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This afternoon came word of a horrific set of explosions at a hospital in Gaza. Within minutes, Hamas propagandists were not only claiming a death toll of 500 but that an Israeli rocket had targeted and destroyed the hospital. One might perhaps think it prudent to keep one’s powder dry when a terrorist organization claims its enemy did something bad. You would think wrong. Within minutes of that, this was the headline and subhed atop the New York Times: “ISRAEL STRIKE KILLS HUNDREDS AT HOSPITAL, PALESTINIANS SAY. At least 500 dead; Israel urges caution as it investigates.” Please note it...

The grant raised concerns for the potential of abuse by organizations to act against Israel via BDS and international law tribunals. The US State Department has offered a grant of up to $987,654 for projects that include reporting human rights violations by Israel, raising concern about the potential for abuse by organizations seeking boycotts, sanctions and international law tribunals against Israel. The Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor (DRL) announced "an open competition for projects that strengthen accountability and human rights in Israel and the West Bank and Gaza" last month, thought to be the first of its kind...

<p>BASRA, Iraq (AP) - Ali Hassan al-Majid, dubbed ``Chemical Ali'' by opponents of the Iraqi regime for ordering a poison gas attack that killed thousands of Kurds, has been found dead, a British officer said Monday.</p> <p>Maj. Andrew Jackson of the 3rd Battalion Parachute Regiment told The Associated Press that his superiors had confirmed the death of the man who is also President Saddam Hussein's first cousin.</p> <p>Jackson said the body was found along with that of his bodyguard and the head of Iraqi intelligence services in Basra.</p>

Al-Majid was widely known in Iraq as "Chemical Ali" for his repeated use of outlawed chemical warfare, as documented in the Human Rights Watch book on that campaign, Genocide In Iraq: The Anfal Campaign Against the Kurds . He was later in charge of Iraq's brutal military occupation of Kuwait, and commanded Iraq's military forces in the south, where he was reportedly killed by U.S. and coalition forces. "Al-Majid was Saddam Hussein's hatchet man," said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch. "He was involved in some of the worst crimes of the Iraqi government, including genocide and crimes...

March 03, 2011 HRW Founder Bernstein Starts Advancing Human Rights (AHR) Robert Bernstein, the founder and former chairman of Human Rights Watch who publicly renounced his ties with the organization due to distorted and disproportionate focus on free and open Israel at the expense of the rest of the Middle East -- mostly unfree -- has just launched a new human rights organization, Advancing Human Rights. Why the need for a new organization? Bernstein, 88, explains: Some human rights organizations, like Human Rights Watch, do not condemn incitement to genocide, Arab hate speech being spewed daily in Gaza, particularly, and...

WASHINGTON (AP) - The CIA took the first step toward a criminal investigation of a leak of possibly classified information on secret prisons to The Washington Post, a U.S. official said Tuesday. The agency's general counsel sent a report to the Justice Department about the Post story, which reported the existence of secret U.S. detention centers for suspected terrorists in Eastern Europe. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the issue deals with classified information, said the referral was made shortly after the Nov. 2 story. The leak investigation into the disclosure of covert CIA officer Valerie Plame's...

America's human rights abuses have provided a rallying cry for terrorists and set a bad example to regimes seeking to justify their own poor rights records, a leading independent watchdog said yesterday. The torture and degrading treatment of prisoners in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantánamo Bay have undermined the credibility of the US as a defender of human rights and opponent of terrorism, the New York-based Human Rights Watch says in its annual report. "The US government is less and less able to push for justice abroad because it is unwilling to see justice done at home," says Kenneth Roth, the...