Civil War Breaks Out at Human Rights Watch

H uman Rights Watch (HRW), founded in 1978 by Robert Bernstein to “pry open closed societies, advocate basic freedoms and support dissenters,” has gone from humble nonprofit to political superpower with an annual budget of approximately $100 million. Its publications and accompanying campaigns are headlined by major media platforms, quoted in United Nations documents and by government leaders, and included as assigned reading in university courses. Most important, for the past 25 years, under the banner of promoting human rights, the organization became a world leader in disproportionately singling out and demonizing Israel, including via the Holocaust inversion libel of “genocide” — fueling violent antisemitic attacks, especially on college campuses.

So when a rare public fight within the ranks of HRW takes place, particularly involving Israel, it is major news. This occurred recently, triggered ostensibly by a management decision to hold up and review publication of a report claiming that Israel’s rejection of the long-standing Palestinian Arab claim to a “right of return” — which, if implemented, would mean the end of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people — constitutes a crime against humanity.

The primary protagonists in this drama are the authors of the draft report — Omar Shakir, the organization’s Israel-Palestine director since 2016, and Milena Ansari, who was hired after she had worked for Addameer, an NGO sanctioned by the U.S. for “being owned, controlled, or directed by . . . the PFLP” (the outlawed Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine terror group). In parallel articles in the anti-Zionist Jewish Currents publication and The Guardian, Shakir and Ansari loudly announced they were resigning from HRW because of the publication delay.

In Shakir’s version of events, the conflict centers on the claims based on “principled reporting on the facts and application of the law.” HRW’s response, led by longtime staffer and newly appointed Executive Director Philippe Bolopion, explained: “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.”

As a researcher who has had the painful experience of studying the past 25 years of HRW pseudo-reports condemning Israel, I must say that the claim to “high standards” comes across as a bitter joke. HRW’s stream of statements and publications are anchored in incoherent legal word salads invoking fictitious, invented, or, at best, aspirational forms of international law in order to reach the predetermined conclusion of finding Israel guilty of war crimes, collective punishment, ethnic cleansing, apartheid, and genocide. These are the “high standards” that Shakir and Ansari supposedly failed to meet.

Adding to the theater of the absurd, Kenneth Roth, HRW’s Israel-obsessed former leader who hired Shakir to amplify the attacks on Israel, came out supporting Bolopion, claiming that Shakir’s draft was based on “an extreme interpretation of the law that was indefensible.” Roth, who can be credited with perfecting the strategy of weaponizing international legal slogans to demonize Israel, supported sending “the report back for a more defensible interpretation.” In other words, the high-profile resignations and responses, as presented by those involved, are merely due to the packaging of the usual legal gibberish in HRW publications on Israel.

Alternatively, perhaps this is a ruse hiding a different conflict — a battle for control over HRW’s immense political power and accompanying resources. The organization has undergone significant turbulence since August 2022, when Roth ended his three-decade reign as leader. His hand-picked successor, Tirana Hassan, was summarily dismissed in February 2025, citing “differing perspectives from those of the Board, with regard to the leadership’s relationship with the Board, and the role of the Board in discharging its fiduciary responsibilities.” This demonstrates the degree to which HRW’s operations, like those of many powerful NGOs, are hidden under a massive wall of secrecy behind which financial details and political agenda-setting remain completely opaque.

In recent months, the two co-chairs of HRW’s board of directors (the legal owners of HRW) suddenly and quietly left, along with a number of other members. In parallel, Philippe Bolopion, another Roth protégé, was appointed executive director. Shortly afterward, Shakir staged his orchestrated resignation, using the Palestinian Arab “right of return” report and the supposed conflict over its legal double-talk as the justification.

This turmoil presents a rare opportunity for transparency and accountability at one of the world’s most powerful rights NGOs. Instead of repeating the usual legal fictions, managed headlines, and activist agendas, serious journalists and congressional staffers should start looking into leaks of hidden foreign funding, such as substantial Saudi funding allegedly as part of a quid pro quo to ignore repression in the kingdom, as well as a letter purportedly from a high Qatari official authorizing a €3 million ($3.6 million) donation to HRW. Opening up the secrets behind HRW’s pernicious political machine is long overdue.