PRESS RELEASE

June 2, 2011

Contact:
Jason Edelstein
NGO Monitor
(02) 566-1020
972-52-861-2129
mail@ngo-monitor.org
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NGO Monitor to U.S. Government: Don't turn to HRW for Consultations

Watchdog group says HRW's activities are inconsistent with moral principles

JERUSALEM - In response to recent statements that reflect racial animus by
senior officials at Human Rights Watch (HRW), Jerusalem-based NGO Monitor
has sent letters to President Barack Obama, Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton, and other U.S. officials calling on the U.S. government to reject
further consultations with the organization until it implements reforms.

"Clearly, Human Rights Watch (HRW) has morphed into a political advocacy
organization characterized by double standards and bias - this is now widely
understood," says Professor Gerald Steinberg, president of NGO Monitor. "But
the recent racially-charged Huffington Post article, which exploited the
American Civil Rights movement to incite racial hatred in the Middle East,
crosses new red lines even for HRW and falls far outside any definition of
'legitimate criticism.' Action must be taken because this type of language
contributes to animosity and hate."

Steinberg adds, "Our letter demonstrates that 'the inclusion of HRW in
official United States government policymaking and consultation is entirely
inconsistent with the moral principles of human rights.'"

The inflammatory op-ed, authored by HRW's Middle East and North Africa
(MENA) division head Sarah Leah Whitson, falsely accused Israel of "racial
discrimination." Whitson employed racial stereotyping in race baiting
American Jews and Israelis. NGO Monitor noted that the words "segregate,"
"race/racist," "discrimination" and "equal/unequal" are repeated 23 times
in this short piece, as Whitson sought to justify her support for
discriminatory boycotts against Israel. (The BDS strategy was adopted in the
antisemitic NGO Forum of the UN's 2001 Durban Conference, in which HRW also
played a central role.)

Whitson's article also stated: "In a week when the U.S. paused to recall the
assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, President Peres might have
considered King's message -- an end to segregation -- and why such a system
of racial inequality remains in place in the Occupied Palestinian
Territories..."

"This oped and other HRW statements recall efforts to pit Jews vs. African
Americans, making a complete mockery of Dr. King's legacy," Steinberg notes.
"Similarly, HRW's unjustifiable framing of the Arab-Israeli conflict as
motivated by 'Israeli racism' is a total distortion of the national and
religious dimensions, and erases central peace and security issues from the
agenda."

Ms. Whitson's op-ed followed her 2009 fundraising trip to Saudi Arabia, in
which she raised the specter of the pro-Israel lobby in order to solicit
donations from Saudi elites, including members of the governing Shura
Council. Whitson also embraced and helped market the Gaddafi regime, and in
particular, Moammar Qaddafi's son Seif Islam. In May 2011, the Prosecutor
of the International Criminal Court requested an arrest warrant for Seif
Islam on charges of crimes against humanity.

In November 2010, Whitson praised "the Lebanese sophistication for human
rights" and in May 2010, she visited with Hamas officials in Gaza to
reassure them of HRW's "impartial" reporting and promised that HRW's next
report would allege Israeli violations of international law. Such
ideological bias is clearly inconsistent with the universality of human
rights.

Ken Roth, HRW's Executive Director, has similarly displayed racial
hostility, such as the offensive religious slur during the 2006 Lebanon War
where he referred to the Jewish Bible as the "morality of some more
primitive moment."

Other failures show HRW's lack of moral clarity - in 2009, Marc Garlasco,
HRW's "senior military analyst" and author of many publications accusing
Israel of war crimes, was exposed as an obsessive collector of Nazi
memorabilia. And in January 2011, Shawan Jabarin, an alleged "senior
activist" from the PFLP terror group (as pronounced by the Israeli High
Court), was appointed to HRW's Mid-East advisory board.

"The U.S. government should look to other organizations for policy
recommendations," says Steinberg. "Race baiting is the antithesis of human
rights values."

###

NGO Monitor Letter to U.S Officials

President Barack Obama

The White House

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW

Washington, DC 20500

USA

President Obama,

Human Rights Watch's (HRW) disturbing use of racially-charged rhetoric
directed at Israel and American Jews raises major concerns regarding the
appropriateness of United States government consultations involving HRW
officials.

Attached is NGO Monitor's statement HRW's Whitson Race-baits Jewish
Community; Exploits US Civil Rights Movement (April 17, 2011). We analyze
the article by Sarah Leah Whitson, director of HRW's Middle-East and North
Africa Division, in the Huffington Post ("A Matter of Civil Rights, April
15, 2011), falsely and repeatedly accusing Israel of "racial discrimination
and segregation." This distortion is amplified by offensive stereotypes and
generalizations about American Jews.

This is not an isolated example, but rather reflects a pattern of behavior.
HRW employed an obsessive collector of Nazi memorabilia (Marc Garlasco), who
wrote many of the reports targeting Israel. Other examples of HRW's
exploitation of human rights and moral language include a Saudi Arabia
fundraising trip led by Whitson to combat pro-Israel "pressure groups", and
the embrace of the Ghaddifi regime. (See http://www.ngo-monitor.org). And in
response to the killing of Osama bin Laden, HRW issued a statement drawing
equivalence between terrorists and their victims ("US: Osama Bin Laden
Killed in Shoot-out," May 2, 2011), and Executive Director Ken Roth posted
on Twitter that killing bin Laden was not "justice".

On the basis of this immoral behavior, it is our position that the inclusion
of HRW in official United States government policymaking and consultation is
entirely inconsistent with the moral principles of human rights.

