In an astonishing op-ed in the New York Times, the founder of Human Rights Watch resoundingly criticizes HRW’s anti-Israel bias.
When I stepped aside in 1998, Human Rights Watch was active in 70 countries, most of them closed societies. Now the organization, with increasing frequency, casts aside its important distinction between open and closed societies.
Nowhere is this more evident than in its work in the Middle East. The region is populated by authoritarian regimes with appalling human rights records. Yet in recent years Human Rights Watch has written far more condemnations of Israel for violations of international law than of any other country in the region.
There’s so much to choose from, it’s almost impossible to excerpt.
Human Rights Watch has lost critical perspective on a conflict in which Israel has been repeatedly attacked by Hamas and Hezbollah, organizations that go after Israeli citizens and use their own people as human shields. These groups are supported by the government of Iran, which has openly declared its intention not just to destroy Israel but to murder Jews everywhere. This incitement to genocide is a violation of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.
Leaders of Human Rights Watch know that Hamas and Hezbollah chose to wage war from densely populated areas, deliberately transforming neighborhoods into battlefields. They know that more and better arms are flowing into both Gaza and Lebanon and are poised to strike again. And they know that this militancy continues to deprive Palestinians of any chance for the peaceful and productive life they deserve. Yet Israel, the repeated victim of aggression, faces the brunt of Human Rights Watch’s criticism.
Read it all. And the countdown to Bernstein’s criticism of HRW being dismissed because he is Jewish in 3, 2, 1….
Israel is at fault for locating its land in the way of where Hamas rockets fall, and for putting Israeli citizens in front of the rockets to catch them. I think Israel is violating the human rights of Hamas and Hezbollah by defending themselves and injuring Arab citizens who are standing in front of the Hamas fighters who are shooting at Israel. It’s a Zionist plot!
Human Rights Watch is bought and paid for by the dictators and thugs.
The HRW has not had a single complaint about the treatment of the people of Somalia or Sudan. No problem with the treatment of the people in Cuba or Nicaragua or Chile. The have no problem with the treatment of the native Indians in Mexico. The attacks and extermination of the mountain tribes of Vietnam and Laos. The overt human rights violations on the Zimbabwe government. The religious persecution of the peoples of Georgia a Chechnya by Russia. The lack of rights of any female in any Arab country, but let them have opportunity and any democratic society will be persecuted and insulted. They have become the spokesperson for the unsuitable regimes.
O’Sullivan’s Law, named after John O’Sullivan, sometime editor (I think) of National Review, states that any organization that is not explicitly right-wing will, over time, migrate to the left-wing. Human Rights Watch was set up as Helsinki Watch, to keep the Commies honest after the USSR signed the Helsinki Agreement back in the 70s, one of the rare triumphs of US diplomacy. But it wasn’t right-wing. Now renamed as a more general organization, it coddles the heart-throbes of the left and denounces their bete noires.
The only thing I’d disagree with from your excerpt is his comment that the Palestinians deserve a peaceful and productive life. Given the chance to vote they overwhelmingly chose Hamas, knowing full well that its platform was genocide against the Jews. The Palestinian Arabs have always supported the most radical thugs among them, those who want to destroy Israel and commit genocide. They deserve nothing.
When the Palis want to make peace they sould throw out all the Hamas and Fatah (and other) thugs, gunmen, terrorists and other assorted scum they presently support. Preferably the Hamas way, from the tops of large buildings. Not until then will I think they want peace. And any such peace will come with stringent conditions, if anyone listens to me (not likely, I’ll admit).