26 July - 1 August 2001
Issue No.544
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 26 July - 1 August 2001 Issue No.544 |
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Words of understanding
Non-Arab human rights organisations are defending Arab rights before the world. In exposing the crimes committed by Israel against the Palestinians and against humanity, they show both enthusiasm and an admirable ability to come up with a feasible plan. Why have Arab civil rights organisations not taken such initiatives? Why must we always wait for somebody else to take the first step?
In the case of Sharon's possible prosecution for the war crimes and crimes against humanity he committed in the course of Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon, too, it was a Belgian lawyer, Luc Walleyn, who collected, reviewed and presented the evidence. The documents in themselves, including testimonies of survivors of the Sabra and Shatila massacres, irrefutably prove the crimes in question, but it took a great deal of effort to gather them and present them in court, as well as mobilising public opinion to resist the Zionist lobby's influence throughout Europe.
Of course, these efforts also require funding. Arab governments, immersed in other, pointless concerns, may fail to make even that effort, and this places NGOs in a position of responsibility: they must provide their European counterparts with support and coordinate with them. When this happens, perhaps Arab governments, which often adopt a negative position towards Arab NGOs, will realise the importance of the these groups' activities in the international arena.
In this context, I can cite a particularly clear example of the kind of work human rights groups can do. When Human Rights Watch called on the Danish foreign minister to reject the appointment of Carmi Gillon, a former Israeli intelligence agent, as Israeli ambassador to Denmark after interviews with Palestinians detained in Israeli prisons revealed that Gillon had tortured thousands of them. In the wake of the investigations leading to this discovery, HRW launched a media campaign against the incoming ambassador, contending that diplomatic activities should not be undertaken by torturers, particularly at a time when Denmark, which has participated in the peace process, is speaking out against the mistreatment and torture of political prisoners.
The campaign effectively blew the ambassador's cover, and he admitted to the press that he had participated personally in the torture of Palestinians from 1993 to '96, insisting that his actions were necessary despite the verdict of the Israeli supreme court. HRW is currently calling on Copenhagen to cancel its approval of the new ambassador on the basis of the Vienna Agreement on Diplomatic Relations. A letter has been sent to Sharon informing him that the organisation has documents that could send the ambassador down.
The suspicion and lack of trust with which governments treat human rights organisations in the Arab world only curbs constructive work and prevents the taking of any initiatives, reducing Arab participation in international efforts to publicise Israeli crimes against the Arabs. We may complain about international bias in favour of Israel, but this bias is partly of our own making -- a consequence of our failure to address the world in a language that will convince it of our point of view.
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