We look forward to your response,

Sincerely,

Prof. Gerald Steinberg

President, NGO Monitor

Previous Release

April 17, 2011

Contact: Jason Edelstein, +972-52-861-2129

NGO Monitor: HRW's Whitson Race-baits Jewish Community; Exploits US Civil
Rights Movement

JERUSALEM - The leaders of Human Rights Watch, and the Middle East and North
Africa (MENA) division, in particular, frequently employ highly offensive
and racially charged language regarding Israel, to accompany numerous false
"fact finding" claims, notes Jerusalem-based research institute NGO Monitor.

In an op-ed "A Matter of Civil Rights", (Huffington Post, 15 April) Sarah
Leah Whitson, director of MENA, manipulates and distorts the moral framework
of the US civil rights movement in order to incite racial hatred. Whitson
writes: "In a week when the U.S. paused to recall the assassination of Dr.
Martin Luther King, President Peres might have considered King's message --
an end to segregation -- and why such a system of racial inequality remains
in place in the Occupied Palestinian Territories..." The words "segregate,"
"race/racist," "discrimination" and "equal/unequal" are repeated 23 times in
this short piece, as Whitson seeks to justify her support for discriminatory
boycotts against Israel. (The BDS strategy was adopted in the infamous NGO
Forum of the UN's 2001 Durban Conference, in which HRW also played a central
role.) Whitson's article also employs racial stereotyping and
generalization in making crude references about American Jews.

"HRW has consistently exploited human rights principles to promote a
campaign of discrimination against Israel, and now, officials such as
Whitson are using race baiting against American Jews," noted Professor
Gerald Steinberg, president of NGO Monitor. "Abusing Dr. King's
assassination for this purpose is particularly offensive, erasing both the
Jewish community's leadership in the civil rights struggle and Dr. King's
support for Israel. In contrast, Whitson takes a racist position denying the
right of the Jewish people to sovereign equality. The appropriation of these
images and the comparison of the complex Arab-Israel conflict to the dark
history of American racial inequality marks a new low in HRW's history of
immorality in relation to Israel."

Such vulgar anti-Israel campaigning was recently condemned by a group of
African-American student leaders who called it "as transparent as it is
base." Similarly, Dr. King decried discriminatory attacks on Israel,
declaring, "When people criticize Zionism, they mean Jews."

HRW's campaign rests on manufactured allegations in order to falsely portray
the decades-long Arab-Israeli conflict as one allegedly motivated by Jewish
race-hatred of Arabs, erasing Palestinian violence and ignoring competing
national and territorial claims. Much of HRW's rhetoric simply repeats
crude propaganda developed by the PLO's Negotiation Affairs Department,
promoting the myth of "Israel's plan to segregate the Palestinian People
while continuing the colonization of Palestinian land."

Whitson's op-ed follows HRW's December 2010, unsourced "report" targeting
Israel, under the title of "Separate and Unequal", also abusing the legacy
of the US civil rights movement. Whitson, who has abused the term
"apartheid" to further the discriminatory assault on Jewish self
determination rights, equates Israeli policies to "Jim Crow laws of the
American south."

Whitson's campaigning includes a 2009 fundraising trip to Saudi Arabia, in
which she ignored the daily violations of the regime. Instead, she referred
to HRW's leading role in promoting the discredited Goldstone report "which
depleted HRW's budget for the region," and the canard of "pro-Israel
pressure groups." Whitson also embraced and helped market the Gaddafi
regime. Marc Garlasco, HRW's "senior military analyst" and author of many
publications accusing Israel of war crimes, was exposed as an obsessive
collector of Nazi memorabilia. And in January 2011, Shawan Jabarin, an
alleged "senior activist" from the PFLP terror group, was appointed to HRW's
Mid-East advisory board. In 2006, HRW Director Kenneth Roth displayed his
deep-seated religious prejudice, referring to Israeli policy as "an eye for
an eye" which he described as the product of a "more primitive moment."

Steinberg adds, "HRW and Whitson cynically use double standards and race
baiting against Jews to attack Israel, while ignoring the universal basis of
human rights norms. This abuse of moral standards to promote hatred has
grave consequences for the human rights movement that go far beyond the
anti-Israel racism in this agenda."

HRW's obsessive assault on Israel, and close cooperation with Arab and
Islamic dictators, was cited by HRW founder Robert Bernstein, who condemned
his NGO for turning "Israel into a pariah state." In a 2010 speech at the
University of Nebraska, Bernstein documented HRW's targeting of Israel as
one of the "principal offenders" of human rights. In a 2010 article in The
New Republic, Ben Birnbaum quotes Whitson's praise for Norman Finkelstein --
"making Israeli abuses the focus of one's life work is a thankless but
courageous task".

Whitson, who was hired by HRW after having worked as an anti-Israel activist
(as is the case of Joe Stork, the MENA deputy director), also makes security
and legal claims without any evidence or knowledge: "Israel's security
justifications fall far short of the strict and narrow limits on
differential treatment permitted under international law between people of
different ethnicities or national origins." For over a decade, HRW officials
have minimized Palestinian terror and rocket attacks that kill and injure
Israeli civilians, as well as numerous instances of incitement to genocide.
Whitson's op-ed is the latest in a continued effort to erase of the wider
context of legitimate self-defense against Palestinian attacks.

On this basis, NGO Monitor demands the resignation of Whitson, Stork and HRW
Executive Director Kenneth Roth. We also call on HRW funders, including the
Ford Foundation and the Open Society Institute (George Soros), to
reconsider the implications of their support for this immoral agenda.

mail@ngo-monitor.org

www.ngo-monitor.org