Founder of Human Rights Watch Condemns The Organization

Jillian Bandes | October 20, 2009 1:25 PM

In a very public and incriminating editorial in today's New York Times, Robert Bernstein, the founder of Human Rights Watch, says the organization "has lost critical perspective on a conflict in which Israel has been repeatedly attacked by Hamas and Hezbollah," and that the organization has deliberately clouded "the difference between wrongs committed in self-defense and those perpetrated intentionally."

Leaders of Human Rights Watch know that Hamas and Hezbollah chose to wage war from densely populated areas, deliberately transforming neighborhoods into battlefields. They know that more and better arms are flowing into both Gaza and Lebanon and are poised to strike again. And they know that this militancy continues to deprive Palestinians of any chance for the peaceful and productive life they deserve. Yet Israel, the repeated victim of aggression, faces the brunt of Human Rights Watch’s criticism.

From Volokh:

At what point does the MSM stop treating HRW as a neutral source on human rights in the Middle East, and start treating it like the left-wing, anti-Israel, anti-Western organization it has openly become? And at what point do HRW’s liberal, human-rights oriented American donors become tired to enabling this?

My question: will the exposure of HRW as an anti-Israel propoganda machine usher in further examination of other allegedly nonpartisan outlets and observers who claim authority in the region, such as the Middle East Studies Association or the U.N.'s Human Rights Council?