Responding to an NGO Monitor Report accusing Human Rights Watch of anti-Israel bias (a topic that has been covered here before), HRW's Middle East Director Sarah Leah Whitson replies, "It's hard to comprehend how NGO Monitor thinks that merely devoting an alleged 9% of Human Rights Watch's energies in the Middle East to Israel constitutes a disproportionate focus." Maybe because no objective observer thinks that in a region populated with such human rights stalwarts as Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Hamas-controlled Gaza, Hezbollah-controlled South Lebanon, and Libya, Israel is responsible for anything approaching 9% of the human rights abuses in the region, whatever one thinks of its policies regarding the Palestinian territories.
I can see the argument that a disproportionate focus on Israel is appropriate, because Israel should be held to higher standards as a liberal democracy, and because liberal democracies are far more likely to be responsive to groups like Human Rights Watch than are countries like Saudi Arabia. Instead, Whitson claims that the disproportionate focus isn't disproportionate to begin with, and indeed it's incomprehensible that anyone might think otherwise, which is another nail in HRW's credibility coffin.
Whitson adds: "Israel today is the only country committing collective punishment by blockade because it is the only country that, directly and through its pressure on Egypt, is blocking all borders of a territory in order to squeeze its civilian population." So if Israel and Egypt close the border to Hamas-controlled Gaza, only Israel is engaging in "collective punishment." And Israel is doing so "to squeeze" the "civilian population," not because Hamas has been importing rockets (which it then uses to attack Israeli civilians) and other weaponry through whatever holes it can find in the borders, and meanwhile attacking Israeli border positions whenever they are opened for humanitarian purposes.
The fact is our unwillingness to expect palestinians to behave like civilized people in turns gives them an incentive to be ever more brutal. You want to know why this goes on and on, liberals? Look in the mirror: you share at least some of the blame.
So she considers their coverage proportionate, but she doesn't say with respect to what. She could be accounting for the higher standards expected from a liberal democracy, and the likely effect of their lobbying (which you mentioned), rather than purely the statistical distribution of "abuses" in the region. So it's not necessarily a ridiculous statement.
And there is somewhat of an irony in NGO Monitor accusing another NGO of political bias...
Now you're going to have to attack the credibility of every other human rights organization--because, by and large, there is a consensus among human rights organizations about Israel's atrocities against the Palestinians.
Maybe you can start with B'Tselem?
It is a waste of resources to focus on liberal democracies, because their internal mechanisms (free press, opposition groups, etc.) will publicize abuses, plus their publics care about such abuses and have ways to make the government stop doing them. All this drives liberal democracies to moderate their behavior without HRW intervention. HRW needs to focus on regimes that don't have any internal forces that can make their governments stop abusing human rights.
Needless to say, HRW is not focusing on Israel because they think it should be held to some high standard, they are focusing on Israel because HRW is dominated by Leftists who detest Israel.
We expect better from liberal democracies. And we get better. Israel's record is better than that of any of its neighbors. HRW proclaims itself to be a watcher of human rights. Are Arabs living under Arab rule less human? Less covered by 'universal laws'?
Or is this a case of intellectual smuggling? The idea is certainly prominent in academia that abuses don't 'count' as much if they are committed by people who look like the victims. Is this HRW's planted axiom.
(Oh. And I get to be the first to say: Hey, Prof. Bernstein, this is not a post about law, blah-blah-blah . . .!)
- Israel is responsible because it is pressuring Egypt.
- Egypt is not responsible because it is merely responding to pressure from Israel.
What's wrong with that? Sounds like normal post-modern logic to me.
HRW forgot to mention that the US is responsible because it supports Israel. That would make Israel not responsible, wouldn't it?
Oh, my head can't take that. Too complicated.
Which is why Guantanamo is closed, laws prohibiting the CIA from using torture have been enacted, and war crimes indictments have been lodged against a dozen administration officials?
--Oh, wait: maybe liberal democracies *like* abuses, when the "right" people are being abused. Like terrorists, or Palestinians ....
