01 Sep Human Rights Watch has some explaining to do
Rosa Brooks’ editorial is a must-read.
It is also a non-sequitur.
The New York Sun attacked Ken Roth as an anti-Semite for Roth’s remark that Israel’s behavior was an “[a]n eye for an eye – or more accurately in this case twenty eyes for an eye — [which] may have been the morality of some more primitive moment.” Whether Mr. Roth is an anti-Semite in fact is a question I cannot answer, but the remark itself certainly sounds like an anti-Jewish slur. Ms. Brooks pretends the entire incident never occured.
What’s her answer for Mr. Roth’s behavior? Mr. Roth’s father “fled Nazi Germany.” Oh, well that settles it.
Ms. Brooks claims good faith criticism explains Human Rights Watch focusing most of its attacks on Israel in the recent south Lebanon war. Yet, Human Rights Watch, in its one and only in-depth report, “Israel’s Indiscriminate Attacks Against Civilians in Lebanon”, briefly acknowledged in the report itself that during the time of the twenty-one incidents in the report that HRW alleges constituted Israeli war crimes, Hezbollah engaged in 1,300 (!) indiscriminate attacks on Israeli civilians, each of which was a war crime. Does Human Rights Watch behave this way in other conflicts throughout the world? Does it observe side A committing 62 war crimes for every alleged war crimes of side B, and then focus most of its criticism on side B?
Another must-read editorial is Human Rights Watch board member Kathleen Peratis’ defense of HRW’s abysmal record in the Washington Post.
Kathleen Peratis says “it simply will not do to ‘rebut’ a detailed report such as the group produced [i.e., the aforementioned Israel’s Indiscriminate Attacks Against Civilians in Lebanon] by accusing Human Rights Watch or its executive director, whose father fled Nazi Germany, of anti-Semitism (or other bad motives) and let it go at that. Indeed, the critics barely mention, much less discuss, the 24 incidents [sic] described in the report.”
But of course critics have mentioned the incidents.
I’ve observed that the description of two of the recorded incidents (in Srifa) don’t make sense in light of other newspaper reports.
Another of the incidents — an alleged Israeli air strike on ambulances in Qana on July 23 — has been seriously questioned; Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer stated that “[a]fter closer study of the images of the damage to the ambulance, it is beyond serious dispute that this episode has all the makings of a hoax.” (Brit Hume of Fox News had a segment on the hoax a few days ago; the video is available here).
Yet another incident listed in the report as an Israeli war crime was an Israeli air strike on July 25 that killed four UN observers (from Austria, Canada, Finland and China), with Human Rights Watch alleging that “[t]here was no Hezbollah presence or firing near the U.N. position during the period of the attack.” However, the day after the attack Canadian Major General Lewis MacKenzie reported on CBC Toronto that the Canadian soldier killed had complained that “Hizbullah fighters were all over his position … and … [t]hey use the UN as shields knowing that they can’t be punished for it.”
This is four dubious incidents already out of the 21, and I have just culled reports from the press without any systematic research.
This doesn’t sound like good faith.
Finally, it’s worth noting that Human Rights Watch repeatedly jumped to make accusations without facts. Thus, Mr. Roth alleged in the New York Sun on July 31 that Israel had killed 42 civilians in Srifa. By the time Human Rights Watch’s report had come out on August 3, the number had shrunk to 30 (in one place in the report) and 23 (in another place in the report).
Similarly, on July 30, Human Rights Watch accused Israel of killing “at least 54 civilians” in Qana as part of “an indiscriminate bombing campaign.” By August 2, the number of dead had declined to 28, and Human Rights Watch was calling for an investigation. It must have been a quick investigation, because by August 3, the incident appeared in HRW’s report in alleged Israeli war crimes.
Human Rights Watch has some explaining to do.
Shooting the messenger will not do.
