's rocket attacks on northern Israel—the most comprehensive survey available...
...Muravchik also engages in a twisted exercise of bean-counting: Human Rights Watch has produced fewer interventions on Israel than on, to name several neighbors, Iraq, Iran, Turkey, Sudan, and Egypt, but more than on certain other governments that Muravchik prefers to highlight...
...A critical element of that training is instructing foreign border control officers how to target (that is, profile) suspect cargo shipments that might warrant closer inspection...
...I had the good fortune of serving as his principal for two years when he entered the seventh grade in 1959 as a scholarship student at the McDonogh School, located just north of Baltimore...
...Kenneth Roth Executive Director, Human Rights Watch New York, N.Y...
...all cargo cannot and need not be examined...
...The status quo never satisfied him, particularly when he thought there was a more realistic and efficient way of solving a problem...
...After hours of searching, I discovered that HRW had expunged 5 of the records, sanitizing its own website to reduce the number of items listed for Israel...
...But even this is not certain, for the following astounding reason...
...But whenever the moral vacuity of HRW's work on the Middle East is pointed out, Roth insists that his touchstone is international law...
...Hezbollah says it wants to kill Jews and has killed hundreds...
...Even the Israeli government hasn't produced a single fact to refute Human Rights Watch's findings...
...It should have been enough to join Human Rights Watch in repeatedly denouncing Hezbollah's indiscriminate and deadly rocket attacks as war crimes and pressing for their end, but to call them genocide cheapens a concept whose continued vitality could be a matter of life and death for those who really face it...
...He notes that Hezbollah packed many of its warheads with ball bearings to maximize their lethal effect, but fails to reveal that it was Human Rights Watch investigators who first publicly reported that fact...
...It also does a disservice to a people whose ancestors have experienced the real horror of genocide...
...Why can't Roth and HRW grasp this distinction...
...Is HRW's method to fling charges and then challenge the accused to disprove them...
...Would that more of his U.N...
...Roth sent me an email contradicting NGO Monitor's numbers and inviting me to "check [HRW's website] if you're so inclined...
...Instead, Muravchik resorts to charges of bias...
...Muravchik notes that the Israeli government warned civilians to evacuate southern Lebanon, but then ignores the repeated assertions by Israeli officials that, accordingly, there were no civilians left and so all people who remained could be targeted as Hezbollah terrorists...
...Even at his tender age, and later in high school, Bolton was never afraid to take a stand to defend his position on any subject...
...Also, the maximum prison sentence to which Libby is exposed is 30 years, not 25...
...Roth says that Israeli exhortations to Lebanese civilians to leave areas where Hezbollah was dug in "would entitle Hezbollah to 'warn' civilians to flee northern Israel and then claim justification for firing away...
...John W Coffey Fairfax, Va...
...The evidence...
...A Dubuque grandma is not even remotely a plausible terrorist suspect...
...Sure enough, where NGO Monitor had cited 31 Israel-related pieces I could find only 26...
...He begins by attributing to me the notion of "one big leftist conspiracy...
...That Human Rights Watch hasn't subscribed to his bizarre view that Hezbollah's repeated and disturbing statements of genocidal intent mean that Hezbollah in fact has already committed genocide against the Jews of northern Israel...
...18) with a deep sense of satisfaction...
...colleagues—and the U.S...
...Yet he never bothers to explain why Human Rights Watch's groundbreaking 172-page report on Palestinian suicide bombing should be equated with, say, a one-page press release criticizing Israel...
...After NGO Monitor issued a report documenting HRW's bias, I asked HRW for its response...
...The only neighboring country that HRW may have criticized slightly more often than Israel is Egypt...
...Human Rights," Sept...
...It has produced more documents on Iraq—but only after the American invasion...
...The time to prevent worse is now...
...Before then, HRW criticized Saddam Hussein's Iraq only one-third as often as Israel...
...Joshua Muravchik responds: Kenneth Roth is not an honest man...
...All letters should be addressed: Correspondence Editor The Weekly Standard 1150 17th St., NW, Suite 505 Washington, DC 20036...
...Letters will be edited for length and clarity and must include the writer's name, address, and phone number...
...He will never agree merely for agreement's sake, as his shallow-thinking critics would like to see him do...
...It is hardly in Israel's interest to needlessly kill civilians...
...But HRW did not produce a single fact proving the vicious charge that Israel deliberately targeted civilians...
...The law on genocide obligates states first of all to Correspondence "prevent" it...
...Having learned a considerable amount about John Bolton when he was just a youngster, I have always been a staunch supporter of the present U.S...
...I recommend that his skeptics crawl out of their ruts and try considering the suggestions presented by Ambassador Bolton...
...Quinton D. Thompson Towson, Md...
Vol. 12 • October 2006 • No. 3
