Foreign Ministry Raps Carter Administration’s Human Rights Report Criticism of Israel

Foreign Ministry spokesman Naftali Lavie was sharply critical today of the Carter Administration’s final report on human rights throughout the world, contending that its criticism of Israel’s policies in the occupied territories were unjustified and that human rights violations in some Arab countries were not sufficiently condemned.

The 1140-page report on human rights in 153 nations in 1980 was prepared by the State Department and released this week. Its 19-page section on Israel and the occupied territories was longer than for any other country. It had unstinted praise for human rights practices in Israel which it described as a “parliamentary democracy with high standards of justice and human rights.” But the report observed that “sharply different politico-social environments” prevailed in the “Arab territories Israel has occupied since the 1967 war”

REPORT’S SHORTCOMINGS CITED

“We are amazed,” Lavie said, “to what extent they devote to Israel while other Mideast ‘democracies’ are hardly mentioned.” He said the State Department report overlooked Iraq’s mass deportation of Shiite Moslems and mass executions in Syria. He contended that the reports on Saudi Arabia and Jordan were superficial. But criticism of Israel’s actions in the territories were “very unjust and not convincing,” he said.

Lavie complained that the State Department did not make inquiries about alleged Israeli misbehavior in the territories before condemning them. “We would have expected that if someone had any charges they would at least ask for an Israeli reply,” he said. He said Israel was preparing a reply to the report which would be submitted “at the right place.”