In any event, exactly how DB thinks that constant Hillaryesque whinging does Israel any good is a mystery. Evidently it makes him feel better however. Whinge away, sir.
Interesting first point. Although in periods of war, it's not hard to imagine those internal mechanisms not striking the right balance between human rights and security. Moreover, even outside of war, a country's population are always going to be biased towards their own needs at the expense of other nations'. So outside lobby groups can play a useful role. I half agree with the second point, in that they should focus more on undemocratic regimes, but I'm pretty skeptical that they'll get much results.
But it's higher standards as a descriptive expectation, not a normative one. Nobody's arguing that the Palestinians don't hold the same universal rights as Westerners solely by virtue of living under the government they do, just that it's not a plausible expectation that they'll be granted them.
RickM, I'd certainly expect B'tselem to spend 100% of its time on investigating Israel's human rights record. Otherwise, I'm not going to get sidetracked into a debate over B'tselem.
They got our State Department. But that wasn't much of a contest.
At the very least it helps me understand why it is useless to engage certain people in dialogue on specific issues. The root of the problem is much deeper than "I hate Israel". It has to do with a warped world view that has led to that.
I'm sure their warped view of the world is somehow Bush's fault, though.
Well that's certainly a conveniently and intellectually lazy way of jettisoning all the human rights organization's documentations of Israeli atrocities.
Yes, it is not reprehensible behavior by government against civilians that is noteworthy. It is the relative amount of publicity given to different offenders that is noteworthy.
For some.
This is not exactly to the point that DB made, but it is in a way because DB is pointing out how "human rights" has become a politicized term. People on the left try to add weight to their political preferences by declaring them "human rights." In reality, it just dilutes the meaning of the word.
Perhaps the Left's most feverish dreams of Bush and Cheney doing the perp walk will not be realized, but undoubtedly Gitmo will be closed (never mind that this does not solve the problem of what to do with detainees) and the "rights" of terrorists and guerrillas will be respected to a far greater degree than they deserve. The US military already has lawyers constantly looking over its shoulder, routinely requests legal opinions before it makes attacks, and tries its own soldiers for decisions made in the heat of battle. Can anyone imagine such insanity would be occurring if the US was not a liberal democracy?
I have very seldom seen any evidence of Israeli atrocities in recent years. Generally, the purported atrocities have been more or less self-evident hoaxes (from the "Jenin massacre" through Al-Durah) or based on facially improper understandings of international law (disproportionate force). That is completely consistent with noting that HRW and other self-important human rights groups are prejudiced and biased against Israel.
The best description of what's going on that I've found is the analysis Richard Landes has put together over at theaugeanstables.com. His analysis is thorough and informative.
HGB
Missed again. Either you missed the point, or you missed in your attempt to change the subject.
The point is HRW's lack of balance, and, by extension, the lack of balance of other entities who claim to be concerned about human rights--as long as such concern inconveniences democracies and makes things easier for tyrants.
Nobody was talking about mitigating anything, although you probably think that pointing out something didn't actually happen--Jenin--is "mitigating". Lots of luck with that.
The world may not be better, but it will be more honest, when we take off the rose-colored glasses and admit that democracies can be as violent and abusive as any other form of government. It was democracies, or at least countries which freely voted in governments with power, who colonized the world and drew these boundaries to begin with.
"Democratic Peace Theory" and all the associated hagiography of elections are complete crocks. Israel should not be held to a higher standard than Egypt, nor should Egypt be held to a lower one. Just as dictators can act humanely, electorates can be barbaric.
What, exactly, is the point of complaining about lack of "balance" in HRW's work if not to make some kind of tu quoque argument minimizing HRW's legitimate criticisms of Israeli policy? Why should anyone care how much time and effort HRW devotes to one country vs. another, so long as it is pursuing its mandate in the expenditure of those resources? If you want to argue that HRW is off-base on the merits of the specific claims it makes regarding Israel's purported abuses, fine, but I just don't see why we should care what relative amount of effort HRW devotes to Israel vs. the rest of the Middle East, particularly when, as Whitson notes, the Israel expenditure is hardly overwhelming.
Amen to that.
