While I don't know what exactly I tweeted that caused them to do this, I have been a vocal critic of the group and of its leader, Ken Roth, who has interestingly not blocked me.
There are many reasons why one may want to block another user - harassment or offensiveness would be two of them. But that doesn't apply to a large organization, with well over 4 million followers, which probably has a team of people to support their social media accounts.
On the other hand, there are many reasons why a human rights organization would not want to ever block users. After all, freedom of expression is a human right, and by blocking someone, they are making it more difficult for legitimate criticism to be aired - and impossible for such criticism to be considered.
I have stridently criticized HRW for a long time. I was one of the people who exposed their Middle East researcher Marc Garlasco as a collector of Nazi memorabilia - and he had less bias than most of their researchers on Israel. Even during that incident, I revealed that HRW employed sock puppets to defend Garlasco. HRW called the criticism a "conspiracy."
Since then, I have exposed HRW's lies, deceptions and bias numerous times. And I have argued that its bias against Israel crosses the line into antisemitism. But I document all of my assertions - it is hardly harassment.
On the other hand, I have started to note its director Ken Roth's obsession with posting things about Israel by creating this graphic this past weekend to respond to every time he mentions Israel:
That is trolling - but it is trolling Roth, not Human Rights Watch.
No matter what the reason, this is not a good look for an organization that pretends to care about freedom of expression. Roth once thanked PA prime minister Shtayyeh for his "pledge" that the PA will no longer arrest people for political speech, a transparent lie as we've seen in recent weeks where the PA has arrested numerous critics. Yet HRW has no compunction to try to limit my own criticisms of them.
It appears vindictive, not dispassionate.
In other words, Human Rights Watch is acting the way it falsely accuses Israel of acting.
HRW often uses shallow analysis that assumes that since it cannot figure out a legitimate military target that Israel attacked, there was no such target and Israel acts like an animal, lashing out with multi-million dollar weapons just for spite. Anyone who has actually studied the IDF knows that there are multiple layers of decision-making for every airstrike, and the IDF tracks virtually every bullet. Yet HRW pretends that Israel acts capriciously and that the army acts reflexively and without consideration.
It turns out that HRW - or at least whoever is in charge of their social media - is the one that makes decisions based on emotion and not on facts.
It would be nice if we lived in a world where a human rights organization, that often accuses others of acting with impunity, would be open to criticism and not act with impunity itself. While even the most anti-Israel newspapers will issue corrections for errors of fact, NGOs like HRW never do. They promote the myth that they are objective observers and that their opinions have more moral weight than anyone else's, that their research is objective, that their rulings are inviolate.
When you look a little closer, you see that they are the ones who act out of emotion. They are the ones who show bias. And they are the hypocrites who pretend to care about basic human rights like freedom of expression but are unwilling to tolerate criticism, no matter how well sourced.
