U.S.-Based Leading Rights Group Denies Improprieties

[Scurrilous]

<snip>

"After its May trip to Saudi Arabia recently garnered attention, New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) has come under a hailstorm of criticism by defenders of Israeli policy who claim that the trip raises ethical questions about HRW's work in the Middle East.

The allegations were based on an article in the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) online opinion section - a reprint of a month-old blog post by George Mason University law professor David Bernstein - that accused HRW staff of going to Saudi Arabia "to raise money from wealthy Saudis by highlighting HRW's demonisation of Israel".

HRW denied any impropriety, noting that it raises money from private sources worldwide - not governments - and that it highlighted all of its work in the region during the Saudi Arabia trip.

"The point of my post," wrote Bernstein, "is not that HRW is pro-Saudi, but that it is maniacally anti-Israel."

The allegations have filtered their way up to the Israeli government and its most staunch defenders in the U.S., including the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), one of Washington's most powerful interest groups and the hub of the so-called "Israel lobby".

"For an organisation that claims to offer moral direction," Israeli government spokesperson Mark Regev told the Jerusalem Post on Wednesday, "it appears that Human Rights Watch has seriously lost its moral compass."

An AIPAC spokesperson forwarded the WSJ article to reporters. Asked by IPS if sending out the article represented an endorsement of its contents by AIPAC, the spokesperson, Josh Block, said by e-mail that it didn't. But he did accuse HRW of "Israel-bashing" and wrote, "HRW has repeatedly demonstrated its anti-Israel bias."

However, of more than 30 releases in June and July from its Middle East and North Africa division, HRW was critical of Israel in only three of them, whereas Saudi Arabia was criticised five times, and Israel's regional archrival, Iran, racked up nine critical releases.

HRW has responded by insisting the trip, taken in late May, was in no way to raise money from the Saudi government or Saudi officials, citing a policy that they take no money from governments, "directly or indirectly."

more



Israeli Government, AIPAC Stepping Up Attacks on Human Rights Watch

"As a Jewish progressive, one of the most disturbing elements about Israel’s recent trajectory has been an increasingly tendency by the Israeli government and by hawkish Jewish organizations to respond to criticism of Israel’s human rights record by lashing out against human rights groups. The Jerusalem Post, for example, has a report on how the Israeli government is planning to step up attacks on Human Rights Watch not by contesting HRW’s work on the merits, but by assailing the organization as somehow hypocritical for raising funds from private Saudi individuals. And Matt Duss observes that AIPAC has been emailing journalists with a story making the same argument.

Anyone genuinely interested in a good-faith exploration of whether or not Human Rights Watch ignores human rights abuses by Saudi Arabia or by other states in the region can easily enough click over to their website and find their comprehensive work on the Middle East and North Africa. You will swiftly see that the idea that HRW is some kind of Israel-bashing organization is nonsense. Their currently featured item is about just the subject you’d expect—the recent clampdown in Iran. The headline is “Iran: Detainees Describe Beatings, Pressure to Confess”. They also did a July 8 item highlighting broken promises on women’s rights from Saudi Arabia. They’re highlighting work on torture in the United Arab Emirates and on how administrative detention undermines the rule of law in Jordan.

This is vital work taking place in a large number of countries. Countries that, as the Israeli government is usually the first to point out, tend to treat their citizens really poorly. Smearing the organization doing this kind of work is very damaging. There aren’t, after all, a lot of people doing credible work of this sort. And part of the reason HRW is credible is that they call it like they see it—they don’t zero in on particular countries to serve a geopolitical agenda. Which means that when Israeli policies violate international law or human rights norms, Israel gets criticized. If this makes Israelis uncomfortable, then maybe instead of lashing out with unsupported accusations of of bias they ought to reconsider their own actions."

http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archives/2009/07/israeli-government-aipac-stepping-up-attacks-on-human-rights-watch.php

[bemildred]

1. "First they ignore you, then they attack you, then ..." nt

[azurnoir]

2. Well that Saudi thing

has worked so well for AIPAC in the recent past, how ever could they resist

[LeftishBrit]

3. If the Saudis are bribing HRW, they don't seem to be getting their money's worth

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/saudiarabia/2273865/Saudi-domestic-workers

www.middle-east-online.com/english/?id=33094

www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/apr/21/saudiarabia.gender


Of course, Saudi Arabia do get away with murder. They've got the oil; and they are not a bogeynation either of the UN (unlike Israel) or America (unlike Iran).

[shira]

4. look more closely at the data -since 2006 HRW is criticizing S.Arabia more - before that, no so much

HRW focused way more disproportionately on Israel than S.Arabia (as though Israel were far worse than S.Arabia) before 2006, and as a result of complaints and criticism (most likely because they were losing funds for their bias) they were 'convinced' to become a bit more balanced in their reports.

It wasn't good enough apparently, as they've lost so much Jewish funding that they're now shilling in S.Arabia for $$ and using their anti-Israel reporting to sell their product there.

As for the claims on the agenda, the data shows until 2006, Saudi Arabian human rights behavior was hardly on HRW’s agenda. Using a systematic methodology to compare the activities, NGO Monitor data show that between 2004 and 2006, HRW criticism of Israel was 300% greater than the almost non-existent focus on Saudi Arabia. In other words, in HRW’s world, Israel was by far the greater source of human rights violations.

The change – as much as it was — took place in 2008, after the NGO Monitor reports on HRW’s obsessive anti-Israel agenda were published. Some donors then earmarked money for a wider agenda, dragging Roth and Whitson along. But Israel continues to be the main target, with more press conferences, major reports, and United Nations lobbying. HRW is not campaigning for an “independent UN inquiry” on Saudi treatment of women, minorities, or members of other religions. And there is no evidence of HRW soliciting potential Israeli donors on the basis of the organization’s record on Saudi Arabia, Iran, Libya, Syria or Hamas.

Even Sarah Leah Whitson of HRW implicitly admits this:

"Human Rights Watch in recent years has published more reports and news releases on rights problems in Saudi Arabia than any other human rights organization in the world."

===========

By the way, HRW is not calling for UN special inquiries on S.Arabian abuse of women and minorities - but they are calling for special UN inquiries with regard to Israel.

And simply reporting "more" on S.Arabia now than Israel is also misleading. S.Arabia, by any measure of human rights, is at least 100x worse than Israel and should therefore demand FAR more criticism from HRW than Israel - not 20 reports on S.Arabia vs. 17 on Israel or 100 against S.Arabia vs. 79 on Israel (just making up those figures for arguments sake).

Anyone truly concerned about human rights should be outraged at HRW.

Let's not pretend HRW is doing their job as an impartial, unbiased, and non-political human rights organization, okay?

[shira]

5. "not by contesting HRW’s work on the merits"

please.

where should we begin attacking HRW's work on its merits?

al-dura hoax?
jenin massacre warcrimes?
gaza beach libel?
denial of Hamas/Hezbullah human shields?

=======

this article is garbage.

no one honestly concerned about human rights and informed about HRW's clear bias would apologize for such a detestable and CLEARLY politically biased organization......well, unless such a person gets their rocks off on HRW's demonization campaign against the "zionist" entity.

=======

ETA:
love the part about trying to distinguish the Saudi govt. from those in attendance at the HRW fundraising dinner. A member of the Saudi "shura" council was there in attendance (part of the monarchy devoted to enforcing sharia law). We're to believe from HRW hacks that the organization was there among "fellow human rights" advocates, just as they would be in America or Europe if they solicited funding there, and that their presentation and call to funds with people in NO WAY devoted to human rights causes was not crooked.

what an absolute farce.