In a recent meeting with a representative of the United Nations, I was asked to suggest concepts that would capture the suffering my family and loved ones in Gaza endure. I froze for a moment, not only because of the surprise of a legal scholar unsuccessfully looking for a concept that would precisely capture Gaza’s…
Human Rights Watch could do with a new pair of glasses. The organization’s new report, “A Threshold Crossed — Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution,” is blind to fact and reality. Every paragraph in the 213-page diatribe serves one goal: brand Israel as an apartheid state. I left South Africa as a…
When I arrived in Jerusalem in 1989 as Human Rights Watch’s first Israel-Palestine researcher, I did not imagine the word “apartheid” applying to the Israeli and Palestinian context. But this week, HRW published a report that I edited, as the organization’s acting Middle East director, finding that Israeli officials are committing the crimes of apartheid…
Human Rights Watch weighed in this week on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by using the term “apartheid” in its report on conditions in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. For some, the term justifiably assigns a harsh label to a harsh reality of oppression and occupation. For others, it’s an overstatement that has dangerous implications…
The Israeli government expelled the Israel and Palestine director of Human Rights Watch on Monday, officials from the organization said, the first such deportation under a 2017 law targeting supporters of a boycott movement. The director, Omar Shakir, departed after the Israeli Supreme Court ruled in favor of a deportation order from last year that…
JERUSALEM (JTA) — Israel’s Supreme Court rejected an appeal by the local director of Human Rights Watch, who was ordered deported over his involvement in the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. Omar Shakir on Tuesday was ordered to leave the country within 20 days. Shakir was ordered expelled from the country a year ago. The…
JERUSALEM (JTA) — Human Rights Watch sued Israel’s Interior Ministry to prevent its local director from being deported over his past involvement in the BDS movement. The NGO filed the lawsuit in Jerusalem District Court on Tuesday in order to keep its director of Israel/Palestine, Omar Shakir, from being deported after his work permit was…
When Israeli authorities revoked the work permit of Human Rights Watch Israel/Palestine director Omar Shakir on May 7 and ordered him to leave the country within two weeks, they presumably anticipated the furious backlash that promptly ensued. After all, already last year, Israel denied Shakir a work permit, only to backtrack quickly in the face…
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