New Israeli PR Offensive Targets Human Rights NGOs
New Israeli PR Offensive Targets Human Rights NGOs
Reporting that the Israeli government “has decided to take a much more aggressive stance” toward human rights NGOs, the Jerusalem Post quotes Netanyahu spokesman Mark Regev attacking Human Rights Watch for raising raising funds from private Saudi individuals.
Regev told the Post that “A human rights organization raising money in Saudi Arabia is like a women’s rights group asking the Taliban for a donation.”
“If you can fundraise in Saudi Arabia, why not move on to Somalia, Libya and North Korea?” he said. “For an organization that claims to offer moral direction, it appears that Human Rights Watch has seriously lost its moral compass.”
Responding to Regev’s troubling suggestion that citizens of Saudi Arabia should come under suspicion simply by virtue of being Saudis, Sarah Leah Whitson, director of HRW’s Middle East and North Africa Division said that “Certainly not everyone is tainted by the misconduct of their government.”
Meanwhile, a number of journalists received an email from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee this morning containing this Wall Street Journal item attacking HRW for the Saudi trip. Author David Bernstein asserts that Whitson was raising money “from wealthy Saudis by highlighting HRW’s demonization of Israel,” and suggests that “Ms. Whitson found no time to criticize Saudi Arabia’s abysmal human rights record.”
In the WSJ comments section, Whitson responded that “had [Bernstein] asked me, and not just ’someone who claims to have worked for HRW,’ the only source he ever cites, he would know that we did indeed spend much of the time in serious discussion about Saudi violations, including its troubled justice system and the lack of women’s rights, as well as our work in the region, including Israel.”
Had he checked our website, he’d know that Human Rights Watch in recent years has published more reports and news releases on rights problems in Saudi Arabia than any other human rights organization in the world.
I emailed AIPAC’s Josh Block to ask about AIPAC sending Bernstein’s item out. Block responded via email that “HRW has repeatedly demonstrated its anti-Israel bias, and for an organization that claims to be objective about human rights to go hat in hand to raise money from the Saudi ruling elite, while bragging about and seeking to further its Israel-bashing is deeply revealing of the group’s fundamental hypocrisy and its policy of holding a double standard when it comes to Israel. Human Rights Watch has long ago lost all credibility when it comes to human rights issues in the Middle East.”
A 2005 article in the Jewish Daily Forward noted that “Human Rights Watch has in fact devoted more attention to each of five other nations in the region — Iraq, Sudan, Egypt, Turkey and Iran — than to Israel.”
8 Responses to “New Israeli PR Offensive Targets Human Rights NGOs”
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And here is my response to Whitson (who, by the way, failed to respond to inquiries sent by NGO Watch about the original story and then has the chutzpah to complain about “fact-checking”):
Ms. Whitson has responded, both in the Post and on in the comments on OpinionJournal, asserting that contrary to the impression left by the Arab News (which, she notes without irony, is subject to government censorship), she did discuss Saudi Arabia’s abysmal human rights record during her visit to Saudi Arabia.
Meanwhile, Ms. Whitson acknowledges that the trip involved fundraising, and she says that HRW obtaining funding from Saudi Arabia is something to be “applauded.” She also does not deny that her pitch involved trumpeting HRW’s battles with what Arab News quotes her as calling “pro-Israel pressure groups in the US, the European Union and the United Nations.”
For my part, if Ms. Whitson did indeed discuss Saudi human rights abuses during her trip, I apologize for suggesting otherwise. But note that she doesn’t state that she publicly mentioned any of them, much less criticized them, at the fundraising dinner at which she criticized Israel and its supporters, in front of “prominent members of Saudi society, human rights activists and dignitaries.” Perhaps she would share a transcript of her remarks, or better yet, a video. After all, HRW is all about “Transparency.”
In any event, I still think (a) it’s extremely unwise for a human rights group to raise money in a totalitarian country, even from human rights advocates in that country; the organization may become dependent on that funding, which in turn could be cut off by the government at any time, creating pressure on the organization to downplay its criticisms of that country; (b) it’s more than unwise for HRW to specifically raise money in Saudi Arabia by portraying itself as an organization doing battle with “pro-Israel forces,” which implies that HRW is serving as an “anti-Israel force.” This suggests either that HRW isn’t concerned about its reputation for evenhandedness, or that it’s so maniacally anti-Israel that its leaders just assume that being anti-Israel is somehow the obvious even-handed position that it embraces. This obviously plays into the hands of critics like myself who have previously accused HRW of a lack of objectivity with regard to Israel. I certainly can’t imagine HRW going to Israel and raising money with the pitch that it is trying to counter-balance “pro-Arab” or “pro-Saudi” “pressure groups”.
