On Tuesday, October 8, the 2013 Martin Ennals Human Rights Defender Award was presented in Geneva, Switzerland to someone other than an Egyptian woman who repeatedly vilified and glorified violence against Israel.
Yes, things are so bad it is newsworthy when a promoter of human rights abuses against the Jewish state was not voted by the leading global human rights organizations as the top human rights defender in 2013.
But although Egyptian social media activist Mona Seif was not chosen as this year’s award recipient, it is barely less astounding that she was chosen as a nominee, and then again as one of the three finalists for what is known as the “Nobel Prize for Human Rights” in spite of her very public advocacy of terrorist and wanton destruction against the Jewish State.
Friday morning and then again on Monday, the day before the award was presented, The Jewish Press spoke with the (non-voting) chair of the Martin Ennals Human Rights Award jury, Hans Thoolen, in an effort to understand how Mona Seif could be considered a credible nominee.
The Jewish Press first covered this story back in May when we learned that Seif had been nominated for the award because of her social media activism in countering the Mubarak regime’s repressive actions and in mobilizing protesters and supporters of the Egyptian Revolution in Tahrir Square during the winter of 2010 – 11.
But it was her use of that same social media to threaten and to glorify attacks against Israel that led at least some human rights advocates – those who also support the right of the Jewish State to defend itself – to question Seif’s nomination.
True, Seif organized and activated an important Egyptian grassroots organization which opposed former Egyptian President Hosnai Mubarak’s use of military trials for civilians through her masterful use of social media. She tweeted out messages warning of oppressive moves by the former Egyptian government, and helped mobilize protesters and supporters of Tahrir Square’s Egyptian Revolution during the winter of 2010-2011. That takes bravery, especially given the alarmingly violent misogyny in Egypt, particularly amongst the young revolutionaries.
But, as was pointed out when Seif’s nomination was first announced, there is a darker side to her social media activity. People who think that the Jewish state is entitled to self-defense and security in the face of decades of existential terrorism find that side utterly inconsistent with the fundamental precepts of the Martin Ennals Human Rights Defender Award.
Seif’s Twitter account revealed a propensity to express the most vulgar kind of hatred towards Israel, both in terms of how she expresses herself, “#F[expletive deleted]Israel” being a popular choice, as well as the substance of her messages, which advocate terrorism against the Jewish State and which harshly criticized Human Rights organizations that dared to suggest the terrorist group Hamas should refrain from killing Israeli civilians.
Last week Alana Goodman in the Washington Free Beacon reported that additional messages advocating violence against Jews and Israel had been sent out via Twitter by Seif. Here is a translation from the Arabic of the most egregious:
Palestine is my way, and I am full of determination and will. I will draw my blood in the West Bank, I will fight to my death in Gaza, I will support by people in Bethlehem and I will achieve martyrdom in Jerusalem.
How is it possible that the Martin Ennals Foundation considered holding up to the world as a global role model “defender of human rights” someone who published such a message of murderous hatred and hopes to participate in murder? That was just one of the questions put to Mr. Thoolen.
Some cynics suggested that of course such a double standard exists, killing, torture and demonization is only wrong – in the eyes of the global human rights community – when it is about anyone other than Israelis: Jews from the Jewish state. We hoped the cynics would not be proven right.
We were wrong.
Thoolen was kind enough to spend a good deal of time explaining why twitter remarks such as the ones sent out by Seif simply could not be the basis for disqualifying a nominee whose bravery on behalf of Egyptian rights qualified her to be nominated.