Human Rights Watch defends outgoing chief against antisemitism claims
Kenneth Roth is stepping down from the campaign and monitoring group after nearly three decades in the role
Michael Daventry is Jewish News’s foreign and broadcast editor
Human Rights Watch has defended its outgoing director Kenneth Roth against claims of being “a supposed antisemite” as it announced his departure this week.
The 66-year-old will step down in August after building up the campaign and monitoring group into a globally recognised organisation over the past 30 years.
Roth was leader when the group shared the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize for its campaign to ban anti-personnel land mines.
But his term has also been punctuated by anger at Human Rights Watch’s stance on the Israel-Palestine conflict, which Israeli authorities have called one-sided.
In 2018 the group’s Israel and Palestine director Omar Shakir was expelled from the country on the grounds that his work supported the Israel boycott movement BDS.
Three years later Roth himself was criticised by Britain’s Community Security for a tweet that “offered excuses” for a surge in global antisemitic incidents after fighting broke out across the Gaza border.
The group describes Israeli policies towards the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza as “apartheid”.
Human Rights Watch acknowledged the criticism in a statement announcing Roth’s departure: “Despite being Jewish (and having a father who fled Nazi Germany as a 12-year-old boy), he has been attacked as a supposed antisemite because of the organisation’s criticism of Israeli government abuses.”
The organisation appeared to remove the “supposed antisemite” reference from a later version of its statement.
Roth became executive director in 1993, when the group had a staff of around 60 and a US$7 million annual budget.
Its annual budget now closer to US$100 million, Human Rights Watch now employs over 550people in over 100 countries to campaign against human rights abuses.
“I had the great privilege to spend nearly 30 years building an organisation that has become a leading force in defending the rights of people around the world,” Roth said.
“I am leaving Human Rights Watch but I am not leaving the human rights cause.”
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