The credibility of NGOs like Human Rights Watch depends on their being above and apart from the conflicts they monitor – to not take sides. Human Rights Watch has been criticized by many, including its founder, for giving up all objectivity an adopting an anti-Israel campaign. Their grudge against Israel has been clear for a […]
Tag Archives | Human Rights Watch
Sarah Leah Whitson of Human Rights Watch and the Arab Spring
It’s fascinating to listen again to this talk by HRW Middle East and North Africa director Sarah Leah Whitson (starting at 16:53) from the Summer of 2009. The topic was “Human Rights in the Middle East.” Syria and Libya get barely a mention. Yemen isn’t mentioned at all. Israel gets by far the most negative […]
Ken Roth of Human Rights Watch on Bin Laden: “Not Justice”
Human Rights Watch Appoints Terrorist (and “Human Rights Activist”) to Middle East Advisory Board
By David Bernstein on February 16, 2011 8:43 am in International Human Rights Law, International Law
You can’t make this stuff up. Daily Beast: The man at the center of the dispute, Shawan Jabarin, runs the human rights organization Al Haq in Ramallah on the occupied West Bank. In 1985 he belonged to a Birzeit University student group associated with the PFLP, indicted as a terror group, by 30 countries including […]
Soros and Human Rights Watch
Human Rights Watch, bleeding donors because of the various scandals surrounding its reporting on the Middle East [I have a lengthy series of blog posts on HRW and Israel, most of which can be found here, with some more recent ones here], and apparently finding Saudi elites either unavailable or no longer palatable, has found […]
Taking the Yglesias Challenge on Human Rights Watch
Matthew Yglesias writes of Benjamin Birnbaum’s piece on HRW in The New Republic: What I had in mind is that I don’t see what there is to rebut in the piece. As we’ve known for a while, some folks don’t like it that Human Rights Watch criticizes Israel. Some of those people aired their grievances […]
The Sound of Crickets Chirping
So the New Republic published the most thorough critique to date of Human Rights Watch’s record on Israel this week. Contrary to its typical belligerency, HRW has not responded [beyond this tepid and largely unresponsive letter to TNR from a co-chair of HRW’s Middle East advisory committee, who is not an employee of HRW, but […]
Birnbaum on Human Rights Watch and Israel
Benjamin Birnbaum’s investigative piece for The New Republic on Human Rights Watch and Israel is now up. The piece mentions, but does not dwell on, the various scandals that engulfed HRW last year—the fundraising trip to Saudi Arabia in which HRW Middle East director Sarah Leah Whitson invoked the organization’s hostility to Israel and the […]
Forthcoming TNR Piece on Human Rights Watch
Word on the street is that the next issue of The New Republic will have an extensive investigative article on Human Rights Watch and its hostility to Israel, written by young journalist named Ben Birnbaum. On cue, Philip Weiss of Mondoweiss–a Nation Institute sponsored anti-Israel and often anti-Jewish blog (really, how many “introspective” posts by […]
Typical Human Rights Watch Dishonesty
HRW’s website has published this piece on the Geneva Conventions and Israel by director Ken Roth. There are many things wrong with it, but I’ll focus on one piece of blatant dishonesty. Here’s Roth: Instead, there is strong evidence that Israel wanted Gazan civilians to pay the price for Hamas’s abuses, and that the decision […]
What Kind of People Affiliate with Human Rights Watch’s Middle East Division?
This kind: Helena Cobban is on the Board of Directors of Human Rights Watch’s Middle East and North Africa Division. In a recent blog post, she took exception to the Weekly Standard’s Michael Goldfarb criticizing her because “she likes to compare Israel to Hamas.” (H/T: Richard Landes) Cobban was offended not because Goldfarb was wrong, […]
Andrew Sullivan on Human Rights Watch–Ignorance is Bliss
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 […]
Heller (Kevin) Again
Just about every time I post something about Human Rights Watch, Kevin Jon Heller at Opinio Juris, who served as HRW’s external legal advisor on the trial of Saddam Hussein, posts a nasty response. His response almost never addresses the substance of my post, but instead provides readers with an attack on the messenger, i.e., […]