Why the Civil War at Human Rights Watch Over Israel Matters

Human Rights Watch was established in 1978 as Helsinki Watch by Robert Bernstein, president of Random House, after he met with dissidents in the Soviet Union. Although his goals were similar to Amnesty International’s, Bernstein believed that the addition of research and documentation in exposing abuses would pressure the USSR and other authoritarian regimes and lead to positive outcomes. By the mid-1980s, the nongovernmental organization (NGO) had established significant credibility and influence, including supporting Jewish refusniks and political prisoners such as Natan (then Anatoly) Sharansky.

HRW became an NGO superpower with an annual budget of $100 million, and the accompanying media footprint and political power. Having diverted far from Bernstein’s founding vision and principles, HRW is dominated by radical ideologues (postcolonialists) and they and Amnesty lead a worldwide orchestra that demonizes Israel, including the Gaza “genocide” blood libel, through the manipulation of human rights values and institutions.

HRW is in the middle of a very intense and public civil war focused on these issues that has exposed deep fissures and threatens to cripple the institution. The disappearance or significant weakening of this NGO would be a major loss for anti-Israel, antizionist, and antisemitic forces.

It would also bring posthumous vindication for Bernstein, who, in 2009, denounced the organization, then led by Executive Director Ken Roth, for abandoning the founding mission “to pry open closed societies, advocate basic freedoms and support dissenters;” ignoring “brutal, closed and autocratic” Arab dictatorships; and exploiting human rights in order to turn Israel into “a pariah state.” Following his oped article in the New York Times, Bernstein made a number of public presentations condemning Roth, and also founded an alternative NGO, Advancing Human Rights. (I had numerous and often painful conversations with Bernstein beginning in 2005, in which we discussed my research detailing HRW’s bias and hypocrisy on Israel.)

In many respects, the current civil war is a belated continuation of the conflict over HRW’s agenda, and particularly Israel. The latest and most explosive round was made public in parallel articles in the Guardian (UK) and Jewish Currents, a radical antizionist publication where Peter Beinart is editor at large. Under the headline “Researchers at Human Rights Watch Resign Over Blocked Report on Palestinian Refugee Return,” the piece centered on the resignation of Omar Shakir, Israel-Palestine director since he was hired by Roth in 2016. The text was a platform for Shakir and another anti-Israel staffer to present their accusations, centering on the claim that HRW’s leadership, including newly installed director Philippe Bolopion, had blocked publication of Shakir’s report calling for the exercise of a fictitious “right of return” for millions of Palestinian Arabs. Since the failure of the Arab armies to destroy Israel in 1948, the demand for mass return, meaning the end of the Jewish nation-state, has maintained the conflict, including incitement instilled in generations of children, and the resulting terror atrocities. As a career Israel eliminationist, this is a logical continuation of Shakir’s agenda.

In response to Shakir, HRW wrote that “aspects of the research and the factual basis for our legal conclusions needed to be strengthened to meet Human Rights Watch’s high standards.” Perhaps this is an honest statement, although the glaring absence of high or any standards in previous pseudo-legal reports on apartheid and genocide did not prevent their publication. Or perhaps Bolopian and new board members recognized that with HRW already isolated over the Israel obsession, and amidst donor criticism on the organization’s role following the October 7 Hamas atrocities, open support for Israel’s destruction (actual genocide) under the guise of “refugee return” would be one step too far. Similarly, perhaps Shakir resigned because of the decision, as portrayed in the Jewish Currents spin, or perhaps this is his excuse to jump ship while also doing damage to HRW before he was pushed, and then go to his next human rights propaganda framework.

Interestingly, Ken Roth, who built the antizionist and postcolonial framework that dominated HRW’s structure and activities, came out against his protege, ostensibly for attempting “to fast-talk through the review system at a time of leadership transition” and for “an extreme interpretation of the law that was indefensible… [and] would have been deeply embarrassing if given a Human Rights Watch imprimatur.” Roth did not explain how the “return” publication differs from the many others that he approved as Executive Director, and continues to endorse after retiring, including the 2024 sham genocide report. The most likely explanation is that he is worried, for good reason, that the empire he built and his legacy are under sustained attack from different fronts.

Beyond the specifics, the conflict also highlights the tension between the massive influence of political NGO superpowers like HRW and their tightly closed structures. Information on agenda setting, staffing, and foreign donors (like Qatar and corrupt Saudi billionaires) are top secret. Despite their importance, most journalists still embrace the NGO halo effect, treating them as altruistic non-partisan research-driven frameworks that are beyond criticism. No mainstream media platform reported on the major changes among the Board of Directors, and the sudden firing in 2025 of Tirana Hassan, Roth’s hand picked successor – both early indications of wider conflict. Since then, a number of other antizionist ideologues hired by Roth have departed, without mention by major media platforms.

Taken together, these and other changes at HRW go far beyond Omar Shakir’s departure. There is not enough information to understand why these are happening now, and how they will affect and perhaps end the organization’s poisonous 30 year leadership in the political war to demonize Israel? But if HRW survives, there is a chance that it will be closer to founder Robert Bernstein’s moral version.

Prof. Steinberg is the founder and president of NGO Monitor.