who also served for five years on Québec's Human Rights Commission and countless other accomplishments. If he is giving propaganda it should be easy for you to refute rather than attack him. He has a spotless reputation and writes for many publications. Joe Stork from HRW on the other hand has no where near the credentials or experience as Krauss. Stork has a Master's Degree in International Affairs/Middle East Studies from Columbia University compared to a Yale Law degree. He is a radical anti Israel activist who acts with an agenda and bias rather than objectivity
Joe Stork HRW
Before joining HRW, Stork was a highly visible and radical anti-Israel political activist and ex-editor of Middle East Report. After the 1972 Munich Olympic massacre, this organization urged socialists to "comprehend the achievements" of the atrocity. ("Who Are the Terrorists," MERIP Reports, No. 12, September-October, 1972, pp12-13) Similarly, after a Palestinian terror attack on an Israeli school, Stork’s organization declared that "all Israeli settlers are potential targets of the Palestinian resistance" ("Ma'alot: an Account and an Evaluation," MERIP Reports, No. 29, (June 1974), pp21-3. Since coming to HRW, Stork’s biases have shaped this organization’s activities and its credibility.
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http://ngo-monitor.org/editions/v2n09/v2n09-7.htmProfessor Michael I. Krauss
In 1994, PROFESSOR OF LAW MICHAEL I. KRAUSS became the law school's first recipient of the university's "Teacher of the Year" award for his engaging and challenging approach in the classroom. Born in the United States but raised in Canada, Professor Krauss speaks legalese in two languages. He earned his B.A. cum laude from Carleton University, his LL.B. summa cum laude from the Université de Sherbrooke, and his LL.M. from Yale Law School, where he was a Commonwealth Scholar. He was Columbia University's Law and Economics Fellow in 1981. He has been teaching at George Mason since 1987 and also has taught at the law schools of Seattle University, the University of Toronto, and the Université de Sherbrooke.
Hired as a law clerk by Justice Louis-Philippe Pigeon of Canada's Supreme Court, Professor Krauss practiced law for Quebec City's largest law firm before entering academia. He also served for five years on Québec's Human Rights Commission. A Salvatori Fellow of the Heritage Foundation and an academic fellow of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, Professor Krauss sits on the advisory boards of several think tanks. He served as president of the Virginia Association of Scholars and on the Board of Governors of the Education Section of the Virginia State Bar, and is currently a member of the Board of Governors of the National Association of Scholars.
Professor Krauss teaches Torts, Legal Ethics and Jurisprudence, and has a strong interest in national security issues. His research on torts and ethics is nationally known. He co-authored the first edition of Legal Ethics in a Nutshell in May 2003. This book digests the Model Rules in an engaging and often critical fashion. The second edition was published in 2006. Professor Krauss is now under contract with West Publications to produce an innovative textbook on Products Liability in late 2008.
http://classweb.gmu.edu/mkrauss/Palestinian civilians aren't the enemy...
Yes they are just as anyone you are in a conflict is such as Japan and the US in WW2. This crap that only the Government in a conflict is the enemy but civilians are not is absolutly moronic. While there are laws regarding treatment of civilians and actions that effect them it does not mean they are not the enemy nor do you have a equal responsibility to them as to your own citizens it does not require Israel to supply Gaza with fuel or electricity or any other materials, goods, or services. Israel has a greater responsibility to protect its own citizens.
And anything that has the words 'anti-Israel pundits...' and 'Gaza is now Judenrein' in it is merely propaganda and no-one in their right mind would be inclined to believe it over what human rights groups like HRW say....
That is a crock. Judenrein is an apt way to describe the Joy to Hamas it gives. As I said above Krauss has much more experience and credibility than Stork including not to mention he is a legal expert and has 5 years on Québec's Human Rights Commission. Stork, even more so than HRW as a whole, is of questionable credibility and has a habit of making up facts, exaggeration and inserting his radical anti Israel bias. .
HRW’s Gaza Statement: Moral Muddle and False Allegations
The statement written by Joe Stork of Human Rights Watch (HRW) condemning Israel’s response to rocket bombardment from Gaza exploits and distorts international law.
Of the 34 paragraphs, Stork only mentions the hundreds of rocket attacks against Israel in two sentences, demonstrating the double standards in this invective.
HRW’s claim that Gaza remains “occupied” is a politically based fiction designed to negate Israel’s legal and moral right to self-defense.
There is no legal or moral precedent for a country to be forced to provide a hostile neighbor with the means to continue attacks on its territory and against its civilians.
