04-Oct-18: Entitlement, transparency and foreign aid: Responding to Parents Circle

From this week's Australian Jewish News

We were bothered by views that appear in a recent report ["Fears funding freeze is going too far", Nathan Jeffay, September 20, 2018] that looks at changes in the Trump administration's approach to US support for non-governmental organizations (NGOs).

The parts that jumped out at us had to do with a group on which we have expressed ourselves at intervals over the years without getting much response: Parents Circle Families Forum.

They appear in the article's opening lines

Donald Trump is being accused of taking his squeeze on Palestinian funding too far, by stopping new grants to organisations that promote coexistence with Israelis. “It’s totally heartbreaking,” said Robi Damelin, an Israeli bereaved mother who runs a coexistence group with bereaved Palestinian parents. She was talking to The AJN shortly after hearing that the Trump administration is cutting its last major aid channel to Palestinians, namely $US10 million annual funding to projects like hers which bring together Israeli and Palestinian civilians... 

Then a few paragraphs later:

Damelin said that America is acting dangerously by undermining coexistence work as a strategy to achieve political results. “It can only achieve more violence,” she said. Her son David was killed when a terrorist opened fire at an IDF roadblock in the West Bank in 2002, and she became involved in The Parents Circle Families Forum, a grassroots organisation of Palestinian and Israeli families who have suffered a bereavement due to the conflict. She believes that groups like hers are building connections between populations which will prove vital if there is to be a political agreement. “Can they imagine that there could be peace without contact between Israelis and Palestinians? ” she asked rhetorically. “This will cause fear of the unknown, which leads to hatred and its natural partner, violence.”

Each of us (Frimet and Arnold) has criticized PCFF's work and methods via articles and posts over a period of 15 years. Other than a degree of vituperation, we haven't gotten meaningful responses from them in all that time which we assume is a strategy. 

Arnold wrote a brief comment for the Australian Jewish News which they published yesterday in their print edition. If an online version gets published, we will add the details in an update to this post. So far, there's none.

Reflections on the dark side of foreign aid 

Arnold Roth, Jerusalem | Published in the print edition of the Australian Jewish News, October 3, 2018

Nathan Jeffay’s review of US foreign aid cuts ["Fears funding freeze is going too far", September 20, 2018] touches on some of the undoubtedly thorny questions that arise when long-standing funding commitments are suddenly slashed.

I have no role in any organization that benefits from US (or any non-Israeli) government funding. And I surely don’t have the responsibility of either defending or attacking what the Trump Administration chooses to do.

But like many observers of Palestinian Arab and Israeli societies and their universe of non-governmental organizations (NGOs), I strongly favour transparency, along with critical, frequent and active reassessments of who gets funded by foreign governments. In other words, management that has goals and results in mind.

If programs are found to need changing, let the change come.

UNRWA, the startlingly unique “refugee” organization, has sought since the late 1940s to perpetuate – but not to solve – the powerlessness and misery of Palestinian Arabs. Anyone familiar with its operations, especially its schooling, understands how much harm flows from institutionalized hypocrisy, embedded ideology - and inertia.

Right at the outset, Jeffay’s article quotes one of the central figures in Parents Circle Families Forum (PCFF). Robi Damelin and I have spoken on the same platforms in the past. My wife and I have written critical opinion pieces about PCFF’s work. In Israel’s large circle of families bereaved by acts of Arab terror, it’s a small, marginal and noisy participant.

Ms Damelin, reacting to an announced change to US funding that will affect PCFF, tells Jeffay it’s “totally heartbreaking… undermining coexistence work as a strategy to achieve political results… It can only achieve more violence.”  

That’s an overblown, self-aggrandizing response. But more than that: as Frimet and I have written in several opinion columns over the years, it reflects an approach we know is offensive to many of Israel’s thousands of terror-affected families. We have been one of those since our daughter Malki was murdered in the 2001 Hamas attack on a Jerusalem pizzeria.

PCFF’s fund-raising emphasizes that it brings together the families of terror victims from among Palestinian Arabs and Israelis who “have chosen a path to reconciliation”. 

But its calls for change address just one side. Israelis are the aggressors. Palestinian Arabs are the victims and powerless to change much in their lives and society. The occupation is at the heart of the conflict. And terrorism – is simply missing from the narrative. 

They concede their line is unrepresentative of Israel’s bereaved families. Nonetheless it has stayed dismayingly consistent throughout the 15 years we have observed them. How is this offensive?

PCFF likes to say its work constitutes “an alternative to hatred and revenge”. The realization sank in some years ago that the hatred and revenge for which they have “an alternative” are what they tell the world the rest of us Israelis feel. It’s repugnant and it’s also untrue. Their messages adopt the language of bereavement. But their substance is skewed to the political. In my view, it’s calibrated to meet the political expectations of funders.

(Pointing out the sharp divergence between what claim to do and the reality is beyond the scope of this short comment. The blog Frimet and I write [meaning ThisOngoingWar, which you are probably reading now] has more: click here)

Everyone ought to be free to promote their own political view of the conflict. Though I find it offensive, PCFF are entitled to exploit bereavement to raise funds and to promote specific ideological positions.  

They don’t owe me or anyone else an accounting – except their funders. Funders can embrace or reject that approach. 

Let PCFF do whatever they feel needs to be done. But it’s absurd for them to argue that they are entitled to US government funding. If their work produces an acceptable return on investment, however that’s defined, funders will seek them out. The broader issue though is about how large bodies, often controlled by governments, use sometimes-vast aid funds to influence and even change the political landscape in other countries.

Jerusalem-based NGO Monitor is mentioned in Jeffay’s article. I play a tiny committee-member’s role there that gives me some insight into the distortions and the double standards that are often part of the funding industry. A notorious illustration: the Abbas regime’s rewards-for-terror stipends scheme has produced a devastating harvest of deaths and blighted lives on both sides since Arafat’s time.

The PA has for all practical purposes been insolvent through all those years. Those stipends and that hideous scheme are made possible only by foreign funding. Let it be critically reviewed widely, often, transparently and with vigour.

