 |
| Human Rights Watch's Israel and Palestine director Omar Shakir, a US citizen, sits at his office in the West Bank city of Ramallah on 9 May 2018. Photograph: Abbas Momani/AFP/Getty Images |
Two Human Rights Watch (HRW) employees who make up the organization’s entire Israel and Palestine team are stepping down from their positions after leadership blocked a report that deems Israel’s denial of Palestinian refugees the right of return a “crime against humanity”.
In separate resignation letters obtained by Jewish Currents and the Guardian, Omar Shakir, who has headed the team for nearly the last decade, and Milena Ansari, the team’s assistant researcher, said leadership’s decision to pull the report broke from HRW’s customary approval processes and was evidence that the organization was putting fear of political backlash over a commitment to international law.
“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,” Shakir wrote in his resignation letter. “As such, I am no longer able to represent or work for Human Rights Watch.” The resignations have roiled one of the most prominent human rights groups in the world just as HRW’s new executive director, Philippe Bolopion, begins his tenure.
In a statement, HRW said that “the report in question 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. For that reason, the publication of the report was paused pending further analysis and research. This process is ongoing.”
Shakir said that his experience illustrated that while public opinion has evolved on Israel in the last several years – with “concepts of apartheid, genocide and ethnic cleansing” increasingly voiced in mainstream circles – the right of return remains a third rail. “The one topic,” he said, “even at Human Rights Watch, for which there remains an unwillingness to apply the law and the facts in a principled way, is the plight of refugees and their right to return to the homes that they were forced to flee.”... READ MORE https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/feb/03/human-rights-watch-researchers-resign-palestine?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other
This story was co-published with Jewish Currents. You can find a longer version on their site here