Love of the Land: The Wrath of Ken Roth: Human Rights Watch, Goldstone and Israel

The Wrath of Ken Roth: Human Rights Watch, Goldstone and Israel

by Gerald M. Steinberg
Executive Director, NGO Monitor

1 September 09

At a conference in Europe, Sa’ad Eddin Ibrahim, the respected Egyptian human rights activist, stopped abruptly in the middle of his presentation to embrace Prof. Irwin Cotler, who had just arrived. Prof. Cotler had been active in the fight to secure Ibrahim’s freedom from jail on trumped-up charges -- one of many such battles that the former Canadian Justice Minister has led, including in behalf of Natan Sharansky, Nelson Mandela, and Ethiopian Jews.

For this and many other reasons, readers should add more than the usual grain of salt in reading Kenneth Roth’s diatribe (Jerusalem Post, August 26). As head of Human Rights Watch (HRW) since 1993, Roth’s accomplishments do not come close to Prof. Cotler’s. Instead, Roth has led the politicization and erosion of universal human rights as a moral force.

The main focus of Roth’s attack is to defend the legitimacy of Judge Richard Goldstone, the head of the United Nations “fact finding mission” whose report on the Gaza war is expected to be released soon. But in his tirade, Roth forgot to disclose his relationship with Goldstone - a long-time member of HRW’s board. And in many ways, the attempts to malign and disparage Goldstone’s critics are also part of efforts by Roth to defend himself and HRW.

Indeed, as Goldstone is discredited, Roth has good reason to worry. The appointment of Goldstone was another step in the strategy adopted by the 2001 Durban NGO Forum, with the goal of isolating Israelthrough the language of human rights. NGO Monitor’s detailed research shows that HRW has promoted this strategy by issuing at least 68 calls for “independent investigations” of Israel -- including Jenin (2002), Rafah (2004), the Gaza Beach incident, and the Lebanon war (2006). Roth lamely sought to avoid the evidence of targeting Israel, rather than doing more on human rights in Iran, Africa, or Libya: “we’ve got to pick and choose—we’ve got finite resources.”

The Gaza war gave Roth the opportunity to expand these efforts, and HRW worked closely with the UN Human Rights Council, dominated by Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Cuba, Russia, China, and Egypt, in creating the “independent inquiry” headed by one of its own - Judge Goldstone. Since then, HRW has provided the investigators and the accompanying media campaign with three more tendentious “reports” accusing Israeli forces of “war crimes” during the war. (To claim “balance”, HRW also published a belated report on Hamas, omitting Iran’s role in supplying weapons and training. This follows HRW’s standard pattern, as seen during the suicide bombing campaign, and the 2006 Lebanon war.)

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Love of the Land: The Wrath of Ken Roth: Human Rights Watch, Goldstone and Israel