HRW has changed its opinion of the PFLP over the years from a terror group to a respected political organization

Human Rights Watch issued a report in 2002 detailing the terror attacks during the start of the second intifada. The report described the various terror groups that had been targeting and killing Israelis.

Here's what it said about the PFLP:

The PFLP has not claimed any separation between its military wing and its political leaders. As with the other armed Palestinian groups that have intentionally and repeatedly organized suicide attacks against civilians, persons carrying out attacks on civilians claimed by the PFLP are individually criminally liable for their actions. PFLP leaders are also liable both directly and under the doctrine of command responsibility.

HRW accurately said that the PFLP political and terror components are one and the same.

But over the years, as Human Rights Watch lurched leftward become the leading anti-Israel organization, its descriptions of the socialist PFLP has become less critical and more admiring.

In 2007, it called the PFLP "a secular leftist party that also conducts armed attacks against Israel."

In 2012, HRW said that PFLP - which it had previously documented in 2002 of being guilty of crimes against humanity  - was merely a group "which Israel considers a terrorist organization."

In 2013, it became "a left-wing political party."

In 2018, it was merely a "leftist party." 

By 2021, HRW writes:

For most of the last six years, Israeli authorities have detained Khalida [Jarrar], a 58-year-old elected member of the Palestine Legislative Council, over her political activism with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). One of the more than 400 organizations that Israeli authorities have outlawed, the PFLP includes both a political party and an armed wing. The armed wing has attacked Israeli soldiers and civilians. Israeli authorities have never charged Khalida with involvement in armed activities.

The implication is that Israel has no business outlawing the PFLP altogether, because its armed and political sides have nothing to do with each other - the exact opposite of its position in 2002.

Even though the PFLP was involved in a murderous attack in 2019 - where the ringleader worked for one of those "human rights organizations" that HRW is defending now.

In 2002, HRW would have said that Khalida Jarrar was responsible for the death of Rina Shnerb, under the doctrine of command responsibility. 2021 HRW creates a virtual wall between the two sides of the PFLP - a wall that the PFLP itself brags doesn't exist.

What does the PFLP itself say?

Their most recent political platform was published in 2000:

It it is a natural right, and duty that the Palestinian people should defend itself, resist the occupation through various means of struggle, including armed struggle. ..[T]he form of armed struggle should be dealt with at each stage as a means to serve the inclusive political vision which is responsible for determining the function to be done at each stage of the struggle...

The political platform explicitly supports the "armed struggle" and regards it as integral to the PFLP.  There are no "wings." The PFLP's "human rights organizations" are part of its social, political program. To the PFLP, "human rights" are just as much weapons as  the IED that murdered Rina Shnerb, which the PFLP admits. 

The only thing that changed is that Human Rights Watch, which had a shred of morality 20 years ago, is now an open ally with Palestinian terror groups.

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