Ken Roth’s Jerusalem Talk - Sept 6: A Preview
Ken Roth, the perennial leader of Human Rights Watch, attacks Israel with great regularity, but only spends little time here, and his knowledge is superficial and highly distorted. His next foray is scheduled for September 6 2007, when he will speak on “The 2006 Israel Hezbollah War: The Real Reason Civilians Died”.
The presumptuous headline notwithstanding, neither Roth nor HRW have the capability to determine “real reasons” nor distinguish “civilians” from terrorists. On the contrary, HRW is a political organization whose officials regularly exploit the language of human rights to demonize Israel (and other democracies involved in terror conflicts), as demonstrated in NGO Monitor’s detailed reports, and confirmed in the Washington Post, Wall St. Journal, the Weekly Standard, and elsewhere.
Angry statements that revealed Roth’s private chip-on-the-shoulder, and criticism of HRW’s tendentious reporting during last year’s war as well as in the previous decade have placed him on the defensive. While still a political superpower with a massive budget, HRW has reportedly lost some important donors, and Roth is coming for another attempt to salvage his reputation and his position.
On the substance, expect Roth to again cite “eyewitnesses” (probably Hezbollah operatives since no one else could move freely in Southern Lebanon), low-credibility journalists using the same sources, and HRW’s “researchers” to support false claims that Israel responded “indiscriminately” to Hezbollah’s attacks. According to almost daily HRW press statements during the war, the Israel Air Force only struck at areas free of Hezbollah forces. Detailed photos and other verifiable information exposed HRW’s fabrications and lack of credibility, including claims of an Israeli attack on an ambulance.
Roth may also repeat the condemnation of Israel’s use of (American made) cluster bombs, as well as HRW’s lame excuses for waiting months after the war to mention Hezbollah’s use of Chinese-made bombs. Given HRW’s double standards, lack of credibility, and other sins of both omission and commission, Roth is in no position to preach to Israelis on this or other issues.
In contrast, Roth is unlikely to say anything about Hezbollah’s use of human shields or its aggression. HRW’s campaign during the war ignored this issue entirely. Afterwards, when asked for an explanation, he invoked pseudo-legalistic jargon contending that human rights law does not take aggression into account, conveniently erasing moral common sense and the UN Charter. (It took HRW a full year to acknowledge the human rights of the kidnapped Israeli soldiers.)
While Roth has been caught before, and HRW was found to have erased evidence from its website, he has never apologized. His style of defense is to attack, and he may also pull out his father’s “escape from Nazi persecution” again to avoid the substance and evidence of anti-Israel prejudice. He will also deny HRW’s double standards or biased agendas, such as the fact that during the six week period, HRW largely ignored the terrible violence and human rights violations in Sri Lanka, Darfur, and elsewhere.
To their credit, the Minerva program at Hebrew University, whose members seem largely to share Roth’s agenda, have not given him an entirely open platform. While he is given top billing, Col. (Reserved) Daniel Reisner, a Research Fellow, Israel Democracy Institute and formerly head of the International Law Division in the IDF Legal Corps, is expected to provide some opposition as a discussant. This is a welcome improvement over Roth’s previous public appearance in Israel, for 24 hours in October 2004. On that occasion, he held a press conference at the American Colony Hotel (the Palestinian media center), to promote HRW’s entry into the anti-Israel boycott campaign. (The vehicle was glossy publication headlined “Razing Rafah”, which used “eyewitnesses”, double standards, “technical experts” with frail credentials, and the rhetoric of international law to erase the context of Palestinian terror, weapons smuggling tunnels to demonize Israel. HRW has yet to issue a similar report on Hamas.)
Perhaps this time, a more knowledgeable and assertive audience will remove the façade that has allowed Roth and his colleagues to exploit human rights to pursue their private agendas. The event is scheduled to take place on September 6 at 18.00, at the Maiersdorf Faculty Lounge (Room no. 502) , Mt. Scopus Campus, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Gerald Steinberg, Executive Director, NGO Monitor