I’ll close with a quote from commenter “Patrick” at the Opinio Juris blog (scroll down), with whom I rarely agree:
“HRW pride themselves on being independent, but this raises two quasi-existential threats to them. First, the poisonous allure of Israel-bashing does sometime threaten to contaminate and devalue not only their other work, but the numerous legitimate criticisms that might be made of Israel. Secondly, I know that it is almost sweetest if rich Saudis can be convinced to fund HRW, but there is a real risk of giving very wrong impressions by soliciting same. HRW appear not to have so much managed that risk as blatantly embraced it.”
July 15th, 2009 at 12:46 pmWhat a load of shit Bernstein is pushing. Unless and until, Bernstein can show that HRW is compromising itself or is willing to supply alternative funding to HRW, his arguments smell.
July 15th, 2009 at 2:09 pmI certainly can’t imagine HRW going to Israel and raising money with the pitch that it is trying to counter-balance “pro-Arab” or “pro-Saudi” “pressure groups”.
According to Jeffrey Goldberg’s email exchange with Ken Roth:
…we don’t get any Saudi funds for work on Israel, if that’s what you’re driving at. We do have some funds from Jews for work on other Middle Eastern countries (and some for work on Israel), but the vast majority of our funding is for our work as a whole.
I recommend reading Goldberg’s piece in its entirety for Ken Roth’s remarks, but not for those of Goldberg, who seems to be acting obtuse on purpose.
July 15th, 2009 at 4:46 pmIronic. The Israel lobby was built with foreign money. The AZC was so hard up, it brought in $5 million (35 today) from Israel for lobbying because it couldn’t raise it here. Kennedy shut down the AZC, which transferred ops over the AIPAC.
http://irmep.org/ILA/AZCDOJ/default.asp
AIPAC policing foreign fund receipts is quite forgetful of its own history (Founder Isaiah Kenen was taking thousands from the Jewish Agency direct from Jerusalem, while lobbying the Hill).
July 15th, 2009 at 5:37 pmNGO Monitor’s May 27 report revealing HRW’s Saudi Arabian (mis)adventures is part of the ongoing and systematic analysis of this NGO superpower’s confused mix of speculation, pseudo-research, ideology, and international legal rhetoric. See HRW Goes to Saudi Arabia to Demonize Israel and Raise Money, HRW profile
Diane Meskin
July 16th, 2009 at 5:14 amResearcher, NGO Monitor
Ms. Meskin, your organization is full of crap. You’ve attacked virtually every well-respected human rights group/advocacy organization – from Human Rights Watch to Amnesty International to Oxfam to B’tselem to the Association for Civil Rights in Israel to Rabbis for Human Rights – as having an anti-Israel bias. Do you ever stop and think that maybe the problem is not with the human rights organization but rather with the Israeli policies that they put the spotlight on?
July 16th, 2009 at 4:33 pmNow that David Bernstein quotes “Patrick” in defense of his argument I suppose all that is left is abject surrender. After all, Bernstein has “rarely” agreed with the man in the past, so if the two finally do agree, well, my, that must be the voice of authority.
As dubious as quoting “Patrick” as an authority is Bernstein’s argument. HRW has always been an equal opportunity critic of any and all regimes deserving of criticism. The rancid assertions of the Israel-first crowd to the contrary can be shown false by a simple visit to HRW’s web site and some time spent reading. That Bernstein and the rest reject open and clear evidence in favor of an endless repetition of false allegations is only what can be expected.
July 16th, 2009 at 4:34 pmTheir only purpose is to discredit any and all criticism of Israel not first vetted by them. Objectivity or the lack thereof has nothing to do with it. Stone-deaf ideologues they are, and so they are intent on remaining.
I would also point out that criticism of Human Rights Watch have come from the pro-Palestinian side as well. See Mouin Rabbani’s article in Counterpunch critizing HRW’s alleged double-standard in favor of Israel. I am not saying the pro-Palestinian side is right, just that HRW has been criticized by both sides, hardly justifying David Bernstein’s allegations of the “poisonous allure of Israel-bashing”.
July 16th, 2009 at 4:41 pm