Global Research, Chossudovsky, Russia, Propaganda

[coffin_dodger]

Your thinking is so incredibly off that I can only conclude that you are impaired and/or dissembling

Well, thank goodness for that! After all, there's only 7bill and counting of us, AD - and to think, we don't all think like AD! Some of us (gasp) see things differently! Thought-retraining required, eh, AD? And where's bph? - you'll need some backup, 'cos it's a lonely but brave job you're doing - defending all that's right and proper and true!

Please note that this does not lead to working for "some sinister cause", because most sinister causes that I know of would want to employ a different caliber of person as their agent...

LOL! I'm not even worthy of being an agent. I'm too stoopid.

PS I'm fascinated by your casual insinuations that always end with a ' .... ', which are then construed as misconceptions when challenged. This is a very clever trick, though not one I'd ever use myself as it strikes me as underhand and 'gamey'. And you have had the nerve to call so many others on this board 'slippery' LOL!

on edit - ah, the cavalry has arrived, I see.

[Searcher08]

Your thinking is so incredibly off that I can only conclude that you are impaired and/or dissembling

Well, thank goodness for that! After all, there's only 7bill and counting of us, AD - and to think, we don't all think like AD! Some of us (gasp) see things differently! Thought-retraining required, eh, AD? And where's bph? - you'll need some backup, 'cos it's a lonely but brave job you're doing - defending all that's right and proper and true!

Please note that this does not lead to working for "some sinister cause", because most sinister causes that I know of would want to employ a different caliber of person as their agent...

LOL! I'm not even worthy of being an agent. I'm too stoopid.

PS I'm fascinated by your casual insinuations that always end with a ' .... ', which are then construed as misconceptions when challenged. This is a very clever trick, though not one I'd ever use myself as it strikes me as underhand and 'gamey'. And you have had the nerve to call so many others on this board 'slippery' LOL!

on edit - ah, the cavalry has arrived, I see.

And with the usual level of searing insight...

Let's avoid this diversionary nonsense from the baker of the GAS (Globalist-Anarchist-Soros) layercake.
(by the way, your observation about the language used is spot on, it is very 'dirty' in the sense
that it seeks to impose his model of the world on the interaction - and the language is full of ambiguous 'cloud words' - and value judgements which are provided without a basis, rather than a point by point factual refutation)

Onward.
I have been spending a few hours doing some research into this area (academic anti-fascists and connections to Soros and / or to Intel). I am not sure how to represent it at the moment - linearly or in a mindmap.

I never imagined that there was a right old (as opposed to Old Right ) veritable anti-fascist industry going on. Conferences, think tanks, academic journals, university departments, consulting, grants to allocate / apply for, government links etc.
An entire deeply interconnected 'anti-fascist' ecosystem. It's the Circ-cle of Liiiiiiife!!!

[American Dream]

When and if you have a coherent position to express regarding the main ideas here- bring it on, Searcher. I will be happy to address concerns that directly relate to the central contentions of this thread: that there is a Russian Propaganda Machine funding a network of writers with strong connections to the conspiracy world, that this network is working in tandem with a network of far right/fascist forces from across Eurasia and North America, etc.

Beyond that, if you think I believe a certain thing or sustain a certain position and it is not absolutely certain, you can ask me. Do not put words in my mouth and then expect me to respond cordially.

[coffin_dodger]

there is a Russian Propaganda Machine funding a network of writers with strong connections to the conspiracy world, that this network is working in tandem with a network of far right/fascist forces from across Eurasia and North America

So, when them Russkies was Commie Pinkoes, they werz de enemy because demz hordes wanted to seize yerz prop'ty and destroy yerz way-o-life, but now deys is Fascist Nazi-basterds who want to... to... seize yerz prop'ty and destroy yerz way-o-life?

Well, I'll be a son-of-a-gun!

We gotta get demz Russkie pinko-Nazi basterds afore deys be getting us!

BY ANY MEANS.

[stillrobertpaulsen]

I will be happy to address concerns that directly relate to the central contentions of this thread: that there is a Russian Propaganda Machine funding a network of writers with strong connections to the conspiracy world, that this network is working in tandem with a network of far right/fascist forces from across Eurasia and North America, etc.

