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4.2.12 WC: 191694 politically active academia, multiple political parties and, judging by the amount of news coverage, probably more journalists per capita than any other country in the world — many of whom are there expressly to cover the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Meanwhile, the Arab and Iranian regimes rule over some 350 million people, and most remain brutal, closed and autocratic, permitting little or no internal dissent. The plight of their citizens 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. Human Rights Watch has lost critical perspective on a conflict in which Israel has been repeatedly attacked by Hamas and Hezbollah, organizations that go after Israeli citizens and use their own people as human shields. These groups are supported by the government of Iran, which has openly declared its intention not just to destroy Israel but to murder Jews everywhere. This incitement to genocide is a violation of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.” Only by returning to its founding mission and the spirit of humility that animated it can Human Rights Watch resurrect itself as a moral force in the Middle East and throughout the world. If it fails to do that, its credibility will be seriously undermined and its important role in the world significantly diminished. = Amnesty International, which began as an organization dedicated to the freeing of political prisoners from repressive regimes and won the Nobel Peace Prize for its noble efforts, has now turned into a hard-left political lobby that elevates its ideology above its commitment to neutral advocacy for the victims of repression. Consider its 2005 report on rapes and honor killings perpetrated against Palestinian women by Palestinian men in the West Bank and Gaza. Such violence is a serious problem, especially in the Arab and Muslim world, because so few leaders within these groups are prepared to condemn it and so many even justify it as a necessary means of maintaining family honor and male dominance. The AI report documented honor killings of women who had been raped. In one such case a 17 year old girl was murdered by her own mother after she was “repeatedly raped by two of her brothers.” In another case, a 21 year old “was forced to drink poison by her father” when she was found to be pregnant. The AI report places substantial blame for these and other killings on Israel! Here is AI’s conclusion, listing the causes of the violence directed against Palestinian women, presumably in the order of their importance: “Palestinian women in the West Bank and Gaza Strip are victims of multiple violations as a result of the escalation of the conflict, Israel’s policies, and a system of norms, traditions and laws which treat women as unequal members of society.” The “escalation of the conflict” (which AI blames primarily on Israel) and “Israel’s policies” rank higher than the “norms, traditions and laws which treat women as unequal.” The report asserts that violence against women has “increased” dramatically during the Israeli occupation and has reached “an unprecedented level” as a result of the “increased militarization of the Israeli-Palestinian confrontation.” This is a deliberately false conclusion. In fact the number of such killings has gone down dramatically since the Israeli occupation. But if one were to believe the Amnesty International Report, it would be as if the West Bank and Gaza Strip had been violence free for Palestinian women until the Israeli Occupation. Following the publications of the Amnesty International report, I spoke with Donatella Rovera, who is AI’s researcher on Israel and the Occupied Territories and asked her to provide the data on which she had based her conclusion that violence against women had escalated to an “unprecedented level” during the occupation, and especially during its most militarized phase. I also asked her whether AI had compared violence against women in the occupied West Bank and Gaza with violence against women in unoccupied Arab-Muslim areas that have comparable populations, such as Jordan. Rovera acknowledged that AI could provide no such comparative data and confirmed that the report was based on anecdotal information, primarily from Palestinian NGOs. “We talk to anyone who would talk to us,” she said. When I asked her for a list of the NGO’s that were the sources of the information, she refused to provide them because “there are things we can simply not provide to outsiders.” I assured her that I was not interested in names or identifying features, but only in statistical data regarding the 335 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_017422