PCHR Exploits Human Rights
On October 21, 2008, the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) – a major Gaza-based NGO whose funders include the EU, Christian Aid, Ireland, and Norway, and a leader of the NGO-lawfare movement – published a report entitled “Blood on Their Hands: Child Killings by the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) in the Gaza Strip. ” The 64-page document claims that the Israeli army killed a number of children between June 2007 and July 2008. According to a PCHR press release, these deaths “are the direct result of IOF policy of targeting unarmed civilians in the OPT, and especially the Gaza Strip, as a form of collective punishment against Palestinian civilians. “
In an interview with Al Jazeera, Marcus Sheff, Executive Director of the Israel Project, pointed to discrepancies between PCHR´s claims and B´Tselem´s statistics. Sheff found that at least two of the “victims” were killed while participating in hostilities against Israel, and at least one of the “children” was 18 years old (given the credibility deficits in B´Tselem´s research, these are minimal figures). In the Al Jazeera report, a PCHR representative erased the context of terrorism and condemned Israel´s “patterns of deliberate killing and deliberate targeting of children. “