{"id":274255,"date":"2026-02-04T21:24:14","date_gmt":"2026-02-04T21:24:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/274255\/"},"modified":"2026-02-04T21:24:14","modified_gmt":"2026-02-04T21:24:14","slug":"how-human-rights-watch-killed-a-report-calling-israels-denial-of-palestinians-right-of-return-a-crime-against-humanity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/274255\/","title":{"rendered":"How Human Rights Watch Killed a Report Calling Israel\u2019s Denial of Palestinians\u2019 Right of Return a Crime Against Humanity"},"content":{"rendered":"

Drop Site is a 100% reader-funded, independent news outlet. Without your support, we can\u2019t operate. Please consider making a 501(c)(3) tax-deductible donation today<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Omar Shakir, the now-former Israel-Palestine director for Human Rights Watch, and Kenneth Roth, the former executive director, in Ben-Gurion airport after being expelled from Israel in 2019. Photo by JACK GUEZ\/AFP via Getty Images.<\/p>\n

The Israel-Palestine director of Human Rights Watch (HRW), Omar Shakir, resigned effective on Monday after over almost a decade at the organization in protest of a top-level decision to shelve a report that characterized Israel\u2019s decades-long campaign to deny Palestinians the right of return to their homes and land a \u201ccrime against humanity.\u201d<\/p>\n

The 43-page report formally underwent every step in Human Rights Watch\u2019s internal review process, including evaluations by the divisions covering refugees, international justice, women and children\u2019s rights, and the legal team over seven months. After that process was completed, incoming Executive Director Philippe Bolopion halted the report roughly two weeks before its scheduled publication on December 4. Shakir was informed of the decision by a phone call.<\/p>\n

The report, which cites interviews with 53 Palestinian refugees and included fieldwork in refugee camps across Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon, connected the expulsions of 1948 all the way to the present moment with the emptying of the camps in Gaza and the West Bank over the past two years. Shakir hoped that the report would open \u201ca path to justice for Palestinian refugees.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bolopion\u2019s decision came after a senior official at HRW raised concerns about the publication of the report. Shakir said in his resignation email that one senior leader told him it would be perceived as a call to \u201cdemographically extinguish the Jewishness of the Israeli state.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve given every bit of myself to the work for a decade. I\u2019ve defended the work in very, very difficult circumstances,\u201d Shakir told Drop Site. \u201cI have lost faith in our senior leadership\u2019s fidelity to the core way that we do our work, to the integrity of our work, at least in the context of Israel, Palestine.\u201d Milena Ansari, a Palestinian assistant researcher and the only other member of HRW\u2019s Israel and Palestine team also resigned.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe refugees I interviewed deserve to know why their stories aren\u2019t being told,\u201d Shakir said.<\/p>\n

In response to an inquiry from Drop Site, HRW said in a written statement: \u201cThe report in question raised complex and consequential issues. In our review process, we concluded that aspects of the research and the factual basis for our legal conclusions needed to be strengthened to meet Human Rights Watch\u2019s high standards. For that reason, the publication of the report was paused pending further analysis and research. This process is ongoing.\u201d<\/p>\n

In late November, Shakir, along with a MENA deputy director and a legal reviewer, initially briefed Bolopion on the outgoing report. In the call, senior leadership lobbied to delay the report.<\/p>\n

According to internal emails obtained by Drop Site, Bolopion was ultimately swayed by other top leadership that the report shouldn\u2019t go out, despite completing the internal review process and the backing of the majority of the organization.<\/p>\n

Among those opposing the report was the director of the Refugees and Migrant division, Bill Frelick. Donors, journalists, and external figures had already been informed of the report\u2019s planned publication on December 4. Frelick\u2019s own department had signed off on the report in the formal review process. But on November 25, Frelick went outside the formal review process to voice concerns directly to Bolopion in an email.<\/p>\n

Drop Site obtained the original email Frelick sent Bolopion, flagging \u201csubstantive legal and strategic issues.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cTo be clear, I am not objecting to our position that the Right of Return (RoR) is, indeed, a human right and that denying the right of return is a human rights violation,\u201d Frelick wrote to Bolopion, which staff told Drop Site is the email that started the chain of events that led to the report\u2019s shelving. \u201cI do not think, however, that we have strong grounds for asserting that the denial of this right is a Crime Against Humanity (CAH).\u201d<\/p>\n

