Human Rights Watch Stands by Its Slanders of Israel

From: Commentary Magazine Human Rights Watch absorbed a major blow to its credibility when Richard Goldstone recanted his September 2009 report on Israel’s war in Gaza. After all, the organization has been one of the report’s leading cheerleaders, and it has long stood at the center of the campaign to delegitimize Israeli self-defense against Palestinian terrorism. No one should have been surprised when Kenneth Roth, the executive director, claimed that the charge that Israel deliberately targeted civilians—now shown to be false—is somehow still true.

Writing in the Guardian, itself a hotbed of anti-Zionism, Roth first claims that Goldstone is right to say now “that civilians were not intentionally targeted as a matter of policy.” But then he contradicts himself by asserting that Israel’s “large-scale attacks” and use of artillery was nevertheless a war crime. Roth’s conclusion is that “this misconduct was so widespread and systematic that it clearly reflected Israeli policy.”

Roth apparently is not to be shaken from his belief that Israel’s entire campaign was illegitimate for no other reason than that the Hamas terrorists took up their positions among civilians.