There's something I'm curious about, AD. Numerous times in this thread, you have mentioned that you don't believe ISIS is "controlled" by the US. I don't believe anyone on this thread has made this claim, though I have probably come the closest to doing so because I believe there is strong circumstantial evidence that the neo-cons and neo-libs set up their Grand Chessboard specifically so that the players (al-Qaeda, ISIS, Eastasia, etc.) would be highly motivated to use horrifying means to achieve their (neo-con and neo-lib) ends. I believe, as Sibel Edmonds spelled out, that this in no way constitutes "blowback", it is an insurance policy for further justification of "The War That Will Not End in Our Lifetime."

So allow me to put the question back to you regarding your central contention regarding the "Russian Propaganda Machine funding a network of writers with strong connections to the conspiracy world." Do you believe Russia "controls" Global Research?

[American Dream]

The question of ISIS being controlled by the CIA and/or Mossad is actually a carryover from another thread. I'm too busy to dig it up now, but that is the origin of that question. I'm also by no means asserting that ISIS is not fully controlled by some spy agency- just saying that I haven't yet seen good evidence of this. I'm open to the possibility but looking to see the evidence.

As to whether Russia "controls" Global Research, I'm simply at a deeper level of mistrust towards Chossudovsky given the material presented at the beginning of this thread. I don't know enough about Global Research to claim that they are controlled by this or that entity. I see more evidence that there is a deficiency of principle, judgement and integrity at this point.

[American Dream]

https://shirazsocialist.wordpress.com/2 ... t-friends/

Russian and other fascists discard their UK “socialist” friends
September 1, 2014


Discarded: German, Murray and members of ‘Workers Power’ at the last London meeting of Useful Idiots For Putin and His Fascist Friends

Less than two months ago Richard Brenner (Workers Power) and Alan Freeman (Socialist Action) were feted in the Hotel Yalta-Intourist by assorted Russian fascists and ultra-nationalists at a conference about Ukraine. The same initiative, meeting again this weekend, was apparently without them.

The first conference produced a “Declaration” (full of worthy anti-fascist and anti-war verbiage, designed for a European/US left-liberal audience) and a “Manifesto” (which amounted to a programme to wipe Ukraine off the face of the earth, or at least to reduce it to the borders of pre-World-War-One Galicia).

Brenner defended his attendance at the conference on the grounds that “some of the people in the resistance are nationalists and socially reactionary on some (not all) questions.” As for the “Manifesto”, according to Brenner, “there is nothing reactionary in its practical proposals.”

(An astonishing conclusion, bearing in mind that the title of the Manifesto – “Manifesto of the Popular Front for the National Liberation of Ukraine, Novorossiya and Transcarpathian Rus’” – was itself a “practical proposal” for the dismemberment of Ukraine.)

This weekend’s conference in the same hotel was entitled “Russia, Ukraine, Novorossiya: Global Problems and Challenges”, and will launch what it calls the “Anti-Fascist (Anti-Maidan) Council of the Russian Federation”. (1)

The conference was organised by the “Co-ordination Centre for Novaya Rus’” – one of the organisations headed by Aleksei Anpilogov which ran the earlier conference attended by Brenner and Freeman.

Three of the conference’s listed speakers attended the earlier conference: Anpilogov, Vladimir Rogov and Pyotr Getsko. (Anpilogov can fairly be described as a nationalist-cum-fascist; the latter two are more ultra-nationalist/fascist-fellow-travellers.)

But this time they were not meeting with a couple of (possibly) useful idiots from the British left.

Keynote speakers at the conference included Igor Strelkov-Girkin and Alexander Borodai (respectively, former Defence Minister and former Prime Minister of the ‘Donetsk People’s Republic’). Both are members of the Izborsky Club, a Russian fascist ‘think tank’ headed up by Alexander Prokhanov and Alexander Dugin.

Sergei Glazyev (presidential aide to Putin, and a member of the Izborsky Club) also addressed the conference, as did Mikhail Delyagin (Russian academic and a member of the Izborsky Club).

Other speakers included Mikhail Sheremet (former head of the ‘Crimean Self-Defence’ which worked with the Russian military in the annexation of the Crimea, subsequently appointed Crimean Deputy Prime Minister) and Mateusz Piskorski:

“Piskorski is an open proponent of Nazism, a holocaust denier, and the author of articles in the portals “White World” and “I, A Russian”. He was the leading light of the Polish skinhead paper ‘Odala’, where he praised the Aryan race and Adolf Hitler.” (2)

Publicity for the conference states that it would be attended by “members of the Izborsky and Zinoviev Clubs”.

