Harry's Place about "Human Rights Watch":

I really am at a loss for words.

Assuming that this is all correct, hiring a very extreme Communist, with simply horrendous views about Israel/Palestine to produce a report of this sort is akin hiring a man who was formerly active in the KKK to write about black people and crime. Fundraising for this sort of work in Saudi Arabia is like taking cash for this enterprise from the old Apartheid South Africa.

This is the anatomy of a lynching.

Of course, back in the 1980s, right wing think tanks did take cash from South African sources, and did produce horrendously racist material. They didn’t worry. They were fighting the good fight, after all. All that has now changed. There is zero tolerance for racism on the mainstream right.

The same thing needs to happen on the Left. There is, presently, a general acceptance of extreme and marginal politics. The fact that an activist has supported terrorist organisations isn’t seen as a disqualification for a job. It should be, and we should be absolutely furious that the likes of Joe Stork are not simply tolerated, but promoted in mainstream human rights organisations, and tasked with writing reports on the most sensitive of subjects.

There is a value in impartial and properly researched criticism of the conduct of combatants in armed conflicts. However, by hiring a man whose ideological background is vicious, at least in the case of Israel, they have utterly disqualified themselves from performing this important task.

http://www.hurryupharry.org/2009/08/17/human-rights-watch-and-the-veteran-extremist/