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Read the below and then visit the source for the complete information. I have no sympathy for human rights workers whom are arrested, injured and/or murdered in Islamic countries. In my opinion they are reaping what they are sowing by concentrating on trumped up violations by Israel while largely ignoring the gross Islamic violations. SOURCE

Human Rights

Eli E. Hertz

Palestinian children participate in lynching, parading and hanging of a ‘brother’

Arab countries attack Israel on trumped-up charges of human rights violations to cover up their own systemic human rights violations. Not only does the Arab world ignore the rule of international human rights law, many of its violations – from sanctioning honor killings of women to cross-amputations for criminals – are enshrined in the legal system of most Muslim countries. Palestinian self-rule is no different.

Arab Nations’ Actions Fail to Put Human Rights Commitments Into Practice

Arab Violations: A Daily Affair

Endangered Human Rights Groups

Maybe it’s not so surprising given the conditions in most Arab nations, but human rights monitoring organizations in the Middle East also face tremendous danger.

Nearly 60 Years After Its Establishment, Israel Remains the Only Nation in the Middle East Whose Laws and Mainstream Social Values are Committed to Upholding Human Rights

Palestinian Breaches of Human Rights Affect Almost all Institutions and All Levels of Their Community

Ironically, under Israeli rule, Palestinians enjoyed more respect for their human rights than after the establishment of Palestinian self-government.

Under Palestinian rule, for example, those who ran newspapers – once the freest in the Arab world while under Israeli administration – began to face intimidation, arrest, closure, and confiscation of editions critical of the Palestinian government. Bookstores, too, were ordered to remove critical volumes. Judges were fired for decisions that Palestinian leadership did not like, and citizens were detained for months and often tortured, without charge or the benefit of counsel.

The Abuse of Arab Women’s Rights

Arab abrogation of women’s rights goes further than violating their freedom to organize and protest. It is endemic not only in Palestinian society, but also in the Arab world in general, where Arab women are legally treated unequally, both in personal matters and in the workplace.

Marginalization and disempowerment of women in Arab countries is significant.

Human rights violations stem not only from the absence of rule of law in the Arab world; many violations result from laws themselves that call for cruel forms of corporal punishment and tolerance for those who murder women.

The most widespread breach of human rights anchored in Arabic law are so-called honor killings. It is a practice endemic to both liberal and conservative societies in the Middle East, where murderers, motivated by desire to protect their families’ honor, enjoy special legal status in all Arab countries. In most – Syria, Kuwait, Egypt, Iran, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco, Oman, Lebanon, Jordan, and in the territories administered by the Palestinian Authority – the laws that exempt perpetrators and/or mitigate punishment for honor crimes are part of each government’s civil code. In Saudi Arabia and Qatar, the laws are based directly on Sharia, or Islamic law.

Regimes in the Middle East Not Only Intimidate Their Citizenry; They Use Terror Tactics Against Dissidents and Rivals

The Palestinian Authority uses the machinery of government to oppress its people.

Palestinians are plagued by a special brand of terrorism and fratricide: vigilante rule. Such has been the pattern over a dozen security organizations established by the PA. Vigilantism characterized the Intifada in 1987-93 and before that, the 1936-39 Arab revolt.

When a Palestinian police force was first envisioned, Israeli officials expected the force would number 3,000-4,000. At Oslo, a force of 12,000 was agreed upon. Then, believing a larger force would fight terrorism, it increased to 30,000 after the September 1995 interim agreement (“Oslo II”) was signed. In the end, under the leadership of Yasser Arafat, the PA has built a police state with over 40,000 armed security personnel for a population of 2.5 million inhabitants. That is a ratio of 16 police to 1,000 civilians inside the Palestinian Authority, compared to the ratio in Europe of 4-6 police to 1,000 civilians and a ratio of 2.4 to 1,000 in the United States.

In terms of human rights, however, the PA’s security wings have not just turned into a small army with weapons poised against Israelis, but have become a menace to their own people. Rather than taking advantage of self-rule to establish and maintain law and order, the PA simply used the machinery of self-government to terrorize Palestinians, and at times, literally, get away with highway robbery, aggravated assault, and even murder.

As a result, honor killings of Palestinian women have risen under the PA, paralleling other forms of vigilante justice carried out against a backdrop of general lawlessness.

The arrival of Arafat and his wing of the PLO from Tunis only worsened tribal blood feuds, with thousands of members of the security forces newly armed and prepared to use their weapons in private vendettas tied to tribal loyalty.

Despite self-rule, Palestinians also fear the damaging effects of a PA-controlled economy.

After two years of self-rule in 1996, Palestinians in PA-run areas suffered a 30 percent decline in their standard of living, Israeli experts estimate. By early 2002, after Palestinian leaders opted for more violence, the Palestinians’ Gross Domestic Product (GDP) plummeted by 70 percent, and the PA’s collective net worth dropped by an estimated 60 percent due to corruption, loss of productivity, and a loss of foreign aid.

Emigration

One of the least discussed results of Palestinian human rights violations is the growing exodus of Palestinians themselves from the territories, fed up with the violence and corruption.

The PA Cynically and Consciously Violates the Most Basic Human Right – the ‘Right to Life and Security of Person’ in Regard to Its Own Children – in Violation of a May 2000 Amendment to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child

Despite the strongly worded UN ban, the world body has failed to condemn Palestinians for victimizing children – their own or Israeli children.

The opposite has actually been the case, as the UN has served as the platform of choice for Israel bashing. One of the most blatant cases was the 2001 UN-sponsored conference on racism held in Durban, South Africa. The gathering was devoted solely to painting Israel as a human rights violator by means of a parade of fliers, bumper stickers, and posters declaring Israel racist, criminal, illegal, and an “apartheid state.” In many ways Durban stood as a recap of a 1975 UN General Assembly resolution, which defined Zionism as “a form of racism and racial discrimination.” That resolution was repealed in 1991, but the terminology continues to reverberate throughout the UN halls and other UN resolutions.

Beside health, the other basic human right is education. But intellectual empowerment through literacy and education pose one of the greatest threats to autocratic regimes.

From the very day it became an independent state on May 14, 1948, Israel has stood as a beacon of liberty

Israel has always perceived itself as responsible for providing a safe haven for any Jew in distress, regardless of the circumstances – displaced European Jews who survived the Holocaust, Jews from Arab countries whose communities became a target for discrimination and attacked, Jews from behind the Iron Curtain and black Jews from Ethiopia, and more recently, immigrants from Argentina and France – this is what Israel has stood for. In addition to serving as a haven for Jews, Israel has undertaken number of humanitarian gestures over the years. In the late 1970s, Israel took in 250 Vietnamese boat people, giving them asylum after an Israeli Zim Line vessel saved their lives while ships from Panama, Japan, Norway, and then-East Germany passed them by. Similar sentiments prompted Israel to give refuge to 84 Muslims from Bosnia in 1993 and 110 Albanians from Kosovo in 1999.

Israel is accused of gross violations of Palestinian human rights based on simple ‘body counts’ – Israeli fatalities vs. Palestinian fatalities. This is misleading. An examination of circumstances surrounding many Palestinian deaths shows most were combatants, and there were countless, needless casualties among Palestinians that stemmed from reckless death-defying behavior.