Let's Make Sure Humanitarian NGOs Stand For Human Rights

This week marks 75 years since the UN adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, in the wake of the Holocaust. Today, NGOs have become important vehicles for advocating for human rights and helping improve the lives of many around the world through humanitarian work. But when it comes to Israel and the Palestinians, the majority of human rights-oriented NGOs, many backed by Western government funding, fail at that task.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) is one such example. HRW's publications, statements and posts focusing on Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East, far exceed those in any other region of the world. For years, HRW reports have often contained false and unverified information about Israel, including blaming it for war crimes, ethnic cleansing and apartheid. Now, the organization has been nearly silent on the travesties perpetrated by Hamas on Oct. 7, instead castigating Israel for "war crimes" in its efforts to uproot the terror organization. And in the process it doesn't even get the facts right; for example, HRW said that "there was no evidence put forward [by Israel that] would justify depriving hospitals and ambulances of their protected status under international humanitarian law" despite clear evidence that Hamas indeed was using hospitals as terror bases.

It's impossible to take seriously a group called "Human Rights Watch" when it ignores the human rights of Palestinians, forced to seek medical care and attend school in places used to store Hamas weapons, as well as those of Israelis, murdered in their own homes and communities.

HRW is one of the best-known and largest — but far from the only — NGO to take this tact. Among the other most egregious NGOs is Al-Haq, which bills itself as the "defender of human rights in Palestine" but dedicates nearly all of its resources to criticizing Israel — with nary a word for human rights abuses in the Palestinian Authority-ruled West Bank or Hamas-administered Gaza, such as executions of Palestinians for selling land to Jews, femicide, domestic violence and the rights of women. Instead, Al-Haq concentrates on lobbying the International Criminal Court in the Hague to persecute Israelis and calling for divestment from companies doing business with Israeli firms and other BDS campaigns. At the same time, Al-Haq is affiliated with a terrorist group, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. While NGOs are free to take sides in political conflicts, the actions of Al Haq show that it does nothing but camouflage its antisemitic agenda and completely ignores its stated mission of protecting human rights, including Palestinian human rights.

Perhaps this is why the German government, according to recent media reports, deemed Al-Haq unreliable as a partner.

Yet another NGO that spends an inordinate amount of resources criticizing Israel — when its mission is to help people — is Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières). The organization continues to accuse Israel of "indiscriminate violence" in Gaza and demands "safe passage to evacuate staff and their families" to areas not being targeted by Israel even though Israel has established humanitarian evacuation routes throughout Gaza. Safe passage — or even humanitarian visits — by MSF staff to the hostages being held by Hamas are not on the organization's agenda. MSF, like HRW, apparently missed the reports on Hamas' usage of hospitals as terror bases, falsely claiming that there was "no evidence" for this. That Hamas murdered medics on Oct. 7, destroyed Israeli ambulances and has been hitting Israeli hospitals with rockets — without urging evacuations, as Israel has been doing — also goes unmentioned by MSF. Although the group does provide much-needed medical assistance to Gazans, its failure to acknowledge Hamas' role as the prime cause of suffering on both sides means that it has failed in its mission as an NGO.

These organizations are acting in exactly the opposite manner that they are supposed to. In fact, they are failing the very populations they claim to serve. The Israel bias is clear, and the inability to defend the human rights of Jews around the world is striking. But this issue should bother not only Israelis and Jews but all who support freedom and democracy everywhere around the globe. At the very least, those who believe in human rights should demand that these well-funded NGOs stop spending their time on a political agenda that has nothing to do with human rights. Ideally, though, they should call them out for flaring the Jew hatred around the world and failing the Israeli victims of the Hamas massacre by failing to accurately report on what is happening on the ground.

Since the Hamas massacre on Oct. 7, Israelis and Jews around the world have felt abandoned by the human rights community. The 75th anniversary of the Declaration is an apt time for all to make sure that Jews are not excluded from enjoying the same rights and protections as everyone else.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is supposed to be exactly that — universal and centered on the rights of everyone, not just groups that certain NGOs choose to side with. It is time that NGOs and their donors stop wasting time and resources that fail to carry out stated goals and, more critically and dangerously, contribute to the continued deterioration of human rights in the Middle East, the rising of antisemitism and the silent acceptance of Hamas and other terrorist organizations.

Olga Deutsch is the vice president of NGO Monitor.

(Opinions expressed in this article are the author's own.)