The latter Club is named after the late Soviet philosopher Alexander Zinoviev: an admirer of Stalin, a supporter of Milosevic, and an opponent of Western values. The Club is concerned with the restoration of “traditional Russian values”.

Also attending the conference was “parliamentary and government delegations from twelve European countries.” So far, only one of them has been named: Marton Dyondyoshi, a leading figure in the Hungarian far-right and particularly anti-semitic party Jobbik.

The list of speakers shows the hollowness of the expression “anti-fascist” in the context of this conference and its goal of setting up an “Anti-Fascist Council”.

(It is no less hollow in the context of: “Campaign in Solidarity with the Anti-Fascist Resistance in Ukraine”, to which Workers Power, Socialist Action and other more explicit brands of Stalinism are affiliated.)

There is nothing “anti-fascist” about the politics of the Izborsky Club members. There is nothing “anti-fascist” about the politics of Dyondyoshi. There is nothing “anti-fascist” about the politics of the French National Front (regularly praised on separatist websites).

“Anti-fascist”, in this context, is no more than a verbal fig-leaf to cover up for straightforward Russian-imperialist aggression against Ukraine.

And the fact that the organisers of the first Yalta conference have now organized this weekend’s event, inviting along sundry fascists, Hitler-admirers and anti-semites, tells you a lot about their own politics as well.

But for the likes of Worker’s Power, perhaps Jobbik should now also be classed as no more than “nationalists (who are) socially reactionary on some (not all) questions”?

1) http://delyagin.ru/news/81020-rossiya-u ... yzovy.html
2) http://sz-n.com/2014/03/piskorski-head- ... ti-semite/

Dale Street adds:

An International Congress of Fascists

Submitted by dale street on 30 August, 2014 – 22:37

Anton Shekhovtsov, an academic expert on European and Russian far right/fascist movements and ideology, has published the following list of participants in the conference (or invitees to it – it is unclear from current reports how many actually attended):

Nick Griffin (fascist British National Party, UK)

Márton Gyöngyösi (fascist Jobbik, Hungary)

Frank Creyelman (far right Vlaams Belang, Belgium)

Luc Michel (neo-Nazi Parti Communautaire National-Européen, Belgium)

Pavel Chernev (far right Ataka, Bulgaria)

Angel Djambazki (far right Bulgarsko Natsionalno Dvizhenie, Bulgaria)

Erkki Johan Bäckman (neo-Stalinist, Finland)

Giovanni Maria Camillacci (far right Lega Nord, Italy)

Roberto Fiore (fascist Forza Nuova, Italy)

Mateusz Piskorski (far right Samooborona, Poland)

Konrad Rękas (far right Samooborona, Poland)

Bartosz Bekier (neo-Nazi Falanga, Poland)

See: http://anton-shekhovtsov.blogspot.co.uk ... cists.html

A pro-separatist website (http://baltija.eu/news/read/39884) states that representatives of the French National Front were also due to attend the conference.

On the website of the pro-separatist “Izvestia” newspaper (http://izvestia.ru/news/575833) an article reports that attendees at the conference include Alexander Prokhanov and Alexander Dugin (Russian fascists) and Konstantin Zatulin (Russian ultra-nationalist and president of the, ahem, philanthropic fund “We Are All – Berkut”).

In early July Aleksei Anpilogov (fascist) organized an international conference to build support for the “anti-fascist resistance” in Ukraine, attended, inter alia, by Richard Brenner (Workers Power) and Alan Freeman (Socialist Action) of the British “Campaign in Solidarity with the Anti-Fascist Resistance in Ukraine”.

Now the same Aleksei Anpilogov (fascist) has organized another conference (same venue) to build support for the “anti-fascist resistance” in Ukraine, attended (if they turned up to the event) by fascists from throughout eastern and western Europe.

The BNP, Falanga, Forza Nuova, Jobbik, Lega Nord, Vlaams Belang, French National Front, Workers Power and Socialist Action – that’s a very broad campaign in solidarity with the “anti-fascist resistance” in Ukraine that Anpilogov is building.

See also: Comrade Coatesy: http://tendancecoatesy.wordpress.com/20 ... far-right/

[coffin_dodger]

The Hitler Slur and Making New Enemies consortiumnews.com 4 Sep 2014

A favorite tactic to get Americans and Europeans ready for another war is to liken some foreign “enemy” to Hitler, no matter how ill-fitting or absurd the comparison. But once the Hitler slur is slung all rational debate ends, as Danny Schechter explains.

