Sullivan quotes me: “I suggest that if Yglesias and similarly-situated bloggers want to address the root causes of R. Bernstein’s obviously painful decision to denounce the organization he founded and nurtured, they read this comprehensive report by NGO Monitor” (by the way, I’ve since heard from a very reliable source that R. Bernstein in fact came to his painful decision after both reading such critiques–I’m not sure if he read that specific report–, doing his own due diligence to make sure they checked out, and trying to get HRW to mend it ways before going public):
So, does Sullivan actually bother to read the report? You guessed it, nope. Instead, he quotes my frequent (and persistent) critic, Kevin Heller:
Bernstein bases his recent posts on “reports” issued by NGO Monitor, an organization that — unlike HRW — makes absolutely no effort to be critical of both sides of the Arab-Israeli conflict:
NGO Monitor’s objective is to end the practice used by certain self-declared ‘humanitarian NGOs’ of exploiting the label ‘universal human rights values’ to promote politically and ideologically motivated anti-Israel agendas.
NGO Monitor at least gets credit for truth in advertising: every single report it has issued in 2009 has attacked an NGO or state or other organization that criticized Israel.
You know, I heard there’s a blogger named Andrew Sullivan who is concerned about marriage. And here’s the crazy thing: every single blog post he writes on the issue is supportive of gay marriage! Every one!
This of course means that no matter what facts he marshals, no matter what evidence he provides, no matter how extensive his research, and no matter how darn persuasive he would be if we just read what he wrote, because he has a position on the issue, nothing he has written about it could possibly be worth reading. Instead, everyone should just attack him with ad hominems.
Oh, and applying this same standard, did you know that every single report that Human Rights Watch has issued on Israel has been critical of Israel? Worse yet, even when its own on-the-ground researcher “praised the IDF’s professional investigation”, into an explosion in Gaza, HRW a few days later issued a report critical of Israel, alleging that Israel “betray[ed] a lack of interest in arriving at the truth of what happened.”
And here’s the rub: as Heller points out, NGO Monitor doesn’t claim to be an objective, neutral party on the Arab-Israeli conflict. Neither do I. But (a) that doesn’t mean that one can reasonably and blithely ignore facts presented by NGO Monitor (e.g., the radical anti-Israel activist backgrounds of various top HRW Middle East staff; that one of the “eyewitnesses” relied upon on the Goldstone report defended vociferously by HRW has given fifteen different and conflicting accounts of a particular incident to different sources; and so on); and (b) Human Rights Watch does claim, as Heller suggests, to be an objective source, but that doesn’t make it so; its reporting is laughably one-sided. If Human Rights Watch acknowledged that it has an ideological agenda (recall again that M.E. director Whitson thinks that of Middle East human rights problems, while Israel’s behavior in wartime is, relatively speaking, worthy of many minutes of attention, Hamas and Hezbollah deserve twelve incoherent seconds) that dictated hostility to Israel, no one would be complaining that it’s using a human rights halo to mask an anti-Israel agenda.
So here’s my proposal to Andrew: read the report with an open mind. If its wrong, explain specifically why its wrong. And if its right, acknowledge that its right. Your support for Human Rights Watch should at least be informed, no? Better to live in blissful, but ideologically comfortable, ignorance?
UPDATE: Andrew promises to look over the report, and invites his readers to do so as well. Good. He adds that he “glanced over the report and it reads more like an op-ed than a fact finding exercise.” I’m not going to vouch for the style of the report, which after all is meant to be readable, not to be a Ph.D. thesis, and I think NGO Monitor folks sometimes seem to make as much of a very minor infraction as about HRW’s most outrageous misconduct. (For an advocacy group, it’s very tempting to try to make a slow news month into a press release of some sort.) With those caveats, NGO Monitor has been following HRW for years, tries in my experience scrupulously to avoid misstatements of fact, and its report is the one place where you can find almost the entire Bill of Particulars pro-Israel folk have against HRW in one place, with footnotes–sources generally available on line–backing up the claims. I should think it’s very possible to review the evidence and still think that HRW serves a good devil’s advocate’s role, but difficult to do so and remain convinced that HRW has no ideological bias.
Rick A. says:
Indeed, it does not. But it does mean that many will and perhaps should discount their selection and interpretation of facts.
October 23, 2009, 11:59 amDavid Bernstein says:
Exactly, treat it just like I’d treat HRW. But I’d hardly say that HRW never has any facts correct vis a vis Israel. But of course, its easy enough to ignore facts if you are not willing to read the source material.
October 23, 2009, 12:02 pmaf says:
Professor Bernstein,
Your complaints about Sullivan’s ad hominem attacks on NGO Monitor are the epitome of the pot calling the kettle black, as your comments about Human Rights Watch on this site have been unapologetically ad hominem.
October 23, 2009, 12:06 pmDangerMouse says:
I wouldn’t let Sullivan bother you. I don’t think anyone reads him anymore. His rants over Palin’s baby have shown to all that he’s a nutcase. Just ignore him.
October 23, 2009, 12:10 pmDavid Bernstein says:
Af, only if you don’t understand the arguments, and what constitutes proper evidence to support the arguments.
October 23, 2009, 12:14 pmPatrick says:
Sullivan doesn’t appear interested in getting at the truth. He wants to win the argument. As mentioned above, his (continuing)obsession with Trig Palin, with no evidence whatsoever to support his “changeling” theory, demonstrates pretty well that while he’ll use evidence if it supports his position, a lack of evidence won’t cause him to change his position on any given topic.