If you care to review (and of course to respond to) the critiques we have offered of PCFF and its approach, here are some:

• 27-Nov-02: The sin of forgivenness fervor, Frimet Roth in Jerusalem Post [archived]
• 12-Jul-13: Behind the facade at Parents Circle, messages that are deeply disturbing to bereaved families
• 17-Oct-13: Naive in Seattle (but not only there, of course): notes from the battlefield
• 27-Jun-14: First, understand the war and the grief | A response to Parents Circle
• 23-Oct-16: Vengeance is ours, say these Israeli Jews

13-Mar-17: Jerusalem and the (alleged) knife-men

The Old City and Lions' Gate [Image Source]

At about 4 this morning (Monday) there was a slightly elevated police presence in Israel's capital city because in Jerusalem it's the festive day of Purim. (Everywhere else in the world celebrated Purim a day earlier.)

An Arab assailant managed to squeeze into an occupied and cramped guard booth adjacent to the Old City of Jerusalem's Lions' Gate, armed with a large butcher knife. He embarked on a frenzied stabbing attack, injuring the two Border Guard police inside.

"One of the officers fought his way out of the guard booth, loaded his weapon and shot the assailant, police said. The assailant was shot and critically wounded during the attack. He later died of his injuries." [Times of Israel today]

The Border Guard men are recovering at Hadassah Medical Center's Ein Kerem hospital where they were rushed for emergency treatment, arriving there in stable and fully conscious condition according to a hospital spokesperson.

The assailant has been named in the Arab media as Ibrahim Mahmoud Mattar, described by Israel Police as a 25-year-old resident of East Jerusalem’s notorious Jabel Mukaber neighborhood from which a significant number of Arab-on-Israeli shooters, rammers and stabbers have emerged in the past two years (click to see some relevant earlier posts).

The attacker's knife [Image Source: Foreign Ministry]

Ma'an News Agency, whose work is in large measure paid for by the mostly unwitting and increasingly unwilling taxpayers of several European countries, adopted its customary alternative-reality approach to reporting on Palestinian Arab terror, starting with the headline of its tendentious report: "Witnesses: Israeli police 'execute' Palestinian in Jerusalem over alleged attack":

Israeli police shot and killed a 25-year-old Palestinian near the Lion’s Gate entrance to occupied East Jerusalem's Old City early Monday morning over an alleged stabbing attack that left two Israeli police officers lightly and moderately injured. The slain man was identified as Ibrahim Mahmoud Matar, a resident of the East Jerusalem neighborhood Jabal al-Mukabbir, located south of the Old City. The shooting happened ahead of the al-fajr (dawn) prayers, as worshipers were headed to Al-Aqsa Mosque inside the Old City. Witnesses told Ma'an they saw a dispute inside an Israeli police post located near Lion’s Gate, between an Israeli policeman and a Palestinian "who was carrying a stick.” Israeli police then forced the young man outside of the enclosure and “executed” him at point blank range with with four bullets, leading to his immediate death, witnesses said. Referring to the dispute that lead up to the shooting, eyewitnesses told Ma’an that Israeli police were “controlling the situation” and could have easily detained Matar without using lethal force... Following the killing, Israeli forces were heavily deployed in and around Lion’s Gate and prevented many Palestinians from reaching Al-Aqsa Mosque to pray, with witnesses saying the lockdown lasted from 4:30 until 6:00 a.m. Later Monday morning, Israeli forces raided Matar’s home in Jabal al-Mukabbir and detained his brother, parents, and his uncle, according to locals and Israeli police.

A few words about the journalistic values on display here. We follow Ma'an's reporting more closely than most people. The reflexive use by its editors of the cowardly term "alleged" to describe most Arab-on-Israeli attacks is a constant. But the mostly outlandish claims of Arab so-called witnesses and their fanciful explanations for how knives and guns ended up in Arab hands are almost never termed "alleged". 

Taking Ma'an's Palestinian-Arab-centric reportage at face-value requires a prior commitment to a thoroughly partisan view of events. In war, that's not unusual or even in some ways unacceptable. What's outrageous is that none of this could be done without the massive ongoing funding its editors and managers have gotten since its inception in 2005 from Western sources. Most of that money is from governments which means from tax-payers. And while many of the government bureaucrats in Europe signing off on those cheques and foreign aid forms are ideologically comfortable with how the money they supply is spent, it's a certainty that many, probably most, of the people actually providing those funds have no such political leanings.

NGO-Monitor does first-rate, systematic work examining how government funding from the West often gets wasted and channeled into very dark places connected with the Arab/Israel conflict. You might want to know that it has a resource page [here] devoted to shining some light on the quiet funding that is Ma'an's life-blood. 

Most people don't realize, but NGO-Monitor documents this, that for years Ma'an - an outlet for news in several languages - has been the recipient of millions (dollars and Euros) in foreign aid. Initial funding came from the governments of Denmark and the Netherlands. 

Since then, the torrent has continued to arrive from (among others) the governments of Denmark, Sweden, the United States,  Switzerland, Netherlands, the European Union and the United Kingdom. Several human rights and humanitarian juggernauts, in particular Catholic Relief Services, UNESCO and most egregiously Save the Children, have found ways to justify sending some of their budget to the Bethlehem offices of the propaganda agency. Why donors accept this is a puzzle - assuming they know.

UPDATE Monday March 13, 2017 at 10:00 pm: Elder of Ziyon notices, on visiting Facebook, that

Naturally, Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah is extolling him as a "martyr" and making sure that his act is viewed as a religious obligation. This is all to let the next terrorist know exactly how his acts will be honored.

Tragically, it usually plays out this way.

05-Mar-17: What Gaza's Pal Arabs think about the electricity problems in Gaza

Seeking an energy solution in chilly, dark Gaza, January 2017
[Image Source: Aljazeera]

Buried deep inside an opinion poll report just published by the Jerusalem Media and Communications Centre is a real nugget.

JMCC's website says [here] the Ramallah-based organization was

established in 1988 by a group of Palestinian journalists and researchers seeking to provide information on what was happening in the occupied Palestinian territories.

Every few months, it publishes public opinion polls. The one we are discussing in this post was released for publication four days ago, on March 1, 2017. The next most recent one came out on October 9, 2016 - five months earlier.

