FULL ARTICLES

“HERE IS SOME LAST-MINUTE ADVICE”

On breaking Israel’s naval blockade
By Khaled Abu Toameh
Hudson Institute NY
June 22, 2010

Here is some last-minute advice to the group of women who are planning to organize another aid ship to break the Israeli naval blockade on the Gaza Strip: Do not forget to wear the hijab and cover other parts of your body before you arrive at the Hamas-controlled area. And make sure that none of you is seen laughing in public.

Otherwise, you are likely to meet the same fate as other Palestinian women who have been physically and verbally abused by fundamentalist Muslims in the Gaza Strip.

Some women in the Gaza Strip have had acid splashed in their faces for allegedly being dressed “immodestly” or for being seen in public with a male who is not a husband, father, brother or son.

Just recently, Hamas’s Committee for the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice stopped female journalist Asthma al-Ghul under the pretext that she came to the beach dressed “immodestly” and was seen laughing in public.

“They accused me of laughing loudly while swimming with my friend, and for failing to wear a hijab,” she told a human rights organization in the Gaza Strip. “They also wanted to know the identity of the people who were swimming with me at the beach and whether they were relatives of mine.”

This incident came only days after a Hamas judge ordered all female lawyers appearing in court to wear headscarves and a long, dark colored clock under their black robes.

By seeking to help Hamas, the women who are planning to sail to the Gaza Strip are in fact encouraging the fundamentalist movement to continue oppressing Palestinian women living there.

Wouldn’t it have been better and more helpful had the same group of female activists launched a campaign to promote women’s rights under Hamas? Or to protest against the severe restrictions imposed by Hamas on all women, including the right to stroll along the beach alone or to wear a swim suit?

Moreover, it is ironic (and sad) that some of the women who are behind the new flotilla adventure come from Lebanon, Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Kuwait - countries that not only have killed Palestinians, but also continue to oppress them and impose severe restrictions on them.

As for the Egyptian women activists, it would be helpful if they would advise their colleagues to sail toward Egypt, whose authorities are also imposing a blockade on the Gaza Strip and continuing to prevent humanitarian aid from entering the area. The Egyptians are also continuing to prevent tens of thousands of Palestinians from using the Rafah border crossing to travel abroad.

Have the Kuwaiti women on the planned trip ever thought about protesting against the mistreatment of Palestinians in their emirate?

Following the 1991 Gulf War, Kuwait expelled some 400,000 Palestinians who were part of a thriving immigrant community in the emirate. The Palestinians were being punished because of the PLO’s support for Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait a year earlier.

Most recently, Palestinians complained that Kuwait denied entry permits for members of a Palestinian team of disabled athletes who were supposed to take part in an international tournament in the emirate. “The decision came from the Kuwaiti Foreign Ministry under the pretext that the team members hold Palestinian passports,” CNN quoted Palestinian sources as saying.

And why don’t the Lebanese women who are planning the journey to the Gaza Strip organize a tour to Nahr al-Bared, a Palestinian refugee camp in northern Lebanon that was totally destroyed by the Lebanese army in 2007?

According to a recent report in the Electronic Intifada Web site, “reconstruction of the camp is delayed, the area is a military soon with restricted access, and the camp’s economy is stalled and residents are largely employed.”

The same report states that before the war, “around two-thirds of Nahr al-Bared’s labor force worked within the camp’s boundaries. As Palestinian refugees face heavy legal and social discrimination in the Lebanese labor market, working outside the camp is difficult.”

Lebanon, Syria and Jordan have more Palestinian blood on their hands than any other country.

 

NETANYAHU TO “HUMAN RIGHTS” ACTIVISTS: SAIL TO TEHRAN

Netanyahu to “human rights” activists: Sail to Tehran
By Jonathan Lis
Ha’aretz
June 23, 2010

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday called on human rights activists who participate in Gaza-bound flotillas to sail to Tehran instead, where he says real human rights violations exist.