October 23, 2009, 12:25 pmDavid Bernstein says:
I’ve started to delete comments of the “Sullivan is a hack” variety. Let’s try to keep things reasonably civil.
October 23, 2009, 12:31 pmBrian Garst says:
Is that not what your post just proved? Seems to me you’re punishing brevity.
Would it be more civil to say that Sullivan has all the characteristics of a hack, and that so long as he maintains this disposition, it is an utter waste of time to attempt to engage him intellectually? Perhaps what I’m asking is: what level of obfuscatory qualifications are necessary to dress up what we all know to be true such that it qualifies as “reasonably civil?”
October 23, 2009, 12:39 pmaf says:
Professor Bernstein,
I admit to failing to understand why the anti-Israel background of HRW researchers is not an ad hominem argument against HRW’s work. Perhaps you can explain or point me to an explanation?
October 23, 2009, 12:40 pmPhil says:
David, I’ve read Sullivan’s blog consistently for years. He has his moments, but by in large it is difficult to take him seriously on virtually any issue. In fact, reading him requires that one overlooks the routinely selective nature of his inquiries into any topic. Though it is admirable to elevate discourse beyond “he’s a hack”, sometimes the shoe fits.
October 23, 2009, 12:44 pmDavid Bernstein says:
af: Because I’m not using evidence of their anti-Israel background to prove that any specific report of HRW is wrong, I’m using their anti-Israel background to prove that its staff is anti-Israel, and therefore its reports are likely to be tainted by anti-Israel bias.
David Duke gives a speech against affirmative action. A critic says, I think that his views on affirmative action are influenced by his racism. But, responds Duke’s defender, he specifically claimed that his view on affirmative action is “objective” and not based on any hostility toward blacks. The critic rejoins, he may say that, but just before he started his lecture tour on affirmative action, he had spent 10 years as the grand wizard of the KKK. Ad hominem?
October 23, 2009, 12:46 pmhawkins says:
I understand what you’re getting at, but I dont think the comparison entirely holds up. There is a difference between supporting a position (gay marriage or Israel’s right to exist) and the actions proponents take to further their position.
October 23, 2009, 12:46 pmaf says:
Absolutely ad hominem. Are you suggesting that it’s not?
Obviously, it’s a legitimate point, but that’s not because it’s not ad hominem, it’s because in real life, as opposed to logic class, ad hominem arguments have force.
That’s why I didn’t say your arguments against HRW were baseless. I said they were ad hominem. Similarly, Sullivan’s ad hominem arguments against NGO Monitor aren’t baseless.
October 23, 2009, 12:52 pmDrew says:
“David Bernstein says: af: Because I’m not using evidence of their anti-Israel background to prove that any specific report of HRW is wrong, I’m using their anti-Israel background to prove that its staff is anti-Israel, and therefore its reports are likely to be tainted by anti-Israel bias.”
This entire debate seems to be ever more quickly boiling down to both sides arguing “a) YOUR ad hominems are illegitimate, but b) MINE have merit as a general guide to how seriously anyone should take the claims of NGO/HRW/etc.!” (Ad hominem might be the wrong fallacy though: it seems more like what’s at issue is which appeals to authority are trustworthy and which are not, which is somewhat bizarre to begin with, since most people involved in the debate are informed enough to not need to rely on appeals to authority in the first place.)
But the result of this seems to be simply illustrating, more than anything else, that you all despise each other personally, without leaving me any the clearer on whether Israel is pursuing the right policies towards its security or not.
October 23, 2009, 1:04 pmYankev says:
af, if you Prof. Bernstein’s comments were limited to pointing out the remarks and attitudes of HRW staff, you might have a point. But you overlook numerous comments by Prof. Bernstein that criticque the content and methodology of HRW’s reports, their selection, weighing and interpretation of evidence, and their distortion of the laws of war. That is hardly ad hominem, nor is it ad hominem — after pointint out patent flaws in HRW’s reports — to suggest that those flaws may be the result of bias, and that the bias requires that work of the HRW be subjected to careful scrutiny.
October 23, 2009, 1:13 pmjosh says:
DB: “So here’s my proposal to Andrew: read the report with an open mind. If its wrong, explain specifically why its wrong. And if its right, acknowledge that its right.”
Man, if we could only get DB to do the same to the reports of critics of Israel!
[In all seriousness, it's my view that Israel's actions in Gaza were warranted, particularly in light of the fact that Israel voluntarily left at the behest of the international community that is now criticizing Israel's self-defense. But, to me, that's the argument. Not that some NGO or a Jewish judge has some irrational bias towards Israel. The merits of the argument, rather the attack on the critic, would and should win the day, and 100 posts attacking an NGO with a history of being critical of numerous human rights violators other than Israel simply doesn't address the merits of the argument.]
October 23, 2009, 1:17 pmDavid Bernstein says:
What Yankev said. But also, to the extent that someone’s character, beliefs, or motivations are at issue, I don’t see how it can possibly by a “fallacy” (as Drew puts it) to provide evidence of that person’s character, beliefs, or motivations. In short, before you can persuade that my argument was improperly ad hominem or ad hominem at all really, you’d make a case to begin with that the character, beliefs, or motivations of HRW’s senior staff was properly at issue, even though my entire point in those particular posts was that an ideologically “objective” organization investigating a highly contentious would not consistently hire people with strong beliefs disfavoring one side of the conflict, and the fact that HRW did so suggests that its not even trying to be objective.