If an organization's leaders manifest an obvious bias against a country--for example, Israel but not Egypt is responsible for closing Gaza, and Israel is only doing it out of spite--the credibility of the organization's reports and analysis is then in question. The original post links to a prior post in which various media organizations, but not HRW, found obvious evidence of military activity in a town in Lebanon targeted by Israel. This begins to look less like an honest error.
I think the point was that they're not all equally abusive.
Maybe it's because they KNOW what would happen if they tried that crap with Egypt ? Thye found out recently when they tore down a section of the Egyptian fence - Egypt told them flat out 'If you ever do this again, we will have troops lined up to meet you, and they will mow you down where you stand.
GO figure.
The fact is most 'human rights' organizations, from the UN HRC, to Amnesty International, to HRW, etc, are mere organs of the far left, the socialists, and the anarchists. They exist primarily for one reason - to harrass and harangue Western democracies ( is that two reasons ? ).
I read recently that one of them, I forget which, claimed that by not having totally open borders, by not INVITING Mexicans to come here for free health care, housing, college, shelter, etc, the United States is 'violating the human rights' of Mexicans. They went beyond talking even about 'illegals' ( which they now call 'paper-work deficient workers' or such ), and complained that we dont' ACTIVELY SEEK OUT an increased flow of the destitute across our borders.
Really?
http://www.hrw.org/
Hmm. A perusal of today's front page shows Israel mentioned exactly once, in a click-through about Gaza on the right side.
Obviously somebody at HRW has seen this thread, and they're covering their tracks.
I thought Arab countries had been boycotting Israel for years. Wikipedia says
Should someone point this out to Whitson? I wonder what he has to say about such things as the boycott of apartheid South Africa?
I can't think of any other situation where anyone behaves like this. For example, Greenpeace doesn't campaign where environmental abuses are the worst; it presumably considers that as one factor along with how much public interest in can raise in a problem and how much good it can do. Is there any organization that spends its resources only with regard to the total amount of the problem it is trying to address, and with no other considerations?
Human Rights Watch's mission statement is:
I could understand this criticism a bit more if they were exclusively dedicated to exposing human rights abuses, but they're not.
If HRW followed this advice, I imagine it would redeploy the vast majority of its resources to places like North Korea and Myanmar, where there are human rights abuses occurring on a larger scale than anywhere in the middle east, and it is incredibly difficult to report on them because of their governments. I have a hard time seeing how that would advance global human rights.
That said, one has to acknowledge anti-Israeli bias in some sectors of human rights reporting, just as one has to acknowledge pro-Israeli bias in other sectors of society - It is odd the feelings that that country engenders, as its constant and seemingly reappearance on blogs like this one shows.
There a difference between getting into a debate over B'Tselem and recognizing their manifest relevance to the instant debate.
And btw, war itself results in "inhumane treatment during wartime"; war is not humane. I've noted before that "human rights" organizations traffic in pacifism, at least with regard to Western powers.
Best,
Ben
Sure I can't find a reputable human rights organization that disagrees with all the other reputable human rights organizations indictment of Israel's human rights record, but thats not going to stop me from saying that they all hate Israel.
Similar to the Chinese hypocrisy - they are good enough to manufacture our retail goods, but we shouldn't bother them about human rights violations.
HRW complains because Israelites (and those who send them money) might listen and take the words to heart, whereas the other abusive countries exist as autocracies and policy is not a democratic institution; so HRW would bang their collective heads against the Egyptian/Syrian/etc wall trying to alter that policy.
Seems simple to me and does not impact the aura of credibility.
I certainly think the Israeli-Egyptian blockade is legitimate, given the hostile nature of the government of Gaza. For example, it cannot be said that Israel is committing a "human rights abuse" when it stops the transport of fuel into Gaza after Gazan troops attack the fuel terminal.
RickM, we have a disagreement about what is "reputable," but just keep asserting your opinion as if it's truth from heaven. Rather than rely on the "reputation' of a group, it's in any event far more useful to look at what they actually write. When Amnesty says that bridges and roads are not legitimate military targets, when HRW claims that it couldn't find evidence of Hezbollah in a town when even Robert Fisk could, and so forth, I don't need to know whether Amnesty or HRW are considered reputable to know they are full of **** in these particular instances.
