‘No credibility’

Regarding the Sept. 11 op-eds by Gerald Steinberg and Fred Abrahams concerning Human Rights Watch, Mr. Abrahams does little to address Mr. Steinberg’s accusations regarding the questionable backgrounds of some of the HRW staff at the organization’s Middle East and North African division. Can Mr. Abrahams refute the allegations that the leaders of this division have a long history of anti-Israel activism?

And just the fact that a Palestinian campus organizer at the University of California at Berkeley is on the HRW staff destroys any believability in Mr. Abrahams’ op-ed. That HRW reports on Palestinian abuses against its own people in Gaza is not the point. Does HRW report on terrorist bombings against Israeli civilians or rocket attacks from Gaza into Israel? That Israeli soldiers report abuses doesn’t indicate that these abuses are government or military policy. I challenge Abrahams to prove that the Israeli government has a policy of allowing its military to kill Palestinian civilians, and to prove that many of the HRW staff in the Middle East have no background of anti-Israeli sentiment. Otherwise, his op-ed has no credibility.

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