HRW: We're Not Sure About Marc Garlasco's Nazi Obsession, But There's Definitely A Coordinated Jewish Cabal Of Liars Attacking Us
It's unclear whether Human Rights Watch has reinstated their anti-Israel investigator Marc Garlasco yet. His obsessive collecting of Nazi regalia got him suspended a few months ago, but reader JM says that Garlasco's HRW bio page doesn't reflect the suspension - and that it used to. I asked a second guy who would know and he didn't remember anything like that, and there's no way to definitively check. Gigablast reports that HRW had disabled caching on the page, which would explain why none of the search engines have an old copy.
Either way it won't be very long now. Doug Bandow has a post up on HuffPo - HuffPo being where Garlasco started his rehabilitation with innocent protestations of naivety before having sympathetic journalists write him up in Esquire - hinting that Garlasco's good to go:
I'm thinking a bit more about my collecting these days after the controversy that erupted over Marc Garlasco of Human Rights Watch, who collects World War II German militaria. It is the most popular military genre, but Garlasco was attacked as a Nazi-sympathizer by people who don't like his analytical work critical of Israel. Garlasco--whom I have never met--seems to have survived the kerfuffle, but the controversy demonstrated not only Washington's tendency toward the ad hominem but also a more general failure to understand collectors. Collectors collect. The doing often is as important as the what. Few collectors collect because they identify with the politics behind the items they are accumulating. In fact, many can't even explain why they like what they like.
I'll admit that I "don't like" Garlasco's reports, though in fairness they're an objectively unlikable pile of systematic and repeated - to say nothing of inaccurate - smears and fabrications, all of which he happily funnels to legacy and new media outlets.
Not that it matters. Motivation and bias are things you get to attack after you disprove something. So a pro-Israel activist might say "given that Garlasco's anti-Israel publications have been repeatedly debunked, it's relevant to investigate what's so consistently undermining his objectivity." Less argumentatively legitimate: "even though Garlasco's critics are undeniably right, you should ignore how a Nazi-obsessed investigator fit in so well at our organization because those critics don't like us and you do." And since we're on the topic of what exactly is getting proven, it's flat false to imply that I ever accused him of being a Nazi sympathizer, bigot, or racist.
The way I know that is because I wrote things like "Garlasco's not a vulgar racist. He's simply not. He's someone torn by sensibilities that make him wildly inappropriate as a choice for a Middle East investigator" and "I would guess that he clings very, very tightly to the belief that he's a history buff who happens, for purely familial reasons, to be utterly fascinated by the Nazis." Which are all the things that Bandow pedantically claims people "fail to understand."
The only caveat I added - a minor one, admittedly - is that anyone riven by an inchoate obsession with the color and pageantry of Nazism ought abstain from multi-year campaigns to demonize the Jewish State and drag Jewish officials in front of politicized international tribunals. Garlasco was drawn to Nazi collectibles for some reason. The guy wasn't collecting postage stamps, even though his Nazi grandfather presumably mailed stuff.
This emerging theme of vague "people" engaged in "ad homs" so as to undermine "work critical of Israel" has nonetheless become quite the pro-HRW talking point. When HRW founder Robert Bernstein turned his back on the organization for its anti-Israel pathology, that was the reality-based community's instinctive go-to. And here's HRW program director Iain Levine sounding exactly the same note:
America's leading human rights organisation has accused Israel and its supporters of an "organised campaign" of false allegations and misinformation, including "extremely personal attacks" on its staff, in an attempt to discredit the group over its reports of war crimes in Gaza... Iain Levine, HRW's programme director, said ... "I really hesitate to use words like conspiracy, but there is a feeling that there is an organised campaign, and we're seeing from different places what would appear to be co-ordinated attacks ... from some of the language and arguments used it would seem as if there has been discussion," he said. "We are having to spend a lot of time repudiating the lies, the falsehoods, the misinformation."... At the time, Levine called the attacks on Garlasco the latest salvo in the Israeli government's campaign "to eliminate the space for legitimate criticism" of the Israeli military.
Four quick things before I get to the part about how it's a long-established hallmark of conspiracy nuts to emulate their projected enemy:
(1) The rhetorical trope of "I'm not saying..." or "I hesitate to say..." is called paralipsis. It was well understood in Antiquity and nobody thought it was particularly clever back then either.
(2) I'm not sure when it became reasonable to unblinkingly describe the Garlasco stuff as "lies, falsehoods, and misinformation." I understand why HRW would prefer it that way, but it's just not the reality we live in.
(3) The Israeli government had zero to do with me outing Garlasco, as they were busy that week writing all the headlines for the NYT, the WaPo, and USA Today. Not the BBC though. Screw those guys, let them write their own copy.
(4) There's at least one collective effort to push back against anti-Israel human rights partisans. Naturally Levine chose the single dumbest way to prove it, since "the language and arguments" of pro-Israel bloggers and activists are similar mostly because they hold similar assumptions and subscribe to similar news feeds. The same might be said of leftists like Matt Yglesias who, though they're members of the confidential and exclusive JournoList, don't have to touch base to simultaneously defend antisemitic blood libels by hyperventilating about "stifling legitimate criticism of Israel."
