Terra Incognita 93 Terror and Human Rights organizations

Terra Incognita
Issue 93

“Written to enlighten, guaranteed to offend”

A Publication of Seth J. Frantzman
Jerusalem, Israel

Website: http://journalterraincognita.blogspot.com/

July 22, 2009



3) Terror and Human Rights Organizations: The recent revelations that Human Rights watch raises money in Saudi Arabia should raise awareness of the fact that human rights organizations are funded by the same sources and people who fund terrorist organizations. But their cooperation and similarity goes beyond that. They are organized the same way, use the media the same way and undermine democracy the same way.

Terror and Human Rights organizations

Seth J. Frantzman

July 19, 2009

Recent revelations that Human Rights Watch raised money from Saudi Arabia by emphasizing its criticism of Israel makes one realize that the same Saudis who fund Al Qaeda may also be funding Human Rights Watch. This means the two organizations and their leaders in the Middle East; Bin Laden and Sarah Leah Whitson, may have more in common than we subsequently realized. So are there other ways that some Human Rights Organizations and Terrorist Organizations are similar?

The two seem to be in a symbiotic relationship. Human Rights Organizations spend most of their time defending terrorists or those that support them and frustrating the efforts of states to remove the scourge of terrorism (Consider the recent irony of Amnesty International “strongly condemns Saudi Arabia over abuses allegedly committed during counter-terrorism efforts”-note no critique of the country’s other abuses of woman and foreign workers). But the symbiosis goes beyond that. The organizational structure is the same as well. They have a head office and then they have tentacles that stretch throughout the globe which work with local groups and recruit locally and receive local reports. They organize themselves into cells in the local environment, usually consisting of three men and women, which control the local hydra of the umbrella group. The cells operate independently, in the case of the terror organization they plan and orchestrate attacks whereas the Human rights cell orchestrates reports and criticism of the local state, a form of attack.

In addition both have training camps and centers where local recruits are sent on expenses paid flights to train in their work. Most members of these organizations are wealthy and most are educated or exposed to the West and its values. They both have an international outlook. Both terrorists and human rights activists hate Israel and both criticize local Muslim governments, such as that of Egypt. Both work in their own way to widdle away and undermine the state.

But it is in funding, following the money, that we also find a similarity. Both receive government and private donations. Both terrorist organizations and human rights organizations are organized as charities and both receive funding from Saudi Arabia and from the West. They also cooperate. Consider Human Rights Watch and Al Qaeda. Both receive money from Saudi Arabia. The money is funneled through numbered accounts, usually untraceable (Human Rights Watch doesn’t report who its Saudi donors are or have open books), and then local activists wage a vicious war of “reports” against the state. Human Rights Organizations use terrorism of the mind, attempting through publicity seeking articles and reports to shock the citizenry and ruin the reputations of states, while the terrorist organization use terrorism of the body, murdering and slaughtering people to shock the citizenry and ruin the reputation of a state, weakening it in the hopes it will collapse.

Both operate under the theory that ‘harming us makes us stronger.’ Thus attacks on human rights organizations either by locals or police or states seems to validate their point, the state is brutal and the suppression of the organization means that it must have been correct. Absence of an ability to report, the organization will then issue reports of imminent genocide or ‘warnings’ and ‘concerns’. Terrorist organizations thrive off of suppression, using it as a recruiting tool. Thus Al Qaeda once complained that the U.S occupied Saudi Arabia and harmed Muslims, and this was the excuse for 9/11, but 9/11 produced the Afghan and Iraq wars and gave Al Qaeda more claims of Muslims being occupied and suppressed as an excuse for further terror. Both use the media to gain exposure. If no one reported terrorist attacks or human rights reports than terrorist organizations and human rights organizations would have a hard time justifying their existence. Likewise democracies seem to suffer disproportionately from both. Extreme dictatorships usually receive little critique from human rights organizations, Saudi being a case in point, and terrorists have trouble operating in strong dictatorships.
It is unfortunate that the structure, funding and operations of Human Rights Watch and Al Qaeda have much in common. It goes to show the perversion that has overtaken the Human Rights industry and perverted it from its original interest in the ‘rights of man’ to the rights of terrorists and their supports.