Yesterday I clenched my teeth and linked to an op-ed in Haaretz where Kenneth Roth, head of HRW, castigated the Israeli authorities for not being willing to listen to his organization's findings on Israeli crimes in last year's Lebanon War.
Gerald Steinberg, Executive Director of NGO Monitor, also responded, sharply criticising Roth. So I've linked to him, too. But I don't retract my statement of yesterday. Unfortunately, the suggestion that Israel was careless with the lives of Lebanese citizens last year is based on fact. Would that it were otherwise, but it isn't.
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2 comments:
I dunno. Steinberg makes a lot of sense to me, esp. as regards HRW's questionable evaluation of evidence. Anybody (just to take one of Steinberg's examples) who says that he could find no evidence of Hezbollah using human shields is not a reliable source on this subject in my book.
In your blog posting, you acknowledged NGO Monitor’s critique of Human Rights Watch and its head, Kenneth Roth, but then you noted that the information and analysis that we provided would not change your opinions. I admit that I cannot understand how, after seeing the specific examples of HRW’s unverifiable, and in many cases, clearly false claims, and its obsessive condemnations of Israeli responses to Hezbollah, you still believe" that it would have been better had the IDF tried to learn from [HRWws] report on the war in Lebanon last year” and that Roth is “unfortunately, right, and the IDF people are wrong." I wonder what evidence it would take to convince you that HRW, and Roth in particular, have a strong ideological agenda and that their research capabilities, particular when dealing with Israel, are practically non-existent? HRW’s condemnations against Israel are almost entirely based on reports of so-called “eyewitnesses” based in Southern Lebanon, and the latest report on last year’s Lebanon war regarding the number of civilian casualties in Lebanon is full of huge holes. Perhaps if you read some of NGO Monitor’s detailed analyses on HRW since 2001, you would recognize that HRW’s “halo effect” hides some nasty ideological agendas and biases.
In contrast, I note the posting from Lydia McGrew on your blog: "Anybody (just to take one of Steinberg's examples) who says that he could find no evidence of Hezbollah using human shields is not a reliable source on this subject in my book." This is indeed the key
point. HRW published condemnations of Israel without any verifiable evidence. If NGOs were to use a reliable and consistent methodology, more governments, including the Government of Israel, would take them seriously. As it stands, it is the powerful NGOs that need to be examined. HRW’s annual budget is close to $50 million – money that could be much better spent. For example, as NGO Monitor has shown, for the past two years has spent only a small fraction of its resources on the abuses in Burma .
This is an important issue, both for Israel and for the effort to restore the credibility and impact of universality of human rights norms, and to end the exploitation of the language to promote the ideological and personal agendas of NGO officials.
Gerald Steinberg
Executive Director, NGO Monitor
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