Human Rights Watch Under Fire From Its Founder
Michael Ejercito
Human Rights Watch Under Fire From Its Founder
by Jillian Bandes
On Monday, the founder of the non-government organization Human Rights
Watch issued a scathing editorial condemning the organization for its
recent support of a U.N. resolution that accused Israel of war crimes.
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"HRW has lost critical perspective on a conflict in which Israel has
been repeatedly attacked by Hamas and Hezbollah, organizations that go
after Israeli citizens and use their own people as human shields,"
wrote Robert Bernstein, the chairman of Human Rights Watch from 1978
to 1998, in a scathing New York Times editorial.
His criticism echoes longtime critics of the organization who accused
it of selectively prosecuting war crimes to suit liberal international
agendas.
On Friday, HRW had pushed through a U.N. vote asserting that Israel
had committed war crimes earlier this year as part of Operation Cast
Lead. In that operation, Israel took to the offensive to stop
thousands of Palestinian rockets from entering its southern border.
Bernstein's editorial didn't mention the recent vote. But the timing
of the editorial and the vote seemed to indicate that it was the final
straw for a long-frustrated founder.
Bernstein specifically mentioned the inability of the HRW to
distinguish between "open" and "closed" societies, something Robert P.
Barnidge, Jr., a professor at Reading law school, said reflected a
longstanding institutional problem within the organization. Bernstein
seemed to condemn the conflagration of liberal democracies and
illiberal autocracies.
"[Bernstein] is writing this in a particular context, in which
international discourse about intl law... is dragged into this morass
of moral equivalency," he said. "Some states, by the nature of their
regimes, are more likely to adhere to human rights."
Those states would be liberal democracies, such as Israel, which HRW
and others have repeatedly ignored when considering the dynamics of
international conflict. It's a theme that stems from Natan Sharansky,
former Deputy Prime Minister of Israel and longstanding advocate for
strong Israeli defense policies. Bernstein's "open" and "closed"
socities were Sharansky's "free" and "fear" societies.
Joining with classical Israeli rhetoric in international affairs could
represent an even stronger move to embrace Israel.
Anne Bayefsky, a senior fellow with Hudson Institute, said that
Bernstein's move push HRW to reconsider its decisions with many other
international affairs.
"HRW has decided for many years to refuse to do the hard work of
confronting human rights abusers who have powerful friends,
particularly within the United Nations," said Bayefsky. "With an
annual budget of $40 million a year, the only way to change what has
become of this human rights fraud is to withdraw financial support.
Let's hope Bernstein's call wakes up HRW's funders first and
foremost."