To understand the context of what we're about to say, consider these recent news reports:

• Gaza Strip - Anger is growing among Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip as the narrow coastal enclave's electricity crisis deepens. An estimated 10,000 Palestinians flooded the streets in Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza last week, after more than a week of lengthy power cuts. In many parts of Gaza, residents received only three hours of electricity at a time, punctuated by 12-hour blackouts. Protesters expressed anger at Israel's blockade, and at the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority and Hamas authorities in Gaza. Demanding a solution to the power cuts, some demonstrators clashed with security forces. Speaking to local media on Monday, Gaza's Interior Ministry spokesman Iyad al-Buzm said that protesters arrested for "creating chaos" had been released after an agreement between various political factions. Nearly two million Palestinians in Gaza have endured electricity shortages since Israel, with the help of Egypt, imposed a suffocating blockade on the territory a decade ago. The electricity crisis has been exacerbated since Israel's 51-day war on Gaza in 2014, during which the main power plant was targeted and damaged by Israeli forces... ["Protests erupt in Gaza as electricity crisis deepens", Aljazeera, January 21, 2017]
• Gaza requires 450-500 MegaWatts of power a day but is receiving barely a third of that. About 30 MW produced by its own ageing power plant, 30 MW imported from Egypt and 120 MW supplied from Israel... For weeks, Gazans have been making do with less than half their usual electricity supply - barely a few hours a day - with no sign of the shortages alleviating anytime soon, fuelling distress and frustration among the population... [S]ince late last year, there have been only three or four hours of electricity a day in total. The costs of running generators have spiralled. People are trying to light and heat their homes with candles or by burning scrap wood. Families wake in the middle of the night, when the power sometimes comes on, to take showers or wash clothes. "We live like rats," said Mazen Abu Reyala, an unemployed fisherman and father of five, sitting around a primitive stove that he uses to warm his house... ["Energy crisis leaves Gaza with barely four hours of power a day", Reuters, January 12, 2017]
• ["Gaza electricity crisis: Hamas breaks up protest", BBC. January 13, 2017]
• ["Israel cannot shirk its responsibility for Gaza’s electricity crisis", B'Tselem (far-left Israeli protest group), January 16, 2017]

Now consider the results of JMCC's rather inadequately named "Poll No. 89 - February 2017 - Gender, Equality and Politics" In the full text version of its analysis, it touches on Gazan anger at those responsible for the electric power power fiasco that is making hard lives even more stressful. And it gives numbers:

Source: JMCC Poll Number 89 (published March 1, 2017) [Online here]

Interesting. Look at the "Gaza" column, which reflects the opinions of the direct victims of the Hamas regime, those closest to the problem and suffering the most. Half of them lay the blame not at the feet of the Israelis but at the doorstep of their lords, masters and oppressors, the Islamist ideologues of Hamas.

When did you ever read or hear that via conventional news channels?

Notice also that Palestinian Arabs living far from Gaza (the column headed "West Bank") and who have essentially no first-hand knowledge or experience of living under the Hamas regime are twice as sure as their Gazan brethren (who do) that Israel is to blame.

Also interesting: if you read JMCC's poll summary (as distinct from the detailed report), there's not a word in it about the electricity crisis. Check for yourself; the summary report is online here. We're certain most reporters and their editors didn't bother to delve into the details. The summary met their needs. And so they missed a serious insight. And so did the consumers of their news.

Our friends over at the excellent Israellycool noticed something else funny/outrageous about social media coverage of the Gazan electricity screw-up. In "B’Tselem Caught In Malicious (And Dumb) Lie" (February 28, 2017), Israellycool's moving spirit, Aussie Dave, published a heart-tugging photo of an attractive young "medical student in Gaza [who] studies by the light of a battery-powered lamp... How does life without electricity, 90 minutes from Tel-Aviv, look like?" The photo and the accompanying text had been published by the ever-enthusiastic campaigners at B'Tselem.

Leaving aside the clumsy English (they have higher priorities at B'Tselem), if you take a close look at the "battery-powered" lamp, you quickly notice - unless you're as obsessed with simplistic anti-Israel narratives as B'Tselem's lot are - that it's not. The lamp is plugged into a wall power socket.

(And remember this earlier Gazan attempt [here] from 2008 at pulling the shades over people's eyes? Reuters played a central role in that scam too.)

Truth is often boring and shaded in grey. But that doesn't exonerate any of us from seeking it - even in the dark and the gloom. And that's especially true of the ladies and gentlemen of the news-reporting industry.

07-Dec-16: The alleged failures at World Vision and a toxic ideological background

World Vision's Middle East involvement goes
beyond mere "humanitarianism" and includes
"advocacy" with such far-left Israel-based partners
as "Breaking the Silence" and B'tselem.
Note that the word "terror" appears nowhere in its
brochure [check here]

The terrorism-centered scandal at the multi-billion dollar global Christian charity World Vision ["06-Dec-16: World Vision and terrorism: Hazy accounting is the last thing this scandal needs"] has brought some even larger issues out of the dark.

First, what are the charges against World Vision's chief manager in Gaza, El-Halabi? NPR says they are about the charity's funds being "diverted" to these ends:

Money raised to support injured children in Gaza was diverted to the families of Hamas militants who claimed their children were wounded. Money was paid as salaries to Hamas militants who were falsely registered as World Vision employees. Costs for legitimate projects such as greenhouses were inflated, with the extra money going to Hamas. Fake charities that were actually Hamas fronts received World Vision donations. And entire lists of aid beneficiaries were fictitious, so instead of giving money to needy farmers, the money was handed out to Hamas members. Hamas spokesman Hazem Qasim told NPR that the allegations were made by "an enemy entity that has no credibility at all to us," and that "Israel is trying to make fake media wins." Pressed on whether Halaby was a member of Hamas, Qasim declined to comment... ["Israel Accuses World Vision Employee Of Embezzling Millions For Hamas", NPR, August 5, 2016]

A wide-ranging article seeking to put the current allegations, now under scrutiny in an Israeli criminal court, into a broader context has just been published today. In "World Vision’s Decades-Long Hate Campaign Against Israel" that appears online and in the December 2016 issue of The Tower Magazine, Luke Moon, deputy director at the Philos Project ("the network hub for leaders and future leaders who are committed to promoting positive Christian engagement in the Middle East") provides some background we have not seen elsewhere.

