I've been following the Twitter account of Ken Roth, head of Human Rights Watch, and his multiple attacks on Israel daily.
I count that he has tweeted against Israel 95 times since July 1, far more than any other nation except Myanmar and China.
Roth really emphasizes his bizarre idea that Israel is in the top tier of human rights abusers in the world. In one very telling tweet from August 4:
Biden "is preparing an overhaul of arms export policy to increase the emphasis on human rights." The real test: will that mean a cutoff of arms sales to systematic abusers like Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, the Philippines, and Israel?
Here is Roth's list of the worst human rights abusers that buy arms from the US. However, as I pointed out then, there are a lot of countries with horrific human rights records that Roth didn't bother to mention in his list, among them Nigeria, Qatar, Lebanon, Mexico, Colombia, Tunisia, Pakistan, Kenya, Turkey, Jordan, Oman, Indonesia, India, Thailand, Niger, Morocco and DR Congo.
There is another angle that proves Roth's obsession with the Jewish state.
With most other countries, Roth concentrates on one (or two) major human rights abuses. With Israel, there is a seemingless endless list of issues that Roth feels are important enough to emphasize.
Since July 1, the top issue was the NSO Group, a private Israeli cybersecurity firm whose software is misused by autocratic customers. I count 34 tweets about NSO Group that specifically mention or blame Israel even though the countries that used the software in ways that violated the license agreement are the ones who are the actual human rights abusers.
No less than 22 tweets about Ben and Jerry's ice cream - a truly remarkable amount of time and effort for a supposed leader in human rights to spend.
But no issue is too trivial for Roth to tweet about as long as he can try to make Israel look bad: Israel dragging its feet on extraditing an alleged Mexican criminal, Israel not fielding any Arab Israelis on its Olympics team, multiple tweets about the law that didn't pass on restricting marriages between Israeli and Palestinian Arabs, settlers and "war crime" settlements, generic accusations of Israeli "apartheid," eight tweets on a property dispute in Sheikh Jarrah that shows that Roth knows nothing about the law, and others. There is no other country that gets this level of attention where so many issues are used as fodder for attacks.
Roth's obsession can only be described as antisemitism. Besides the tweet he made last month blaming Jews for antisemitism - which he took down but didn't apologize for - Roth yesterday tweeted:
"Israeli claims that Ben & Jerry’s is engaging in a boycott against Israel is untrue," say several Democratic aides. And "what right does Israel have to dictate an American’s right to decide" or "to order state governors to punish this American company?” https://t.co/55OHs4MdF9 pic.twitter.com/5lonp8KSN3
— Kenneth Roth (@KenRoth) August 9, 2021
American Jews are the ones who are writing letters and contacting governors and representatives about this topic. Roth, by highlighting this quote, is saying that American Jews are not really Americans, and they have no right to complain about American companies. Moreover, any Americans outraged at the Ben and Jerry's boycott are - according to Roth's tweet - really acting as agents of the Israeli government.
Accusations of dual loyalty are antisemitic. Here a human rights icon is seriously pushing the same trope, and he is serious.
