Middle East Media Research Institute on Tuesday published a leaked Qatari government document claiming Qatar’s regime paid 3 million euros to HRW - Click the link for more details.
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In 2020, the online news organization The Intercept revealed that HRW’s then-Executive Director, Ken Roth, accepted a $470,000 donation from a Saudi billionaire based on the condition that HRW would not use the money to protect the rights of the persecuted LGBTQ-plus community in the Middle East.
Roth was compelled to return the donation after The Intercept report.
Neither i24 nor memri are unbiased sources, but if this is true, it certainly would account for a lot of the anti-Israel bias that has been coming out of human rights watch lately.
It's them inappropriately defining this as genocide or whatever other buzzwords will generate outrage. This is clearly about defense for Israel and not eliminating an ethnic group.
In 1948, the United Nations Genocide Convention defined genocide as any of five "acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group".
Sure sounds like what they're doing to Palestinians in Gaza to me. Or do you think they're going to let the innocent people they didn't murder come back now that they're occupying it?
You know, because Israel is famous for giving Palestinians their homes and their land back.
The "genocide" debate here is activists trying to seize the high ground after Hamas's hideous acts. Their hope, after an assault of such barbarity, is to label the response "genocidal" and hope that people chase that shiny lure instead of remembering why this war happened at all.
Quite the strawman. People deploying the word "genocide" are either ignorant of what the word means or are intentionally misusing it for political purposes because they would otherwise be faced with having to discuss why this war began at all. Word play debates do little to alleviate people’s suffering. Denial of the other side’s humanity & dueling victimhood, eliminate empathy. We’ve had FEW cases of legal genocide since 1948, the question is how do these debates help long term?
You were the one who said they were doing it to stop Hamas. So were the 5000+ children part of Hamas or not?
Again, you are forcing a strawman. This war began with the barbarity of October 7th. As with all wars, there are civilian causality.
I also wouldn't put too much faith in the numbers as they come from Hamas. Not only do they not differentiate between their own members and civilians, but have been known to fabricate for propaganda purposes as I explained.
Also, 'legal genocide' is weaseling out of this.
The term genocide is a criminal charge and has a legal definition. Making up a definition is weaseleing out, not using a proper legal definition
Trump didn't 'legally' commit rape against E. Jean Carroll.
Israel is neither trying to destroy Arabs nor Muslims, What they are doing is defending themselves against a hostile nation that declared war on them by slaughtering their civilians. Sometimes keeping themselves safe means annexing land, and a genocide this does not make.
Israel's intent is not to destroy any group, if that were their intent, they would have done it by now. They certainly have the capability. Their intent is to keep themselves safe from people who are trying to kill them and refuse to surrender.
Palestinians are a specific ethnic group. Interesting that you aren't acknowledging that. And the majority of Palestinians that have been murdered were not part of Hamas.
As far as calling Gaza or Palestine a nation, that's laughable. When has Israel ever acknowledged their sovereignty?
A relatively large group of people organized under a single, usually independent government; a country.
When has Palestine been organized under a single independent government?
Also, 'Arab' is as much a single ethnic group as 'European.' Or even 'Jewish.'
Spain didn't expel, murder and forcibly convert the Ashkenazi Jews. Because there weren't any in Spain. It expelled, murdered and forcibly converted the Sephardic Jews. It was still genocide. I'm sure you'll find that most Jews would agree on that point.
nation: a large body of people united by common descent, history, culture, or language, inhabiting a particular country or territory.
Also, ‘Arab’ is as much a single ethnic group as ‘European.’ Or even ‘Jewish.’
Arab is a specific ethnic group that contains a lot of diversity/tribes. Jewish is a collection of several ethnic groups, and European is a region, not an ethnicity.
It expelled, murdered and forcibly converted the Sephardic Jews. It was still genocide. I’m sure you’ll find that most Jews would agree on that point.
I honestly don't know enough about this part of history to weigh in. Was there intent to destroy Sephardic Jews, or was Spain under attack by them and defending itself?
It not being a literal active war zone is probably a good first step, I'd say. That, and "back into Gaza" implies they've been forced out of Gaza, which isn't true.
If Israel were truly attempting to eliminate the Palestinians as a people, it would take a few hours. It's not like they lack the firepower. I'll readily concede that they've been much less careful about preventing civilian casualties, and they absolutely should be criticized for that, but that's a significant and meaningfully different thing from deliberately targeting and killing civilians.
My apologies, I was referring to the Gaza Strip as a whole, not specifically the city.
If you see Jewish settlers being sent to Gaza after this mess, I'll eagerly join you in being outraged, just as I find the West Bank settlements a disgrace. But I don't think it's useful to get angry over things that haven't happened yet, especially when there are plenty of events that have already happened that are more worthy of anger.
It seems like most people claiming Israel wants to reoccupy Gaza genuinely don't realize that Israel voluntarily disengaged in 2005, closed the existing settlements, and withdrew all military. Or that part of the reason that Hamas was able to execute the deadliest terrorist attack in Israel's history was due to Israel's willingness to ease border restrictions.