Mouin sent me this regarding my query below about the standards of HRW regarding Syria versus its standards regarding Israel: "I don't have the detailed info on Syria vs Israel publications by HRW, but
if you look at the first 10 pages of HRW's ME page, consisting of approximately
100 items and covering the period 25 April - 3 July, 12 have Syria in the title
vs 3 for Israel (and one of the latter three is unrelated to its treatment of
Palestinians).
I suspect that if you go further back in time you would find that in fact a
disproportionately high number of their publications are about Israel and the
Palestinians. But that is precisely the problem: HRW was routinely setting the
standard for discussion of Israel's human rights record, and it has been a very
very low standard. To the best of my knowledge HRW never, for example, got within 100
miles of "command responsibility" for Israeli political leaders, as it now
routinely does with Syria (and once also examined in the case of Palestinians).
Their factual information is typically quite good (even much more often than not
in the case of Israel). But if you compare the analysis and conclusions applied
to Syria vs Israel, you might as well be comparing Nazi Germany to New
Zealand.
Feel free to post."