The "ideological baggage" (which I assume is code for "doves") of B'Tselem, is, however, irrelevant because I'm not citing their agreement to suport the conclusion that HRW is correct, I'm citing their agreement to debunk the theory that HRW's conclusions are the product of anti-Israel bias. Whatever BT's faults (and I'm sure they are many), certainly being anti-Israel is not among them.
I don't particularly buy the HRW line on Israel (I think they focus on the details that suit them) but to imply that this indicates anti-Israel bias when Israelis are saying the same things is just plain wrong. (Note: BT is perhaps also unduly focused on some details, but certainly that isn't in and of itself evidence of anti-Israel bias)
If, as you claim, the Egyptians will keep it closed, then Israel scores a PR victory with no actual cost!
I kid, I kid. That said, it has always seemed absurd to me that leftism would somehow lead to anti-Israel bias. Maybe the two got mixed up somewhere a long the way, but I consider myself vaguely left (in the left-libertarian sense, kind of a precarious position) and I've always felt that Israel was light-years ahead of the rest of the middle east in terms of the values that I hold dear.
At least, whether there is any internal effect or not, the HRWs of the world could tell us more emphatically about how things go in NK, or Myanmar, or Cuba.
Just so we'd know they actually care.
But they don't, so they don't.
Like I said, I don't think the human rights NGOs are objectively reasonable -- they oftentimes fail to see the forest for the trees. This is more a product of their focus than ideological stricture, IMO.
The diff, if you have anything to be right about, is that said lefties aren't actually fooled. They like the absence of human rights.
However, if you were to ask a random bunch of people about nations with human rights issues, would Israel come out closer to the top, or North Korea?
Strikes me that NGO Monitor is doing exactly what it purports to do. That's reason, perhaps to be skeptical of NGO Monitor. But here Ms. Whitson didn't take issue with NM's claim that HRW spends a lot of time on Israel, she just suggested that Israel's human rights record deserves such attention relative to Iran et al.
That doesn't really stack up with what I saw from a quick visit to their site. What the media choses to report of HRW's activities is another issue.
Now, you must keep in mind that we have a much higher standard for "to happen" in the case of liberal democracies.
Actually, you have essentially argued yourself that the attention may not be disproportionate from a cost benefit perspective. Money used to focus on Saudi Arabia may provide very little or no benefit, because Saudi Arabia is not responsive.
I do not believe that someone must agree that something is disproportionate when they disagree with the standard used to make that assertion. And if you cannot "comprehend" why people would use a different standard, I think it is fair to say it.
Maybe in HRW's view, money used on some of these other countries is money wasted. It is hard to "comprehend" why someone would insist that one use a flawed metric of proportionality that causes an organization with scarce resources to squander those resources.
Maybe HRW does have anti-Isreali bias. But, this particular quote does nothing to establish that.
So when HRW discovers Israeli human rights atrocities, it doesn't matter because "Hell, you'd find those atrocities committed by ANY nation if you spent THAT much money investigating it"? No, that can't be it.
DB presumably think Israel commits no significant human rights atrocities. I can't recall ever hearing him mention one. If he truly believes that, wouldn't he want HRW to spend even more of their budget investigating Israel? "See! You spent 100% of your budget investigating Israel and you found NOTHING!"
Is the point that if HRW spent more money investigating, say, Egypt, they'd find more atrocities committed by Egypt. Granted, this is likely. But how does that lessen the significance to Bernstein of documented Israeli atrocities? Presumably, given Bernstein's strong commitment to Israel, he'd be MORE interested in any Israeli atrocities committed. I don't care about Egyptian atrocities. I don't travel there or have friends there. I'm more interested in atrocities alleged of governments I live under or care about. But that's just me. I, for one, would never think of saying, when the Washington Post uncovered torture at Abu Graiab, "Wait just a minute. Exactly how much did you SPEND to uncover that? Was it proportional to your spending on Sadam's atrocities?"
