Establishing A Reputation

Which was precisely what Robert Bernstein, former president and chief executive of Random House, as chairman of Human Rights Watch from 1978 to 2998, managed to establish. A solid reputation as an advocate for basic human freedoms, while supporting political dissenters within closed societies. Human Rights Watch encouraged vigorous public debate in advocating for those struggling to obtain rights and freedoms on behalf of the oppressed. Shining the light of reasoned enlightenment in dark corners of the world.

Somehow, Human Rights Watch appears to have sloughed off its mission for the greater perceived 'good' seen in illuminating the wrongs and misdeeds of an open, free and democratic country with a strong and adversarial press, an independent judiciary, and a national conscience. That same state, surrounded by countries ruled by force of arms, not democratic participation by their citizens, whose human rights are depressed by tyrants, religious thugs, and royal autocrats, is held to a standard they are not.

In its original mandate, Human Rights Watch earned international respect as a voice for the oppressed living in closed societies, and was actively going about its work exposing human rights abuses in 70 countries. In a turn-about of purpose and direction it has joined most other left-leaning, pseudo-humanitarian organizations that see profit in heralding a new mission that they cleave to - the slanderous accusations that can be levelled, with impunity, against the State of Israel.

Israel itself, with its sparse 7.4-million population, one-sixth of which is comprised of Israeli Arabs, has its own human rights organizations, dozens of them, critical of the government at every turn. It has no need of outside critics. It also enjoys the presence of a vibrant free press, one that has no hesitation in criticizing their own government, when they see it to be fit and proper. And the independent judiciary too, has occasion when it rules for a plaintive, against the government.

Arab regimes - and the Iranian Republic, and Muslim societies elsewhere - have much to learn about respecting the human rights of their citizens. Unfortunately, they have no wish to learn anything about human rights, much less those of their citizens, in thrall to the dictates of the state which disdains to consider it might owe certain basic freedoms to its population. Dissent is put down swiftly, brutally. Political adversaries are simply shunted away; prisons are handy for that.

Yet Human Rights Watch is focused on Israel, and Israel alone. Uncritical of the threats posed by, for example, the Islamic Republic of Iran against Israel in its constant threats of annihilation of the "Zionist entity". Despite that this kind of provocation is in direct contravention of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. In this way, Human Rights Watch is right on cue in partnership with the United Nations and its redoubtable Human Rights Council.

That non-state militias such as Hamas and Hezbollah, acting as subordinate proxies for such dangerous human-rights-abusive states as Syria and Iran, training children in the art of suicide attacks, deliberately using densely populated areas as shields when launching attacks against Israel so that in the aftermath of response, they can crow to the international community about Israel's brutal assaults on minors and civilians, there is no thumping from Human Rights Watch.

So much for a once-vaunted reputation. Human Rights Watch itself has become a willing surrogate for the forces of human relations gone berserk.