The Anti-Israel Record Of Human Rights Watch (HRW)
Arthur Bierman

In an previous article I examined the widely publicized claim by Human Rights Watch (HRW) that Israel's military operation against the Jenin refugee camp had violated a number of human rights provisions, thereby rendering the Sharon government potentially liable to war crimes prosecution. My article analyzed the indictment in some detail and reached the following conclusion:

"In light of all these demonstrated deficiencies - the inevitably one sided testimony of Jenin residents, the absence of any balancing Israeli testimony, HRW's failure to clarify its definition of "protected persons", HRW's willingness to condemn Israel's military actions as "indiscriminate and excessive" while lacking the needed experience to render fair judgment, and finally, the team leader's flagrant anti-Israel bias -HRW's widely disseminated and inflammatory claims of Israeli war crimes should be rejected as flawed beyond redemption."

Given this negative finding about its Jenin report, and considering HRW's reputation as a highly respected human rights organization, it seemed only reasonable to examine its general stance towards the Jewish state. Specifically, we wished to determine whether the bias discovered in this one report was only an accidental aberration or represented a more general anti-Israel attitude.

As one might expect, HRW has always insisted on its objectivity and fairness -- and not only in its reporting on the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, but in all of its investigations. Thus Peter Bouckaert, HRW's Jenin team leader, defended his research by stating that it was "important in our work that we look at the abuses by both sides", and HRW's web site unqualifiedly asserts that "the hallmark and pride of Human Rights Watch is the even-handedness and accuracy of our reporting. "(1)

To test HRW's "even-handedness and accuracy" with respect to the admittedly contentious Israeli-Palestinian conflict, we examined the many public statements it had issued since the October 2000 onset of Intafada II. Consider first those items unrelated to the current violence.

(1) On December 22, 2000 HRW urged Prime Minister Barak, Chairman Arafat and President Clinton that "a peace agreement between the two sides should allow Palestinians in exile to choose freely among three options: returning to their country of origin, integrating into the country of asylum, or resettling in a third country." (2) And lest there be any misunderstanding as to the population affected, HRW's letter to Arafat specifically stated that "HRW urges Israel to recognize the right to return for those Palestinians, AND THEIR DESCENDANTS, who fled from territory that is now within the State of Israel.." (My capitalization for emphasis.)

Let us place this pronouncement into its historical context. In December 2000, after months of intense, but until then unsuccessful, efforts to mediate an historic reconciliation between Israel and the Palestinians, Clinton proposed a last minute compromise which would yield each party some long desired gains -- security for Israel, and a viable state for the Palestinians. As is true for most compromises, however, this one would also demand from each party some non-trivial sacrifice — from Israel, abandoning most, if not all, settlements and from the Palestinian Authority, relinquishing the Unlimited Right of Return of Refugees . As to the latter, the reason is self-evident -- since the return of over 3 million Palestinian refugees would have soon spelled the end of the Jewish state, this demand would have been rejected out of hand by even the most accommodating Israeli government. This was a well known fact, and those desiring a successful outcome of the Oslo process desperately hoped that an apparently unyielding Arafat would ultimately trade the Unlimited Right of Return for some other, realizable Israeli concession.

It was at this critical moment that HRW announced its support for a right of return, not only for the original 700,000 Palestinian refugees but also for all their descendants -- thus rendering its proposal identical to Arafat's Unlimited Right. And since Arafat's intransigence on the refugee issue was a major stumbling block during the Final Stage negotiations, HRW must share some responsibility for Oslo's ultimate failure.

What can we conclude?

HRW's intercession in the Oslo peace process was not only far from even-handed but showed also an impressive disregard for Israel's long term survival.

(2) In the spring of 2001, shortly after Sharon's election and amidst escalating violence, the Palestinians and their supporters launched a global campaign to discredit the new Israeli Prime Minister. They accordingly revived a nineteen year old event, the September 1982 Sabra and Shatilla massacre of Palestinian refugees by the Phalangists, a Lebanese Christian militia, and tried to indict Sharon as war criminal for having allowed these forces to enter the above mentioned refugee camps. For reasons never explained, HRW decided to participate in this global campaign against Israel's Prime Minister. Thus, on June 23, 2001, just a few days before Sharon's visit to the White House, HRW issued a public demand for a "criminal investigation" into Sharon's role "in the massacre of civilians ...of Sabra and Shatilla." HRW admitted that the massacre had been perpetrated by the Phalangists and that Sharon's guilt consisted in his supposed failure to have anticipated the carnage the enraged militia -- their leader had just recently been assassinated -- might perpetrate in the Palestinian refugee camp. HRW also acknowledged that Sharon's role had been investigated in 1983 by a highly respected Israeli Commission, which had found him "personally (but not directly) responsible for the events" and had then compelled his resignation from his post as defense minister.

