Human Rights Watch under fire for allegedly accepting millions in Qatar funds - I24NEWS
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Middle East Media Research Institute on Tuesday published a leaked Qatari government document claiming Qatar’s regime paid 3 million euros to HRW - Click the link for more details.

In 2020, the online news organization The Intercept revealed that HRW’s then-Executive Director, Ken Roth, accepted a $470,000 donation from a Saudi billionaire based on the condition that HRW would not use the money to protect the rights of the persecuted LGBTQ-plus community in the Middle East. 

Roth was compelled to return the donation after The Intercept report.

  • DarkGamer@kbin.social
    48·
    1 year ago

    Why are Sephardic Jews an ethnicity but Palestinians not an ethnicity?

    That’s how they’re categorized on Wikipedia.

    I presumed that the various Jewish ethnicities had more genetic drift than Arabs due to the diaspora, but upon further reading I’m not sure that’s the case:

    All Jewish groups were found to be genetically closer to each other than to Palestinians and Muslim Kurds.

    It’s a good question. I suspect this ethnic classification is how they classify themselves.

      • DarkGamer@kbin.social
        48·
        1 year ago

        On what basis are you making your claim that Palestinians are a distinct ethnic group? Even pro-Palestinian organizations refer to them as Arabs. As far as I’m aware, Palestinians only began existing as a group when local Arab nationalists emerged as a regional group opposing Jews in the levant.

        I think calling Palestine a nation and not an ethnicity is more accurate, but I will correct my language if you can provide me a source.

        • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
          42·
          1 year ago

          Yes, and Sephardic Jews refer to themselves as Jews. They’re still a distinct ethnic group. The difference according to you is, apparently, ‘Wikipedia says so.’

            • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
              52·
              1 year ago

              https://www.stats.govt.nz/tools/2018-census-ethnic-group-summaries/palestinian

              https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S014717670900056X

              https://forward.com/tag/palestinian/

              https://www.michigannewssource.com/2023/11/confused-about-the-terms-you-hear-connected-to-the-israel-hamas-war-this-will-help/

              https://www.ncesc.com/from-whom-are-the-modern-palestinians-descended/

              https://spa.sdsu.edu/documents/Flanigan2015_Article_CommunityServiceProvisionByPol.pdf

              I’m guessing you won’t consider those “better sources” than a page anyone with an agenda can edit. But I’ll keep going if you want.

              • DarkGamer@kbin.social
                22·
                1 year ago

                Summarizing:

                • NZ considers “Palestinian” an ethnic group in its census.

                • The Abu-Rayya family refers to Palestinian ethnicity in their study regarding personal identification as Israeli or Palestinian.

                • A link to list of every article on forward.com that contains the tag, “Palestinian,” (why did you post this?)

                • A student article in Ann Arbor’s student newspaper refers to Palestinians as, “an ethnic group.”

                • An article full of videos disproving Palestinians are descended from Philistines, in which several of the videos seem to totally contradict your position. Did you watch them?:

                  • 2nd video: says that Jews were considered Palestinians until 1948, and contains this quote: "The group of people that call themselves, ‘Palestinians,’ are mostly Arabs that come from neighboring countries like Egypt, Syria, Jordan and more."
                  • 3rd video: Claims that Palestinians did not exist as an identity until around 1900 when, "More people in the area were developing a sense of being not just ethnic Arabs, but Palestinians, a unique national identity." National, not ethnic.

                • A paper that refers to Palestinians as an ethnic group in a paper about service organizations for middle east minorities

                While I appreciate that you bothered to present sources, these seem to just be google hits for “Palestinian ethnicity” rather than articles specifically chosen from credible sources because they support your case. Did you read them?

                I’m guessing you won’t consider those “better sources” than a page anyone with an agenda can edit. But I’ll keep going if you want.

                If you want to keep going please provide sources that are making this specific claim with evidence and not just articles that mention the words ethnic and Palestinian together in an unrelated context.

                It seems to me that Palestinian is better classified as a national, not ethnic, identity. They consider themselves Arabs and were referred to collectively as such until Mandatory Palestine ended.