By contrast, Sullivan says that he doesn’t need to read the NGO Monitor report because, in essence, NGO Monitor is pro-Israel, and that NGO Monitor is hostile to the ideological agenda it perceives HRW as having. But the issue in question is not whether NGO Monitor is or is not pro-Israel, or is or is not simpatico with HRW’s anti-Israel ideology (which Sullivan also denies it has) but whether NGO Monitor’s report is or is not correct.
October 23, 2009, 1:23 pmDavid Bernstein says:
Josh, my interest in HRW in fact started from reading its reports on the Lebanon War, and then Gaza.
October 23, 2009, 1:25 pmjosh says:
And, by the way, I have read the NGO Monitor report. It is divided into three sections. The first “examines” the bias of HRW and its leaders. The second attempts to refute HRW methodology. The third addresses what DB routinely posts about — namely, HRW’s purported over-emphasis on criticizing Israel.
It seems to me that only section 2 could remotely be considered as addressing the merits of the underlying issue — namely whether Israel’s actions were proportionate, lawful, moral, whathaveyou. Certainly, addressing a critic’s bias has merit, but I wonder if that aspect itself is credible by an organization (or an individual) whose sole focus appears to be to attack critics of Israel.
If you look elsewhere on the NGO Monitor site, you see nothing but attacks on Amnesty International, Bet’selem, etc. Perhaps someone can correct me, but I did not find a single report on the site addressing an NGO that criticized Israel that NGO Monitor doesn’t find as biased, wrong, etc. Similarly, I cannot recall a substantive post on this site about Israel criticizing anything Israel has ever done with respect to its military responses in Gaza and Lebanon (other than perhaps advocating for more).
Again, to me, the focus should be on whether Palestinians or Israelis use human shields, whether rockets that find no purchase should be responded to with 1 ton bombs, etc. Discussions of bias have their place, but they don’t really seem to address the issues.
But that’s me
October 23, 2009, 1:30 pmJoe says:
It might be useful to quote the whole three sentences cited by AS:
I suggest that if Yglesias and similarly-situated bloggers want to address the root causes of R. Bernstein’s obviously painful decision to denounce the organization he founded and nurtured, they read this comprehensive report by NGO Monitor. If Yglesias and other HRW defenders haven’t read it, they are in no position to claim that criticism of HRW as anti-Israel is “nonsense.” But I won’t hold my breath because Yglesias, at least, still seems to have no interest in seriously examining why HRW has been on the receiving end of so much obloquy.
Thus, “it” — this one report — apparently is necessary to have a “position” against the claim being made by DB. This puts a lot of weight on one report. Attacking the source as unreliable sounds credible to me in that respect.
AS’ mission is not to support same sex marriage alone; he has various dragons to slay. So, the reference to him always being on the side of same sex marriage isn’t really a sound comparison. Not that I would think that I had to read him or any one source (no matter how comprehensive their report allegedly is) to decide the issue.
In fact, especially if I did not “blithely” decide the matter (e.g., sought opinions — as AS did — of those in the know), I might be wary about reports from biased (for the sake of argument) sources. Even allegedly comprehensive ones. It might be helpful all the same, but even if I didn’t read the source, I would still be in a “position” to make a claim if I based it on other appropriate sources.
October 23, 2009, 1:32 pmPosts about Andrew Sullivan as of October 23, 2009 » The Daily Parr says:
[...] about Andrew Sullivan as of October 23, 2009 Andrew Sullivan on Human Rights Watch–Ignorance is Bliss – volokh.com 10/23/2009 Sullivan quotes me: “I suggest that if Yglesias and [...]
October 23, 2009, 1:36 pmaf says:
I’m going to declare victory and go home.
October 23, 2009, 1:39 pmjosh says:
Joe: “Thus, “it” — this one report — apparently is necessary to have a “position” against the claim being made by DB. This puts a lot of weight on one report. Attacking the source as unreliable sounds credible to me in that respect.”
Joe, I don’t necessarily disagree that notions of bias has a place in the discussion, but doesn’t that also require an analysis then of the critic of the critic (in this case NGO Monitor or these posts)? Is it really possible that every critic of Israel’s actions since 1948 is wrong, as NGO Monitor appears to be advocating? Is it true that an organizations such as Amnesty International (which I can recall first supporting in the ’80s during its campaigns against Apartheid in South Africa) on their face have no credibility in criticizing Israel?
I suppose it’s possible. I’m a big fan of Israel. I went to school there and have celebrated various religious events in my life there. But I don’t think it is flawless in its conduct as these “reports” seems to argue …
October 23, 2009, 1:40 pmrick.felt says:
So, does Sullivan actually bother to read the report? You guessed it, nope.
Not reading the material is a Sullivan trademark. I still don’t think he’s read Party of Death or Liberal Fascism.
October 23, 2009, 1:41 pmDavid Bernstein says:
All three sections are relevant to the claim that HRW is biased against Israel, which as the quote Joe reprints above, is what the argument is about.
That’s exactly what NGO PURPORTS to do, as the Sullivan quote makes clear, to serve as a watchdog against biased NGOs, not to be an objective sources praising them when they do good, and criticizing them when they do bad. NGO Monitor’s whole purpose, if you will, is to be a prosecuting attorney. HRW, by contrast, purports to be the equivalent of a referee or judge, yet it acts like a prosecuting attorney.