He refers to the criminal charges we mentioned yesterday and to the charity's problematic reaction:

World Vision has responded by questioning the charges, claiming that the entire budget for Gaza over the last ten years is just $22.5 million. They also claim to be impartial and neutral on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, rejecting any involvement in political activities. While this claim may be true in other conflict zones where World Vision operates, it is not true in regard to Israel. Not only does World Vision have a long history of antagonism toward the Jewish state, it has done more to undermine Christian support for Israel than any other organization... [The Tower, December 2016]

How much should that worry us? A lot, we think, because

World Vision is the largest and most respected Christian humanitarian organization in the world. In homes and churches across the U.S., it is widely known for assisting children and families in need... [The Tower, December 2016]

Moon traces the changes in this important charity's orientation to the entry of a handful of named individuals. One of them, Tom Getman, became director of World Vision's Jerusalem, West Bank and Gaza (JWBG) operation in 1997.

World Vision advocates for the
Palestinian Arab argument on the
security barrier issue [Image Source]

Under his leadership, World Vision’s work in the Holy Land became increasingly anti-Israel. It was not uncommon for Getman to travel the world promoting World Vision, as well as the work of Sabeel, one of the most aggressive anti-Israel and anti-Zionist Palestinian Christian organization in the region. Sabeel promotes “Palestinian liberation theology,” which tends to justify Palestinian nationalism as a theological construct by regularly using themes from the New Testament to demonize Israel and Christians that support Israel... Under Getman’s leadership, World Vision also began to drift away from its evangelical roots, even as it began accepting more and more money from the U.S. government and expanded into a global organization... [The Tower, December 2016]

Moon goes on to make the case that World Vision's alleged failure to identify the lethal corruption (our term, not his) in their Gaza office

stems from three sources: Willingness to overlook terrorist atrocities, institutional antagonism toward Israel, and hostility towards Christian Zionism... [Senior management] never seemed to be overly bothered by Palestinian terrorist organizations’ role in the conflict with Israel. Mooneyham’s willingness to compare Israeli soldiers with Nazis, Getman’s friendship with Hezbollah leaders, and Snary’s repetition of Hamas talking points shows the depth of World Vision’s institutional distaste for Israel and the absence of critical voices within its leadership... [The Tower, December 2016]

Those, naturally, are not the factors that an Israeli criminal tribunal is going to examine. But they surely ought to be on the minds of charity-minded people - and certain NGOs and governments and their foreign aid programs (like the UN's World Food Programme, the UK's DFID, the EU, Australia's AusAID, the United States' USAID, Canada's CIDA and the German Humanitarian Assistance office) - before they entrust further donation funds to World Vision's Gaza program.

06-Dec-16: World Vision and terrorism: Hazy accounting is the last thing this scandal needs

The man in charge of World Vision's Gaza operations inside an
Israeli criminal court [Image Source]

The trial of a top-level World Vision manager got underway in an Israeli criminal court in Beer Sheva a few days ago. Fresh revelations disclosed today in an Australian newspaper (and below) suggest the credibility of the global Christian charity is going to be as much on trial as the man himself.

Mohammad El Halabi, who held a leadership role in World Vision's Gaza office, is charged with

funnelling tens of millions of dollars to Hamas... [He's] alleged to have led a double life as a senior figure in the Islamist organisation and used his position “to divert the humanitarian organisation’s funds and resources from the needy to benefit of Hamas’s terrorist and military activities”. According to the allegations from Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic security agency, the money given by British donors was used to build a military base, dig military tunnels and pay salaries in Hamas’s military wing. Other donations were allegedly transferred to buy weapons for Hamas in the Sinai during the period that Mohamed Morsi was president of Egypt. The announcement of Halabi’s arrest followed a raid on World Vision’s office [in August 2016]... [H]e was indicted on a number of charges, including funding terrorism. ["Israel accuses World Vision's Gaza director of diverting cash to Hamas", The Guardian, August 4, 2016]

It amounts to an appalling set of suspicions: Christian charity in service of the murder and maiming of Jews? We pulled together a lot of the background to this deeply worrying scandal in an earlier post: "14-Aug-16: Who actually cares that foreign aid is diverted from needy Gazans to terror? Not who most people think".

Today, an investigative journalist at The Australian, Anthony Klan, drills down into some of the evidence, and in particular the unusual accounting deployed by World Vision's record keepers:

World Vision’s Jerusalem, West Bank and Gaza charity operations — of which Australians are among the biggest funders — have spent millions of dollars on programs such as “keeping children safe ­online” and “home gardens”, ­internal accounts show.
World Vision is under scrutiny following allegations by Israeli authorities that its Gaza head, ­Mohammad El Halabi, funnelled $US43 million to Hamas, a proscribed terror group since 2010. The sum was about 60 per cent of World Vision funding to Gaza.
Investigations by The Australian show the poor transparency of World Vision’s operations in the region, with the agency ­appearing to publish no breakdowns of where or how funds are spent. For the year to September 2015, World Vision Australia reported $4.786m “disbursed” to “Jerusalem/West Bank/Gaza” without any further information.
The Australian has now ­obtained, through the Jerusalem-based NGO Monitor, a document filed by World Vision Israel with a local charity regulator, containing curious entries for expenditures, including “drawing a smile on children” and “South Gaza transformed families”.
The document sheds light on World Vision’s otherwise secretive disbursements in the region. ­Israel’s Registrar of Non-Profits wrangled with World Vision for ­almost two years to obtain it. Only in recent months — after the Israeli regulator on June 26 threatened World Vision Israel with “dissolution” — was the document provided.
World Vision Australia has been unable to provide The Australian with breakdowns of spending in the region. But the 56-page World Vision Israel document filed with the Israeli Register of Non-Profits shows cash flows ­associated with the group. The document is not properly labelled, but appears to be a banking or cashflow statement from December 2012. Entries include “more enjoyable learning” alongside the figure 196,138.14, understood to be Israeli shekels, each worth 35c, amounting to $68,648.
Other entries include “transformed relationships”, 416,871 ($145,905); “drawing a smile on children”, 104,926 ($36,724); ­“special gifts reserve”, 495,352 ($173,387); “South Gaza empowered children”, 408,443 ($142,955); and “South Gaza transformed families”, 106,327 ($37,214). Citing the ongoing trial of Mr Halabi, a World Vision spokeswoman declined to comment on the accounts, other than to say they would be subject to a wider audit the group had commissioned. Mr Halabi’s trial began last week in an Israeli court, however no pleas were entered and it has been adjourned until January 12... ["World Vision hazy on how it spent Gaza cash", The Australian, December 6, 2016"]

Four months ago when the explosive charges emerged, there was a flurry of World Vision activity via the media plainly aimed at blunting the Israeli claims and pooh-poohing the credibility of the Shin Bet. This for instance from an Amira Hass piece in Haaretz:

