Rights Watchdog, Lost in the Mideast

By Robert L. Bernstein

AS the founder of Human Rights Watch, its active chairman for 20 years and now founding chairman emeritus, I must do something that I never anticipated: I must publicly join the group’s critics. Human Rights Watch had as its original mission to pry open closed societies, advocate basic freedoms and support dissenters. But recently it has been issuing reports on the Israeli-Arab conflict that are helping those who wish to turn Israel into a pariah state.

At Human Rights Watch, we always recognized that open, democratic societies have faults and commit abuses. But we saw that they have the ability to correct them — through vigorous public debate, an adversarial press and many other mechanisms that encourage reform.

That is why we sought to draw a sharp line between the democratic and nondemocratic worlds, in an effort to create clarity in human rights.

To read more, visit Rights Watchdog, Lost in the Mideast in the New York Times.

Robert L. Bernstein, the former president and chief executive of Random House, was the chairman of Human Rights Watch from 1978 to 1998.

1 person likes this post.
Unlike

Related posts:

  1. UN’s Human Rights Council Condemns Islamic Republic of Iran A year after Iran's controversial election and subsequent crackdown of...
  2. Israel Rejects One-Sided Goldstone Resolution Israel’s Reaction to the Decision of the UN Human Rights...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.