As one of the world’s best-known human rights groups, such a report ought to carry significant weight with its accusations that Arab people are systematically denied basic rights granted to Jews. But these accusations come from various human rights organisations frequently and face counter-accusations of bias, so the impact will be limited.
Israeli authorities immediately rejected the accusations as the usual type of antisemitic propaganda they face. A realisation is spreading internationally that anti-Israel propaganda has become the latest form of antisemitism, and it is often disguised as concern over human rights.
NGO Monitor is an organisation set up to hold non-governmental organisations to account, and it quickly published a rebuttal of this latest HRW report. A few key points are listed here:
As usual, international media organisations have written at length about the HRW report. The BBC’s news article covers some of the main accusations at length before quoting international human rights lawyer, Philippe Sands, as saying the report ‘was a balanced and rigorous wake-up call by a serious and authoritative organisation.’
Thankfully, they also quoted Gerald Steinberg, founder of NGO Monitor, right at the end of their article as saying the HRW report was part of a “vindictive vendetta ... against Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people.”
He highlighted the fact that HRW had chosen to “completely ignore and erase deliberately decades of terrorism and the need for counter-terror measures.”
President of the British Board of Deputies, Marie van der Zyl, said the HRW report was a “sham which puts rhetoric above fact.”
“They consistently ignore or downplay the fact that Israel’s security measures in the West Bank and around Gaza are the response to well-documented terror activities. The ridiculous ‘apartheid‘ slur in this report is belied by the fact that, as it stands, Israel’s next government may well rely on the support of Arab parties, voted for by the country’s fully-enfranchised Arab citizens.”
Writing in the Jerusalem Post, Seth J. Frantzman notes that Israel’s human rights record regarding treatment of the Palestinians has improved in recent decades. ‘Clashes between Israeli forces and Palestinians rarely result in the death of civilians, a major change from how events unfolded during the First and Second Intifadas.’
He also emphasises the fact that an entire generation of Palestinians has grown up educated in Palestinian Authority schools in the West Bank and under Hamas rule in Gaza. Someone born when the Palestinians first began to administer their own affairs in a new authority under the Oslo Accords is now 25 years old.
Thus, the war of words over human rights in and around Israel continues.
If anyone doubts the claims of bias in the accusations levelled against Israel, one only has to look at the way the country is singled-out for criticism at the United Nations to realise that there is a significant international problem.
Facts of racism in the area and the intolerance of casting fear as "racist"
A Jew cannot buy or rent in an Arab settlement. And even in those mixed communities where there was a Jewish minority, Peki'in village is an example where, Jews fled the terror of Arab racism.
That Jews fear going through certain Arab villages, is practical fear.
Arabs targeting Jews, as identifying them as Jews, is sheer Arab racism and Islamists bigotry.
That certain leadership in Arab political and religious sphere incite against Jews is not rare.
The Palestinian Authority's death sentence for anyone who sells real estate to a Jew. And moderate (relatively to genocidal Hamas) Mahmoud Abass' 2013 open declaration of no Jew to be in future [judenrein, ethnic cleansed] "palestine" state, now that is raw racism.
Denying genuine worry of Israelis and casting it as just intolerance, is in and of itself intolerance. No matter if it's Arab racism by Arab "activists" including bigoted BDS pushers abusing Human Rights org. [Enter Omar Shakir, et al] casted in "human rights" phrases/frames or anti-Jewish Haaretz/Btselem's Hagai El-Ad who by focusing its denouncements in the international arena and ignoring real human rights abuses on the Arab side (whether Arab leadership inside Israel or "palestinian") and Arab racism against Jews, proves the campaign's real agenda - defamation, at any costs, truth or not, misrepresentation or what have you. Not progress.
Despite latest "drama," nothing major has really changed since 2006, when Jimmy Carrter (who, besides misrepresentations and white washing Arab violence) admitted that Israel is an equal democracy for all but his "criticism" was about "territories", plus the language was to "provoke debate."...
Is is not "apartheid" when calculations is risk assessment.
Nor is there a difference between the "race" of Israeli-Arabs and "palestinian"-Arabs.
Nor is it "apartheid" when Arab representation is very powerful in all areas, including in Knesset.