Again, my criticism is not that HRW serves as a prosecuting attorney, marshaling evidence against Israel, interpreting all disputed facts against Israel, relying on dubious eyewitness testimony, using misleading or dishonest rhetoric in an attempt to win a conviction, etc. My objection is that it does so while purported to be objective, and that various people believe it be objective, and therefore fail to gives its reports the scrutiny they would give reports from a more overtly partisan source.
October 23, 2009, 1:43 pmLN says:
Let’s keep this simple. Israel is a reasonable actor that occasionally does superficially immoral things because it takes its fundamental right to defense seriously. The Palestinians are inexplicable beasts, whose actions are best explained by their subhuman status and their fundamental disregard for human life and basic decency. Western critics of Israel are other irrational actors, motivated by evil left-wing politics, a general desire to support and facilitate Islamic terrorism, and a hatred of Western civilization.
Now that we’ve established the basic objective outline of Middle Eastern conflict — reinforced by the HRW’s founder’s obviously painful decision to disagree with the direction his organization has taken — can we move on to discuss other issues? I see no reason to seriously engage other points of view here.
October 23, 2009, 1:45 pmSigivald says:
af: Ad homimen is not merely pointing out that an opponent is unsavory.
It’s pointing out that he’s unsavory and then pretending that that proves he’s wrong.
When it’s used to give reason to believe they might be biased, it’s not a logical fallacy, because the thing being shown is not “they are wrong” but “one should be wary of bias”. There’s a logical connection between the predicates, rather than fallacious handwaving.
The former can’t be demonstrated by “HRW is staffed by people who hate Israel”, and thus it would be the Ad Hominem fallacy to use that as evidence. The latter, however, can be, and thus it’s not fallacious to use it as part of an argument.
(Perhaps the problem here is that “ad hominem” is too often simply used to mean “saying anything critical about the person involved”, rather than “invalidly arguing that their character makes them wrong in itself”.
Maybe the following construction will help illustrate:
Not Ad Hominem, because the first term is not fallacious (assuming common and indeed demonstrable things about the way held views affect interpretation and reporting):
People who are biased against X are unlikely to produce objective reports on X.
ABC staffers are biased against X.
Therefore ABC staffers are unlikely to produce objective reports on X.
Ad Hominem, because the first term assumes something completely fallacious:
People who are biased against X are lying about X.
ABC staffers are biased against X.
Therefore ABC staffers are lying about X.
[Where X and ABC can be Israel and HRW, or with completely equal logical validity - if debatable factual accuracy - Democrats and FOX News.]
Ad Hominem is a fallacy because, well, it assumes something false; that someone’s character is relevant where it is not. Thus when the character is specifically and closely related to the thing being demonstrated, Ad Hominem as a fallacy cannot exist.)
)
October 23, 2009, 1:47 pmaf says:
Sigivald:
Thanks for the logic lesson. Strictly speaking you’re right, of course. Of course, strictly speaking, “I am not going to bother reading the NGO Monitor report because NGO Monitor is a biased organization that is unlikely to give a balanced and credible view of HRW’s alleged biases” is not a logical fallacy either.
October 23, 2009, 1:53 pmLN says:
If R. Bernstein had disagreed with D. Bernstein, you never would have seen his arguments here. In other words, R. Bernstein apparently only has credibility here to the extent that he agrees with D. Bernstein.
Now R. Bernstein disagrees with HRW about Israel-Palestine. D. Bernstein is pretending that the only logical implication is that R. Bernstein has every reason in the world to agree with HRW, but only the painful truth could lead him to D. Bernstein’s position. Therefore, the Bernstein position must be correct.
There are of course a bazillion other explanations — one is that the Israel-Palestine position is very contentious and Bernstein just happens to have a different view from HRW. Somehow somebody who presumably got a triple-digit score on the LSAT just doesn’t get it.
October 23, 2009, 2:00 pmDavid Bernstein says:
HRW isn’t supposed to have a “view” on the Israel-Palestine conflicts, it claims that it applies neutral human rights standards equally to all sides.
October 23, 2009, 2:27 pmDavid Bernstein says:
Josh,
October 23, 2009, 2:33 pmI haven’t explored Amnesty in great detail, but they did issue at least one absurd report during the Lebanon war stating that things like bridges are not legitimate military targets if they are mostly used by civilians,.
Unfortunately, the major human rights groups have been largely taken over by a combination of far leftists, pacifists, and others who may be well-meaning, but don’t adhere to the traditional human rights work–prisoners of conscience and whatnot–that found support across the political spectrum and constituted my intro to Amnest.
josh says:
Re: DB’s 1:42 pm post:
So the point is (only!) that HRW claims to be acting as an objective observer, but is acting like a prosecuting attorney, and if it claimed to be acting as a prosecuting attorney, everything would be hunky dory?! Similarly, because NGO Watch is open and honest about its prosecutorial functions, that too makes everything hunky dory?!
I don’t buy it. If you weren’t criticizing HRW for actually being a prosecutor, regardless of claims of objectivity, you wouldn’t characterize the conduct as “marshaling evidence against Israel, interpreting all disputed facts against Israel, relying on dubious eyewitness testimony, using misleading or dishonest rhetoric in an attempt to win a conviction, etc.” Clearly, from your descriptive language, you do have a problem with its view of Israel and the manner in which it communicates its view. ["dubious" eyewitness testimony. "misleading or dishonest" rhetoric.]
