A sort of “coverage” of land mark oppression of the Palestinians which could not be ignored (without exposing his deep underlying prejudice), and that very general lacking specifics. It seems to take as its assumptive background what I would call the Bernard Lewis school of “thought,” with the design of vilification of the Middle Eastern “other.” That is because when you enumerate the whole in the sense of what he covered in the ME it gives the impression by the concentration on Israel’s surrounding countries (and beyond) with numerous specifics (minus the background and their current status as client nations), and than fail to do the same with Israel it skews the vision. I can elaborate with specifics if you like.

Whereas Neier deals with the specifics of Bernstein’s charges he does not go into the specifics of a critique of the whole of HRW’s activity in this region under his leadership. I do not necessarily blame him, who wants to unearth these specifics when one was a participant in the organization (Neier). Just as Lewis was the founder of MESA and now opposes it because of the devastating critique of Dr. Edward Said’s Orientalism, and he is now at odds with MESA – so Bernstein finds himself at odds with the pendulum swing back Israel and its numerous atrocities. Hopefully we will not see Bernstein act the same way as Lewis who is trying to create an entire other “school of Middle Eastern studies” with an entirely new human rights organization – we will have to wait and see.

The two do not prove or disprove the other.

James,
I thought that I was clear that I do not have information sufficient to judge whether Neier OR Bernstein is writing “slop”. I don’t see it in those terms, either/or.

I take both author’s comments as information. As, I take the reports as information.

I hope you acknowledge that the degree that the organizations can be relied on for non-biased reporting is a critical factor in how authoritatively (an intrinsically relative term) their assertions can be regarded. IF their methodology is potentially criticized as partison, then their work can be dismissed, always noted as biased.

There is a flip side with their reputation. That is that at some point in the future, they may turn their light on some behavior that you or I do, or someone that we support.

Its like law. As, it will at some point in the future apply to you, it is important that it be and appear as free from prejudice as possible.

Like the childhood exercise of dividing a cupcake. “I cut. You get to choose which half.”

Israel’s response to the reports though has been jaded. Rather than respond, “thank you for the information that we can use to improve our function”, Israel responded with a shoot the messenger approach.

The structure of UN resolution yesterday that is worded as endorsement of the Goldstone report, only has any means to hold Israel accountable judicially, while Hamas is immune, so even if the wording of the Goldstone report is more balanced, the necessarily non-biased accountability would not be.

Its a problem. Inherent with the opportunistic militia status of Hamas, and Hezbollah.

But I agree, the State Dept report is a minor victory, in that it can be quoted authoritatively to refute mendacious Zionist claims.

I don’t know. That’s the short answer. Here’s the long one– I am trying to remember when I started paying attention to HRW’s reporting on Israel and my memory is hazy before 2006 (when they did a good job on Lebanon). Actually, come to think of it they did a good job in the heavy fighting in the West Bank during 2002, which included Jenin. The initial rumors (one of them started by an Israeli general) was that hundreds had died, but after about a week or two it was clear there was no evidence for that and the hasbara brigade starting crowing that there was no massacre. HRW and other human rights groups did a careful investigation and found that about 50 Palestinians died, roughly half of them civilians, and some of these were war crimes. They were explicit about this. I do remember HRW doing that. But in the 90′s I have no recollection. It was harder for me (and most people) to do internet searches then. I have seen a pretty good report from HRW on the US bombing of civilian infrastructure during the Gulf War in 1991, which was written in 1992, but I think I found that much later, in the late 90′s or early 2000′s (maybe in the runup to the Iraq War). I don’t think I was looking for their material on Israel back then –I was reading people like Fisk and Jonathan Randal and Chomsky and Finkelstein and a few others, so I knew Israel was doing bad things, but can’t recall if Middle East Watch investigated them then.

Actually, you can go to their website and do searches for old material, though right now (as of yesterday anyway) their own search engine was down–they’re doing work on it I think. I’ve found interesting stuff that way, including reports on Turkish atrocities against the Kurds (mentioned by Chomsky) and that Gulf War aerial bombing study I mentioned.