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Mon, Dec 20, 2010 | NGO Monitor | By Crethi Plethi

"Kauft nicht Bei Juden" (Don't buy Jewish Goods). Sign on a Jewish store in Nazi Germany. And after 70 years of progress, the Human Rights Watch advocates for the boycott of Israeli goods in its latest biased report.

HRW Again Distorts Middle East Conflict

Yesterday, we published an article about the latest Human Rights Watch report, “Separate and Unequal: Israel’s Discriminatory Treatment of Palestinians in the Occupied Palestinian Territories”, accusing Israel of “harshly discriminating against Palestinian residents” and promoting boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) against Israel.

Today, the NGO Monitor responded to this latest unbalanced and biased report by the HRW in a press release:

In another indication of the organization’s biases and lack of moral compass, Human Rights Watch (HRW) today released a report that promotes boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) against Israel and strips away the context of Arab terror in which Israel operates, notes NGO Monitor, a Jerusalem-based think tank that tracks NGOs in the region. In particular, NGO Monitor condemns the report – titled Separate and Unequal – for its historical inferences and misleading and false allegations.

“This is the latest HRW report comprised of inflammatory rhetoric, misuse of international law, and baseless accusations,” says Prof. Gerald Steinberg, president of NGO Monitor. “Presenting information in this manner only serves to reinforce the myth of Palestinian victimization – a tactic that does not foster an environment conducive to peace and mutual understanding. Furthermore, by invoking the Separate and Unequal language of the American civil rights movement, HRW falsely turned a political conflict into one of racial hostility. This is an insult to the history of African Americans and black South Africans who truly suffered as a result of racial discrimination.”

NGO Monitor claims that systematic analyses of publications by the HRW related to Israel and the Israel-Palestinian Issue “lack credibility, and highlight disproportionate condemnations of Israel.” NGO Monitor also repeatedly called for an “independent investigation into the hiring practices, research priorities, methodologies, and biases of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) division at Human Rights Watch (HRW).”

As was the case with previous reports by the Human Rights Watch on the Arab-Israeli Conflict, NGO Monitor notes many critical flaws in the report:

Lack of Sources

— As in the case of most HRW reports on Israel and the conflict, this publication has the façade of research, without the substance. Instead, the majority of the allegations are based on reports from and a mix of political advocacy NGOs that HRW did not independently verify – specifically: Al Haq, EAPPI, BADIL, B’Tselem, Bimkom, OCHA, Peace Now, Yesh Din, and Coalition of Women for Peace.

— In one example, HRW misquotes B’tselem (page 4): “Israeli security forces killed 1823 Palestinian civilians” in the West Bank between 2000 and August 31, 2010. According to B’Tselem, however, 479 of these casualties were known to be “Palestinians who took part in the hostilities,” and an additional 411 casualties may also have been armed.

— HRW’s independent research, including interviewing 66 Palestinians and eight Israelis, anecdotal and lacks credibility.

Israel Compared to Closed Societies in HRW’s Agenda

— HRW’s Middle East and North Africa (MENA) division has consistently and obsessively focused on Israel, while giving far less attention to human rights violators in the region. The 166 page publication is the longest one issued by MENA in the past two years. HRW has issued more reports and documents on Israel in 2010 than on any other country in the region. For comparison, HRW’s five-year report on systematic Saudi Arabian abuses is only 52 pages (“Looser Rein, Uncertain Gain,” September 27, 2010); HRW’s report on the Syrian police state covering the past decade is 35 pages (“A Wasted Decade,” July 16, 2010). In 2010, HRW’s three reports on Israel total 344 pages – far more than any other country in the region.

Promoting the BDS Agenda

— The report seeks to justify increased HRW support for the BDS campaign, which specifically calls for the destruction of Israel, as stated in the 2001 NGO Durban declaration. (HRW was a major supporter of the NGO Forum and has supported BDS in the past.) In addition, HRW repeats previous demands for punishing Israel by withholding U.S. security assistance.

Exploitation of International Law

— Significant portions of HRW’s indictment are based on a tendentious version of human rights norms and international law, such as reliance on the non-binding and widely discredited advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice, July 2004.

Prof. Gerald Steinberg adds that “this report unfortunately is the result of the anti-Israel agenda of the MENA division …. Much of the staff come from ideological advocacy backgrounds. MENA director Sarah Leah Whitson in 2009 actually went to Saudi Arabia to raise funds, selling the message that HRW’s role is central in countering ‘pro-Israel pressure groups.’ Simply, the once proud organization has lost its moral foundations.”

Steinberg’s assessment echoes that of HRW founder Robert Bernstein, who last year (October 2009) concluded that HRW “has been issuing reports on the Israeli-Arab conflict that are helping those who wish to turn Israel into a pariah state.” After a visit to Sderot in November 2010, Bernstein remarked that “Human Rights Watch’s attacks on Israel as the country tried to defend itself were badly distorting the issues – because Human Rights Watch had little expertise about modern asymmetrical war.”

The release of this latest HRW report is, according to the NGO Monitor, also “indicative of the close relationship between superpower NGOs, such as HRW, and international institutions such as the UN.”

“At the same time as the Arab League is campaigning to undermine the peace process by exploiting UN frameworks, HRW publishes this study,” says Anne Herzberg, NGO Monitor legal advisor. “It is another troubling aspect of a very troubling and misleading report.”

The NGO Monitor is a Jerusalem-based ‘think tank’ which mission is “to publicize distortions of human rights issues in the Arab-Israeli conflict and provide information and context for the benefit of NGOs working in the Middle East. We hope this will lead to an informed public debate on the role of humanitarian NGOs” and “to end the practice used by certain self-declared ‘humanitarian NGOs’ of exploiting the label ‘universal human rights values’ to promote politically and ideologically motivated agendas.”