“I call on all human rights activists in the world - go to Tehran, that’s where there is a human rights violation,” said Netanyahu during his meeting with the Austrian Chancellor, Werner Faymann, in which he discussed Israel’s ease of the Gaza blockade and flotillas planning on breaching Israel’s Gaza blockade.

“Today, after we lifted the civilian blockade of Gaza there is no reason or justification for further flotillas,” he said. “These flotillas are organized by those who oppose peace, not those who support it. These people just want to break the security blockade.”

Netanyahu also said that the list of items forbidden to enter Gaza will be published in the coming days.

Earlier on Wednesday, during a Knesset discussion on Israel’s collapsing international status, Netanyahu warned that Israel’s legitimacy is being attacked.

“We know that the attacks on Israel are threatening its existence, since we constantly hear people saying ‘go back to Poland or Morocco’. They are essentially telling us to dismantle the Zionist enterprise.”

Netanyahu went on to criticize the United Nations and other international institutions for targeting Israel alone for condemnation.

“They want to strip us of the natural right to defend ourselves. When we defend ourselves against rocket attack, we are accused of war crimes. We cannot board sea vessels when our soldiers are being attacked and fired upon, because that is a war crime.”

“They are essentially saying that the Jewish nation does not have the right to defend itself against the most brutal attacks and it doesn’t have the right to prevent additional weapons from entering territories from which it is attacked,” he said.

Netanyahu stressed that Israel has taken steps to push forward a resolution with the Palestinians though they have not reciprocated the gesture.

“The Palestinian side promoted the Goldstone report, organized boycotts, and tried to prevent our entrance into the OECD. The Palestinian Authority has no intentions of engaging in direct talks with us,” Netanyahu exclaimed.

“I call on [PA President Mahmoud] Abbas, yet again, to enter direct talks with us, because there is no other way to solve the conflict between us without direct dialogue. How could we possibly live side by side if they can’t even enter the same room as us?”

 

ET TU, FIFA?

Football killing fields
International soccer singles out Israel
By Tom Gross
National Review Online (America) / The National Post (Canada) / Ma’ariv (Israel)
April 11, 2006

[This article, concerning the double standards of FIFA, was written shortly before the last World Cup in 2006. To see the photos and photo captions that accompany it, please see here.]

***

Israel is used to being singled out for unjust criticism and subjected to startling double standards by the United Nations, the European Union, much of the western media and numerous academic bodies. But now FIFA – the supposedly non-political organization that governs the world’s most popular sport, soccer – is getting in on the act as well.

FIFA has condemned Israel for an air strike on an empty soccer field in the Gaza Strip that was used for training exercises by Islamic Jihad and the al-Aqsa martyrs’ brigade. This strike did not cause any injuries. But at the same time FIFA has refused to condemn a Palestinian rocket attack on an Israeli soccer field last week which did cause injuries.

With the soccer World Cup, which takes place only once every four years, just weeks away, it is a time of mounting emotion for the hundreds of millions of people across the globe who passionately follow the game.

As FIFA meets in the next few days to decide what action to take against Israel, the double standards involved could not be more obvious. Up to now FIFA, which sees itself as a purely sporting body, has gone out of its way to avoid politics, and has refrained from criticizing even the most appalling human rights abuses connected to soccer players and stadiums.

NOT A WORD ABOUT SADDAM AND THE TALIBAN

When Saddam Hussein’s son Uday had Iraqi soccer players tortured in 1997 after they failed to qualify for the 1998 FIFA World Cup Finals in France, FIFA remained silent. Uday, who was chairman of the Iraqi soccer association, had star players tortured again in 1998. And in 2000, following a quarterfinal defeat in the Asia Cup, three Iraqi players were whipped and beaten for three days by Uday’s bodyguards. The torture took place at the Iraqi Olympic Committee headquarters, but FIFA said nothing.

