Last month a controversy erupted over the human rights organization Human Rights Watch. David Bernstein, professor at George Mason University School of Law, reported that Sarah Leah Whitson, HRW’s Director of Middle East and North Africa Division, went to Saudi Arabia on a fundraising jaunt. Her development technique involved playing to her hosts’ prejudices by boasting of HRW’s struggles against “pro-Israel pressure groups in the US, the European Union and the United Nations.”
As Bernstein explained: “Apparently, Ms. Whitson found no time to criticize Saudi Arabia's abysmal human rights record. But never fear, HRW ‘recently called on the Kingdom to do more to protect the human rights of domestic workers.’ There is nothing wrong with a human rights organization worrying about maltreatment of domestic workers. But there is something wrong when a human rights organization goes to one of the worst countries in the world for human rights to raise money to wage lawfare against Israel, and says not a word during the trip about the status of human rights in that country. . . .But Whitson wasn't raising money for human rights, she was raising money for HRW's propaganda campaign against Israel.”
HRW has been on the defensive ever since. Now, Bernstein reveals more. It turns out that when HRW engaged Whitson, she was a member of the Board of Directors of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee’s New York chapter. During her tenure the chapter lobbied United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan, held a Land Day rally, and “organized a silent vigil outside St. Patrick's Cathedral to draw attention to the fact that Palestinian Christians are also suffering under Israeli occupation” (a lie, by the way—Palestinian Christians are persecuted by Palestinian Arabs, Hamas in particular, not by Israel).
In short, as Bernstein puts it: “So when HRW hired Ms. Whitson to be its Middle East director, it was hiring someone that was in the middle of serving what amounted to a second term on the Board of Directors of an organization that was firmly and openly on the Arab side in the Arab-Israeli conflict. And she had personally engaged in pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel activism while serving in that position. I don't know whether she resigned her position when she started working for Human Rights Watch; if she didn't, it was a clear conflict of interest. Regardless, it should hardly come as a surprise that one of her first acts at Human Rights Watch was to involve the organization in political action, supporting the campaign to get Caterpillar to stop selling tractors to the Israeli Army.”
Revelation after revelation. It appears that we haven’t hit bottom when it comes to HRW’s anti-Israel bias. Bernstein also mentions—just in passing—that Joe Stork, Whitson’s deputy director, publicly supports the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement against Israel.
Human Rights Watch has some explaining to do. Will it engage in genuine introspection? Genuine reform? Will Whitson retain her position? If HRW does not publicly, believably address this issue, it will lose whatever credibility it may still have.
Comments
Well put! How ironic, that NGOs that call themselves human rights organizations are so dishonest and contrary to human rights, at least when it involves the Arab-Israel conflict.
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