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Sunday, September 14, 2014

The top 22 things HRW's Ken Roth DIDN'T tweet about Gaza (update)

As we've already discussed, Human Rights Watch executive director Ken Roth tweeted obsessively about Gaza during during Operation Protective Edge. We've shown how inaccurate and biased his tweets were.

But let's look at the many human rights violations in Gaza that Ken Roth didn't bother tweeting.

  1. There was not one tweet that admitted that Hamas uses Gazans as human shields - even when Roth linked to a HRW article whose definition of human shields exactly matched Hamas' methods.
  2. Nothing about terrorists using ambulances for military purposes.
  3. Nothing about shooting Fatah members in the legs to keep them under "house arrest."
  4. Nothing about the Palestinian report that over 160 Gaza children were killed while digging tunnels.
  5. Nothing about Hamas booby-trapping civilian homes and marked medical facilities.
  6. Nothing about using children for military purposes.
  7. Nothing about Fatah's accusations of Hamas stealing humanitarian aid.
  8. Nothing about terrorists shooting rockets into Kerem Shalom - from which aid was sent to Gaza.
  9. Nothing about terrorists shooting mortars at Erez, where patients and reporters could enter and exit Gaza.
  10. Nothing about Hamas preventing reporters from leaving.
  11. Nothing about Hamas shooting rockets at the Israeli field hospital set up to help Gazans.
  12. Nothing negative about Hamas' explicit intentions to kidnap Israeli soldiers to take them hostage, a war crime.
  13. While he mentioned Hamas rockets, he didn't mention Hamas' explicit threats against Israeli civilians, via video, text messages and the like, which is also against international law.
  14. Nothing about Hamas targeting Israel's nuclear power plant - which is the definition of nuclear terrorism.
  15. Nothing about Hamas' threats to journalists. - including threats from March about kidnapping them in the "coming war."
  16. Nothing about Hamas war headquarters being in the basement of a hospital.
  17. Nothing about Hamas rockets falling short and causing deaths, injuries and damage.
  18. Nothing about Hamas deliberately aiming rockets at its own people.
  19. Nothing about the report that Hamas threatened UNRWA employees.
  20. Nothing about Hamas instructing Gazans to stay in their homes when Israel dropped leaflets urging them to leave for their safety.
  21. Nothing about Hamas shooting rockets from schools and playgrounds.
  22. Nothing about Hamas instructing Gazans to lie to reporters and NGOs by claiming that every dead person is an "innocent citizen."


All of these were reported in the media, and all of them are at least as well-sourced as the anti-Israel reports that Roth did tweet.

While no anti-Israel rumor was too far out for Ken Roth to link to it, when it came to Hamas, he only mentioned three things: shooting rockets at civilians, shooting from civilian areas and assassinating "collaborators." Despite clearly obsessing over media reports from the region, and tweeting over 400 times on this topic alone, nothing else was worth his attention from the Gaza side.

Bias isn't only in what you say - it is in what you don't say. Roth's bias is obvious.

But what is even worse, and what should bother every person who cares about human rights, is that Ken Roth has been deliberately downplaying and ignoring human rights violations against not only Israelis but even against Gazans.

Why does Ken Roth's supposed interest in the human rights of Gazans disappear when Hamas is the party threatening them?

The only possible reason is that Roth doesn't want to distract people from his primary goal in the Middle East: to denigrate and delegitimize Israel. He does this so enthusiastically that he covers up and minimizes human rights violations by a terror organization - simply because they share his anti-Israel views.

People who truly care about human rights would not ignore the many, many examples above of Hamas human rights violations. They would not downplay the ones that they cannot deny.

Roth's hate for Israel is so extreme that he feels that he must cover up and minimize Hamas war crimes.

Any member of HRW's board of directors should be considering, very carefully, whether they want a person with such clearly documented bias representing the organization.

UPDATE: #23 - Not a word about Hamas and other groups recruiting children for fighting.