Restoring their lost credibility, if it can be done, will require a major effort taking many years. Opinion.
23.05.22 08:21
(JNS) The head of Human Rights Watch (HRW), Kenneth Roth, recently announced that he will be leaving the organization after 29 years. For nearly three decades, he led HRW far from its founding principles, which were based on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted in the shadow of the Holocaust. Instead, HRW today is often considered a political organization with a highly selective agenda and an obsession with Israel. To restore their lost credibility, if it can be done, will require a major effort that will take many years.
HRW, originally called Helsinki Watch, was founded in 1978 as an independent organization to monitor and report on rights violations in closed societies, in particular the Soviet Union, China and other dictatorships. The NGO quickly gained influence as a credible source, and over time became the US-based counterpart to London’s Amnesty International.
Since the end of the Cold War in 1989, Roth transformed HRW from an objective watchdog into a champion of “the global left” and the post-colonialist ideology that blames the democratic West and capitalism for the world’s problems, even as it absolves the “victims” from any responsibility to protect human rights. After it joined this political movement, HRW was embraced by the UN and similar-minded academics and political influencers.
The short, pro-forma criticisms of dictatorships continued, but Roth and HRW got attention and funds by condemnations of American-led conflicts with terror regimes in Afghanistan and Iraq; condemnations that tended to employ distorted versions of international law and human rights principles. Among other absurdities, Roth attacked the Obama administration’s decision to kill Osama Bin Laden. Instead, he asserted, the arch-terrorist should have been arrested and tried.
Roth also showed a strong animus towards Israel. Over and over, he joined the shrill voices that demanded an end to American support for the Jewish state, and repeated false accusations of “war crimes” and “crimes against humanity.” HRW, in concert with Amnesty International and various Palestinian groups, was instrumental in the revival of the Soviet-led effort to equate Zionism with South African apartheid. In 2001, HRW was among the leaders of the antisemitic NGO Forum of the UN Durban conference, which was called to celebrate the end of South African apartheid. In response to critics, some of them from within HRW, Roth declared that “Israeli racist practices are an appropriate topic.”
To support this agenda, Roth filled HRW’s Middle East and North Africa division with people who engaged in relentless attacks on Israel, with only token publications on Syria, Libya, Iran and other authoritarian regimes. Roth lobbied the UN Human Rights Council to create one-sided “investigations” of the Jewish state, and pressed the International Criminal Court to adopt invented versions of international law in order to do so, including a fictitious description of apartheid. Roth also used the term “primitive” in the context of Jewish religion and tradition and blamed Jews for antisemitism. HRW’s April 2021 “report” that claimed Israel had “crossed the line into apartheid” is a reiteration of this 20-year campaign.
These activities were noted by Robert Bernstein, the founder of HRW. Although he had retired, Bernstein was strongly opposed to the direction in which Roth was taking the organization, in particular its demonization of Israel. (Full disclosure: I discussed these issues in meetings with Bernstein beginning in 2004.) In 2009, Bernstein took the unprecedented and painful step of denouncing HRW in a New York Times column and a series of speeches. As a result, many of HRW’s donors ended their support.
However, Roth is a very skilled fundraiser, and after getting $100 million from George Soros, he added other secret donors, such as a Saudi billionaire whose 2012 “contribution”—the existence of which was denied for many years—was only revealed in 2020.
It will be difficult for HRW to find a qualified successor devoted to universal human rights who is not inherently hostile to the West and to Israel, and will not sell out to corrupt donors. If it succeeds, however, the difficult process of repairing the damage and restoring the credibility and universality of human rights principles envisioned by HRW’s founders can begin.
Gerald M. Steinberg heads NGO Monitor and is emeritus professor of political science at Bar Ilan University.
Cute play on words there. When my watch goes kaput, I find it’s cheaper to buy a new one than have it repaired or even to replace the battery so I do that. Same goes for a “Human Rights” watch.
When a dog has gone rabid, it loses all relationship to its former self, irrespective of how tame, loving and responsible a creature its former self might have represented to those who raised, cared and helped train the beast. These savaged representations of ones we once loved only last about a week, but consider if they were kept in such a state for many many years before some chance of reform might be claimed could restore some possible remnant of the animals original state. Sentimentality for some would surely support pursuing this task, but sentimentality for a loved pet is a special bond that should not be extended to deviant organizations such as HRW.
Sadly enough, despite the nifty tag name, the damage done to HRW by Roth and his savage lot of political goons over the years, whose domination and corruption over this institution covered nearly two thirds of its existence, is really beyond the hope of recovery and would always be handicapped by the legendary notoriety of their pursuit of false narratives and libelous claims. The unfortunate reality is that some institutions, such as the HRW, are best relegated to the scrapheap of history, where their betrayal of their mission statements can be best qualified without the taint of that betrayal seeping further into any stand that might be pursued by even a reformed image of its current state of ignominy. There are other nifty names to choose from, and even an unimaginative tagline should be more desirable to use while seeking out the truth than the long record of lies and rearranged halftruths that HRW has come to represent.