The pervasive anti-Israel bias at Human Rights Watch that it is beyond repair - by Petra Marquardt-Bigman

I don’t quite see why Israel should give a work permit to employees of foreign NGOs who come to work for the demise of the Jewish state. By trying to force Israel to host a longtime anti-Israel activist, HRW has provided a stark reminder of its bias and its arrogant attitude that it has no need to even pretend to be impartial. But this is arguably not only about Israel. If an organization is so shameless about its bias towards one country, it seems reasonable to question how much ideological fixations affect its work on other countries. The apparently widespread idea that an organization working on human rights must be assumed to reflect the highest ethical standards and should be automatically exempt from scrutiny and criticism is certainly not justified.

Petra Marquardt-Bigman..
Legal Insurrection..
18 May '19..

In the first part of my documentation of the bias of Human Rights Watch, I focused on HRW’s “Israel and Palestine Country Director” Omar Shakir.

I demonstrated that, given his long record of anti-Israel activism, it is laughable for HRW to insist that Shakir would be able or even willing to impartially monitor Israel’s human rights record.

Indeed, HRW is playing a cynical game by demanding that Israel grant Shakir a work permit, because what they are essentially saying is: we hired a veteran anti-Israel activist and are paying him to continue his efforts to rid the world of its only Jewish state, and we insist that for the sake of “human rights,” Israel must host him.

Since HRW is a well-funded and influential NGO that enjoys near-immunity from media criticism, it is all the more important to realize that Shakir’s case should serve as a reminder of HRW’s institutional bias against Israel.

As I will document in this second part, this bias was widely criticized a decade ago, and it is not only Shakir’s case that illustrates that this criticism remains valid. Top HRW officials like well-paid veteran executive director Ken Roth and Sarah Leah Whitson of the Middle East and North Africa Division are almost eager to openly display their pronounced bias against Israel. Their conduct reflects HRW’s adoption of an anti-Zionist agenda almost two decades ago.

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