Israel Lobby Watch

Israel Lobby Watch: "The Jerusalem Post and New York Daily News soon piled on. Never one to miss the limelight, so did Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, who wrote on the Huffington Post that HRW had invented facts. Dershowitz then invoked Jewish solidarity: 'Within the last month, virtually every component of the organized Jewish community, from secular to religious, liberal to conservative, has condemned Human Rights Watch for its bias.'

Roth says that HRW was isolated in its role as Israel critic in part because the prospect of the sort of vitriol he faced has scared other groups away from even looking at the Middle East. HRW emergency director Peter Bouckaert explains, 'We always get attacked for our findings by the government involved. What makes this case different is, it's not the government, it's the external lobby. We have a difficult but positive dialogue with the Israeli government and the IDF. They don't dismiss us as morally repugnant or irrelevant. They take our findings seriously. The attacks are not about the facts, they're about insulating Israel from any type of criticism.'"

You may download Fatal Strikes, the HRW report that is at the center of the controvery discussed in the Nation article and judge for yourself.

Also see the earlier entry here on the Amnesty International report.