Criticism of HRW

In an article entitled UN Human Wrongs Council, David Harris posed the question as to whether the countries that voted on the adoption of the Goldstone report could "admit that the UN Human Rights Council was so viscerally anti-Israel, as evidenced by the stunning fact that 80 percent of its resolutions adopted over the past three years have focused on Israel alone, that it could not be deemed an objective body?"
Towards the end of the article, Mr. Harris stated, "Courage and principle are always in short supply."
I believe courage and principle was demonstrated by Robert L. Bernstein today.
Mr. Bernstein, chairman of Human Rights Watch from 1978 to 1998, is the author of an article that appears in the New York Times which is highly critical of the organization which he headed for two decades.
All I can say is kudos to Mr. Bernstein for realizing that the baby he helped to create is losing its moral perspective.

"AS the founder of Human Rights Watch, its active chairman for 20 years and now founding chairman emeritus, I must do something that I never anticipated: I must publicly join the group’s critics. Human Rights Watch had as its original mission to pry open closed societies, advocate basic freedoms and support dissenters. But recently it has been issuing reports on the Israeli-Arab conflict that are helping those who wish to turn Israel into a pariah state.
... in recent years Human Rights Watch has written far more condemnations of Israel for violations of international law than of any other country in the region.
...Meanwhile, the Arab and Iranian regimes rule over some 350 million people, and most remain brutal, closed and autocratic, permitting little or no internal dissent. The plight of their citizens who would most benefit from the kind of attention a large and well-financed international human rights organization can provide is being ignored as Human Rights Watch’s Middle East division prepares report after report on Israel.
Human Rights Watch has lost critical perspective on a conflict in which Israel has been repeatedly attacked by Hamas and Hezbollah, organizations that go after Israeli citizens and use their own people as human shields.
Leaders of Human Rights Watch know that Hamas and Hezbollah chose to wage war from densely populated areas, deliberately transforming neighborhoods into battlefields. They know that more and better arms are flowing into both Gaza and Lebanon and are poised to strike again. And they know that this militancy continues to deprive Palestinians of any chance for the peaceful and productive life they deserve. Yet Israel, the repeated victim of aggression, faces the brunt of Human Rights Watch’s criticism."
Read more:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/20/opinion/20bernstein.html