The indictment against Halabi describes a sophisticated, far-sighted scheme involving the planting of a person within the organization, with the aim of misappropriating funds and materials, and passing them on to the military wing of Hamas. To accomplish this, Halabi would have had to overcome World Vision's meticulous and centralized system of allocating money and equipment, contracting suppliers and the regular oversight of accountants. He also would have had to evade the main office of his organization, in East Jerusalem. Workers at other aid organizations are familiar with this well-organized system, and therefore they have cast doubt on the Shin Bet's statements... ["Israel's Allegations Against World Vision: Credible Charges or Political Ploy?", Haaretz, August 9, 2016]

We don't claim to know more than Hass or the editors at Haaretz, and we certainly know less than what World Vision's management team know. But if the filing at the Registrar of Not-for-Profits in Jerusalem is to be believed, a charity that allocates large outlays to such expese categories as “Drawing a smile on children” and “Special gifts reserve” and then claims to be meticulous and well-organized has some serious credibility issues.

And perhaps also some major shortcomings when it comes to the responsibility, maturity and probity required when you run a global enterprise that raises many hundreds of millions of dollars annually from trusting donors and you keep telling them this is going to help do good in the world.

They want El Halabi free again: Protestors outside
 UNESCO headquarters in Gaza City, October 16, 2016
[Image Source: APA]

The trial has some way to go. But it's notable that several major donor states have frozen further payments into World Vision's Gaza activities pending resolution. They are Great Britain, Australia, Austria and Germany (according to DeutschlandFunk, November 30, 2016). The effect on World Vision's work in field must be devastating [see "World Vision fires 120 in Gaza as Israel freezes funds over Hamas accusations", Times of Israel, September 9, 2016].

But then there's the matter of just how surprised World Vision's serious and responsible management must have been when the scandal broke. The same investigative reporter at The Australian noted a week ago that

Allegations that World Vision Gaza head Mohammad El ­Halabi funnelled millions of dollars to the Hamas terror group were raised with the charity last year but dismissed after an internal investigation... World Vision has described the allegations against Mr Hal­abi as “very explosive” but said it has “no reason” to believe the claims were accurate...  The case is particularly relevant locally because, as ­revealed by The Australian yesterday, the Australian government has been the single biggest donor to World Vision’s operations in Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza since Mr Halabi became the charity’s Gaza head... ["World Vision charity dismissed Hamas funds link", The Australian, November 29, 2016]

According to a feisty unfriendly-to-Israel report in Foreign Policy ["Israel Declares War on Gaza’s NGOs", September 20, 2016]

World Vision had already investigated Halabi in 2015, after one of its accountants, who had recently been fired, accused him of stealing money and working with Hamas. The charity brought in an outside investigator to review its books; the audit turned up nothing suspicious.

An audit that turned up nothing suspicious? In a failed-state place like Gaza? With millions of free-floating dollars involved? Alright, everyone has to be treated as innocent until proven otherwise. But given the life-and-death nature of what this scandal is really about, shouldn't some sharp questions be asked in the wake of a finding like that? NGO Monitor, whose work we think is exemplary, thought so, and does that sort of drilling down well. They asked -

Which World Vision framework led the investigation [the one mentioned by both Foreign Policy and The Australian] and to which bodies or departments did the investigator report? Did investigators contact Israeli authorities concerning these allegations, or request assistance in the investigation? [NGO Monitor]

Naturally, NGO Monitor raises numerous additional concerns ["Questions for World Vision", NGO Monitor, November 01, 2016] and articulates them soberly and without melodrama. We wish World Vision had addressed them, but so far, no. Notably, some pertain to World Vision's accounting practices and diligence. Others touch on the only-too-obvious political and ideological agenda that appears to underpin World Vision's often-valuable work in this part of the world.

Friends in Australia tell us there is a real desire by the Jewish community specifically, and Australians in general, to see the dark cloud removed from over World Vision's head and for irresponsible allegations to be avoided. We can understand them and bear in mind there are certainly places and times where World Vision does valuable work.

But there's another way of viewing this, and that is that a charity of World Vision's scale ["active in more than 90 countries with a total revenue including grants, product and foreign donations of $2.79 billion", according to Wikipedia] ought to have been doing somersaults in the air to avoid even the slightest taint of scandal, let alone permit itself to be accusedm as it now is, of failing to prevent tens of millions of dollars from being siphoned out of its operations and applied to funding jihadist terror warfare against innocents.

Failures of management, if that's what has happened here, don't come more expensive than that.

01-Nov-16: Again, Pal Arab armed security officer in Arab-on-Israeli terror attack

The IDF's Focus security checkpoint near Beit El, scene of last night's shooting attack [Image Source]

When prominent voices in the Palestinian Authority regime go public with extravagant praise of murderous violence directed at Israelis and Jews (which they are increasingly doing and with less restraint than in the past) it should not surprise that the Palestinian street - the rank-and-file of ordinary Palestinian Arab folk, take note and respond.

Armed attacks on Israelis by members of the various PA security apparatuses, though rarely reported that way by the mainstream news media, are also a growing reality.

Back in January, a Palestinian Arab who was employed by the PA as a security officer (here he is in official uniform) and armed bodyguard for the Ramallah District Attorney, opened fire at an IDF checkpoint near Beit El in the West Bank. As Times of Israel recounted at the time, he drove up to an IDF security checkpoint (called "Focus") by car and got out, opening fire with his handgun. His targets, all of them IDF service personnel, suffered serious gun-fire injuries before one of them shot the assailant, Amjad Sakari, 35, dead. Two of the victims were described as being in serious condition with bullet wounds to the neck and thigh. All were rushed to Jerusalem hospitals for emergency care.

What happened next is instructive. The gunman's body, draped (as another Times of Israel report says) in a Palestinian flag, was brought from the Rafidiyeh Hospital in Nablus to Jamain, a village south of Nablus, for a martyr's burial. Throngs of participants in the funeral shouted "Death to Israel" as the religious functionary - presumably also on the payroll of the PA - who conducted the ritual intoned

"It is time for the machine gun, to shoot 500 people... Muhammad’s army will return"

The Palestinian Arab media, quoted by Times of Israel, reported on the participation of high-ranking PA and Fatah officials among the thousands attending Sakari's funeral. They included Nablus governor Akram Rajoub. No one suggests the "Death to Israel" messaging was repudiated by any of the participants. In fact, to illustrate the wall-to-wall support in Palestinian Arab society for this kind of undertaking, special praise from Hamas for the shooting attack came via one of its more notorious spokespeople, Sami Abu Zuhri in a press release.

