Human Rights Watch Leader Joins Critics of Own Group Over Israel

Nadene Goldfoot

Robert L. Bernstein is the founder of Human Rights Watch and has been the chairman for the past 20 years. He finally stepped down from this responsibility in 1998 when it was active in 70 countries. Now he finds himself in the awkward position of having to publicly criticize it because of it's unfair attacks on Israel.

Israel is a country of 7.4 million. There are about 80 human rights organizations within it. They have a free press, a democratic government, a judiciary that often rules against the government so that they do have self criticism, a politically active academia, many many political parties and more jounalists per capita than any other country in the world. The journalists come there mainly to cover the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The Arab and Iranian regimes rule over 350 million people. They are still brutal, closed and autocratic, permitting little or no dissent. The plight of their citizens are being ignored by any human watch group as they are too busy trying to attack Israel. Hamas and Hezbollah are attacking Israel and are using their own people as human shields. They are supported by Iran who has declared its intention to destroy and murder Jews everywhere. Everyone knows that these terrorist groups chose to choose their war arena amongst dense populated areas on purpose. They don't care that this war deprives Palestinians of a peaceful life because it suits their purpose to gain sympathy and condemnation against Israel. Here we have Israel, the victim of aggression, being the ones that are criticized unfairly.

Members of Human Rights Watch are not out on the field to see which laws of war have been violated. They are relying on witnesses with unverifiable stories who testify for political advantage or because they fear retaliation from their own rulers. Col. Richard Kemp, an expert on warfare has said that the Israel Defense Forces in Gaza did more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone than any other army in the history of warfare. He is not being listened to by the Human Rights group.

People should understand that there is a difference between wrongs committed in self-defense and those perpetrated intentionally. This Goldstone report does not enforce the difference. As Kemp stated, Israel did their utmost to preserve life. It was to their advantage to not bring down attacks from the world on their course of action. Regardless, they are dammed nevertheless. Perhaps only army personnel in the world will see this fact. Knowing that their peer group understands is not changing the United Nations' verbal attack.

Reference: Robert L. Bernstein, former president and chief executive of Random House, former chairman of Human Right Watch from 1978 to 1998.