A controversy that the rightwing lobby is seeking to stir up over the fact that Human Rights Watch has raised money recently in Saudi Arabia is well-reported here by Ali Gharib:
[Law professor/blogger David] Bernstein maintained that "it's extremely
unwise for a human rights group to raise money in a totalitarian
country, even from human rights advocates in that country."
[HRW's Sarah Leah] Whitson said the claim had no grounds, noting that the notion
"that any money from Saudi Arabia is tainted because it comes from a
country with a totalitarian ruling regime is a gross generalisation."
"The ethnic background of our donors is irrelevant to the work
we do," Whitson told IPS. "It's not relevant to our work in Israel that
many, many of our donors are Jewish. And it's not relevant for the work
that we do that we get money from Arab countries."
"Should people be criticising us for the fact that much of our
support base is made up of Jews?" Whitson said. "Should that imply that
our work on Israel is in fact too soft?"
Good questions. Ethnicity can be predictive, actually. But not always. This is the central struggle of this site.
