Obama administration, under pressure from pro-Israel Jewish lobby groups, has revoked the Martin Ennals Award for Human Rights Defenders, it planned to give to Egyptian human rights activist Mona Seif. She was nominated for fighting against “virginity test” on femate protesters by Egyptian military junta.Her nomination was dropped after the Geneva-based American Jewish Congress-subsidiary UN Watch, sent a letter to the Martin Ennals Foundation on April 30, 2013, urging the organization’s chairman Hans Thoolen to immediately cancel Seif award for her support for the Palestinian resistance against the Zionist entity in the past.
The so-called “an independent watchdog group”, the UN Watch is an Israeli advocacy group linked to Israel’s Ziofacist Likud Party. The UN Watch was established in 1993 by Morris B. Abram (died 2000), the former US permanent representative to United Nations in Geneva. Alfred H. Moses, former Jewish ambassador to Romania and honorary AJC president is chairman of UN Watch. AJC Executive Director David A. Harris serves as co-chair of UN Watch together with Per Ahlmark of Sweden and Hillel C. Neuer as executive director.
Muslim-haters Daniel Pipes, Norman Podhoretz and Irving Kristol have used UN Watch’s office in Geneva.
The UN Watch cited several of Seif’s tweets during the Israeli attack on Gaza, in which she condemned calls by some NGOs for both sides of the conflict to stop the violence.
Seif was nominated for the award by a jury comprised of 10 of world’s leading human rights organizations including Amnesty International and US Human Rights Watch. She is a biology graduate student researching breast cancer mutations, became a prominent activist documenting the 2011 Egyptian uprising from Tahrir Square. She later started the group ‘No to Military Trials for Civilians’ to denounce the pro-US Supreme Council of Armed Forces’ (SCAF) abuses of power.
Jewish professor Richard Falk, the special UN envoy for the Palestinian territories, has been a major target of UN Watch for his criticism of the Zionist regime.
This episode reminds me American Jewish journalist and producer of two radio programs, Jeffrey Blankfort, who said in an interview he gave in 2006: “America’s invasion of Iraq in 2003 was not for oil, but was a war conceived by the neo-cons and the pro-Israeli lobby in the United States to benefit Israel, and to elevate Israel to a very important position in the Middle East. And right at this moment, the only segment of the American society that is pushing the US administration to confront Iran, happens to be the Jewish establishment or the lobby, whose main focus for months – groups like AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, but also other Jewish organizations– has been to prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons“.
Uprooted Palestinian
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