Paperback of the week: Righting Wrongs by Kenneth Roth -Roth spent three decades as head of Human Rights Watch. His record of past victories is also a warning for the future

Roth notes the struggle for human rights is “incessant”; there is no sign that China and others will stop their abuses anytime soon"

It was strange to be reading Righting Wrongs, Kenneth Roth’s memoir about his time in charge of Human Rights Watch, on the same weekend that the United States bombed Venezuela and abducted its president, Nicolás Maduro. As condemnation of the action failed to arrive from Keir Starmer, or barely any significant European leader, I thought of Roth’s statement that it is “axiomatic that for Human Rights Watch’s methodology to work, some particular government or institution must feel shamed”. Unfortunately, it’s shamelessness that seems to be in the ascendant.

Roth achieved tremendous successes at Human Rights Watch during his 29 years as executive director (he stepped down in 2022), seeing the organisation’s annual budget grow from $7m to $100m. The organisation has campaigned for a diverse range of issues including the banning of landmines and LGBT rights, as well as documenting genocide in Rwanda and Bosnia, the displacement of Palestinians from Gaza and, in the early 2000s, helping to establish the International Criminal Court. The idea, he explains, is to present reports so solid as to be undeniable, and therefore shame the target government or group into stopping their actions. “Stigmatise with facts,” he writes.

Roth’s predecessor at Human Rights Watch, Aryeh Neier, taught him “the possibility of being an activist with intellectual sophistication”. And according to Roth: “It is not my nature to spend lots of time rallying in the streets or picketing government buildings.” He is, he says, no rabble-rouser. Readers of his somewhat colourless prose would have to agree.... READ MORE  https://observer.co.uk/culture/books/article/paperback-of-the-week-righting-wrongs-by-kenneth-roth

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https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/739898/righting-wrongs-by-kenneth-roth/

 ONE OF THE ECONOMIST‘S BEST BOOKS OF 2025 • From the long-time head of Human Rights Watch, the fascinating and inspiring story of taking on the biggest villains and toughest autocrats around the world

In three decades under the leadership of Kenneth Roth, Human Rights Watch grew to a staff of more than five hundred, conducting investigations in one hundred countries to uncover abuses—and pressuring offending governments to stop them. Roth has grappled with the worst of humanity, taken on the most brutal officials of our time, and persuaded leaders from around the globe to stand up to their repressive counterparts.

The son of a Jew who fled Nazi Germany just before the war began, Roth grew up knowing full well how inhumane governments could be. He has traveled the world to meet cruelty and injustice on its home turf: he arrived in Rwanda shortly after the genocide; scrutinized the impact of Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait; investigated and condemned Israel’s mistreatment of Palestinians. He directed efforts to curtail the Chinese government’s persecution of Uyghur Muslims, to bring Myanmar’s officials to justice after the ethnic cleansing of Rohingya Muslims, to halt Russian war crimes in Ukraine—even to reign in the U.S. government. Roth’s many innovations and strategies included the deployment of a concept as old as mankind—the powerful tool of “shaming”—and here he illustrates its surprising effectiveness against evildoers.

This is a story of wins, losses, and ongoing battles in the ceaseless fight to uphold our most basic values. 

"There are now, as the historian Rashid Khalidi has put it, “two peoples in Palestine, irrespective of how they came into being”, and their “mutual acceptance can only be based on complete equality of rights”. If that sounds utopian, it is largely because of the decay of political leadership in both Israel and Palestine. Whatever happens with the Trump plan, no amount of bulldozer diplomacy or external governance will alter that." Kenan Malik

Without a two-state solution or single state with equal rights, what hope is there?

Kenan Malik 

https://observer.co.uk/news/opinion-and-ideas/article/without-two-state-solution-or-single-state-with-equal-rights-what-hope-palestine 

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https://profilebooks.com/work/the-hundred-years-war-on-palestine/ 

One of the 'Five Best Books to understand the Israel-Palestine Conflict', as chosen by the Guardian  https://profilebooks.com/work/the-hundred-years-war-on-palestine/     & LOOK INSIDE     https://profilebooks.com/wp-content/uploads/wpallimport/files/PDFs/9781781259344_preview.pdf

‘They lock us in like sheep’: new Israeli checkpoints and barriers raise fears in the West Bank. Israel’s growing network of roadblocks are cutting off communities from major transport routes, disrupting work, education and aid supplies

Palestinians living in the West Bank passing through the Qalandiya military checkpoint separating Ramallah and Jerusalem for the first Friday prayer of Ramadan. Photograph: Issam Rimawi/Anadolu/Getty Images

Jason Burke and Sufian Taha, in the occupied West Bank

Sat 15 Mar 2025 12.09 EDT

The road to Atara from Ramallah winds through the hills and valleys of the occupied W est Bank. To drive the nine miles to the village from the de facto capital of the Palestinian Authority should take about half an hour, despite the potholes and traffic.

These days, the taxi drivers waiting for fares on Radio Street in the north of the city shrug when asked when they will arrive at their destination.

“Thirty minutes, one hour, half a day, it all depends on the checkpoints. If I could tell you, I would … but no one knows,” said Ahmed Barghouti, 50, a driver for over 20 years.

