Why HRW’s Ken Roth won’t condemn kidnapping of Israeli teens

In contrast to the UN secretary-general and the International Committee of the Red Cross, the head of Human Rights Watch is refusing to unequivocally condemn Thursday’s kidnapping of Israeli teenagers, emphasizing instead that they attended school in an “illegal settlement,” and demanding that his critics first condemn an unrelated event from a month ago, the alleged IDF killing of masked rock-throwers.

After repeated appeals from Twitter users for HRW Executive Director Kenneth Roth to end his silence on the abductions, Roth finally responded with this carefully-constructed tweet: “Attending school at illegal settlement doesn’t legitimize apparent kidnapping of Israel teens. They should be freed.”

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As the once-mighty Amnesty International is mired by internal battles, union strife and an ever-revolving leadership, Roth controls an ascendant $228-million empire that recruits top diplomats, UN officials and journalists into its ever-expanding global staff, at the same time as it places its own officials in key positions of influence, including the senior ranks of the U.S. State Department’s human rights division.

Sadly, while the organization accomplishes important work on many areas, the Twitter feed of its enormously influential leader — who was born Jewish — reveals this person’s pathological, daily obsession with portraying the Jewish state as irredeemably irredentist, racist or bloodthirsty, causing him to turn a blind eye, or, worse, explain away, terrorism committed against Israelis.

When your New York human rights group is more indifferent to the suffering of innocent Jews than international organizations like the UN and the ICRC, it’s time to realize you have a problem.

http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/hrw-chief-says-kidnapped-teens-belonged-to-illegal-settlement/