So, I'm not clear on the import of DB's point. Either Israel commits atrocities or it doesn't. If it doesn't, that point is made more clear the MORE HRW spends to try and discover them. If it does, THAT's the important issue, not HRW spending priorities.
Yes, there are knuckleheads that go to Cuba and make a stink about it (probably because they don't tour the political prisons). To be frank, they embarrass me quite a bit. I can't stop them, though, now can I. The only thing I can do is present a positive picture of modern liberalism that is committed to human freedom, human rights and rejects authoritarian leftism as a ridiculous and failed system.
I'm pretty sure NK, but whatever.
This clever argumentation is starting to give me a serious headache. Even more so since we probably agree on the core issues -- I just wish that criticisms of HRW would focus on the substantive issues of misrepresentations (where they exist) and not on some vaguely mathematical notions of "percentages of abuses" (whatever it means to quantify a thing like that) or thinly-veiled accusations of outright racism.
They seemed pretty down on Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Morroco and Jordan too, giving those countries a whopping 12/20 stories combined, or 15% each. This must mean that HRW considers Egypt to be only 3 times as bad as Israel when, in reality, they are at least 10 times as bad. That's a 333% inflation in badness!
You should patent that approach. Call it the badometer.
But that completely elides my point. I thought you were suggesting that HRW was not "credible" because its reports show some pattern of bias. I would think that a site that has a priori decided to be one-sided, would surely lack credibility.
Now, I don't think that's terribly bad, it's good having vigorous one-sided advocates on both sides. But if you are talking about credibility, I don't see how you could say the one that makes at least some effort to report both sides lacks credibility while the one that explicitly only reports one side has credibility.
I would say that country needs some watching.
Wasn't that the courts in Israel?
If you're taking the average per country in that group to be 15% of stories (a bit of bad statistical analysis I'll ignore for now), yet they dedicated 20% of the stories to Israel, then the inflation is going the other way. In other words they portray Israel to be 33% worse than Egypt, and if Egypt is actually 10x worse than Israel, then the disparity is actually a 967% inflation against Israel! (How many badometers is that?)
[incoming snark warning]
Tell you what, how about you just leave the math to us pesky conservatives working in the hard sciences from now on. =)
But if I were PM of Israel, I'd make HRW a deal. Israel will open the border with Gaza more regularly, if HRW staff will man the border checkpoints (which Hamas and allies have attacked regularly). Nothing like asking someone else to risk their lives for your idealism, but if HRW has volunteers to do it, more power to them.
The Left hates Israel.
And if that requires you to tell lies like, "NK and Cuba are universally known to have zero consideration for human rights," well, so be it.
Money used to focus on Saudi Arabia may provide very little or no benefit, because Saudi Arabia is not responsive.
Fascinating. This is the "look for the car keys under the street light" theory of human rights watching!
I think that's a fairly uncharitable interpretation of what she said. If HRW did think that Israel is on par with Iran then they would be plain nuts, but I don't see that (or at least, I don't see the evidence that they see that).
Really? No further documentation?
What ever happened to ensuring the victims aren't forgotten? To getting their stories out so everyone's aware -- viscerally aware?
Maybe I'm off base, but I always figured it's best to put your efforts were it's needed most, not where it's easiest (and most fashionable).
I guess my main point is that credibility is not really a binary concept and that some failure or bias in particular instances doesn't really defeat credibility. No organization should be taken on faith as universally accurate, but HRW is a pretty good organization overall (notwithstanding is occasional errors) that provides a pretty good and pretty credible source of information on global human rights.
No reasonable people, but yes, some people do. Just as when Oren says, "NK and Cuba are universally known to have zero consideration for human rights" it allows BGates to, at the very least, uncharitably call him a liar.
Some of us moderates do erroneously say things like "nobody" when we really mean "nobody reasonable." I think it's partly a reflexive response to having our views defined by the same extremists we exclude when we refer to "everybody." So maybe that's our ideological blind spot. We wishfully define the extremists away as an aberrant fringe, and they lump all of us from both sides together with their extremist counterparts, by whose positions they define anyone who disagrees with them.