The only way this could be a true statement is if you were giving NGO Monitor the OK for “marshaling evidence against [NGOs that criticize Israel], interpreting all disputed facts against [NGOs that criticize Israel], relying on dubious eyewitness testimony, using misleading or dishonest rhetoric in an attempt to win a conviction, etc.”
Is that what you’re saying? If so, you may have persuaded me of your point. But, in any event, this whole issue reminds me of Spike Lee’s “Do the Right Thing,” where one of the characters wants to boycott Sal’s Pizzaria. He asks Spike Lee’s sister in the movie whether she is “down” with the boycott. When she says no, he gets mad, and she explains that, yes, she is “down” with doing something positive in her community, but not “down” with getting involved in useless exercises that have nothing to do with the problems in the community.
That is a long way to say that the issue in this conflict involves the facts on the ground. The only way I see NGO Watch (or these posts) address the facts on the ground is to attack the bias of the critic. It would seem to me that addressing the merits of the argument (i.e., do Israel or the Palestinians use human shields? Is a 1 ton bomb in a densely populated area an appropriate response to a rocket attack that kills no one? Does that analysis change if the rocket attacks never cease and they are only possible because Israel voluntarily left Gaza in the first place?) would be a better use of time. More importantly, the fact that the merits are never addressed, and only the critic is attacked for bias, makes me think the credibility of the critic’s critic is equally lacking.
October 23, 2009, 2:48 pmRyan Waxx says:
You’re wrong. They name their streets after suicide bombers and beat people to death that they suspect of “collaboration” with Israel because of their fundamental commitment to peace and liberty.
October 23, 2009, 2:49 pmHipposGoBeserk says:
LN,
Replace “beasts” and “subhuman” with “raised in a non-Western culture” and you are headed in the right direction. The other change you need to make is from “superficial” to “limited, discrete violations of law.”
The problem provoked by Cast Lead is that many have the impression that the level of violence implies viuolation of law. It is hard for some to acknowledge that a few hundred civilians can be legally killed in war, yet it is. To the extent they see smoke and expect fire they cannot process the facts – the allegations are few and can readily be proven false by limited investigation.
The simple truth is that Israel conducted a few dozen investigations that yielded no evidence of illegal acts. I hope the Israelis compile that work into a rebuttal. Sadly, I think it would be helpful on the PR front.
HGB
October 23, 2009, 2:57 pmHipposGoBeserk says:
LN,
Replace “beasts” and “subhuman” with “raised in a non-Western culture” and you are headed in the right direction. The other change you need to make is from “superficial” to “limited, discrete violations of law.”
The problem provoked by Cast Lead is that many have the impression that the level of violence implies viuolation of law. It is hard for some to acknowledge that a few hundred civilians can be legally killed in war, yet it is. To the extent they see smoke and expect fire they cannot process the facts – the allegations are few and can readily be proven false by limited investigation.
The simple truth is that Israel conducted a few dozen investigations that yielded no evidence of illegal acts. I hope the Israelis compile that work into a rebuttal. Sadly, I think it would be helpful on the PR front.
HGB
October 23, 2009, 2:57 pmDavid Bernstein says:
Josh, I’ve addressed “the merits” of many of the issues you raise in many posts over the years. But surely I am entitled to criticize Human Rights Watch, an incredibly influential organization, without reiterating every other Israel-Palestine related issue when I do so.
And no, it wouldn’t be “hunky-dory” if HRW behaved exactly as it does now, but acknowledged that it was anti-Israel, because it would still mean that HRW was, from my perspective, promoting pernicious views. But people have a tendency to be more skepitcal of a source that is known to be biased that to a source that is known to be objective. Look at Sullivan and Heller: HRW should be paid attention to, because it’s objective, but NGO Monitor should be ignored because it’s biased. If HRW would ackhnowledge that it, too, has an agenda, then logically Sullivan and Heller would either have to ignore HRW, too, or would have to read both NGO Monitor and HRW’s reports with equal skepticism, or would have to acknowledge that they prefer HRW because they share its biases. Any of these three scenarios would be preferable to the status quo.
October 23, 2009, 3:31 pmHipposGoBeserk says:
Sorry about the double post.
Josh, be careful to distinguish between “appropriate,” “best,” “legal,” “justified,l etc., when you discuss your opinions about dropping that 1 ton bomb in the urban area.
HGB
October 23, 2009, 3:34 pmGramarye says:
josh:
I would say that the issue that you’re calling the “underlying” issue–the actual moral and legal merits of Israel’s actions–is more important than the credibility of HRW’s watching of human rights. However, this series of threads has openly been about the collateral issue, not the underlying one, and both have gotten their fair share of airtime. (In fact, given how minor I view the Palestinian-Israeli conflict to be, I would suggest that both the underlying and collateral issues have gotten significantly more than their fair share of airtime, to the point where they’re taking up more oxygen than North Korea, Burma, Sudan, Zimbabwe, Iran, Libya, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Mordor, and other places where the both the depth and breadth of endemic human rights violations are far greater.)
October 23, 2009, 3:47 pmJoe says:
Josh asks:
I don’t necessarily disagree that notions of bias has a place in the discussion, but doesn’t that also require an analysis then of the critic of the critic
Andrew Sullivan overall has discussed (his posts often are short, so this includes citing longer discussions) critics. He very well might be better off looking over the report in question specifically given your comments suggests it could be used to promote his point of view.