Since the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas came into effect in Gaza in January, life for the 2.9 million Palestinians in the West Bank has not become easier. Israel immediately launched a bloody major offensive in the north that has so far forced at least 40,000 people from their homes, the largest displacement since Israel’s occupation began in 1967, and killed dozens, including children.

At the same time, Israeli authorities have been constructing new checkpoints and barriers. According to the Palestinian Authority, at least 119 “iron gates” have been set up since the start of the war in Gaza in October 2023, including many since January. These block access to villages and towns, cutting off entire communities from major transport routes.

There are now close to 900 barriers in the West Bank, the PA said. The UN has recorded more than 800, a steep increase on the 645 in 2023.

Palestinian officials say this “localised system” of roadblocks is a change from a strategy merely to cut the West Bank into north, south and central sections. “It no longer controls movement alone, but also … access to ­agricultural land, social and livelihood opportunities, health, education and the economy, among other things,” Amir Daoud, of the Authority’s Colonisation and Wall Resistance Committee, told the Observer.

A survey last month of NGOs working in the West Bank found that 93% said roadblocks, permit denials and checkpoint delays hindered aid delivery... READ MORE  https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/mar/15/israeli-checkpoints-barriers-raise-fears-in-the-west-bank

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Sue Williamson, an anti-apartheid artist: “They’re trying to set it up that South Africa is not a credible country to bring such a case [the International Court of Justice (ICJ) case against Israel]... You’ll see South Africa dragged through the mud a lot more by Netanyahu [Benjamin, prime minister of Israel] and Trump and Musk.”

Chair for Ray Alexander, created from 1990 to 1992. Photograph: Sue Williamson

‘Trump and Musk are gaslighting’: anti-apartheid artist on how US president and his billionaire ally are attacking South Africa

Ahead of a career retrospective, Sue Williamson tells how the US pair are dragging her country ‘through the mud’

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 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/feb/23/trump-and-musk-are-gaslighting-anti-apartheid-artist-on-how-us-president-and-his-billionaire-ally-are-attacking-south-africa

Speaking from her studio in Cape Town, Williamson said: “Trump and Musk are just gaslighting, because of the judgment of the international court of justice (ICJ) against Israel.”

South Africa brought a case against Israel at the ICJ in December 2023, accusing it of committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. In January 2024, the UN court ordered Israel to ensure its forces do not commit acts of genocide, although it has not yet ruled on its previous acts. Israel has fiercely rejected the case.

“They’re trying to set it up that South Africa is not a credible country to bring such a case,” Williamson said. “You’ll see South Africa dragged through the mud a lot more by Netanyahu [Benjamin, prime minister of Israel] and Trump and Musk.”

Ahead of the opening of her retrospective at the Iziko South African National Gallery in Cape Town on 22 February, Williamson dismissed the US claims that South Africa was expropriating land from white Afrikaner farmers.

“It’s a much more considered process. If you look back to the Land Act of 1913, when black farmers lost their land to whites, it’s about time that something was done to reverse that.” .... READ MORE

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Williamson has produced many forms of resistance art that examines the history of South Africa.  For instance with 'One Hundred and Nineteen Deeds of Sale' Williamson incorporates the history and memory of the slave trade in order to transform the stigmatizing history into a history that can address and combat global inequalities.

'One Hundred and Nineteen Deeds of Sale' by Sue Williamson              https://www.sue-williamson.com/one-hundred-and-nineteen-deeds-of-s

 

"Trauma in Palestine is collective and continuous. PTSD is when your mind is stuck in a traumatic loop. In Palestine, the loop is reality." Dr Samah Jabr

Children stand amid the rubble of a building hit by an Israeli air strike in the centre of the Gaza Strip. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

 

‘Chronic traumatic stress disorder’: the Palestinian psychiatrist challenging western definitions of trauma

Chair of the Palestinian ministry of health’s mental health unit says the clinical definition of PTSD does not fit the reality in Gaza

Even before the war in Gaza broke out, people in the besieged Palestinian territory had some of the world’s worst rates of mental illness.

Israel and Egypt’s blockade of the Mediterranean strip is now 17 years old; a generation has grown up knowing nothing but cyclical escalation, a dire lack of public services and next to no freedom of movement. Research published by Save the Children in 2022 found that four out of five children in Gaza said they live with depression, grief and fear, and three in five were self harming.

Since 7 October, the charity found that there has – unsurprisingly – been a dramatic deterioration in children’s mental health. “Children here have seen everything,” one father, Wasseem, told Save the Children researchers. “They’ve seen the bombs, the deaths, the bodies … We can’t pretend to them any more. Now, my son can even tell what types of explosives are falling.”... READ MORE   https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/14/mental-health-palestine-children

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Palestinian family home demolished by Israeli forces in Jerusalem

A Palestinian child cries after his family's home was demolished in Beit Hanina, Jerusalem. The building was said to have been constructed without proper permits. Members of the 33-member family said that they had been waiting to receive permits. Photograph: Bernat Armangue/AP The Observer photo gallary 2012

The Observer's 20 photographs of the week

Gallery (20 pictures), 9 Feb 2013:

The best photographs in news and culture from around the world over the past seven days