HRW – ‘Reporting both sides’, but what about equal values?
On September 24th, San Francisco Chronicle published an article, ‘Human Rights Watch – Scrutinizing War from Both Sides’, in which HRW’s Executive Director Ken Roth boldly claims that ‘in a war, we will always report both sides’. He even uses HRW’s investigations of the 2006 Second Lebanon War as a prime example of this noble concept in action.Extensive research by NGO Monitor has uncovered that far from a track record of even handedness, HRW has a consistent record of disproportionate criticism of Israel, and reliance on non-credible sources to support its political position. Its latest report on the Second Lebanon War defies logic – Hezbollah regularly stored and fired rockets from civilian areas, yet HRW pointedly avoids the clear conclusion that Hezbollah were guilty of using human shields. And despite the fact that Hezbollah continues to violate human rights through the ongoing captivity of two Israeli servicemen, HRW fails to take the opportunity to demand their release.
Roth and his organization must learn that the key to upholding universal human rights standards is not simply to ‘report both sides’ but actually lies in applying the same set of rules and values to both sides of a conflict – Something that HRW unequivocally failed to do in its reporting of the Second Lebanon War.