I’m waiting to learn how the United Nations, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and even the US State Department’s Directorate of Defense Trade Controls, conspired with Lebanese civilians, the Lebanese government and news organizations to claim that Israel used cluster bombs during the conflict, indeed that reports of thousands of such bomblets found at 359 separate sites are completely fabricated. Moreover, I’m looking forward to an account of how these individuals, groups and organizations conspired to claim that 90% of the cluster bomb strikes ‘occurred in the last 72 hours of the conflict when a UN Security Council ceasefire resolution was pending.’ Of course yet further evidence of this conspiracy is the utterly fantastical belief by many human rights activists that such cluster munitions are illegal under multiple provisions of Protocol I of the Geneva Conventions (1977) as they are notoriously inaccurate weapons that spread damage indiscriminately. How can we not accept the Israeli government’s categorical denial that it engaged in the unauthorized use of cluster munitions in Lebanon, knowing in our heart of hearts that its weaponry and the use thereof invariably, consistently and closely conforms to international standards? It is exquisitely clear that this is yet another attack… Read more »
‘Another of the incidents — an alleged Israeli air strike on ambulances in Qana on July 23 — has been seriously questioned’—on this, please read Daniel Davies’ post today at Crooked Timber: ‘A conspiracy so vast…’ http://www.crookedtimber.org/ (scroll down a bit)
Mr Roth’s comment was unfortunate, less because he belittles Judaism but that he misunderstands it. “An eye for an eye” was, I believe, a limitation on the use of organized violence (shades of proportionality no?). Along with the condemnation of human sacrifice, these Jewish laws were a major step forward for the civilization of a primitive time. It fostered a respect for human life that allowed for the development of a more advanced moral code both within the Jewish tradition and beyond it. It is a precursor to the laws of war and the prohibitions of state violence that Mr Roth advocates. But this condemnation of Human Rights Watch seems a bit absurd, no? After a military campaign that did very little, after the Chief of Staff of the Army looked like a war profiteer and the Justice Minister a pervert, friends of Israel might better spend their time addressing these internal issues than on how many casualties an NGO happened to report. And maybe HRW does have a point. It was only 30 years ago that Israel faced a hostage crisis in Uganda. It got 100 of its civilian hostages back, while taking few if any civilian lives in… Read more »
Professor Bell takes a quote from Ken Roth out of context and offers a link to one of his own articles on this subject, but does not link to any of Ken Roth’s efforts to respond to his claims.
I hope readers of this blog will refer to the primary sources and draw their own conclusions as to whether Human Rights Watch– or Ken Roth– is biased.
You can read Ken Roth’s letters to the New York Sun (in chronological order) here, here and here.
You can read material in HRW’s archive of materials on the Israel-Lebanon conflict here.
You can sample some of Human Rights Watch’s work on a wide range of other issues by browsing their site: http://www.hrw.org.
Like any organization made up of human beings, HRW occasionally makes errors (which they readily correct when corrections are warranted). But anyone who believes that HRW, or Ken Roth, has an “anti-Israel bias” is drawing conclusions based on a willfully distorted view of the facts.
Why do pro-Israel people always equate criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism? Even if he was anti-Israel or anti-Zionist, these do not seem to me morally problematic in themselves, unlike being anti-Semitic.
Even if Israel committed no war crimes, they ended up killing 1,000 civilians in an operation that was (predictably) a total failure. Not to mention gross violations of international sovereignty – not that Israel has ever cared much for such laws in the first place.
I was delighted to see Ms. Brooks respond to some of my criticisms of her oped. And I heartily agree with one thing she said: readers should read the primary sources cited by Ms. Brooks, as well as the criticisms, and draw their own conclusions. In addition to the cites provided by Ms. Brooks, readers should consider looking at the New York Sun pieces on HRW here (together with all of Ken Roth’s correspondence). You can see collected criticisms of HRW’s conduct during the war on the NGO Monitor website, as well as HRW responses here. Other criticisms of HRW’s conduct are here. You can find details about the July 23 ambulance hoax that HRW lists as an Israeli war crime here. I was also delighted that Ms. Brooks referred to the “Israel-Lebanon conflict.” Mr. Roth had been bizarrely insisting that the war was not an “interstate” conflict in order to excuse holding Hezbollah to the full panoply of the laws of war. If Ms. Brooks is still with us, I would also appreciate her explanation of how the context of Mr. Roth’s eye-for-an-eye comment makes it less of an anti-Jewish slur, or how things are made better by Mr.… Read more »