March 22nd, 2009 by NGO Monitor Staff | Category: Amnesty International, B'tselem, Ethics, Human Rights Watch, NGO Monitor

On March 15, 2009, NGO Monitor issued a press release calling on Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and B’Tselem to end their silence on kidnapped soldier Gilad Shalit. Executive Director Gerald Steinberg said, “Gilad Shalit has been denied even the most basic of human rights for almost 1,000 days.  The unwillingness of human rights organizations such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and B’tselem to campaign on his behalf is immoral.  Their shameful silence on Shalit’s fate amounts to a betrayal of universal human rights”.

 

These NGOs responded with a frontal attack on the messenger. In a March 17 article in the Jerusalem Post, a B’Tselem official was quoted as replying that “the suffering of the Schalit family is cynically manipulated in order to trash human rights NGOs”. Amnesty tried denial, asserting (without evidence) that NGO Monitor’s claims were “not borne out by the facts.”  And HRW’s Joe Stork (deputy director of the Middle East division) remarked that “[t]he idea that we have commented on everything but this is ridiculous”.

 

But almost immediately afterwards, perhaps purely coincidentally, Amnesty and B’Tselem issued their first serious statements about Gilad Shalit. To their credit, B’Tselem did not pull any punches. In contrast, Amnesty’s statement was politically “balanced”, claiming that “the plight of detainees [is] used by both sides of the Israel/Gaza conflict as bargaining chips in political negotiations.”  Immoral equivalency runs deep among the officials of this self-proclaimed human rights superpower.