Human rights hypocrisy: 'Forced displacement' in, Hamas out - opinion

Powerful NGOs claiming to promote universal human rights have long been major sources of false claims and hate propaganda targeting Israel. The violent antisemitic attacks that took place in Amsterdam were another manifestation of these campaigns. 

For three decades, the US-based HRW has been among the leaders of this insidious warfare, once again displayed in a new publication cynically headlined “‘Hopeless, Starving, and Besieged: Israel’s Forced Displacement of Palestinians in Gaza.” This form of agit-prop falsely portrays Israel as cruelly, arbitrarily, and needlessly evicting 90% of the Gazan population from their homes, bombing them as they evacuate and depriving them of food, water, and sanitation. 

With an annual budget of about $100 million, HRW claims to advance human rights for all, while disproportionately and brazenly peddling false accusations based on the claims of Hamas. As in all its statements and “reports” on Israel and Palestinians, the HRW staff erases the reality of 17 years of the Hamas reign of terror in Gaza, as well as the mountains of obvious evidence depicting Palestinian war crimes.

This is not merely another biased and inaccurate report that gets a few “cut and paste” headlines from wire services and some posts on social media. 

Like similar publications from the network of anti-Israel advocacy NGOs, the invented headlines drive policy that rewards terror and demonizes Israel and are used to justify antisemitic attacks. In the propaganda marketing strategy perfected by long-time HRW leader Kenneth Roth, the NGOs surround themselves with a halo effect based on false images of altruistic, benevolent, and apolitical neutral actors on the world stage.

This description has not been true for a long time, especially when it comes to Israel, and the consequences are dire.

For example, HRW’s “forced displacement” disinformation campaign again erases the role of the Hamas terror army and its massive infrastructure of excavated tunnels and weapons manufacturing factories in and below houses, schools, hospitals, and mosques. 

Hamas exploiting civilians

The single mention of how Hamas exploits civilians is the ritual assurance that “Human Rights Watch understands and has criticized Hamas and other Palestinian groups for firing rockets from populated areas.” In fact, the very few such criticisms are largely invisible and used as tokens like this one to shift the focus away from Palestinian terror and war crimes.

Following 20 years of systematic malpractice, HRW only mentions the word “tunnel” four times – and only when quoting or referring to Israeli-provided information. The combination of falsely accusing Israel of war crimes and ignoring the 1949 Geneva Convention’s prohibition on using civilians and civilian infrastructure for war – which is the core of the Gaza terror strategy – highlights HRW’s hypocrisy.

Only by falsifying everything about the Gaza conflict, including the IDF’s emphasis on evacuating civilians in order to fight Hamas and destroy the massive underground infrastructure is HRW able to accuse Israel of war crimes. 

Notably, the staffers who wrote this document admit that “it is impossible for Human Rights Watch to fully interrogate the military strategy of the Israeli military.” In fact, HRW clearly has no clue nor interest in understanding the IDF strategy against the brutal war machine constructed under Gaza. Without this information and expertise, there is no foundation for any accusations based on the laws of war, which require evaluating actual battlefield conditions. 

As in other numerous previous reports, the researchers at HRW have demonstrated that they are totally unqualified to write such reports.

In the absence of facts and evidence, HRW substitutes large-scale disinformation and distortion. In “‘Hopeless, Starving, and Besieged: Israel’s Forced Displacement of Palestinians in Gaza,” they cite explicit statements from Israeli officials that demonstrate the legality and necessity of the Gaza strategy: “Israel justified the mass evacuation order as being for the safety of the civilian population and stated military reason... was centered on the presence of Hamas fighters and military infrastructure, including Hamas’ extensive tunnel infrastructure…”

But then, HRW devotes numerous pages to manipulating distorted and cherry-picked quotes in order to falsely claim that the initial IDF actions following the October 7 atrocities were actually designed to punish and displace civilians, with no military necessity. 

Through this entirely false narrative, HRW asserts its central propaganda claim, that “there is no plausible imperative military reason to justify Israel’s mass displacement of nearly all of Gaza’s population, often multiple times.”  For anyone who reads the text (and not merely the press release) with anything like an open mind, the distortion is painfully obvious. 

This is another example of the systematic bias and immorality that permeates HRW, as verified by Danielle Haas, a senior editor at the NGO for 13 years. 

Haas has referred to the “years of politicization” in singling out Israel, violating “basic editorial standards related to rigor, balance, and... the principles of accuracy and fairness.” Recalling this history, Haas observed that HRW staff know that the “unverified accusations would be widely cited as incontrovertible evidence.” 

The clear objective of HRW’s reports, including this one, is to promote the soft-power war based on arms embargoes, boycotts, and demonization that reinforce the hard war led by Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran.

These bogus reports are cited blindly (or consciously) by UN demagogues, biased academics, journalists, and policymakers to prevent Israel from blocking genocidal terror and defending its civilians. By giving credibility to the propaganda produced by HRW and other NGOs, the international law and human rights community, created in the shadow of the Holocaust, has totally betrayed its mission to protect civilian lives.

The writer is emeritus professor of political science at Bar-Ilan University and president of NGO Monitor.