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Outgoing Human Rights Watch Senior Editor Blasts Group's Work on Israel
(Times of Israel) Danielle Haas, an outgoing senior editor at Human Rights Watch (HRW), wrote an internal email to 500 HRW employees on Tuesday. "Following the Hamas massacres in Israel on October 7, years of institutional creep culminated in organizational responses that shattered professionalism, abandoned principles of accuracy and fairness, and surrendered its duty to stand for the human rights of all," she wrote. "HRW's initial reactions to the Hamas attacks failed to condemn outright the murder, torture, and kidnapping of Israeli men, women, and children. They included the 'context' of 'apartheid' and 'occupation' before blood was even dry on bedroom walls....HRW's initial response was the fruition of years of politicization of its Israel-Palestine work that has frequently violated basic editorial standards related to rigor, balance, and collegiality, when it comes to Israel." She pointed to the Israel chapter in HRW's annual global review of human rights, which Haas oversaw for more than a decade, and claimed it "has always been longer than those of rights-abusing goliaths such as Iran and North Korea."