NGOs Suddenly Notice UAE Authoritarian After Nation Forms Ties With Israel

“That came as news to me, even though it’s been in all of our reports, my aides tell me.”

Geneva, August 18 – Human rights groups reacted to last week’s sudden announcement of diplomatic and commercial ties between Israel and the United Arab Emirates by finding it important, out of the blue, that the latter country relies on dictatorial, repressive, and abusive policies to exert political and civil control, a fact that had passed without much attention among those groups during the last several decades, when a constructive relationship between Israel and Persian Gulf Arab states was not under public consideration.

Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and various other organizations took a sudden detailed interest over the weekend in the state of Gulf state human and civil rights following the Trump administration’s announcement heralding the establishment of UAE-Israel commercial and diplomatic ties, an interest that has merited little more than passing mention in each of the organization’s annual reports on such issues outside Israel and the territory under Israeli control.

“Whoa, hold up, that’s not a democratic country,” remarked Human Rights Watch director Ken Roth, as if noticing the fact for the first time. “Israel is of course establishing ties with dictatorial regimes, which comes as no surprise. Of course, much of the international community wants Israel to be all nice to the Palestinian government, which boasts much of the same dictatorial, authoritarian, repressive character, but we’re confident the mainstream media will continue to ignore that.”

Ann Tissemeit of Amnesty International voiced much of the same surprise at the revelation. “Heyyyyy, that’s something new,” she stated in an uncharacteristically loud voice. “Did you know the United Arab Emirates – as well as some of its neighbors considering similar moves, such as Oman and Bahrain – denies citizenship to huge numbers of foreign laborers who function, effectively, as slaves? Well, that came as news to me, even though it’s been in all of our reports, my aides tell me. Curious, that. Anyway, we have to note that Israel cozying up to the UAE should give pause to anyone who wants to encourage the development of democracy, civil rights, yada yada yada, can we put the focus back on Israel already? That’s where our donors want to see us focus. The EU and Geroge Soros don’t really care about actual enslavement of black Africans in Qatar. Let’s be honest. So if we cant spin this development into an anti-Israel story, let’s move on. We have some Palestinians to interview who claim they’ve been fatally shot by the IDF six times since 2017.”

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