DB noted:
All three sections are relevant to the claim that HRW is biased against Israel, which as the quote Joe reprints above, is what the argument is about.
“relevant” is a low bar … “the argument” right now is specifically about the necessity of reading that report … the claim is if he did not, Andrew Sullivan has no business stating the opinion he did.
Bias against Israel itself is the broader debate. That one blog post centered on one specific authority.
October 23, 2009, 3:51 pmEinhverfr says:
Well, given DB’s dismissal of EVERY human rights group that EVER says anything critical of Israel (ICRC included), I would conclude that he is somewhat less objective than HRW in this area. I would expect him to make a point that criticism of Israel is evidence of bias in and of itself.
However, this being said, I think there is an argument to revisit the whole question of natural human rights from a perspective of functional structuralism. One of the underappreciated points (that I don’t even thing DB buys) is that that the whole question of human rights is as corrosive to any ideal of global pluralism (where ethnic religions like Judaism have any place in the world) as is the influence of large, conversion-oriented religions like Christianity or Islam. In fact, the whole question grows out of early Renaissance Christian thought.
If we accept the notion of universally applicable human rights than it is obvious that Israel should be FORCED by whatever means (foreign aid and trade embargoes, etc) to live by them.
If we don’t accept this notion then many of the questions remain but they admit at least of dialog. We can ask what our role as a country should be in ensuring stable borders, and a stable regions, and we can ask what appropriate reactions to the settlement plans really are (proposal: Declare all settlers to be “Palestinian Jews” and declare that they have full rights to their property and to participation in the Palestinian political system but have no more rights wrt involvement in the Israeli state than the rest of the diaspora).
I propose reviewing elements via functional structuralism because this gets away from some of the worst problems and allows some focus on solutions that are not incredibly disruptive rather than assuming we know the answers going in.
October 23, 2009, 3:54 pmSuzy says:
I saw that entry on Sullivan’s blog earlier today, and was struck by how irrational the argument was. He dismisses NGO Monitor as an authority simply because it makes “no effort to be critical of both sides” of the conflict. This assumes that any organization that takes a particular stand is automatically discredited, regardless of the quality of its arguments. In addition, Sullivan begs the question with respect to HRW when he assumes that it does, indeed, make an effort to be critical of both sides.
Sigivald is correct about the use of ad hominems here. Sullivan is using ad hominem in the fallacious sense: because NGO Monitor has an openly acknowledged opinion on the issue, it must be so perniciously biased that it’s not even worth listening to. I’ve been following Bernstein’s posts on this matter for a long while, and he is not using ad hominem in a fallacious sense. If he says that the group or an individual in the group is biased, he a) gives evidence for those claims, and b) concludes that they should not claim to be purely neutral, as a result. He does not automatically infer that they are wrong, which would be the fallacious version. Discussing bias or other individual characteristics does not automatically result in an ad hominem fallacy; that only happens when you try to draw unjustified or irrelevant conclusions based on those claims.
October 23, 2009, 4:09 pmSuzy says:
I’m not sure that’s the precise claim at issue. Rather, regardless of whether he read the report, he seems to be dismissing any evidence offered by NGO Reporter out of hand simply because it takes a stand defending Israel, rather than being–or pretending to be–neutral.
This is a very strange way to evaluate evidence. If you think a group is so biased that their claims are necessarily falsified, then you should have some additional evidence for that view, yes? If not, then you might read the report with a careful eye, knowing that they are taking a particular stance, but it doesn’t discredit anything they might say.
October 23, 2009, 4:18 pmRob Egenolf says:
I think most of the posts here miss the point.
A broken watch shows the correct time twice a day yet cannot be said to be a reliable source of ANY information and need not be consulted at all in order to determine the actual time of day.
Fox News comes to mind as well as a source of marginally correct information on occasion. yet it cannot be viewed as a credible source whose opinions must ever be refuted.
NGO Monitor and Bernstein are both goal oriented sources whose clear and accepted biases are known and understood
Those biases effectively eliminate their opinions from any pool of information that a scholarly approach need address.
David’s challenge to Andrew was essentially “you must prove you have stopped beating your wife” before you can properly address your marriage.
It is unnecessary and counter-productive.
When the facts involved speak for themselves, they can do so without reference to the opinions of either NGO Monitor or Bernstein.
October 23, 2009, 4:43 pmHipposGoBeserk says:
Egenolf,
1) By that definiton, one is left without data on the Israeli-Palestinian dispute to analyze. Good luck with that.
Or
2) Apply that same filter to the equally biased (but hiding it) NGOs.
HGB
October 23, 2009, 5:00 pmDavid Bernstein says:
I’m very curious to have you identify which facts “speak for themselves.” And also, for that matter, to suggest which “scholarly” unbiased sources Sullivan and Yglesias are relying on.
October 23, 2009, 5:04 pmstefanfromstuttgart says:
It is interesting the lengths to which some people will go to avoid focusing on the simple fact that Israel has killed hundreds, if not thousands, of innocent women and children in the past few years.
So much easier to prattle on about what Blogger A said about Person X discussing what Group A thought about Group B.
Pathetic.
October 23, 2009, 5:35 pmNoah David Simon says:
Alfred E. Neuman says, “Who me biased?”
October 23, 2009, 5:41 pmHipposGoBeserk says:
It’s interesting the lengths to which some peole will go to avoid acknowledging that living a righteous life requires more than simply choosing white over black.