Again, FIFA simply looked the other way while the Taliban used UN-funded soccer fields to slaughter and flog hundreds of innocent people who had supposedly violated Sharia law, in front of crowds of thousands chanting “God is great”. (Afghan soccer coach Habib Ullahniazi said that as many as 30 people were executed in the middle of the field during the intermissions of a single soccer match at Kabul’s Ghazi Stadium.)

FIFA equally failed to speak out when soccer stadiums in Argentina were turned into jails.

... AND CHILE AND CHECHNYA

FIFA’s silence was no less deafening when, according to the International Red Cross, about 7,000 prisoners were detained (and some tortured) in Chile’s national soccer stadium after Augusto Pinochet seized power in 1973.

Nor did the organization threaten Russia with sanctions after Chechen president Akhmad Kadyrov was murdered by a bomb explosion at Grozny’s Dynamo soccer stadium.

As for the Middle East, FIFA refused to criticize the decision to name a Palestinian soccer tournament after a suicide terrorist who murdered 30 people at a Passover celebration at the Park Hotel in Netanya in 2002. (At the tournament, organized under Yasser Arafat’s auspices in 2003, the brother of the suicide bomber was given the honorary role of distributing the trophies to the winning team.)

FIFA also failed to condemn the suicide bomb at the Maxim restaurant in Haifa in October 2003 which injured three officials from the leading Israeli soccer team Maccabi Haifa.

ISRAEL IS DIFFERENT…

But then last week, FIFA finally found a target worthy of its outrage, and leapt into action. That target was Israel.

The international governing body for soccer condemned the Jewish state, and announced that it was considering possible action over the Israeli air strike last week on the Gaza soccer field that had been used for terrorist training exercises. The field, which had also reportedly served as a missile launching pad, was empty at the time; the strike itself came in response to the continuing barrage of Qassam rocket attacks directed at Israeli towns and villages.

Only a couple of days earlier, one of those Qassam rockets landed on a soccer field at the Karmiya kibbutz in southern Israel, causing light injuries to one person. Several other Israeli children and adults needed to be treated for shock. The attack was claimed by the al-Quds brigades, an armed wing of Islamic Jihad. The soccer pitch is regularly used by children and it was only a matter of luck that there were not greater injuries. (Since Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza last year, several members of the kibbutz, including a 10-month-old baby, have been wounded after their homes took direct hits from Qassams. Israelis elsewhere have died after being hit by these weapons.)

… BUT NOT QASSAM ROCKETS

In an interview with the Jerusalem Post, Jerome Champagne, FIFA’s Deputy General Secretary, who had personally condemned the attack on the Palestinian soccer pitch, refused to extend a similar condemnation to the attack on the Israeli pitch.

Champagne said he had discussed the matter with FIFA president Sepp Blatter and that a decision on what action to take against Israel would be announced soon. Champagne, a French national, also sent an official letter to the Israeli Ambassador to Switzerland. (FIFA is based in Zurich.)

A FIFA condemnation of Israel is no small matter. The incredible passions that soccer arouses in most countries around the globe seem to have few boundaries. For example, it was said that the only time the guns fell silent during the Lebanese civil war was during the 1982 World Cup matches.

Individual Israelis, outraged by FIFA’s blatantly one-sided decision, have been sending emails to FIFA asking why “they care more about the grass on an empty soccer pitch than the human lives saved by strikes on the Qassam launching pads.”

ANTI-SEMITIC BANNERS AND CHANTS

They have also asked where FIFA is when anti-Semitic banners go up in European soccer stadiums, and there are chants from spectators about sending Jews to the gas? And where, they wonder, are the FIFA sanctions against the Arab or Asian countries that refuse to allow Israel to compete in Asia?

Other questions have been raised, too – why, for instance, FIFA has moved games from Israel because guest teams were afraid to come to Israel, but has never banned any other national teams from playing home games on account of local Islamic violence. Indonesia, Pakistan, Egypt and Turkey were all allowed to continue playing matches at home.