"A bunch of pro-Israel bloggers all pointed out that our accusations of water contamination and child murder are internally inconsistent and sound exactly like genocidal medieval anti-Jewish libels - they must be coordinating with each other!" Please.
Anyway, I'm assuming that what Levine is oh-so-darkly alluding to - the coordinated effort he untangled by scrutinizing an opaque discursive network - is Understanding The Goldstone Report. If you want to unveil the conspirators for yourself you can check the About Us page, listen to my TOCS interview with Richard Landes where we discussed the project. Much easier than occult divination based on "language and arguments." And while I wouldn't say it's a conspiracy - and unlike Levine I'm not being disingenuous - sometimes various contributors do email, IM, or Tweet each other. In hushed tones. In abandoned ancient synagogues. Next to candlelight. Really.
But even so: Garlasco genuinely is obsessed with Nazi medals and attire, the Israeli government had nothing to do with me outing him based on a tip from Elder of Ziyon, and pro-Israel bloggers communicate over the Internet. It's all true. And you still have to admire an organization like HRW - which fundraises in Saudi Arabia on the basis of its anti-Israel propaganda while coincidentally publishing multiple reams of anti-Israel propaganda - for accusing opponents of "coordination."
HRW trotted out their Middle East and North Africa (MENA) Deputy Director Joe Stork - an advocate of the "revolutionary potential of the Palestinian masses" as expressed through "spontaneous random outbreaks of violence" - to trumpet demonstrably false and constantly changing fabrications about IDF soldiers shooting at flag-waving Palestinians. They dispatched Garlasco to the Gaza Strip to manufacture a report about Israel's use of white phosphorous. Both of these were widely seen as blatant attempts to raise the diplomatic cost of future Israeli self-defense and to bully Israel out of using legal cutting-edge battlefield weaponry.
And it was Stork's boss, MENA Director Sarah Leah Whitson, who ended up in Saudi Arabia asking for petrodollars on the basis of HRW's anti-Israel work. Not to worry though. In light of the obvious problems in that division HRW added 10 new members to the MENA advisory board. Many are rabidly anti-Israel nutjobs who might be described as symbolic additions meant to help HRW weather the post-Garlasco storm while doing the opposite of cleaning house - but I wouldn't want to repeat those arguments lest it raise the specter of coordination.
Not that any of this counts as a conspiracy. This is just an institution doing its job and getting paid for it, albeit with institutional actors feigning dispassion while enjoying themselves a little too much. But there's certainly more than a hint of dishonest behind-the-curtain calculations which, were they to come under pressure, might end up as pathological outbursts and feverish projections.
References:
* Marc Garlasco - Is HRW's Anti-Israel Investigator A Nazi-Obsessed Collector? [MR]
* Profile - Marc Garlasco [HRW]
* Marc Garlasco: Hey, Sorry If You Were Creeped Out By My Nazi Obsession, Which I'm Now Going To Pretend I Was Never Concerned About [MR]
* Garlasco's Friends at Esquire Do Him No Favors [Esquire]
* The Politics of Collecting [Bandow / HuffPo]
* Off the marc [Soccer Dad]
* The Incredible Marc Garlasco [IsraPundit]
* Some research avenues for Gaza "civilians" [Gaza]
* HRW's Garlasco's latest article: inaccurate and biased [NGO Monitor]
* Prestigious Award for Tendentious Spread [CAMERA]
* Bad pennies [American Thinker]
* Is Israel using illegal weapons in its offensive on Gaza? [Ha'aretz]
* Israel Used Phosphorus to Torch Hamas Hideouts: Human Rights Watch (Updated) [Wired Danger Room]
* No, The Stormfront.org Flak88 Guy Is Not Marc Garlasco [MR]
* Human Rights Watch: From Advocacy to Accusations [Israel Politik]
* HRW's Bernstein Kicks the Lefty Hornet's Nest [Solomonia]
* The Paranoid Style in American Politics - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia [Wikipedia]
* Apophasis [Wikipedia]
* Matthew Yglesias: Anti-Semitic Genocidal Maniacs Are Hip, Terrorists Are Fashionable (UPDATED AND BUMPED: Yglesias Article From Today Predictably Anti-Semitish) [MR]
* JournoList: Inside the echo chamber [Politico]
* About Us [Understanding The Goldstone Report]
* Richard Landes - Goldstoned [The Omri Ceren Show]
* Human Rights Watch Holds Saudi Fundraiser, Promises To Demonize Israel [MR]
* Maariv's Ben-Dror Yemini Exposes Senior HRW Staffer Joe Stork, Based on CAMERA Research [CAMERA]
* Mark Regev interview and IDF Spokesman regarding HRW claims [MFA]
* HRW's Credibility Gap: 14 Versions of the Abed Rabbo "White Flags" Incident [NGO Monitor]
* HRW New Middle East Board: Reinforcing the Bias [Steinberg]
Related Mere Rhetoric Categories:
* Human Rights
* Global Antisemitism
* Anti-Israel Diplomacy
