It’s Cute How You Think Agreements Giving Palestinians Self-Governance Will Stop Us From Blasting Israel For Palestinian Misgovernment

by Ken Roth, Director, Human Rights Watch

New York, January 4 – It never ceases to amaze and amuse me that people think just because Palestinian leaders signed a binding document accepting responsibility for their own internal affairs covering the vast majority of their population, we in the “human rights” community will somehow view the Palestinian leadership as responsible for the welfare and internal affairs of the vast majority of their population instead of laying that responsibility at Israel’s doorstep every time something goes wrong. Just adorable.

Just over the last week or two, as Israel has vaccinated more than ten percent of its population, including a huge percentage of the elderly and more vulnerable to COVID, we and our like-minded colleagues across the human rights community, plus assorted sympathetic hacks in the journalism industry, automatically contrasted that impressive operation with the situation in areas under Palestinian Authority control, where health care and public health have remained a Palestinian governmental responsibility since 1993. We ignore that unimportant detail, because only by doing so can we blame Israel for taking care only of its own and neglecting others for whom they are obligated to care. It would simply not do to acknowledge that it is not, in fact, Israel’s responsibility to see to Palestinian COVID immunization. And it’s just so innocent, so naïve, when defenders of Israel – or of basic facts – get all worked up about such distortions. As if we care.

You can’t help but feel a kind of warm sympathy for people who still maintain the illusion that if we, groups such as Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and the International Committee of the Red Cross, simply had the facts at our disposal, we would refrain from making such pronouncements. It’s quaint, in a way, and it engenders in us the kind of reaction normally triggered when watching an overweight pet get caught in the dog door for the tenth time.

The same people expressed derision and horror when a Red Cross Twitter account posted something about spotting multiple violations of human rights law in an episode of the Israeli television drama Fauda. It’s just adorable that those reacting that way still believe it makes a difference whether the criticisms with which we bombard Israel have any basis in fact. A fictional setting will serve just as well, which those people should have realized long ago, given the success of the Pallywood phenomenon. It’s kind of endearing, the wholesome innocence that remains.

Not enough for us to actually care about what they think, but still.

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