Infantile.
HGB
October 23, 2009, 5:58 pmJoe says:
Suzy … it is not that the source “defends” Israel, which can mean any number of things, it is that Andrew Sullivan thought the source of a report he was told that he just HAD to read to be credible was REALLY biased. That was the whole point of the blog post.
October 23, 2009, 6:01 pmstefanfromstuttgart says:
All of this reminds me of all of the obsessive posts about “Who is green helmet man?” when civilains were being blown apart by Israeli bombs a few months ago. Instead of facing that reality head-on, many people chose to clever propaganda technique, about quibbling about whether or not some doofus in a green helmet was or was not an actual ambulance driver or whatever. There was much fevered speculation that he must be some kind of operative for the other side and that he must be participating in staging photos.
Much easier to argue about that and whistle past the fact that Israel was, at that time, dropping thousands of pounds of explosives on civilians.
Same here, just a different diversion.
October 23, 2009, 6:16 pmLeo Marvin says:
Attacking the messenger can be valid or invalid, depending on what’s being discussed. Even an unreliable source’s argument has to be addressed on its merits if you’re going to have the discussion at all. But prohibiting scrutiny of a source’s credibility empowers hacks and wingnuts to frame the questions you’re forced to debate. If the subject is Barack Obama’s birth certificate or WTC Building #7, it’s an invalid ad hominem to say that anything you hear from Jerome Corsi or Rosanne Barr has to be bullshit. But it’s reasonable and valid to argue separately that Corsi’s and Barr’s objectivity and credibility are so impaired you won’t rely on them as sources, and maybe even that you won’t engage anyone else who relies on them since you’ll then have to waste your time explaining why Barack Obama is constitutionally qualified to be President and George Bush wasn’t behind 9/11. I’m not suggesting that either HRW or NGO Monitor is comparable to Corsi or Barr, just that the same principles apply.
October 23, 2009, 6:32 pmHipposGoBeserk says:
Ah, Stefan, you rest my case. It is the same here – it’s important to understand who has moral and legal culpability for those deaths. To this point, the clear preponderance of the evidence lays the responsibility with Hezbollah and Hamas, unless one rejects current international law and the concept of just war. It’s because HRW ignores clear evidence exposing the falseness of allegations to the contrary that their bias has to be made clear.
I think the green helmet man photos were inconclusive, unlike the videos of the missile crews moving around the villages, but your unwillingness to understand that his role was worth discussing says a great deal.
If only Hezbollah had cared as much for Lebanese civilians as you and I.
HGB
October 23, 2009, 7:04 pmSuzy says:
Why should we think that NGO Reporter is “really biased”, though? Wouldn’t that claim require further evidence or argument–argument that Sullivan does not provide? The fact that a group criticizes NGOs that are in turn critical of Israel does not mean that it’s automatically too biased to trust, right?
October 23, 2009, 8:49 pmPender says:
This whole line of argument goes both ways, doesn’t it? Even if you think HRW are personally horrible people motivated by the worst of intentions for whom abusing Jews and destroying Israel are the motivations and reducing human rights violations is only an irrelevant byproduct in their minds, so what? You can still think that exposing human rights violations is a good thing and that the organization therefore makes the world a better place.
Sounds like Israel does some rotten stuff. Saying that other people do even rottener stuff totally misses the point. Saying that the people who dig up and publish stories about the rotten stuff have a personal dislike of Israel totally misses the point. Saying that they are not objective, that they don’t hold press conferences condemning the abuses of various countries in proportion to the incidence of abuse of those countries, that their founder has repudiated them or even that they are ANTI-SEMITE NAZI SCUM totally misses the point. It’s clear that they’re performing a socially valuable service in shining sunlight on human rights violations, even if the light is not shone equally on all.
October 23, 2009, 9:01 pmNoah David Simon says:
Gerald Steinberg’s letter Of NGO-Monitor to Andrew Sullivan articulates a key concept that I believe has to be noted. It is not balanced blame (even if one could assume that Israel is guilty) because of the proportional media promotion that Israeli accusations get.
http://daledamos.blogspot.com/2009/10/gerald-steinberg-of-ngo-monitor.html “…counting publications from the Middle East division is very misleading. Some HRW statements are “fire and forget”, while others (mainly when Israel is the target) are accompanied by major marketing campaigns. HRW issued four lengthy and largely fictitious “research reports” condemning Israel in six months — each with a press conference at the American Colony Hotel (the hub of the Palestinian media campaign) in Jerusalem, numerous one-on-one press interviews, and meetings with diplomats. In contrast, most of the statements on the Saudi, Egypt, etc. are quickly buried, with no UN investigations , sanctions or ICC action. The token report on Hamas rocket attacks (HRW’s artificial “balance” and involving no research) appeared six months after the war ended, with no mention of Iranian support and weapons. A week later, HRW held another press conference which generated far more attention via the sensational (and fabricated) charge that the IDF killed Palestinian civilians waving white flags. The Hamas rocket report, like HRW’s criticism of Hezbollah in 2006, was immediately forgotten.”