Although praising the Kahan commission's "investigation and documentation" as "authoritative", HRW was not satisfied with its recommended penalty. Convinced that war crimes had been committed and that Sharon's actions rendered him criminally responsible, HRW called for his "criminal investigation and prosecution ....in Israel or elsewhere."

The following comments seem appropriate.

(a) Since all facts cited by HRW have been known since 1983, it is difficult to avoid the suspicion that HRW's decision to raise this matter 18 years later, was inspired, not so much by a sudden passion for justice, but by a politically driven desire to discredit an Israeli government already heavily engaged in a dangerous conflict with Arafat's regime and his Arab allies.

(b) While calling for an identical "criminal investigation and prosecution" of Elie Hobeika, the Phalangist leader directly responsible for the massacre, HRW did not urge such "criminal investigation and prosecution" of either Arafat or the leaders of Hamas and Islamic Jihad for the many terror attacks committed by their organizations against civilian targets. Nor, for that matter, did HRW call for a criminal investigation of the Palestinian Authority (PA) for having violated Article 58 of the relevant Protocols of the Geneva Convention. For, as was recently noted by Jerome Marcus, an ex-State Department attorney, Article 58 obligates all those controlling any territory to "remove the civilian population ...from the vicinity of military objective; (and) avoid locating military objectives within or near densely populated areas ...." (3) But since the PA had not only allowed but even encouraged, the construction of bomb factories, the production and storage of explosive belts for homicide bombers, as well as the training of terrorists in densely populated residential centers, it might well have violated Article 58.

In short: HRW's call for a criminal investigation of Israel's Prime Minister Sharon, shows none of the "even-handedness" it so proudly claimed to possess.

(3) On May 9, 2002, HRW and Amnesty International (AI) issued a statement condemning "the wave of racist attacks against Arabs and anti-Semitic attacks against Jews " in Western Europe and called upon all concerned governments to "combat racism in all its forms and to bring to justice suspected perpetrators of hate crimes." To substantiate its call, the statement first detailed a large number of recent anti-Semitic crimes -- the firebombing of synagogues, the vandalizing of cemeteries, the stoning of Jewish school buses and the assaulting of Jewish men and women, including the Chief Rabbi of Brussels -- and then claimed to have observed a post-September 11 upsurge in "racist and xenophobic violence" against Arabs and Muslims, which included "verbal abuse, physical assaults and attacks on mosques."

On first blush, this seems to be an even-handed and accurate statement, condemning racist attacks against two different minority groups in Western Europe, attacks presumably committed by unnamed members of the majority population - i.e. by non-Jewish, non-Arab, non Muslim Frenchmen, Belgians, Germans, etc. etc. In fact, this statement is neither accurate nor even-handed as we shall demonstrate below:

(a) HRW and AI ignored the well known fact that almost all perpetrators of this described anti-Semitic violence were young men of Arab or non-Arab Muslim background who were trying to avenge Israeli military operations against Palestinian targets. (4)

(b) HRW and AI give the impression that Western Europe had recently experienced roughly equal amounts of anti-Arab and anti-Semitic violence. However, while HRW and AI document a considerable number of anti-Jewish acts, they content themselves with generalities when describing anti-Arab incidents since September 11, 2001. In fact, hard data fail to substantiate their allegation. Thus, while CRIF, the umbrella organization of France's Jewish community, recorded 500 anti-Semitic incidents between September 9, 2000 and early April 2001, corresponding French Muslim civil rights organizations listed only 12 "Islamophobic acts" for 2001 and the first third of 2002. (5) And when we search HRW's own records, we discover that while it had issued 42 reports, letters and news releases on Western European human rights violations between September 11, 2001 and May 8, 2002, not one dealt with racist attacks against European Arabs or non-Arab Muslims. (6) In short, whatever the extent of European anti-Arab violence in the post September 11 period, it had not been sufficiently significant to merit HRW's attention.