So we shouldn't criticize some countries in order to prevent other countries from misinterpreting/misusing the criticism?
Similarly, I don't think any (rational) human being on the planet needs to be reminding that Kim Jong Il II is batshit insane and treats his entire country like peasants while forcing them to stay in 1955. I don't think any (rational) history book will ever omit or gloss that fact.
So what exactly is the point of interjecting North Korea into this?
a big part of this imo is the "underdog principle"
leftists generally (unless there is really good reason for them not to - like taking the side of beleagured rightwingers on leftie campuses) go with the underdog. heck, these are the same people that claim people of color CAN'T be racist because they don't have "power".
israel is, despite its tiny size, metric a**loads more capable, equipped, etc. than the palestinians etc.
they are seen as "having power", not to mention they are supported by the US which automatically makes them suspect.
this is similar to how many in the far left nearly always see "corporate power" as wrong. corporations are big, "have power" etc. and thus are always wrong and always trying to screw the "common man".
this is why they are also against tort reform , since most of these lawsuits are the "little guy" against the big evil corporation.
at least that's my theory. :)
When self-appointed organizations like HRW go after Iran, and Tanzania, and Darfur, and North Korea, and China, and dozens of other countries that treat their people much worse than Israel treats the enemies that have sworn to destroy it, with the same special scrutiny, criticism and alacrity that HRW reserves for jews ...wake me, 'K? We might have something rational to discuss.
I can just imagine the squealing by HRW if Israel ever spouted off like Ahmadinejad or Ugo Chavez -- but they get a free pass compared to Israel.
"Human rights" are basic rights that apply to everyone, and you don't get a free pass just because you happen to be a different country.
I couldn't care what they say about anything.
Some organizations don't want or need credibility. They are perfectly willing to make up facts. But this is not true of every such one-sided organization. Some earn credibility by ensuring that the information they report is well-researched and as accurate as they can make it. The reporting may still be selective, but the reporting is dead-on accurate.
After all, HRW doesn't lose credibility because they don't report on chess tournaments. They also don't lose credibility because they don't devote equal time to anti-human-rights information.
Orin:
Because we need to be reminded of these facts or we will forget them or ignore them to our peril. David Bernstein concedes the point when he says:
It’s as if during World War 2, a human rights organization should have focused on racism in the United States because we are more likely to be responsive while giving a pass to the Nazi death camps because criticism of their existence would not deter the Nazis.
Today, seven years after the attack of 9/11, with the exception of a few sites on the internet, the images of that event are expunged from the media. To even mention that event leads the Left to accuse you of fear mongering. This leads people to question why we are trying to stop Islamofacism.
In 1941 it took the Japanese empire an entire battle fleet including all six first line aircraft carriers, submarines, battleships, cruisers and destroyers to bomb Pearl Harbor and kill about 2400 soldiers, sailors and civilians. In 2001 it took 19 men with box cutters to kill nearly 3000 people and bring the Twin Towers down. Without that background and the understanding that a few people now have the ability to cause mass casualties, we don’t understand what we are doing.
That is the point of focusing on the actual countries that destroy human rights and human dignity. The rest is intellectual onanism.
Examples?
Glad you asked: I put most of my comments on my blog, with links.
And here is that little know, fringe, not part of the Liberal mainstream, writer for an obscure little rag,
Take a few second on Google "fear mongering 9/11" and you get 674,000 hits.
Mentioning him is nothing but Sorosphobia. You ought to be ashamed of yourself.
None of what you linked says that the left reflexively labels any mention of 9/11 as fear mongering. You showed that there have been lots of accusations of 9/11 fear-mongering, but not how often 9/11 was raised without triggering that response, or how many of the claims come from the left. Without those missing pieces, you can't begin to claim all, substantially all or even a preponderance of 9/11 mentions have been met by the left with allegations of fear mongering.
Not to mention which, none of it touches the question of how many of the allegations were accurate.
Btw, both here and on your blog you misspelled VC commenter Oren's name the way Orin Kerr spells it.
Thank you for that graphic example of on-line onanism.