In response to some of this criticism Champagne – perhaps unaware of the phenomena of some radical Jews being at the forefront of whipping up hate against the Jewish state – wrote to the Jerusalem Post saying he couldn’t possibly be biased against Israel because his wife was Jewish.

AP FAILS TO MENTION QASSAM ATTACK

In its widely circulated report on the FIFA condemnation of Israel, the Associated Press (AP) also failed to mention the Qassam rocket attack on the Israeli soccer pitch. As a result, and not for the first time, AP gave its readers around the globe an unbalanced impression of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The popularity of soccer ensured AP’s story was used by dozens of news outlets – among others, Al-Jazeera, CBC News of Canada, and the Los Angeles Times. Only the Israeli press mentioned the Qassam attack on the kibbutz Karmiya soccer pitch, an attack which Islamic Jihad admits to carrying out on their website.

“WE ARE NOT IN POLITICS”

The outrage felt in soccer-mad Israel at these astonishing double standards is all the greater since FIFA president Sepp Blatter has made it clear that FIFA should not become involved in politics. Following calls last December from German politicians that Iran should be banned from participating in the forthcoming World Cup (which starts in Germany on June 9, 2006) because of repeated Holocaust denial by the Iranian president, Blatter said “We’re not going to enter into any political declarations. We in football, if we entered into such discussions, then it would be against our statutes. We are not in politics.”

Indeed so emboldened does Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad now feel by FIFA’s support that he announced last week that he will likely attend Iran’s opening match against Mexico in Nuremberg on June 11. Holocaust denial is a serious crime punishable by a prison term of up to five years in Germany, but Ahmadinejad no doubt feels that powerful international bodies like FIFA will protect him.

A BLIND EYE TO DUBAI

Meanwhile FIFA (and other sporting bodies) continually turn a blind eye to boycotts of Israeli sportsmen.

In February, Tal Ben Haim – the Israeli national soccer team captain, who plays his club soccer for the English Premiership team Bolton Wanderers – was banned from joining his Bolton teammates for their training matches in Dubai. FIFA pointedly ignored this. So did Bolton despite the fact that the team claims to be among the leaders of the campaign to “Kick racism out of football” in the UK.

Only last week, another English club, West Ham, left their two Israeli players, Yossi Benayoun and Yaniv Katan, at home when they went to Dubai. FIFA naturally had nothing to say.

Whilst Israel is often slandered as an “apartheid state,” (despite having several Arabs playing in its national team), Dubai has received no criticism for what appears to be a clear “apartheid” policy.

Indeed, were Israel allowed to compete against other Asian countries for a World Cup berth, rather than against the likes of England and France, the relatively strong Israeli team would most probably have been able to qualify for this year’s World Cup.

RONALDINHO AIDS TERROR VICTIMS

Not all is rotten in world soccer. Some individuals still seem to know right from wrong. Last week, Ronaldinho, the Brazilian superstar widely regarded as the best current player in the world, donated signed footballs and shirts to Israeli child suicide bomb survivors, saying he hoped his gifts would “warm the hearts of the children who have suffered so much.”

But FIFA, meanwhile, apparently thinks it is acceptable for Palestinian terror groups to continue targeting such Israeli children, firing missiles from the Gaza Strip, even though Israel has left the area.

 

HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH APOLOGIZES TO PETER TATCHELL

This is a Press Release from Peter Tatchell

“Inappropriate, disparaging, inaccurate, condemnatory and intemperate personal attacks,” acknowledges HRW

“Apology accepted, let’s move on and work together,” urges Peter Tatchell

London – 30 June 2010

Human Rights Watch (HRW) has made a full and unreserved apology to human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell.

The apology has been made by HRW’s Executive Director, Kenneth Roth, in New York.

It says sorry for a series of untrue and personal attacks on Mr Tatchell, made by the head of HRW’s lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) programme, Scott Long.

The full text of the apology follows below, including statements by Kenneth Roth, Scott Long and Peter Tatchell.