Two weeks later, on February 14, 2016, another PA security man, this time a PA police officer acting with a companion, opened fire on a group of Border Police officers at Jerusalem's Damascus Gate:

The policeman and his companion, carrying automatic weapons, shot at a group of Border Police officers who were receiving their nightly briefing before beginning patrols in the Old City’s Damascus Gate area. The Israeli officers fired back, hitting one assailant instantly and setting off in pursuit of the second, who was still shooting at the officers, police said. The second attacker was soon hit and killed by police fire as well. There were no injuries among the Israeli officers or bystanders. Both attackers were residents of the West Bank, police said. The Palestinian policeman was named as Omar Ahmed Amru, and the other as Mansur Yasser Shawamra. ["One of shooters at Damascus Gate was Palestinian policeman", Times of Israel, February 15, 2016]

Which brings us to yesterday, and another lethal Arab-on-Israeli attack launched by a policeman in the service of the Palestinian Authority. This attack, too, earned praise from Hamas

“We welcome the heroic operation carried out by the martyr officer Muhammad Turkman. We consider [the attack] a strong message in the face of Israeli crimes.” [Times of Israel, October 31, 2016]

And it took place at the same security checkpoint as the one from January 2016:

Three Israeli soldiers were wounded, one of them seriously, in a shooting attack when a Palestinian police officer opened fire on them at a checkpoint outside the West Bank city of Ramallah on Monday, officials said. The gunman approached the Focus checkpoint, near the Jewish settlement of Beit El, and opened fire with an AK-47 assault rifle at the troops stationed there, the army said... The gunman was named as Muhammad Turkman, a police officer from Qabatiya... [The PA says] Turkman served in a “special forces unit... In a statement, the Hamas terrorist organization lauded the attack and encouraged other members of the Palestinian security services to carry out similar attacks ["Palestinian cop wounds 3 IDF soldiers in a shooting attack", October 31, 2016 | Judah Ari Gross in Times of Israel]

All of the injured IDF soldiers are around 20. All suffered gunshot injuries. One remains in serious condition at Jerusalem’s Hadassah Mount Scopus hospital. And since Ma'an News Agency gets lavish financial backing from several European countries, allow us to mention that its Arabic report of the attack at the Focus checkpoint (but not the English-language version) says Turkman, the shooter, was executed by the Israelis in cold blood.

Chief Palestinian "peace" negotiator Saeb Erekat
illustrating "the distance between the Israeli and Palestinian sides"
without, as far as we know, taking  actual credit for how wide and
growing it is [Image Source: Abir Sultan / Flash90]

How do the highest-level PA insiders, and especially the "peace-makers" among them, view wanton violence of the sort in which their security people engage?

For example: the PA regime's high-profile chief negotiator for "peace" (that's the word he and his team use), Saeb Erekat was quoted [here] in the PA's official mouthpiece news channel, a week and a half ago calling the murderous actions of terrorists "sacrifices... acts of heroism, [an] ongoing battle with the occupation".

This is the same peace-making Erekat who last year published recommendations for how the PA ought to go about achieving its strategic goals. They're worth thinking about. An excellent but little-noticed analysis by Jonathan Dahoah-Halevi, a respected Israeli commentator ["The Palestinian Leadership’s Regression in the Peace Process"] lays them out. Peace-man Erekat called for

• Strategic cooperation with the terrorists of Hamas and of Palestinian Islamic Jihad by means of integrating them into the PLO’s institutions.
• The waging of an all-out “peaceful popular struggle” against Israel. "Peaceful" is defined by the Palestinian Arab leadership as referring to local terror attacks.
• The rejection of all proposals for a settlement of issues - whether temporary or even partial - with Israel
• A escalating legal battle against Israel in international organizations and courts arena aimed at constraining Israel’s ability to defend itself against Palestinian Arab terror.

The list goes on and is worth a few minutes' reading. [UPDATE: See also "03-Nov-16: Saeb Erekat's heroes"]

For some of the terror-encouraging quotes and speeches of Erekat's boss, PA president Mahmoud Abbas, we refer you to Palestinian Media Watch which devotes several departments [here] to his ongoing public acts of incitement.

Lest anyone out there believes Palestinian Arab public opinion is somehow immune to round-the-clock exhortations to violence, bigotry and murder like those coming from the highest-levels of the PA ruling clique, take a look at what ordinary Palestinian Arabs say to pollsters from their own Palestinian Arab community. Here's a good, recent starting point: "18-Oct-16: What do the Palestinian Arabs think and feel now?"

13-Sep-15: A roadshow and its groupies

Beloved daughter of Nabi Saleh and kinswoman/cousin to Bassem Tamimi,

this woman - Ahlam Tamimi, boastful murderer of our child - planned
and executed the massacre at a Jerusalem pizzeria. [Image Source]

Bassem Tamimi, about whom we have written several times in the past month, is in Chicago as we write this. He is in the first week of what is being billed by its promoters as a "month long spring 2015 U.S. speaking tour",

This will seem slightly odd to Americans accustomed to decidedly-non-spring weather in September and October. But that's how it is with spinners of myths and fabrications like the Tamimis of Nabi Saleh. You can believe your eyes. Or you can swallow their version of the truth. You can't do both.

UPDATE Sunday morning, September 13, 2015: "Spring" has now been silently removed from their web page. Echoes of it still appear on websites that republished the original Bassem Tamimi Roadshow flyer, like this and this and in the Google Search result below. 

Why the Tamimi roadshow was pushed back from Spring 2015 until now is anyone's guess. We can only marvel (in a distinctly non-admiring way) at the cold and calculating manner in which they engineered a viral video and matching news event - both starring underage children deliberately placed by their parents in harm's way - to give the tour some media push. These are special people in the decidedly malevolent sense of the word.

It's tremendously hard for us, as the parents of a child murdered in an attack on a pizzeria led by a Tamimi woman from his village - a woman whose killings are openly celebrated by that village and honored by the Bassem Tamimi family [here] - to know of the many public gatherings that have been organized to provide Bassem Tamimi with platforms.

