HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH'S ISRAEL PROBLEM

Human Rights: Watching the Watchers - Gerald M. Steinberg
In October 2004, Kenneth Roth, the head of Human Rights Watch in New York, flew to Jerusalem for a day to publicize a 135-page report entitled "Razing Rafah" - a scathing condemnation of the Israeli government's policies along the border between Gaza and Egypt. The issue is how to balance the core human right - the right to life in the face of a terrorist onslaught - with the rights of noncombatant Palestinians. But this is not a problem that concerns HRW, whose officials exploit the rhetoric of universal human rights to promote narrow political and ideological preferences.

In the past four years, despite terror attacks that clearly violate any common-sense concept of basic human rights, HRW's reports and press releases have focused - by a ratio of over six to one - on allegations against Israel. Roth has claimed a "two-to-one" ratio - which, even if true, would be morally unjustified. The writer is editor of NGO Monitor and director of the Program on Conflict Management at Bar-Ilan University. (Jerusalem Post)