Legal Commentary

HRW Defends Shawan Jabarin

By David Bernstein

Last week, I noted that Human Rights Watch had appointed Shawan Jabarin to its Middle East Advisory Board. Jabarin runs a Palestinian human rights NGO based in the West Bank. He also has been found in a series of Israeli Supreme Court opinions to secretly lead a double life as a top official of the Palestinian terrorist group, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

Iain Levine of Human Rights Watch responds to the criticism here. (I find it interesting that HRW has decided to let Mr. Levine speak for the M.E. division; I think their p.r. people have realized that Ken Roth and M.E. director Sarah Leah Whitson are so hostile to Israel that they just add fuel to the fire whenever a controversy erupts). The thrust of his remarks is that HRW chose to disregard the Israeli Supreme Court opinions because they were based on secret evidence. (Since when is ?secret? a synonym for ?baseless??)

Critic Stuart Robinowitz, who has longstanding ties to HRW, responds to Levine here. Robinowitz points out that Whitson and Roth, when recommending Jabarin to the HRW board of directors, asserted that he had discontinued his ties to the PFLP more than twenty-five years ago. Whitson and Roth failed to even mention the Israeli Supreme Court?s findings to the contrary.

Robinowitz concludes: ?In 2006, Jordan barred [Jabarin] entry for security reasons. Do staff members of HRW have more reliable information about Jabarin than the supreme court and security services of Jordan and Israel??

Understating matters considerably, Robinowitz told the Jerusalem Post that ?the Jabarin incident, I believe, is part of a pattern of conduct that casts doubt about Mr. Roth?s and Ms. Whitson?s ability to deal with matters affecting Israel in a balanced and objective manner.?

[The comments section on the previous thread on this matter was far from enlightening, so I?m not going to bother with comments here.]

Full post as published by The Volokh Conspiracy on February 21, 2011 (boomark / email).