HRW’s statement is a moral muddle that further undermines the universality of human rights.
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Stork Invents “Facts”
Stork also gets the facts wrong, including the false implication that Israel cut off electricity supplies to Gaza.3 In reality, Israel decreased fuel supplies but maintained its provision of electricity to Gaza. HRW’s statement also omits the fact that Israel supplied Gaza with cooking gas, 500,000 liters of diesel fuel for generators, primarily for hospitals, 2.2 million liters of industrial fuel for power plants, and 50 trucks of humanitarian aid.
While many journalists acknowledged that Hamas manipulated and manufactured this “humanitarian crisis”, including ordering bakery owners to keep their stores closed, this was inconsistent with Stork’s objective. He also ignored evidence that fuel intended for a European hospital in Gaza was diverted to supply the “Hamas-affiliated Executive Force.” HRW’s portrayal of the mass exodus through the border with Egypt as an act of desperation in response to the Israeli “blockade” is also misleading, in the light of the televisions and other luxury goods purchased by the Palestinians. They were clearly not starving, or in the middle of a life-threatening crisis.
HRW’s Own Word Games
As in most of HRW’s reporting on the Israeli-Arab conflict, this statement includes numerous misstatements and distortions of international law.4 Following Palestinian claims, HRW asserts that since Israel “still controls Gaza’s airspace, territorial waters, and land borders”, it is an “occupier”, but fails to cite any provision of the Geneva or Hague Conventions – the international treaties that establish the law of occupation. In contrast, Article 6of the Fourth Geneva Convention on the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War states that a foreign power is only considered an occupier "to the extent that such Power exercises the functions of government in such territory." Since 1995, and certainly since Israel’s disengagement in 2005, Gaza's Palestinian population has been under Palestinian Authority jurisdiction.5 And Stork’s “facts” to the contrary, Gaza’s southern border is controlled by Egypt (and not only for “this week”, in Stork’s version.)
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Minimizing Palestinian Terror
Stork’s ideology-based analysis also minimizes the context of terror, making only passing reference to the barrage of rocket attacks launched from Gaza on Israeli civilians. Between January 16 and 21, 2008, more than 225 rockets have been launched from Hamas-controlled Gaza against Israeli towns. From June to December 2007, the totals were 475 missiles and 631 mortar bombs. In addition, HRW fails to ascribe responsibility for these attacks to the Hamas government but rather only to “Palestinian armed groups” and “militants”.
Following HRW’s long-established pattern of ignoring the human rights of Israelis under daily bombardment from Gaza, Stork claims Israel’s real security concerns are merely a pretext to “arbitrarily block<...>, delay<...> and harass<...> people with emergency medical problems who need to leave Gaza for urgent care” or to prevent “6,000 people with foreign citizenship, permanent foreign residency, work permits, student visas, or university admissions abroad,” from leaving Gaza. In this case, as well HRW is very selective with factual claims, omitting several instances where Palestinians have exploited Israel’s humanitarian policies to carry out terror attacks. In May 2007, for instance, a pregnant woman and her niece, who had been granted permission to seek medical treatment in Ramallah, were arrested for planning to carry out a double suicide attack in Tel Aviv and Netanya. In another incident four weeks ago, terrorists attempted to smuggle in explosives materials into Gaza hidden in sacks of sugar marked as European Union aid.
The result is a moral muddle and double standards that undermine universal human rights. As in many of its previous campaigns, such as “Razing Rafah” (October 2004), the flood of biased condemnations in the 2006 Lebanon War, the so-called “Gaza beach incident” (June 2006), false charges of war crimes in Jenin (2002), etc. HRW misuses and exploits international law to further political campaigns against Israel.
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http://www.ngo-monitor.org/article.php?viewall=yes&id=1782NGO accuses HRW of Israel obsession
Human Rights Watch has systematically condemned Israel for "collective punishment" in the Gaza Strip, undermining its stated agenda of promoting human rights universally, according to a report released this week by the Jerusalem-based watchdog NGO Monitor.
The report, which provides a detailed analysis of HRW's publications and statements in 2007, compares the group's coverage of Israel with the way it treats other countries in similar situations, and concludes that its continued condemnations of Israeli actions are disproportionate and reflect a "clear, identifiable political bias."
