Israel advocacy, in my formative years, came in buzz words:
Democracy meant a free form of government that Israel had and the Arabs didn’t.
IDF or Tzaha”l meant the army we should be proud of no matter what.
Peace meant what Israel wanted.
Terrorism meant the same thing, but for the Palestinians.
AIPAC meant pro-Israel.
Human Rights Watch meant anti-Israel.
And now, the former director of Human Rights Watch agrees. In a frank op-ed in the New York Times today, Robert Bernstein–who chaired HRW for 20 years–decried the organization for “issuing reports on the Israeli-Arab conflict that are helping those who wish to turn Israel into a pariah state.” He added that “Israel, the repeated victim of aggression, faces the brunt of Human Rights Watch’s criticism.” He argued that though Israel has a freer society than almost any in the Middle East and conducts its wars with morality, HRW focuses most of its condemnatory reports in the region on the Jewish state as opposed to Iran, Saudi Arabia or another oppressive regime.
And he’s right. Although I have since colored almost all of those buzz words with nuance–if not rejected them altogether–my leftism has not swayed my conviction that HRW is unfair toward Israel and misguided in its focus there. I can’t remember a time when I heard the words “Human Rights Watch” without the phrase “anti-Israel” coming in the same sentence. The group, known as a worldwide humanitarian watchdog, stood as our poster child for Western international bias against the Jewish state. I got used to seeing its name only when I would read major newspaper articles about the conflict citing a contrary opinion to AIPAC or the Bush administration, all in the name of balance.
So though I applaud Bernstein for calling HRW out in public I question what influence this column will have. It won’t sway the feelings of the Jewish community; they already ignore HRW. I don’t see it changing the conduct of HRW either; I assume that Bernstein, as an esteemed former chairman, has already brought these complaints to the group’s leadership in private. It won’t shift the votes of the US Congress, an overwhelmingly pro-Israel body before this op-ed, nor will it change the opinions of the Times’ readers, who probably pay little attention to HRW and who voted for those congressmen and senators in either case.
But maybe influence wasn’t Bernstein’s goal. Maybe he saw an organization he loves, an organization he devoted so much time and energy to, going astray. Maybe he had despaired from effecting change from within and decided that the only way to save the product of his life’s work was to take it on from the outside. Maybe he wrote this op-ed to be at peace with his conscience, to know that he did everything he could to keep HRW true to its mission and honest about its values.
I know that feeling. Two days ago my friend asked me why I, a person who is so critical of Israel and who at times gets so angry over its actions, am also so convicted in my desire to live there. After a minute of stammering I responded that I can’t imagine–after having devoted so much of my emotion, so much of my energy and so much of my time to the Jewish state–that I wouldn’t live there, that I wouldn’t do everything I could to understand a situation that captivates me, help it and immerse my life in it. The truth is that I’m already immersed.
And that is also why, in light of Bernstein’s courage, I will not cease to criticize Israel, to see its flaws and try to fix them. He’s right that HRW has lost its way and should reevaluate its stance regarding Israel, but we should not take this column as a blanket justification to disregard all criticism of Israel and its actions. Rather, we should follow Bernstein’s example. Just as he was honest,we too should take an honest eye toward our state, however painful that honesty may be.
