I mean, I read the article [by HRW founder Richard Bernstein]. The word “occupation” does not appear there even one time. He says that Israel is a democracy of seven-million-point-something Israeli citizens. He forgets four million Palestinians, who have to be registered in the Israeli population registry in order to exist. All the Palestinians are registered. He forgot the four million. So what kind of democracy it is, where four million who are in the Israeli Ministry of Interior have to be registered and Israel decides if they are – if they exist? How can you call it a democracy, when half of – when one-third, not to mention the one million Israeli Palestinians, don’t have rights, the same rights? What kind of democracy it is? (full article…)

B’Tselem, Breaking the Silence, the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Haaretz and the international media – to Israelis, these have all fallen into the trash bin of the mendacious Palestinians. In the best case, they have become trapped in their own pure-hearted naivete, and in the worst, into collaborating with efforts to besmirch Israel and bolster prejudices against it. Like the Serbs of yore, we Israelis continue thinking it’s the world that is wrong, and only we who are right. (full article…)

“In terms of reports on Israel, HRW has a very serious bias and lack of credibility,” said Gerald Steinberg, who is president of of NGO Monitor and a professor at Bar-Ilan University in Ramat Gan. “They handle Israel differently than other countries because they have people writing the reports who operate with a lack of expertise on human rights and international law and with a great bias against Israel.” (more…)

Gaza Civilians Killed by Israeli Drone-Launched Missiles

Witness reports taken by HRW describe the killing of a bank manager, his wife and two of their children in their car during white phosphorus shelling in the Tel-el-Hawa area of Gaza City on 15 January. According to a Palestinian journalist, Fathi Sabbah, whose own building in the area came under attack, when ambulances came to take the bodies away from the partly melted car, they found “only a few bones” of the four occupants. The report quotes another witness, Muhammad Al Sharif, as saying that a piece of a skull and some teeth lay beside the car. (more…)

US State Department spokesman Sean McCormack rejected the criticism, saying Washington was “proud of our record on promotion of human rights”. (more…)

Human Rights Watch said Sunday that Israel’s military has fired artillery shells with the incendiary agent white phosphorus into Gaza and a doctor there said the chemical was suspected in the case of 10 burn victims who had skin peeling off their faces and bodies. (more…)

“Its suffocating and has a deadly poisonous smell that I am sure will cause a lot of sickness and disease on all of the civilians here,” he said. (more…)

Israel appears to be using WP as an “obscurant” (a chemical used to hide military operations), a permissible use in principle under international humanitarian law (the laws of war). However, WP also has a significant, incidental, incendiary effect that can severely burn people and set structures, fields, and other civilian objects in the vicinity on fire. The potential for harm to civilians is magnified by Gaza’s high population density, among the highest in the world.

Human Rights Watch believes that the use of WP in densely populated areas of Gaza violates the requirement under international humanitarian law to take all feasible precautions to avoid civilian injury and loss of life. (more…)

“With this ill-considered action, Israel put itself in the company of countries like Burma and North Korea in denying entry to UN human rights experts,” said Joe Stork, deputy director of Human Rights Watch’s Middle East division. “Strongly disagreeing with Professor Falk’s views is no good reason for denying him entry, treating him in a punitive and degrading manner, and refusing to allow him to do his work on behalf of the UN.” (more…)

Torture and other forms of abuse in Iraqi detention facilities, frequently to elicit confessions in early stages of detention, are well documented. The reliance on confessions in the court’s proceedings, coupled with the absence of physical or other corroborating evidence, raises the possibility of serious miscarriages of justice. In at least 10 investigative hearings and two trials that Human Rights Watch observed, defendants renounced confessions submitted as evidence. In most of those cases, the defendants said they had been physically abused or threatened by interrogators. (more…)

Download the full report in PDF.