"This report shows, yet again, that any claim of even-handedness by Human Rights Watch is hollow," said NGO Monitor's executive director, Bar-Ilan University Prof. Gerald Steinberg. "Their exclusive condemnation of Israeli 'collective punishment' is discriminatory, and should end immediately. HRW's continued disproportionate focus on Israel is not only an injustice, but it also allows some of the worst human rights abusers in the Middle East, countries like Syria and Libya, to escape serious scrutiny."
"The idea that we exclusively condemn Israel is absurd," said HRW Middle East Division Deputy Director Joe Stork. "We do criticize the Israeli blockade of Gaza as collective punishment, and solidly so. But I haven't seen this report from Mr. Steinberg, and he seldom has anything useful or truthful to say - you can quote me on that."
But citing Russia's 1999 policy of denying power, water, food or any humanitarian assistance to Chechnya - an action NGO Monitor says was far more widespread than Israel's blockade of Gaza - the report says that situation was not described as "collective punishment" by Human Rights Watch. Furthermore, the report points out that Azerbaijan's 1994 blockade of Armenia was supported by HRW, on the grounds that Armenia was "financing a war."
The report also mentions that while HRW condemns IDF actions against Hamas-sponsored rocket attacks from Gaza, the attacks themselves are labeled as "retaliatory," thus faulting Israel for the violence on both sides.
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http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1209626989868&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFullMore
Human Rights Watch: Continuing the Anti-Israel Campaign
Summary: By employing long-time radical anti-Israeli extremist Joe Stork as its Middle East Director, HRW has highlighted its core political agenda, which is also the focus of a series of recent oped analyses.
http://www.ngo-monitor.org/article.php?id=988HRW Anti-Israel Bias Now A Mathematical Certainty
http://www.mererhetoric.com/archives/11274767.htmlHuman Rights Watch shows a disturbing disparity in its treatment of Israel and China.
http://www.spme.net/cgi-bin/articles.cgi?ID=602Also, Israel isn't at war. If it is, where's the declaration of war, where's the POW's? The blockade is illegal under international law as it's aimed at civilians, which is what makes it an act of collective punishment. The Israeli govt itself has stated that the intention of the blockade was to make Palestinian civilians turn on Hamas, so there's no disputing it...
There does not need to be a declaration of war.Did you even read the articles or the relevent GC conventions cited.
Its actually not even a blockade as Egypt has borders. In any case Israel is under no obligation to provide anything. "Siege and blockade of a hostile territory is a legitimate tactic of war, used in declared and undeclared". International law does not require Israel to supply Gaza with fuel or electricity or any other materials, goods, or services. Just repeating false statements that its against international law does not make it true. I have shown specific evidence from legal experts citing the relevent GC articles but you just make baseless statements. Show me where its Israels responsibility to supply Gaza with fuel or electricity or, indeed, with any other materials, goods, or services. Israel is complying with international law but groups like HRW and the anti Israel types try to hold Israel to double standards and standards no one else is or ever has been.
btw, You cant ban me here just because you cant refute the argument and evidence I present like you did at the other place. I also got banned at your enemies "semite" site. Both sites are cut from the same "intolerant to any disagreement" cloth unlike here where reasonable(it could be more but I understand) disagreement is tolerated.
from my article
Siege and blockade of a hostile territory is a legitimate tactic of war, used in declared and undeclared (e.g., Cuban) conflicts and explicitly recognized by the 1949 Geneva Conventions. The Conventions' sole limitation is that there be "free passage of all consignments of food-stuffs, clothing and tonics intended for children under fifteen, expectant mothers, and maternity cases" (Fourth Convention, art. 23) — and even this exception was conditioned on there being "no reasons for fearing... hat a definite advantage may accrue to the military efforts or economy of the enemy" (for example, if resources destined for humanitarian aid will be commandeered by the enemy). Israel has carefully respected this requirement.
Article 23 of the Fourth Geneva Convention permits states like Israel to cut off fuel supplies and electricity to territories like Gaza. It only requires Israel to permit passage of food, clothing, and medicines intended for children under fifteen, expectant mothers, and maternity cases. Moreover, Israel would be under no obligation to provide anything itself, just not to interfere with such consignments sent by others. Article 70 of the First Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 1977 creates a slightly broader duty regarding the provision of essential supplies, but it does not list fuel and electricity as items for which passage must be permitted.
Dependence on foreign supply - whether it be Gazan dependence on Israeli electricity or European dependence on Arab oil - does not create a legal duty to continue the supply. Absent specific treaty requirements, countries may cut off oil sales to other countries at any time. In addition, neither Israel nor any other country is required to supply goods in response to its foes' resource mismanagement or lack of natural bounty.
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