The apology by Human Rights Watch acknowledges that Mr Long made a series of “inappropriate… disparaging… inaccurate… condemnatory… intemperate personal attacks” on Peter Tatchell.

“I thank Kenneth Roth and HRW for their gracious and fulsome apology. Their readiness to acknowledge the wrong done and say sorry is commendable. My appreciation also to Scott Long for conceding his false allegations and apologising. It can’t have been easy for him. He has shown dignity and humility. I appreciate that,” said Mr Tatchell.

“I accept the apologies. It is time to forgive and move on. For me, this closes the matter. The attacks on me are in the past. I look forward to working with HRW and Scott Long in the future.

“Despite this unfortunate episode, my admiration for HRW’s inspiring, effective work is undiminished. It is documenting tyranny and oppression all across the world; exposing human rights abusers and defending the victims. I urge people to support its humanitarian endeavours,” said Mr Tatchell.

Referring to the nature of the attacks on him by Scott Long, Peter Tatchell added:

“I defend the right of people to criticise me. But Mr Long’s attacks went beyond criticism. He made false allegations, which misrepresented my human rights campaigns. It is these untrue claims that are the focus of my objections.

“Mr Long’s falsehoods and personal attacks were many and varied. They included a highly libellous and defamatory essay written by him, which appeared in the March 2009 issue of the journal Contemporary Politics, published by Routledge, which is part of the Taylor and Francis publishing group:

“This essay made inaccurate allegations. It grossly misrepresented and denigrated my campaigns in defence of gay people persecuted by Iran and in opposition to Islamist fundamentalism.

“I acted in good faith when I opposed the execution of Iranians accused of homosexuality and when I campaigned against fundamentalist Islam in Britain and worldwide.

“Contrary to Mr Long’s claims, I never accused the 13 year-old victim of an alleged rape in Iran of ‘wanting the rape.’ Nor am I guilty of ‘belittling violent sexual assault, and blaming the victim.’ These are outright fabrications.

In addition, Mr Long accused me of me ‘going after’ British Muslims and adopting a ‘bullying tone’ towards the Muslim community in Britain. This is also untrue. I have always made a clear distinction between Muslim people in general and the Islamist extremists who oppose human rights, including the human rights of fellow Muslims. Indeed, I have often defended Muslim communities, in Britain and worldwide, against prejudice and persecution. I will continue to do so.

“Sectarian smears against human rights defenders are wrong and counter-productive. We should support each other in our shared commitment to universal human rights,” concluded Mr Tatchell.

THIS IS THE FULL TEXT OF THE HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH STATEMENT AND APOLOGY:

Statement by Kenneth Roth, Executive Director, Human Rights Watch – New York, 30 June 2010

Human Rights Watch (HRW) apologizes to Peter Tatchell for a number of inappropriate and disparaging comments made about him in recent years by Scott Long, director of HRW’s LGBT program. We recognize that personal attacks have no place in the human rights movement.

Mr Long said: “Although we have our different viewpoints, I respect Peter Tatchell’s contribution to human rights and apologize for any condemnatory and intemperate allegations made in haste and for any inaccurate statements made in my personal capacity.”

Mr Tatchell said: “Despite the unfortunate personal attacks on me by Mr Long, I acknowledge his otherwise important contribution to LGBT human rights and I continue to value the vital work of Human Rights Watch worldwide.”

Following Mr Long’s apology and subsequent discussions, Human Rights Watch is pleased to announce that both Mr Long and Mr Tatchell agree that the movement to protect human rights, including the rights of LGBT persons, is best served when activists focus their criticism on those who abuse rights rather than those who seek to defend those rights.

Mr Long and Mr Tatchell undertake to work to ensure that any airing of disagreements on LGBT and other human rights issues takes place with honesty, civility and respect. They also agree to encourage their friends and colleagues to do likewise.

HRW hopes that this apology and agreement will enable us to move forward together to pursue our common goal: the defense of universal human rights.