Hypocrites International (a.k.a. Amnesty International) is dismissing a British report about human rights abuses in Iraq as propaganda and – get this – “selective attention to human rights”.
“This selective attention to human rights is nothing but a cold and calculated manipulation of the work of human rights activists,” said Irene Khan, Amnesty International’s secretary general.
Yes, this is the same Amnesty International who selectively targets Israel for what it perceives as human rights abuses, while turning a blind eye to those committed in most of the Arab world. Are you laughing yet?
The following quote is from a Letter to the Link by a member of Amnesty International at Concordia:
You can’t fight all causes at the same time; you have to make choices. For example, I am an anthropology student. I believe in the equal value and richness of all cultures, but I cannot be an expert on all of them. I have to pick.
In fairness, this author claims to have chosen West Africa and the Caribbean as her areas of expertise – but then, most of her letters to the Link seem to pick on Israel. In a discussion thread about that letter, the same author posted the following comment:
Please don’t get me wrong, I condemn HRs violations equally on both sides each time they happens but since HRs violations against Palestinians happen more often than against Israelis, I personally condemn the Israeli military, in particular, not Jews, more often then Palestinian suicide bombers! Palestinians impact on Israel is also much less significant than the other way around, assuming they had a state anyway. Also, my little finger told me that when Palestinians rights will be respected, suicide bombers will cease to react that way because they will have no more cause to fight.
Obviously, this is one individual and she does not represent all of Amnesty International. But it can be enlightening to see how some of these people think. It is unbelievable that criticism of Israel is fine by Amnesty International, but criticism of a totalitarian dictatorship such as Iraq, with a madman like Saddam Hussein at the helm, is “propaganda”.
Just to put things into perspective, imagine for ten seconds that Israel were a Muslim country, and Palestinians and Iraqis were a Jewish. (Yes, I know, that sounds absurd, but just pretend for the sake of argument.) What do you think all the so-called “human rights activists” at Amnesty International would be doing? My bet is that they would be lobbying daily for war against Iraq, while defending Israel’s legitimate right to self-defence and mounting an international campaign against suicide bombings and terror attacks!
Makes you think, doesn’t it?