(c) In a final attempt to determine the truth about HRW's alleged anti-Arab violence, we turn to "Overview", HRW's own annual summary, classified by year and region, of important human rights violations. But instead of confirming an upsurge of post-September 11 "anti-Arab violence" , "Overview"'s 2001 issue for Europe and Central Asia, contains only one relevant sentence: "Racist violence targeting migrants and refugees mounted in Western Europe, particularly in the wake of the September 11 attacks. Politicians failed to curb this abuse, too often encouraging it with inflammatory rhetoric equating the fight against terror with the fight against illegal immigration." In other words, HRW's alleged anti-Arab racist violence had been directed, not against local Arab and Muslim residents, but against illegal immigrants, some of whom might have been Arabs or Muslims. HRW ignored the distinct possibility that much of the opposition to "migrants and refugees" may have been driven, not by racist prejudice but by other, perhaps economic or cultural, considerations. (7)

What can we conclude about the joint HRW, AI statement "condemning" Western European anti-Semitism? As demonstrated, the statement turned out to be a disturbingly dishonest piece of reporting: It ignored Arab and Muslim responsibility for most of Western Europe's anti-Jewish hate crimes; it grossly exaggerated the amount of anti-Arab and anti-Muslim violence in the aftermath of September 11, 2001, and it failed to mention that most of this violence had been directed, not against local Arab or non-Arab Muslim residents, but against illegal immigrants of whatever ethnic origin.

Let us now consider those HRW reports which dealt with the last 20 months of violence afflicting Israel and the West Bank and Gaza. As already noted, the last issue of FOCUS examined HRW's extensive investigation of Israel's Jenin's incursion of April 2002, and concluded that it showed significant bias against the Israeli operation. How about HRW's many other reports on the ongoing clashes? An examination of these documents discloses the following pattern: After every terrorist attack by Hamas, Islamic Jihad or the Al-Aqsa Martyr Brigades, HRW issues a stern denunciation reminding these organizations that "civilians must never be targets of attack, even in wartime." Occasionally it even calls upon the Palestinian Authority " to take immediate steps to bring to justice those responsible and to prevent future attacks", an appeal which ignores Arafat's complicity in allowing or even encouraging those terror attacks. But when, after a number of such incidents, Israel finally retaliates, HRW inevitably condemns its military measures as excessive, disproportionate and in violation of international law.

What is striking about these HRW reports is their determination to balance every Palestinian crime by an equivalent Israeli transgression -- attempts which in effect eliminate all moral distinctions based upon the perpetrator's intention and often painstaking efforts to spare innocent civilians. This insistence upon "moral equivalence" is most clearly illustrated by a November 2000 report ostensibly condemning a Palestinian bomb attack on an Israeli school bus in the Gaza strip. (8) As described by HRW, the attack killed 2 adults and maimed 3 children, two of whom lost a leg each and one a foot. 4 other adults and 2 children were also injured. HRW began its report by admonishing the Palestinian perpetrators that "deliberate attacks on civilians are never justified" and demanded a "vigorous" prosecution of the responsible parties. The report could well have stopped at this point -- but that would not have satisfied HRW's desire for balance. It therefore proceeded to accuse "Israeli forces" of having also been "responsible for attacks on children". Specifically, HRW charged that "since the beginning of the recent clashes...dozens of Palestinian chiildren have been killed or gravely injured as a result of indiscriminate or excessive use of force ...." HRW even explained the circumstances in which this "indiscriminate and excessive use of force" had occurred: "While many of the children may have been involved in demonstrations or stone throwing, few, if any, posed an imminent threat to life that might have justified using lethal force against them."

"Children ...involved in demonstrations or stone throwing"? No "imminent threat to life"? At this point it may be helpful to remember the violent events of October and November 2000, when large groups of rock throwing teen age boys, many 15, 16 or 17 years old and often accompanied by gunmen firing from behind their lines, advanced upon Israeli checkpoints, usually manned by only a small number of soldiers -- who, fearing for their lives, responded by shooting, first rubber coated bullets, and then, when seemingly unable to prevent their positions from being overrun, resorted to live ammunition. Not not only were these rock wielding teenagers not exactly harmless "children", but they were also not innocuous, placard waving "demonstrators". They were inflamed young men deliberately assaulting Israeli soldiers with clear intent to injure and kill.

Here then is an example of HRW's "even-handed" morality: A deliberate Palestinian bombing of an Israeli school bus, carrying genuinely harmless children and their teachers -- the maimed victims were 7, 9 and 12 years old respectively -- is equated to Israeli soldiers firing in self defense upon advancing rows of rock throwing teenagers and their supporting gunmen.

This example illustrates the peculiar nature of HRW's "even-handedness", and it characterizes just about all of its reporting on the Mideast conflict. It reflects HRW's refusal to distinguish between a violence, which is deliberately directed against purely civilian targets, and a violence resulting from retaliatory or defensive operations against military targets alone. And if the latter cause civilian casualties, they occur as accidental and unintended by-products of such defensive actions.