By Danny Schechter

The ISIS gang makes great enemies. They dress in black, wear Halloween masks, wave flags, act viciously, and cut off the heads of journalists. Never mind that the Saudis beheaded ten dissidents on the night that journalist Jack Foley became first American victim of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. We didn’t know the Saudi victims and didn’t want to embarrass our ally. But chop the heads of people we do know – and you are asking for a drone up your keister.

Nothing like a grotesque atrocity to pump up Vice President Joe Biden to vow to chase ISIS “to the gates of hell,” a war cry designed to get the Christian Right behind him since ISIS detests Jesus too. President Barack Obama’s vow to destroy and “degrade” ISIS did not have the same populist appeal.

Every evangelical activist who has been singing “Onward Christian Soldiers” has a new cause now, even if ISIS’ last victim was an Israeli-American, Steven Sotloff.

Never mind the role we may have played in training and funding this latest face of Islamic terror (when ISIS was trying to overthrow the Syrian government); the group has managed to do what few maniacs have — unite Iran and the United States on the field of battle. The scary presence of ISIS has also buried all discussion of the failures of U.S. policy that destroyed Iraq and assisted the emergence of ISIS in the first place. (The group originated as “al-Qaeda in Iraq” in response to President George W. Bush’s invasion and occupation of Iraq.)

When you don’t understand the culture of countries you invade, it’s easy to demonize what springs from those invasion. And, just in time, since al-Qaeda had lost its sting and fear appeal, we needed a new enemy to detest, and, poof, here they are!

It is a bit trickier giving Russian President Vladimir Putin the same treatment — not just because “the facts” and factions in the Ukraine — including oligarchs, real Nazis, democrats and demagogues — are harder to define. And, also because Americans are not that familiar with the country’s latest savior, the billionaire “Chocolate King” Petro Poroshenko.

Ukraine is a harder conflict to sell. It’s complex: you have got the East and the West, a blizzard of languages and minorities, and the fact that it seems clear that Putin has not been calling all the shots even though we want to portray the situation as if he is and has.

So what to call Putin to make him really scary? Let’s recycle a name that is more evil than bin Laden, more memorable than ISIS and one that everyone in England of a certain age, certainly, and the U.S. hates.

How about Hitler? Can we get that monster to goosestep across the world stage one more time? When you say Hitler, you don’t have to say much more.

Who can we get to make Vlad seem really bad? How about British Prime Minister David Cameron? He will do anything to sound like Churchill and get his puss in the papers. Cameron reached into his little book of historical clichés to compare the mistakes made by the West in Munich in 1938 with those being made now. Even the debaters at the Oxford Union would see this parallel as a stretch.

Here’s how it went down — at first in secret, then as a leak. Reported the Guardian: “David Cameron has told European leaders that the west risks making similar mistakes in appeasing Vladimir Putin over Ukraine as Britain and France did with Adolf Hitler in the run-up to the second world war.

“In a heated debate about the crisis behind closed doors in Brussels on Saturday, the prime minister told an EU summit that Putin had to be stopped from seizing all of Ukraine, according to La Repubblica, the Italian newspaper, which obtained details of the confidential discussion.”

Wow, a British politician reviving the despised memory of a dead German leader in an Italian newspaper. “We run the risk of repeating the mistakes made in Munich in ’38. We cannot know what will happen next,” Cameron was reported as warning.

No, he did not make any mention of the U.S. corporations that funded the Nazis, or the fact that it was the Russians, not the Brits, who stopped their blitzkrieg – or, for that matter, all the Nazi war criminals who escaped prosecution (often with the help of the U.S. government).
Owen Jones of the Guardian was disgusted by what he read in his own paper. “Here we go again,’ he wrote, adding, “The west comparing its latest enemy number to the German Fuhrer has been a standard tactic for decades. When Egypt’s General Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal in 1956, Britain’s prime minister, Anthony Eden, compared him to Hitler, while Labour’s Hugh Gaitskell opted for a comparison with Benito Mussolini. Serbia’s Slobodan Milosevic was the Hitler of the late 1990s, and the US dabbled with describing former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in these terms too.

“On the eve of the Iraq war, Saddam Hussein was repeatedly compared to Hitler, with Donald Rumsfeld even casting George W Bush in the role of Winston Churchill. The media abounded with such parallels in the build-up to the Iraq disaster, with one Telegraph article headlined ‘Appeasement won’t stop Saddam any more than Hitler’ and even suggesting Iraq could bomb Southampton. On either sides of his rapprochement with the west, Libya’s Colonel Gaddafi faced the Hitler treatment, too.