It's hard as well to see how the grotesque passion of that Nabi Saleh daughter to seek the greatest possible number of Jewish children as her victims keeps getting swept under the rug by the Tamimi clan, aided and abetted by their rabid promoters and by parts of the news reporting industry.

So please don't ask any more why it galls us so much to hear Bassem Tamimi described (as the road-show website does) as a man who will "speak about his village’s work for freedom and justice". This is beyond fraud. It's complicity.

Then there's the matter of the sanctimonious, slogan-spouting sponsors who are making his encounter with open-minded Americans possible. Let's take a moment to look at them. And to see if there's anything a fair-minded person can learn about them for future reference.

We started by looking at the sponsor list from that website. Then we turned to published information gathered by NGO Monitor which does uncompromisingly professional work focused on exposing whose charity and whose tithe money is applied towards funding extremist political causes.

The result: we hereby name, and sincerely hope to shame, the groups on the list below. Please help us do that. These people are getting away with murder.

Every one of them is complicit in the stage-managed burnishing of the career path of a petty Palestinian bureaucrat (Bassem Tamimi's daily work allegedly involves issuing visas for the famously make-work Fatah-controlled regime in Ramallah where everyone whom the regime favours gets paid work) and of his home town, Nabi Saleh, a village whose population - essentially one big family - and its heroes are dedicated to the efficacy of murder in achieving goals that most decent people would be shocked to know.

• Interfaith Peace-Builders' mission statement says it "fosters a network of informed and active individuals who understand the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the United States’ political, military, and economic role in it. To build and nurture such a network, we lead delegations of people from diverse backgrounds to Israel/Palestine.” That means such groups as Parents Circle-Families Forum (about whom see our post "12-Jul-13: Behind the facade at Parents Circle, messages that are deeply disturbing to bereaved families"), Holy Land Trust, Coalition of Women for Peace (CWP), Zochrot, Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD) and numerous others with similarly anti-Israel agendas. The group supports BDS campaigns. 
• Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) calls itself the “Jewish wing” of the Palestinian solidarity movement and seeks to “end the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem.” Its executive director Rebecca Vilkomerson helpfully explains that JVP's strategy is to create “a wedge” within the American Jewish community over support for Israel, while working toward the goal of eliminating U.S. economic, military, and political aid. When people speak of radical splinter groups whose viewpoints usually begin with the highly misleading words "as a Jew", JVP is probably on the list of people whom they have in mind. 
• Friends of Sabeel North America (FOSNA): Its mission statement describes this church group as an “ecumenical grassroots liberation theology movement among Palestinian Christians” which “encourages Christians from around the world to work for justice and to stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people.” Promoting “liberation theology,” the group claims that Palestinians represent a modern-day version of Jesus’ suffering. This includes deicide imagery, and supercessionist rhetoric used to demonize Israel and Judaism. 
• Amnesty International claims to be a “worldwide movement of people who campaign for internationally recognized human rights for all” But friends of Israel have long been aware that Amnesty's stance is odd, inconsistent, and tainted by deeply political anti-Israel considerations. The organization disproportionately singles out Israel for condemnation, focusing solely on the conflict with the Palestinian Arabs, misrepresenting the complexity of the conflict, and ignoring more severe human rights violations in the region. It also distorts international law, routinely misusing terms like “collective punishment,” “occupying power,” and “disproportionate” in its condemnations of Israel’s Gaza policy. To our great chagrin and puzzlement, it has been providing a megaphone for Bassem Tamimi for years, along with his family business and a cast of blood-lusting Tamimis, without even once drilling down into the culture of violence and hatred that characterizes his clan and his town. 
• U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation is a major proponent of BDS, billing itself as “A national coalition of more than 400 groups,” working “to end U.S. support for Israel's occupation of the Palestinian West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem.” 
• Ithaca Committee for Justice inPalestine (ICJP), formed in 2014, campaigns for the Palestinian “right of return” and lobbies for a boycott of Israeli products in supermarkets. 
• Palestinian American Congress Southern California – The Palestinian American Congress (PAC) does not maintain a regular website. Its Facebook account is openly hostile towards Israel, compares Israel with ISIS and calls for anti-Israel boycotts. 
• Veterans for Peace protests against all U.S. military operations and interventions. Its mission is “educating the public, advocating for a dismantling of the war economy, providing services that assist veterans and victims of war, and most significantly, working to end all wars.” 
• Fellowship of Reconciliation: Claiming to promote reconciliation among various ethnic, national and religious groups, it is aligned with those extremists who seek to advance boycotts of anything Israeli. 
• Dorothy Cotton Institute purports to prepare and educate leaders for “a global human rights movement”, but NGO Monitor's research points to their adoption of anti-Israel "apartheid" rhetoric as well as support for BDS. When activists from DCI speak out for the rights of murdered children like our Malki, and against those who celebrate such killings - the Tamimi clan among them - we will be ready to take a more charitable view. Middle East Children’s Alliance (MECA)– The group’s stated goal is to “educate North Americans about children in the region and the brutal impact of US foreign policy on their lives.” According to the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) website, “[t]he Middle East Children’s Alliance is the fiscal sponsor for ISM-USA.” Donations for ISM’s campaign to “interfere with the construction of the annexation barrier” can be made to “MECA (ISM-USA Fund).”
• Episcopal Peace Fellowship: Another group of self-described Christians who say they "seek a deliberate response to injustice and violence and want to pray, study and take action for justice and peace in our communities, our church, and the world. We are called to do justice, dismantle violence, and strive to be peace makers". They urge BDS as the way to achieve this for "the people of Palestine and Israel” But it is plain that they are oblivious to the violence-loving creed of Mr and Mrs Bassem Tamimi, which - given that they are among the sponsors of the roadshow - is a disgrace to them and their values.
• And the improbably named Vegans Against the Occupation: NGO Monitor notes that "a significant portion of the group’s website is devoted to vegan recipes". This may be a good thing. But its members might want to call for an audit in view of the funds they are throwing at the Tamimi platform.