It is this refusal, with its consequent moral obtuseness, that explains HRW's inability, (or is it unwillingness?), to see any difference between a Hamas homicide bomber deliberately seeking to kill the largest number of Israeli civilians, irrespective of age and gender, and an Israeli soldier fighting his way into a booby trapped Jenin building in order to destroy a bomb producing factory. As a matter of fact, HRW seems often more offended by the latter than the former -- for it threatens the Israeli soldier with war crime indictment while contenting itself with sending a laughably naive letter to Yasir Arafat urging him to prosecute the guilty parties.

What, one might ask, is the origin of HRW's apparent inability to distinguish morally between a Palestinian bombing an Israeli school bus and an Israeli soldier firing in self defense against advancing lines of rock throwing teenagers? Unfortunately we will not discover the ideological basis of such moral blindness from HRW documents, since those limit themselves to platitudes about the "utter inadmissibility" of harming civilians. But if we consider HRW's other positions on the Mideast conflict -- its support for Arafat's Unlimited Right of Return, its participation in the Palestinian campaign to discredit Sharon, its dishonest denunciation of European anti-Semitism which promotes the myth of a "wave" of racist anti-Arab incidents and refuses to admit that the anti-Semitic culprits had been racist Arabs and Muslims -- one can well guess as to its ideological origins.

I suggest that HRW's covert ideology is based upon a Left paradigm currently popular among elements of the Western intelligentsia. It is a paradigm which divides mankind into only two groups -- the oppressed, and hence virtuous, Third World masses and an oppressive, racist First World allied to a corrupt Third World ruling elite. When applied to the Mideast, this paradigm interprets the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as nothing but another example of an oppressed colonial people resisting an evil occupation. Accordingly, however appalling the nature of Palestinian violence, it is still redeemed by its liberation objective; and correspondingly, however defensive the Israeli response, it is intrinsically oppressive and morally illegitimate.

While containing elements of truth, this Left version of the Mideast conflict diverges sufficiently from reality that its maintenance requires a stubborn refusal to grant a number of important facts. Let me illustrate this by listing five items, which HRW has never acknowledged in any of its reports on the Arab-Israeli dispute.

(1) That , by January 2001, the Oslo Peace Process had offered Arafat a viable, contiguous Palestinian State, which he rejected for reasons one can only speculate about.

(2) That the Palestinian Authority had nurtured, ever since its inception, a virulent anti-Semitism in its schools, media and mosques; and that most Arab and many Islamic governments had encouraged for decades an even more virulent anti-Semitism among their people.

(3) That the current Intafada was first launched and then deliberately perpetuated by the Palestinian Authority, in direct violation of the Oslo agreement.

(4) That the Palestinian Authority not only allowed such terrorist organizations as Hamas and Islamic Jihad to operate freely on its territory but assisted them also in their terror campaign against Israel.

(5) That one of the most active terrorist organizations, the Al-Aqsa Martyr Brigades, is controlled and financed by the Palestinian Authority.

Given such an ideological stance, it should come as no surprise that HRW's reports on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict reflect a pervasive anti-Israeli bias.

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Endnotes:

(1) For document, contact arthur.bierman@comcast.net
(2) "Israel, Palestinian Leaders Should Guarantee Right of Return as Part of Comprehensive Refugee Solution." Human Rights Watch
(3) Jerome Marcus, "Commentary". The Wall Street Journal, April 30, 2002.
(4) Thus the French ambassador to Washington, while indignantly protesting claims of a recent upsurge of anti-semitism in France, admitted in a recent letter that "nearly all (inexcusable assaults) were perpetrated by poorly integrated youths of Muslim origin who would like to bring the Mideast conflict to France." See Francois Bujon de l'Estang ,"A Slander on France", The Washington Post, June 22, 2002, p. A19
(5) Michel Gurfinkiel, "France's Jewish Problem", Commentary, July-August 2002, pp. 40 and 41.
(6) See HRW's web pages devoted to human rights violations in Europe and Central Asia. Human Rights Watch
(7) A recent article from Great Britain reported on the negative reactions of the residents of a small British town to a governmental decision to build there a detention camp for asylum seekers. They feared it would lead to an upsurge in crime against persons and property. See Sarah Lyall, "Alien Gate-Crashers Becoming a British Hamlet's Nightmare", The New York Times , June 27, 2002.
(8) quot;Israel/Palestinian Authority: Gaza Bus Bombing Condemned", November 21, 2000. Human Rights Watch. For document, contact arthur.bierman@comcast.net