In and of themselves, these comparisons are self-evidently ludicrous.”

But, why let historical facts get in the way in a conflict that seems to have real Hitler lovers in the ranks of Ukraine’s hard-right bully boys, the very people Putin has been denouncing. Talk about twisting reality inside out.

JP Sottle writes that this tactic has spread across the ocean: “when it’s time to fire up the Great American Fear Factory for another ‘lobbying blitz’ and bellicose ‘product launch’, America’s policymakers conjure up the darkest star of human history. They say ‘Hitler’. … Evoking Hitler is the foreign policy equivalent of yelling ‘fire’ in a crowded theater.”

How did this all start? Listen to someone who has been paying attention to the details. Former AP reporter, Robert Parry of Consortium News reports facts, not contrived historical comparisons, in addressing how the crisis in Ukraine began:

“The original lie behind Official Washington’s latest ‘group think’ was that Russian President Vladimir Putin instigated the crisis in Ukraine as part of some diabolical scheme to reclaim the territory of the defunct Soviet Union, including Estonia and other Baltic states. Though not a shred of U.S. intelligence supported this scenario, all the ‘smart people’ of Washington just ‘knew’ it to be true. …

“The once-acknowledged – though soon forgotten – reality was that the crisis was provoked last year by the European Union proposing an association agreement with Ukraine while U.S. neocons and other hawkish politicos and pundits envisioned using the Ukraine gambit as a way to undermine Putin inside Russia.… In other words, from the start, Putin was the target of the Ukraine initiative, not the instigator.”

The Guardian’s Jones appealed to the public that’s heard it all before. “Let’s resist the Hitler comparisons, which intend simply to shut down any reasoned discussion, to demonize all those who are not hawks, and to ratchet up tension,” he asks. “Soon enough, though, western leaders will settle on a new enemy number one, and the Hitler comparisons will begin all over again.”

Sure, it’s pathetic, and cynical, but, wink, wink, what’s a little Seig Heiling! among friends?

http://consortiumnews.com/2014/09/04/the-hitler-slur-and-making-new-enemies/

[American Dream]

It seems pretty clear that loving Justice does not mean that we therfore need love the State, with its deadly war machine and barbed wire borders, friend of the ultra-wealthy way more than us. If the choice is between the U.S. Government and the Russian State, I'll choose neither.

[solace]

"When you don’t understand the culture of countries you invade, it’s easy to demonize what springs from those invasion. "

FFS. It's not "demonizing," when one abhors the barbaric violence of ISIS which includes far more than beheading a few Americans. Honest to God; who comes up with such shit? Why carry even the slightest amount of water for these thugs? Fuck ISIS.

[seemslikeadream]

The United Nations Children’s Fund, UNICEF, says Israeli forces continue their mistreatment of Palestinian youths during detention.


The UNICEF released a report on Monday, saying that “violations are ongoing,” seven months after an initial report underlined widespread mistreatment of Palestinian teenagers arrested by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank.

The international body cited about 20 sample cases of abuse of youths in the West Bank in the second quarter of this year.

The inmates - all male - suffered physical violence such as kicking, slapping and beating. In 17 cases, the detainees were also verbally abused.

“The monthly average for 2013 shows that 219 children per month were in Israeli military custody, compared to 196 per month in 2012, marking a 12 percent increase,” the UNICEF stated.

In March, the UNICEF released an initial report, saying the Tel Aviv regime used “cruel, inhuman and degrading” practices in dealing with Palestinian youths.

“Ill-treatment of Palestinian children in the Israeli military detention system appears to be widespread, systematic and institutionalized,” the report added.

Some 7,000 Palestinian children, aged between 12 and 17, have been arrested, interrogated and prosecuted by Israeli forces, the initial 22-page-report said, adding that the majority of them were boys

[Searcher08]

"When you don’t understand the culture of countries you invade, it’s easy to demonize what springs from those invasion. "

FFS. It's not "demonizing," when one abhors the barbaric violence of ISIS which includes far more than beheading a few Americans. Honest to God; who comes up with such shit? Why carry even the slightest amount of water for these thugs? Fuck ISIS.

That statement was as dumb as a sack of spanners. Who is carrying water for ISIS? Have you never gone beyond the difference between understanding the process of how extremism can evolve form a context versus agreeing with it? Your level of analysis or insight seems to stop at the word 'fuck'. So here is one for you. Fuck Hasbara. Clear enough?