Without dwelling on the matter, it's impossible for people of goodwill not to notice the prominent role played by groups asserting a Christian viewpoint. That's a deeply troubling aspect we plan to come back to in an upcoming post. It's also clear that the vast problems of the Arab world, and of the Palestinian Arabs in particular - corruption, child abuse, the glorification of child-killing, the open abuse of women, the uncritical embrace of so-called honor killings of wives, sisters and daughters - all somehow slip by these people. (We expand on some of this in a previous post: "22-Apr-14: Attention World Council of Churches: Will you now follow your own advice and speak up for the Arabs tortured and imprisoned by the PA?") It's inescapable: there's something about the Jews that somehow gets their total focus.

The remaining sponsors are a grab-bag of small and large action groups who either claim to promote peace (by including it in their names) or are single-issue apologists for one or another of the bickering Palestinian factions: Massachusetts Peace Action, Alliance for a Secular and Democratic South Asia, Boston Coalition for Palestinian Rights, Palestinian House of New England, Students for Justice in Palestine. If we skipped anyone, we apologize. We really do intend for your dishonesty and/or myopia to become much better known.

Finally, here's a reminder of a request ["11-Sep-15: How devoted to non-violence are the villagers of Nabi Saleh really?" and "04-Sep-15: Mr. Human Rights Defender, a question if we may"] we have repeated several times. 

It's directed at the organizers of the Tamimi performance and the audiences and commentators who go along. Please ask yourselves whether the answer you get (assume one is given) gives you the kind of moral comfort that lets a person of conscience sleep at night. 

Bassem Tamimi, tell us in simple words: are you as delighted by your cousin Ahlam Tamimi's massacre of Jewish children as she is? Have you criticized it ever, anywhere? Will you condemn it here and now?

(The massacre we mention is described here. It's where the life of our precious fifteen year-old daughter Malki ended.)

18-Aug-15: Should Amnesty International be on your giving list?

The Times article is online

There's an startling exposé in yesterday's London Times ["Amnesty director’s links to global network of Islamists"] that focuses on charges against Yasmin Hussein:

...Director of International Advocacy at Amnesty International. She previously worked at Islamic Relief Worldwide as Director of Communications, External Relations and Advocacy, where she was responsible for dealing with emergency relief and development efforts, developing their global advocacy strategy and lobbying the UN, EU and governments... In 2006, she was voted one of the 100 most influential Asians in Britain. [Yasmin Hussein biography on the United Nations Association UK website, accessed today]

Amnesty's work product is widely treated as credible when human rights violations are under discussion. It expresses its views confidently, publicly and forcefully, on the basis that it's independent, impartial and (a key issue) free of any of the influence-peddling that government money can buy.

But NGO Monitor, one of its long-term critics, has published some serious findings (start here) into just how credible Amnesty's claims to impartiality really are; see "Breaking its own rules: Amnesty's researcher bias and gov't funding", June 4, 2012, as one clear example.

Israel comes in for a great deal of negative attention from Amnesty, much of it long on rhetoric and vitriol, short on evidence. Israel's embassy in London reacted with dismay to a recent Tweet [here] by a key Amnesty figure who claimed:

Palestinian baby burned to death in settler attack. They see their government getting away with murder every day.

Is he unaware there's a serious Israeli police manhunt into the death of that baby, and of his father, going on right now? Despite the hubris and faux-certainty of the Amnesty man's tone, no one actually knows if the deaths are because of "settler attack", or whether "their government" gets away with murder "every day" or just on Tuesdays. He's engaged in incitement advocacy of a virulent, irresponsible kind. It's familiar to anyone watching sections of the "human rights" industry spiral down into irrelevance.

He's not just another loud-mouthed street protester. Here's the obnoxious Tweet writer's self-description:

Amnesty International UK Campaigns Manager: Crisis and Tactical, #Syria and Bouldering the blues. Views all mine https://www.amnesty.org.uk/blogs/kristyan-benedict …

So can we ask how sure of the facts he is? Come to that, how sure is anyone at Amnesty International, a research-based group with a vast budget (close to US $100 million in 2014) of any of its facts or findings?

It's a question that gets a revealing set of (we assume) unintended answers in yesterday's Times article about Yasmin Hussein:

• "The charity was unaware that [Ms Hussein's] husband... featured in documents released after a criminal trial... [involving] British supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood and Arab Islamists accused of plotting"
• Amnesty "did not realise there was any connection to Ms Hussein, to whom he has been married for 20 years, because it did not know until recently that he was her husband..."
• The husband himself "was unaware of having played any role in the [criminal] case..."
• "Ms Hussein said she was not aware that any concerns were raised about [her meeting with a key figure in] the “Brotherhoodisation” of Egypt’s education system..."
• "Ms Hussein said she had no knowledge of the senior [Moslem] Brotherhood positions held by [the person she should not have been meeting]"
• The meeting she now concedes should never have happened occurred because of "Difficulties in booking a hotel..."
• "Amnesty said that, with the exception of the overnight stay, it “found no evidence to suggest any inappropriate links between Ms Hussein" and the Moslem Brotherhood figure.
• Ms Hussein says "any connections are purely circumstantial".

For a publicly-funded advocacy organization that issues devastating critiques of governments and public figures based on "impartial" "research" into "human rights", and throws terms like "war crimes" around like football stadium hooligans abusing their opponents, those are some stunning admissions.

What they claim they didn't know about their own key people would be sensational under any conditions. But this particular scandal is about involvement with some of the world's cruelest, most savage practitioners of barbarism. And what kind of research organization doesn't know the troubling identity of the husband of one of its key movers and shakers? What sort of senior human rights figure thinks connections like hers don't need to be disclosed?

There's some Amnesty history when it comes to the Islamists. Elder of Ziyon for instance pointed out yesterday that:

Amnesty campaigner Saleh Hijazi's Facebook profile picture was a photo of Leila Khaled, a PFLP terrorist and airline hijacker, while in 2012, his profile picture was a photo of Khader Adnan, a leader of the Islamic Jihad terror organization.

Amid all the Amnesty professions of "we're not sure about that but we're looking into it right this minute", one thing seems clear to us. As serious as we (who have a heightened sensitivity to people being connected with terror and getting away with it) think the revelations in this sordid matter are, there's no sign Amnesty International's leadership genuinely shares that view. Amnesty says

it did not believe that any of her alleged connections with Islamists represented a conflict of interest. [Nevertheless they] take very seriously any allegations that would call into question our impartiality and is therefore investigating the issues raised." [Yesterday's London Times article]

Score 10 for brazenness. Far from being "in question", Amnesty's professed "impartiality" is in tatters, as anyone other than their most devoted acolytes can see.