For the first time in 30 years, Human Rights Watch has a new Executive Director, Tirana Hassan.
Inside days of taking office, she turned her fire on Israel.
“It is a government that is definitely raging against human rights at home against its own people in Israel,” she said.
If one were to decide on a rustic whose government violates human rights, Israel is probably not the first that involves mind.
China is chargeable for “detaining over 1,000,000 Uyghurs and other Turkish Muslims – who’re subjected to torture, political indoctrination and compelled labour,” Hassan wrote in January.
There may be Russia, the perpetrator of “torture, summary executions, sexual violence, forced disappearances and looting of cultural property” in Ukraine behind HRW.
Then there may be Iran, whose clerical regime kills lots of of demonstrators marching in defense of women’s freedom and rights.
North Korea has not made headlines recently, but stays the same Stalinist dystopia that engages in “arbitrary imprisonment, torture, collective punishment, enforced disappearances, executions and compelled labor in detention centers and POW camps.”
(Source? HRW.)
![Benjamin Netanyahu](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/NYPICHPDPICT000010168894.jpg?w=1024)
These could also be the leading candidates, but it will possibly even be argued convincingly that Syria, Myanmar and Venezuela are contenders for the crown.
(By whom? Yes, Human Rights Watch.)
Despite this wealth of viable options, Hassan selected to point the finger at Israel.
Specifically, she drew attention to how Netanyahu’s government treats Israelis, not Palestinians.
![Israeli demonstrators](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/NYPICHPDPICT000010247172.jpg?w=1024)
For months, lots of of hundreds of Israelis (in a rustic of just 9 million) have been marching against proposed judicial reforms that may shift considerable power from the courts to the cabinet.
How did these protesters compare to their counterparts in Tehran and other capitals?
Pretty good, you may say.
There have been some violent incidents, but the important role of the police was to guard the demonstrators’ right to free speech.
While obviously controversial, the judicial reforms themselves are slowly moving through the Knesset – Israel’s parliament – in line with established procedures.
To place it mildly, Israel needs to be placed under a really powerful microscope to search for the alleged madness against human rights that Hassan described.
Some may remember the outbreak of violence on January 27, when a Palestinian named Khairi Alqam shot and killed seven victims, including a 14-year-old boy, outside a synagogue in the Neve Yaakov neighborhood of East Jerusalem.
Alqam shot at the police who arrived at the scene, who killed him in the ensuing fight.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas refused to sentence the attack.
Meanwhile, Palestinians in East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza celebrated the attack.
Israel also did something controversial in response to the attack: it planned to demolish the house where Alqam lived along with his family as punishment for his actions.
That is when Human Rights Watch decided to look into the case.
After the shooting itself, HRW made no statement.
The next edition in his day by day bulletin, he made no mention of the attack — as an alternative, he focused on El Salvador, Cameroon, and police brutality in the United States.
Human Rights Watch has a reasonably energetic Twitter account, but in addition makes no mention of the Neve Yaakov shooting.
The identical goes for HRW’s director of Israel and Palestine, who promoted his upcoming Dartmouth lecture but made no mention of the shooting.
One area where Human Rights Watch has been energetic in relation to Israel is its campaign to guard critics of the Jewish state from accusations of anti-Semitism.
Last week, HRW signed, amongst others, open letter to the Secretary-General of the United Nations, urging him to reject the International Holocaust Remembrance Association’s (IHRA) draft definition of anti-Semitism, which has been endorsed by 39 countries, including the United States and most of Europe.
Specifically, the open letter objected to the IHRA’s claim that one form of anti-Semitism is “applying double standards by requiring [Israel] conduct that’s neither expected nor required of every other democratic nation.”
One can understand why Human Rights Watch saw this benchmark as one that may put him on the flawed side of the anti-Semitism debate.
The letter suggested the secretary-general consider an alternate definition that “paying disproportionate attention to Israel and treating Israel otherwise from other countries isn’t prima facie evidence of anti-Semitism.”
(Try replacing “Jews” with “Israel” and “people” with “countries” and see what it appears like.)
The tragedy of Human Rights Watch is the desperate need for unbiased human rights coverage around the world.
In lots of of the 90 countries during which it operates, the organization meets this standard.
In her first month on the job, Hassan could have steered the organization in a greater direction if she was willing to take legitimate criticism to heart – though that does not seem likely.
David Adesnik is a senior researcher and director of research at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.