[American Dream]

"When you don’t understand the culture of countries you invade, it’s easy to demonize what springs from those invasion. "

FFS. It's not "demonizing," when one abhors the barbaric violence of ISIS which includes far more than beheading a few Americans. Honest to God; who comes up with such shit? Why carry even the slightest amount of water for these thugs? Fuck ISIS.

I find Robert Parry's politics to be limited and disappointing, whatever his record in breaking new ground in investigative journalism, back in the 80's.

We should surely reject Islamophobia, Racism and crypto-Imperialist arguments in general, but there are indeed plenty of reasons to maintain critical consciousness regarding the platforms of ISIS, Hamas, Putin, and others.

[seemslikeadream]

and others....Israel ...U.S. government

[seemslikeadream]

9 September 2014 Last updated at 09:25 ET Share this pagePrint

Israel 'coercing Eritreans and Sudanese to leave'

African migrants stand inside the Holot facility in Israel's Negev desert (17 February 2014)
Hundreds of Eritrean and Sudanese immigrants are housed in a facility in Israel's Negev desert
Continue reading the main story
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Protests throw spotlight on Israel's African migrant pressures
African migrants protest in Israel
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Israel is unlawfully coercing almost 7,000 Eritrean and Sudanese nationals into leaving the country at great personal risk, Human Rights Watch says.

They have been denied access to fair and efficient asylum procedures and detained unlawfully, a new report says.

Earlier this year, African asylum seekers in Israel staged mass protests over their treatment.

Israel says its policies on illegal immigrants and refugees comply with international law.

It insists that the Africans are not asylum seekers but economic migrants who see Israel as an attractive destination because it is the nearest developed country where they can find jobs.

'Illegal infiltrators'
Eritreans and Sudanese began arriving in Israel through Egypt's Sinai Peninsula in large numbers in 2006. By December 2012, about 37,000 Eritreans and 14,000 Sudanese had entered the country.

Continue reading the main story
“
Start Quote

The growth in infiltrators from Israel leaving of their own free will that stands at three times the amount in 2014 than in contrast to 2013 proves that this policy bears results”

Israeli interior ministry
HRW says that over the past eight years, the Israeli authorities have employed various measures to encourage them to leave.

They include "indefinite detention, obstacles to accessing Israel's asylum system, the rejection of 99.9% of Eritrean and Sudanese asylum claims, ambiguous policies on being allowed to work, and severely restricted access to healthcare", it alleges.

In September 2013, the Israeli Supreme Court ruled that a 2012 amendment to an anti-infiltration law, which allowed for the indefinite detention of people for illegal entry, was unlawful.

In response, the Israeli parliament passed another amendment to the law in December that established the Holot facility in the remote Negev desert for those considered "infiltrators".

Hundreds of Eritreans and Sudanese have since been ordered to report to the centre, where they live in conditions that HRW says breach international law on arbitrary detention.

The Israeli authorities say they are not detained because they can leave for a few hours at a time. However, they are required to report three times a day and to be in the centre at night. The only way for them to secure their release is to be recognised as a refugee or leave the country.

In February 2013, Israel allowed Eritreans and Sudanese to lodge asylum claims in significant numbers. However, as of March 2014, the authorities had only reviewed slightly more than 450 "detainee" cases, and the rejection rate has been almost 100%, HRW says.

Jump media playerMedia player helpOut of media player. Press enter to return or tab to continue.
Richard Galpin reported on the wave of protests by African migrants in January
"Destroying people's hope of finding protection by forcing them into a corner and then claiming they are voluntarily leaving Israel is transparently abusive," said Gerry Simpson, senior refugee researcher at Human Rights Watch and author of the report.

"Eritreans and Sudanese in Israel are left with the choice of living in fear of spending the rest of their days locked up in desert detention centres or of risking detention and abuse back home."

HRW says Israel is violating the international principle of "non-refoulement", which forbids states from returning refugees and asylum seekers to places where their lives or freedom would be threatened.

In response to the report, the Israeli foreign ministry said: "Israel treats illegal migrants entering its territory in accordance with international law, including the UN treaty on refugees.

"Illegal migrants are able to file a request to be granted the status of refugees, and can also appeal the decision by the Israeli authorities regarding their status to the Israeli courts," it said.

Migrants had not been expelled, the statement said, adding that those who had left had chosen to do so "of their own free will".