AS the founder of Human Rights Watch, its active chairman for 20 years and now founding chairman emeritus, I must do something that I never anticipated: I must publicly join the group’s critics.

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When I stepped aside in 1998, Human Rights Watch was active in 70 countries

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The region is populated by authoritarian regimes with appalling human rights records. Yet in recent years Human Rights Watch has written far more condemnations of Israel for violations of international law than of any other country in the region. Israel, with a population of 7.4 million, is home to at least 80 human rights organizations, a vibrant free press, a democratically elected government, a judiciary that frequently rules against the government, a politically active academia, multiple political parties and, judging by the amount of news coverage, probably more journalists per capita than any other country in the world — many of whom are there expressly to cover the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Meanwhile, the Arab and Iranian regimes rule over some 350 million people, and most remain brutal, closed and autocratic, permitting little or no internal dissent. The plight of their citizens who would most benefit from the kind of attention a large and well-financed international human rights organization can provide is being ignored as Human Rights Watch’s Middle East division prepares report after report on Israel.

Human Rights Watch has lost critical perspective on a conflict in which Israel has been repeatedly attacked by Hamas and Hezbollah, organizations that go after Israeli citizens and use their own people as human shields. These groups are supported by the government of Iran, which has openly declared its intention not just to destroy Israel but to murder Jews everywhere. This incitement to genocide is a violation of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

Leaders of Human Rights Watch know that Hamas and Hezbollah chose to wage war from densely populated areas, deliberately transforming neighborhoods into battlefields. They know that more and better arms are flowing into both Gaza and Lebanon and are poised to strike again. And they know that this militancy continues to deprive Palestinians of any chance for the peaceful and productive life they deserve. Yet Israel, the repeated victim of aggression, faces the brunt of Human Rights Watch’s criticism.

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But how does Human Rights Watch know that these laws [in Gaza] have been violated? In Gaza and elsewhere where there is no access to the battlefield or to the military and political leaders who make strategic decisions, it is extremely difficult to make definitive judgments about war crimes. Reporting often relies on witnesses whose stories cannot be verified and who may testify for political advantage or because they fear retaliation from their own rulers. Significantly, Col. Richard Kemp, the former commander of British forces in Afghanistan and an expert on warfare, has said that the Israel Defense Forces in Gaza “did more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone than any other army in the history of warfare.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/20/opinion/20bernstein.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1256086895-3oVi3/uybrcqWFkZkog+jg

There you go: I give you a non-Zionist who is not limited to propagating nonsense, as was asked of me.

He does not support Israel or Zionism, he just points out a few facts.

You do not have to be a Zionist to acknowledge that the IDF does more to protect civilians than any other army in the world. (In fact, Zionism per se has nothing to do with this.)

You do not have to be a supporter of Israel in the war against the Arab empire to point out that Hamas and Hizbullah are terrorist groups. (There is, after all, the other enemy, the genuine armies of the Arab League.)

And you do not have to be a Christian Zionist fanatic to remember that it was Hizbullah and Hamas who attacked Israel and not vice versa.

These things are simply facts, not Zionist opinions.

Now looking for: an anti-Zionist who can give anti-Israel arguments that are not based on the assumption that Hamas and Hizbullah are "freedom fighters" and that the PLO has had no connection to the Nazis.