Kenneth Roth Admits to Human Rights Watch Disporportionate Focus on Israel

Kenneth Roth, the executive director of Human Rights Watch, has finally admitted to disproportionately focusing on Israel. Oddly enough, he made the admission in the third paragraph of his Op-Ed in Ha’aretz, just after rejecting the allegation that his organization disproportionately focuses on Israel.

Confused? (Perhaps that what Roth wanted?) Have a look at the relevant paragraphs:

Critics of Human Rights Watch’s work on Israel raise three main points. First, they say we disproportionately focus on Israel, and neglect other countries in the Middle East. Second, they claim our research methodology is flawed – relying on witnesses with an agenda. Third, as recently expressed by our founding chairman Robert Bernstein, they argue that we should focus on “closed” countries such as China rather than “open” societies like Israel.

I reject all three claims.

Human Rights Watch currently works on seventeen countries in the Middle East and North Africa, including Iran, Egypt, Libya and Saudi Arabia. Israel accounts for about 15 percent of our published output on the region. The Middle East and North Africa division is one of 16 research programs at Human Rights Watch and receives 5 percent of our total budget. Israel is a small fraction of what we do.

Got that? HRW works on seventeen Middle Eastern and North African countries. These include not only the most obvious offenders mentioned by Roth — Iran, Egypt, Libya and Saudi Arabia — but also other far-from-skilled practitioners of human rights like Yemen, Iraq, United Arab Emirates, Algeria, Lebanon, Bahrain. (You can learn some more about those countries’ records here.)

Let’s do the math together:

• One divided by seventeen is .058, or roughly six percent.
• The 15 percent of HRW’s published output from the region that Roth admits is devoted to Israel is toweringly greater than than the six percent that would go to Israel were all countries in proportion.

And there we have disproportion.

Add to this the fact that the other countries in the region include, for example, this country as described by the US State Department:

Citizens did not have the right to change their government. The government restricted civil liberties, including freedoms of press, speech, assembly, association, and some religious practices. Domestic violence against women and children persisted, as did discrimination on the basis of gender, religion, nationality, and sect, especially against the Shia majority population. Trafficking in persons and restrictions on the rights of expatriate workers remained problems.

And this one:

During the year the following significant human rights problems were reported: no right to change the government peacefully; beatings; judicially sanctioned corporal punishment; impunity, particularly on the part of the religious police; denial of public trials and lack of due process in the judicial system; political prisoners; incommunicado detention; restrictions on civil liberties such as freedoms of speech (including the Internet), assembly, association, movement, and severe restrictions on religious freedom; corruption; and lack of government transparency. Violence against women and discrimination on the basis of gender, religion, sect, and ethnicity were common. The sponsorship system limited the rights of foreign workers and remained a severe problem.

And this one:

The government restricted citizens’ right to change their government. Domestic and international NGOs reported cases of torture, arbitrary arrest, prolonged detention, and the continuance of poor prison conditions. Impunity, denial of due process of law, and limited judicial independence remained problems. Infringements on citizens’ privacy rights continued. The government harassed religious activists and opposition political party members and restricted to varying degrees freedom of speech, press, assembly, association, and movement. Legal and societal discrimination existed against women, converts from Islam, and persons of Palestinian origin. Restrictions on labor rights and abuse of foreign domestic workers remained problems.

The list could go on, making clear that HRW’s obsessive criticism of Israel is not only out of proportion to the country’s position as one among seventeen other regional states, but also well out of proportion to the countries’ human rights records.

(The organization’s disingenuous attempts to defend its record are hardly new. See, e.g., here.)