Sunday Times on Biases at HRW

Rebecca at Mystical Politics put up a link to this at the Sunday Times (of London). There's any number of interesting bits, and it's well worth reading her post and the whole article.

In June 2006, Garlasco had alleged that an explosion on a Gaza beach that killed seven people had been caused by Israeli shelling. However, after seeing the details of an Israeli army investigation that closely examined the relevant ballistics and blast patterns, he subsequently told the Jerusalem Post that he had been wrong and that the deaths were probably caused by an unexploded munition in the sand. But this went down badly at Human Rights Watch HQ in New York, and the admission was retracted by an HRW press release the next day.

Well, I suppose that makes Marc Garlasco, their Nazi-memorabilia-collecting expert, look just a little bit better. (Supposedly, though, Garlasco had a close look at the beach, so I wonder how he came to his initial conclusions when he already knew what Israel was saying publicly. He couldn't have waited to talk with Israel?) And HRW as a whole looks a lot worse. I remember just how much press this beach incident got. And leftists pushing the story as "ethnic cleansing." I didn't know Garlasco had challenged the initial story. As they say, a lie goes round the world before the truth has a chance to put on pants.