October 23, 2009, 9:24 pmAnne Herzberg says:
Just a few more points about the work of NGO Monitor. We do not report on the actions of the Israeli government. We examine how the human rights NGO community reports on those actions. Our main point is that many human rights/humanitarian NGOs that claim to be neutral arbiters of human rights engage in the deligitimization and demonization of Israel through the use of “apartheid” or “Nazi” rhetoric, distortion of international law, and invocation of inflammatory terminology such as “genocide”, “war crimes”, “ethnic cleansing”, etc… in order to turn Israel into a pariah state. And how this rhetoric actually leads to more conflict within the region. We also note the disproportionate focus of many of these groups on Israel as opposed to other conflict zones. For example, HRW issued more than 28 statements promoting the Goldstone “fact finding” mission and report. In contrast, it has only put out 18 statements on the Iranian democracy protests. Or during the 3-week Gaza War, HRW put out more than 20 statements (almost 1 per day). Yet, during that same time period, thousands were murdered and systematically raped in the Congo, yet HRW only put out 1 statement weeks after the events occurred condemning the violence. Isn’t there something fundamentally wrong with this disparity?
When NGOs report on the conflict without engaging in demonization, present both sides of a particular incident without making inflammatory or false claims, and do not distort or even invent international law, we note that fact. Unfortunately, in this part of the world, it doesn’t happen all that often. See our reports on Human Rights First or Kav LaOved for some examples of NGOs that are critical of Israel without the baggage of most of the other organizations we cover.
Anne Herzberg
October 24, 2009, 3:11 pmLegal Advisor
NGO Monitor
Tyrone Slothrop says:
Why does anyone pay any attention to Andrew Sullivan? Virtually everything he writes is just plain wacky. At the risk of sounding uncharitable, I’m convinced he is suffering from HIV-induced dementia. If the Atlantic was more concerned with its credibility than it is with generating traffic it would buy him a ticket home.
October 25, 2009, 12:05 amLeo Marvin says:
Sorry, but “just plain wacky” was uncharitable. It would be extremely charitable to call what followed “uncharitable.”
October 25, 2009, 4:31 amYankev says:
But they provide a disservice if they misdirect the blame for the human rights violations, distort the definition of human rights violation, and publish as fact supposed evidence of events that never happened.
October 25, 2009, 3:50 pmraoul says:
I think the arguments have been distilled to its essence: does the IDF commit human rights violations?
October 26, 2009, 12:13 amSuzy says:
I may not agree with what Sullivan wrote in this instance, or with other things he writes, but he’s a really smart, interesting writer who makes it well worth your effort to peruse his blog. It seems that a lot of Palin supporters wrote him off last year, but that’s only to his credit.
October 26, 2009, 2:03 amneurodoc says:
You are of course 110% correct about failure to “understand the arguments, and what constitutes proper evidence to support the arguments.” It seems there are many who think it always the fallacy of ad hominem to attack the credibility of the witness when considering their testimony, though “impeachment” of witnesses is entirely proper and permissible. The credibility of Sarah Whitson, Joe Stork, Mark Garalasco, et al., and what they say, is not to be questioned?!
October 26, 2009, 9:08 amneurodoc says:
HRW purports to be “objective,” that is without predilections, its focus supposedly advocacy of human rights without any biasing point of view; NGO Monitor unashamedly announces its predilection, that being engagement with NGOs critical of Israel. Also, HRW undertakes investigations and purports to bring “facts” and syntheses of facts to greater attention, making it something of a “primary source,” and hence putting its own credibility front and center as a key question; NGO Monitor responds to HRW, which is a very different business
October 26, 2009, 9:26 amneurodoc says:
I didn’t read all the way through this thread before posting. Now, I see that most of my points were ably made by others before I waded in.
October 26, 2009, 9:36 amneurodoc says:
Of course, the IDF does. Now tell us, do you know of any military force that has not committed human rights violations? Do you think the IDF is more/less likely to commit human rights violations than other military forces, especially those of their enemies.
October 26, 2009, 9:50 amYankev says:
No, if I may disagree with both you and Neurodoc, it seems to me that the point is this: given that the IDF, like any military force in the world, commits at least some human rights violations, has HRW accurately and fairly assessed accusations of human rights violations against the IDF, or has HRW instead disgraced itself and betrayed the human rights constituency by exaggerating and distorting the IDF’s actions, whether willfully or through incompetence, and if so, given HRW’s consistent refusal to confront flaws in its work on Israel and the IDF, how much uncritical reliance can be placed on HRW reports on the IDF in the future?
October 26, 2009, 11:43 amneurodoc says:
How exactly are you disagreeing with me? Neither you, nor I believe that the IDF has never ever transgressed, and aren’t we both in agreement that HRW has not “accurately and fairly assessed accusations of human rights violations against the IDF”? “Proportionality” (that is not “exaggerating”) and not taking out of context (“distorting”) is certainly part and parcel of accurate and fair assessments of accusations of human rights violations.
October 26, 2009, 1:27 pmneurodoc says:
How exactly are you disagreeing with me? Neither you, nor I believe that the IDF has never ever transgressed, and aren’t we both in agreement that HRW has not “accurately and fairly assessed accusations of human rights violations against the IDF”? “Proportionality” (that is not “exaggerating”) and not taking out of context (“distorting”) are certainly part and parcel of accurate and fair assessments of accusations of human rights violations. And yes, we are speaking apropos HRW here, though it could apply to certain other NGOs too.
October 26, 2009, 1:30 pmYankev says:
Not on the facts, but on the way I would reframe raoul’s statement of the supposed essence of the arguments. Perhaps not a disagreement, in that your counterquestions to him did not purport to do that.
October 26, 2009, 3:26 pm