Bernstein maintained that “it’s extremely unwise for a human rights group to raise money in a totalitarian country, even from human rights advocates in that country.”
Whitson said the claim had no grounds, noting that the notion “that any money from Saudi Arabia is tainted because it comes from a country with a totalitarian ruling regime is a gross generalisation.”
“The ethnic background of our donors is irrelevant to the work we do,” Whitson told IPS. “It’s not relevant to our work in Israel that many, many of our donors are Jewish. And it’s not relevant for the work that we do that we get money from Arab countries.”
“Should people be criticising us for the fact that much of our support base is made up of Jews?” Whitson said. “Should that imply that our work on Israel is in fact too soft?”
Let’s review. The problem with HRW’s fundraising in Saudi Arabia is two-fold: (1) Totalitarian (or even run-of-the-mill authoritarian) governments will only allow fundraising for human rights NGOs to the extent that the NGO is at worst only a minor nuisance to it. If HRW becomes dependent on Saudi money, it will have a significant incentive softpedal Saudi Arabia’s human rights violations; (2) HRW specifically asked for money in Saudi Arabia due to its research and publicizing of Israel’s alleged human rights violations in Gaza, and the cost of its battles with “pro-Israel pressure groups in the US, the European Union and the United Nations” (as if the U.N., with dozens of Arab and Muslim countries, is a hot bed of pro-Israel sentiment!). So HRW went to the elites of a totalitarian nation, with some representatives of the government in the audience(!) to ask for money to help it combat the controversial policies of a liberal democracy.
On point 1, Whitson has intentionally distorted the point to an issue of the “ethnic background of our donors.” Elsewhere, she responded to me by concluding that “believe it or not, some Arabs believe in human rights too.” If Whitson has some reason to believe that HRW’s mission won’t be compromised by fundraising in totalitarian nations, say that HRW is limiting its fundraising in such countries to 5% of its budget so it doesn’t become dependent, let her say so. But her claim that the issue I raised is the “ethnic background” of HRW’s donors is egregiously dishonest.
As for point 2, HRW director Ken Roth has claimed that the pitch regarding Israel was made in the broader context of discussing HRW’s work in the Middle East, and did not amount to a request for funds specifically to combat Israel. (“I’ve been told that we talked about the range of our work in the region, including Israel, Saudi and elsewhere…. That’s [the Israel stuff] certainly part of the story. We report on Israel. Its supporters fight back with lies and deception. It wasn