Free Republic

One can measure the failures of the film American Beauty in so many ways, but perhaps the best is to realize that the screenwriter was so unsure of his audience’s ability to spot a creep that he had to make Kevin Spacey’s next-door neighbor not just a sadist and a closet case but also a collector of Nazi memorabilia. I bring this up because a fetish for the baubles of fascism is generally thought to be a good way of alienating civilized company. The auction house Christie’s refuses to sell the stuff. And whatever the interpretative fallacies of the late...

A leading human rights group has suspended its senior military analyst following revelations that he is an avid collector of Nazi memorabilia. The group, Human Rights Watch, had initially thrown its full support behind the analyst, Marc Garlasco, when the news of his hobby came out last week. On Monday night, the group shifted course and suspended him with pay, “pending an investigation,” said Carroll Bogert, the group’s associate director. “We have questions about whether we have learned everything we need to know,” she said. The suspension comes at a time of heightened tension between, on one side, the new...

Human Rights Watch's employment of a man who trades and collects Nazi memorabilia as its "senior military expert" is a "new low" for the organization that frequently criticizes Israel, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's policy director Ron Dermer said Wednesday. Netanyahu's policy director,... "I thought that nothing could top a human rights organization trying to raise money in Saudi Arabia, but I was apparently wrong," said Dermer, referring to HRW's fundraising efforts in the kingdom earlier this year, using its reports against Israel as a sales pitch. "A war crimes investigator who is an avid collector and trader in Nazi memorabilia...

Human Rights Watch and Saeb Erekat lack objectivity The Israeli Defense Forces recently concluded a report on the tragic deaths of seven Palestinians on a Gaza Beach. As detailed yesterday in HR's special report "Gaza Beach Libel", the IDF has carefully analyzed all evidence and proven that it was not responsible for this tragedy. In the past 24 hours, our report has generated over 500 letters to the media. While some news organizations have reported the IDF findings, it certainly does not compensate for the highly emotive front page initial accusations.At the same time, many in the media have been...

The "expert" who blames Israel of Gaza beach blast From Haaretz:  ”...the British newspaper The Independent on Wednesday quoted a former Pentagon “battle damage expert,” who visited the site of the incident, as saying that “all the evidence points” to a “155mm Israeli land-based artillery shell” as the cause of the blast. “According to the report, Marc Garlasco also called for an independent inquiry into the deaths, saying that physical evidence, including shell fragments, shrapnel and the type of injuries ‘made Israeli shelling easily the likeliest cause.’” His background? From Mother Jones: Marc Garlasco is the senior military analyst at...