29 December 2004
Human Rights: Watching the Watchers

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Gerald M. Steinberg
Jerusalem Post (click here for original article)

In October 2004, Kenneth Roth, the head of Human Rights Watch, flew from New York to Jerusalem for a day to publicize a 135-page report entitled Razing Rafah - a scathing condemnation of the Israeli government's policies along the border between Gaza and Egypt.

Roth's claims were immediately repeated on wire services, television and radio news broadcasts, and in newspaper stories around the world.

The tragedy is that the credibility of HRW and the human rights movement is being undermined. And without credibility, the activities of HRW, Amnesty International, and Oxfam have no impact in a complex debate taking place in Israel.

The issue is how to balance the core human right - the right to life in the face of a terrorist onslaught - with the rights of noncombatant Palestinians.

But this is not a problem that concerns HRW. It has long departed from its origins as Helsinki Watch with its campaigns for freedom in the former Soviet Union on behalf of Prisoners of Zion such as Anatoly Sharansky. As the Cold War ended, officials, including Roth and activists Joe Stork and Sarah Leah Whitson, adopted a new agenda, exploiting the rhetoric of universal human rights to promote narrow political and ideological preferences.

In this framework, human rights are filtered through the subjective distinction between "victims" - say Palestinians or Irish Republicans - and "colonialist oppressors" - Zionists, Irish Unionists, and Americans.

As a result, in the past four years, despite terror attacks that clearly violate any common-sense concept of basic human rights, HRW's reports and press releases have focused - by a ratio of over six to one - on allegations against Israel.

Roth has claimed a "two-to-one" ratio - which, even if true, would be morally unjustified.

Reflecting the lack of a political agenda in Africa, HRW issued far fewer reports these past four years on the mass killing in the Sudan than on the Arab-Israel conflict.

Roth says he "does not do comparisons" of this sort.

By following this political path Roth became a major public figure and commentator. HRW has evolved into a superpower with an annual budget of over $20 million and a staff of over 200.

In September 2001, HRW emerged as a key player during the nongovernmental organization sessions of the infamous Durban anti-racism conference, which were hijacked to demonize Israel.

Anne Bayefsy and other witnesses have described how HRW officials refused to act when members of the Jewish caucus were evicted. And three years later, HRW joined the movement to boycott Israel - another step in the "South Africa strategy."

In contrast, the murder of over 1,000 Israelis did not lead Roth and HRW to call for corporate sanctions against the Palestinian leadership.

To avoid serious debate and criticism of these dubious practices, Roth chooses his platforms carefully, steering clear of confrontations with well-informed critics able to refute his claims.

Although Roth told Natan Sharansky that he was too busy to participate in the Global Forum on Anti-Semitism, he had time for friendly journalists at the American Colony Hotel - an unofficial Palestinian press center - a few days earlier.

And in the interview with the Post, Roth emphasized how he "grew up on his father's stories of life in Nazi Germany until he fled in summer 1938" - his standard response when confronted with the evidence of anti-Israel political bias.

But such assertions do not address the substance or the evidence. And many of Roth's other claims, such as the statement that "out of our staff of 200 people we have one researcher on Israel/Palestine" are less than half-truths.

These incidents demonstrate the continued impact of the human rights halo effect, which protects Roth from serious investigation.

Like other powerful organizations, HRW and its leaders should be subject to a system of checks and balances to ensure that the claimed objectives - moral and otherwise - are consistent with the choice of issues, the presentation of evidence, and the hiring process.

Governments at all levels include independent comptrollers, and news organizations have ombudsmen, but prior to the establishment of NGO Monitor in the wake of the Durban conference no such mechanism existed to watch the watchers in the realm of human rights.

NGO Monitor's analyses provide a foundation for assessing the credibility of NGOs active in the Israeli-Palestinian and other political conflicts, but its scope is still limited.

This work needs to be supplemented by parallel activities run by the NGO network itself. By dedicating a portion of funds to a system of independent controls, and by demanding transparency and accountability, philanthropies and individual donors to groups such as HRW can begin to restore lost credibility.

Perhaps in this way the lost moral force of the human rights movement, reflecting exploitation of universal principles in support of private political biases, can also be repaired.

Gerald Steinberg says he recognizes that the main human rights problem facing Israel is how to balance "the right to life" in the face of terrorism "with the rights of noncombatant Palestinians" (oped, Dec. 29). But Steinberg never mentions the treaties ratified by Israel, such as the Geneva Conventions, which explicitly do set that balance by explaining what steps a government can and cannot take when confronting a war or security threat.

Steinberg also can't bring himself to mention Israeli abuses ­ the home demolitions, the use of torture, the politicized placement of the security barrier ­ let alone analyze whether they comport with international standards. Nor does he discuss the findings of reports by Human Rights Watch and colleague organizations in Israel that rigorously document such abuses. Instead of conducting real analysis of the rights abuses themselves, he resorts to bean-counting: Has Human Rights Watch's lone researcher on Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories issued too many statements on abuses by one side versus the other, or have her 200-odd colleagues kept up with her rate of production for other countries?

When that "analysis| fails to convince, Steinberg simply makes up facts. He claims that Human Rights Watch refers to Israel as "colonialist oppressors" ­ a phrase that doesn't appear on the 40,000 pages of our website, and which we, in that form or any synonym, have never used with respect to Israel. He criticizes Human Rights Watch's supposed silence on anti-Semitism by nongovernmental organizations at the U.N. anti-racism conference in Durban in 2001 while ignoring our highly visible and widely publicized denunciation of their exaggerated criticisms of Israel. Our focused call on one company, Caterpillar Inc., to stop selling bulldozers to the IDF until it stops using them for the unjustified destruction of Palestinian homes becomes, in Steinberg's eyes, "another step in the South Africa strategy."

Steinberg asks for greater "transparency and accountability" among nongovernmental organizations. Yet his organization hides the fact that he is a security consultant for the Israeli government ­ and is thus hardly the voice of independence that he pretends to be. In his self-appointed role as "NGO Monitor," a good place for him to begin would be to embrace honesty.

Sincerely,
Sarah Leah Whitson
Middle East Director
Human Rights Watch

The author responds:

Whitson's aggressive polemics illustrate the vital need to "watch the watchers", and to stop the exploitation of human rights in promoting private ideologies, including anti-Israel demonization. Instead of a serious discussion of biases in HRW reports, Whitson chose to use derisive terms such as "bean counting", and to repeat the fictitious version of the Durban fiasco. Like her colleagues at HRW, including Ken Roth and Joe Stork, Whitson actions and words have long promoted radical post-colonial agendas that justify terror, and HRW's recent adoption of the "South African strategy" is entirely consistent. Rather than making distorted claims regarding NGO Monitor personnel, HRW should end the extremely secretive employment process, which reinforces the biases in their reports and political campaigns. An external mechanism for monitoring HRW and other NGO superpowers is long overdue.