Human Rights Watch's Jihad Against Israel

by Bassam Tawil

• [T]he report fails to mention that during this period Israel has faced a massive wave of terrorism sponsored and funded by the Iranian regime and its Palestinian terror proxies, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ).
• One of the cases "investigated" by HRW is that of Mahmoud al-Sadi, 17, reportedly killed by Israeli security forces as he walked to school near the Jenin refugee camp in the northern West Bank on November 21, 2022. Notably, the HRW report does not mention why Israeli troops had entered the refugee camp.
• The Jenin Battalion terrorists, who are heavily armed, are mostly affiliated with Palestinian Islamic Jihad, an extremist Islamist organization responsible for countless terrorist attacks that have killed and injured hundreds of Israelis in the past few decades. There is no mention of this militia or its activities in the HRW report. Evidently, HRW does not want to the facts to spoil its effort to slander Israelis by depicting them as child-killers.
• While HRW presents al-Sadi as an unarmed teenage boy, Palestinians posted a photo of him carrying a M-16 rifle. Apparently, for HRW such photos, where Palestinian teenagers are featured brandishing weapons and dressed in military outfits, are irrelevant because they do not serve its anti-Israeli propaganda.
• Bizarrely, HRW does admit that the remaining three "children" allegedly killed by Israel were involved in terrorist attacks. Yet, as far as HRW is concerned, Israeli soldiers or police have no right to defend themselves when they are attacked with stones, Molotov cocktails, and fireworks. Why? According to the logic of HRW, the perpetrators are "only" teenagers.
• Does HRW really expect Israeli soldiers and policemen to ask someone who shoots or throws a Molotov cocktail at them how old they are before firing back to defend themselves?
• Instead of denouncing the Palestinians for using children as combatants, HRW is condemning Israel for defending itself against terrorism.
• "Israel, with a population of 7.4 million, is home to at least 80 human rights organizations, a vibrant free press, a democratically elected government, a judiciary that frequently rules against the government, a politically active academia, multiple political parties and, judging by the amount of news coverage, probably more journalists per capita than any other country in the world — many of whom are there expressly to cover the Israeli-Palestinian conflict." — The late Robert L. Bernstein, founder and longtime chairman of Human Rights Watch, New York Times, October 19, 2009.
• "Meanwhile, the Arab and Iranian regimes rule over some 350 million people, and most remain brutal, closed and autocratic, permitting little or no internal dissent. The plight of their citizens who would most benefit from the kind of attention a large and well-financed international human rights organization can provide is being ignored as Human Rights Watch's Middle East division prepares report after report on Israel." — Robert L. Bernstein, New York Times, October 19, 2009.
• "Human Rights Watch has lost critical perspective on a conflict in which Israel has been repeatedly attacked by Hamas and Hezbollah, organizations that go after Israeli citizens and use their own people as human shields. These groups are supported by the government of Iran, which has openly declared its intention not just to destroy Israel but to murder Jews everywhere. This incitement to genocide is a violation of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide." — Robert L. Bernstein, New York Times, October 19, 2009.
• "Leaders of Human Rights Watch know that Hamas and Hezbollah chose to wage war from densely populated areas, deliberately transforming neighborhoods into battlefields. They know that more and better arms are flowing into both Gaza and Lebanon and are poised to strike again. And they know that this militancy continues to deprive Palestinians of any chance for the peaceful and productive life they deserve. Yet Israel, the repeated victim of aggression, faces the brunt of Human Rights Watch's criticism." — Robert L. Bernstein, New York Times, October 19, 2009.
• HRW's ongoing obsession with Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East, serves as a reminder that the organization is on the side of the terrorists who appear as committed to killing Americans and other Westerners, as to destroying Israel and killing Jews.
• The HRW reports are no less dangerous than the non-stop incitement to violence by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad on Al Menar, Al Jazeera in Arabic, or the regimes of Qatar and Iran. Such reports provide ammunition to Iran and its proxies to pursue their murderous campaign against Israel and the West, and reveal that HRW is not all that different from the Palestinian terrorists and their patrons in Iran.
• Perhaps HRW might issue an apology, write accurate reports and turn its attention to actors that really do abuse human rights?

Human Rights Watch has once again exposed its unvarnished anti-Israel bias with outrageous false allegations. Its report fails to mention that Palestinian terrorist groups recruit teenagers as combatants and send them to kill Israeli civilians and soldiers. For example, Mohammad al-Saleem (pictured), a teenage member of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades terrorist group who was killed while attacking Israeli soldiers with incendiary devices. (Image source: NGO Monitor/Abu Ali Express)

Human Rights Watch (HRW) has once again exposed its unvarnished anti-Israel bias by alleging that Israel systematically targets Palestinian children. The outrageous -- and false -- allegation was included in a new report published by HRW on August 28 under the title: "West Bank: Spike in Israeli killings of Palestinian children." The report claims that "the Israeli military and border police forces are killing Palestinian children with virtually no recourse for accountability."

Noting that HRW "investigated four fatal shootings of Palestinian children by Israeli forces between November 2022 and March 2023," the report fails to mention that during this period Israel has faced a massive wave of terrorism sponsored and funded by the Iranian regime and its Palestinian terror proxies, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ).

Continue Reading Article