Two Researchers Have Quit Human Rights Watch After It Blocked A Report On Israel’s Crimes Against Humanity
“I have lost my faith in the integrity of how we do our work and our commitment to principled reporting on the facts and application of the law.”
Two senior researchers at Human Rights Watch (HRW) have resigned after the organization blocked the publication of a report that accused Israel of committing crimes against humanity by denying Palestinian refugees the right of return.
Omar Shakir, who has worked for the rights group for more than 10 years, resigned alongside assistant researcher Milena Ansari, dismantling the organization’s Israel and Palestine team.
The unpublished report had examined Israel’s long-standing refusal to allow Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and concluded that the policy could constitute a crime against humanity under international law.
Shakir told Al Jazeera that the report connected “the erasure of camps in Gaza with the emptying of camps in the West Bank, with the full assault led by the Israeli government against UNRWA, the UN aid agency for Palestinian refugees and underscoring how in the midst of this Nakba 2.0 that we’re seeing unfold beyond us, it’s critical that we learn the lessons from Nakba 1.0.”
The report had cleared multiple internal review stages and was set to be published on Dec. 4 before it was suddenly halted, according to the researchers.
In his resignation letter, Shakir said senior leadership had warned the report could be misread by “detractors” as a call to “demographically extinguish the Jewishness of the Israeli state,” according to Al Jazeera.
“I have lost my faith in the integrity of how we do our work and our commitment to principled reporting on the facts and application of the law,” he wrote.
HRW said in a statement to Al Jazeera that the report had “raised complex and consequential issues.”
“In our review process, we concluded that aspects of the research and the factual basis for our legal conclusions needed to be strengthened to meet Human Rights Watch’s high standards,” it said.
“For that reason, the publication of the report was paused pending further analysis and research. This process is ongoing,” it added.
Shakir spent years documenting abuses in Israel, the occupied West Bank and Gaza and was deported by the Israeli government in 2019 over his advocacy.
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