Frelick also wrote: \u201cI also question the strategic value of HRW advocating in 2025 for Palestinian refugees and their descendants to reclaim homes in present-day Israel that were lost in 1948.\u201d<\/p>\n

Frelick laid out legal questions that he claimed the report did not sufficiently answer, including whether Israel intended to cause harm by denying Palestinians the right to return. \u201cPer the requirement of \u201cintentionally\u201d causing great suffering, is Israel\u2019s intent in denying return to cause great suffering or it is rather motivated by Israel\u2019s national security concerns, demographic engineering, or other motivations, and, therefore, whatever suffering it causes would be incidental or consequential to these purposes but not their intent?\u201d Frelick wrote.<\/p>\n

The legal rationale for calling the denial of the right to return a crime against humanity is one that, Shakir told Drop Site, HRW has used in the past for reports in other countries, including as recently as 2023<\/a>, in a report on the forced displacement of the Chagossians from their homes in the Chagos Archipelago over 60 years ago by the U.S. and the United Kingdom.<\/p>\n

In the email, Frelick questioned essential aspects of Palestinians\u2019 suffering. \u201cDoes the suffering (and claims) of descendants of refugees who lost their homes in 1948 weaken over time? How does HRW assess whether descendants of refugees from 1948 have maintained ties that keep their claims viable? Does having citizenship in another country have impact on those claims? Are these claims unique to the descendants of Palestinian refugees or do they apply to the descendants of all refugees from all places throughout history?\u201d Frelick wrote.<\/p>\n

Shakir said it\u2019s normal for staff at HRW to disagree with the legal rationale of a report and that ultimately, HRW\u2019s legal team makes the call on whether the argument of a report stands.<\/p>\n

In the case of this report, two legal reviewers signed off on the report in the initial rounds of review. One of them, Jim Ross, wrote a memo after the report was spiked titled, \u201cStrengthening the factual presentation of the R2R\/CAH report.\u201d In the memo, which was obtained by Drop Site, Ross seemed to try and strike a middle ground by saying the report needed to include more examples of the suffering of Palestinian refugees in order to bolster its legal conclusions.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want to be able to show very compelling cases of great suffering or serious physical\/mental injury. This likely will be strongest when people are living in extreme poverty or similar awful conditions or are clearly experiencing severe mental harm as a result of being denied the right to return,\u201d Ross wrote. \u201cBesides just listing the harms many are facing, how can we link that as a criminal matter to their not being allowed to return to their familial home areas? \u2026 Israel is denying all of them their right to return, but the report should show convincingly that for some Israel is causing \u2018great suffering\u2019 as CAH.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the memo, Ross also said Tom Porteous, who was at the time chief of programs at HRW, \u201cdidn\u2019t think it was sufficient to just hear from the refugees.\u201d \u201cBeyond the legal standards,\u201d he continued, \u201cwe need [to] make a compelling case for skeptical readers. Maybe this means focusing our CAH claims on certain kinds of cases, such as on people in camps or in similar conditions where the visual, story evidence is most clear.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shakir and Milena Ansari, who contributed major research to the report, submitted their resignations on January 15. \u201cThroughout my tenure, the review process ensured we published the facts as we documented them and the findings that derived from our principled and consistent application of the law,\u201d Shakir wrote in the email sent to Middle East and North Africa (MENA) leadership and human resources. \u201cI can no longer say that.\u201d<\/p>\n

When the report was spiked, researchers on various parts of the organization attempted to revive the report\u2019s publication. \u201cOur review processes, as well as our culture of transparency, have until now ensured that our findings are based on a principled and consistent application of the law. The executive director\u2019s circumvention of the review process throws into question the integrity of our research, which is the foundation of our organization,\u201d read one internal email.<\/p>\n

But senior leadership rejected the push. The only way they would allow it to move forward, they indicated to staffers, was by limiting the findings to Palestinians displaced since 2023 within the Occupied Palestinian Territory, excluding Palestinian refugees from 1948 and 1967 now in other countries denied their right of return to their homes in what is now Israel.<\/p>\n

Around 200 staff members signed a separate letter, some anonymously, in protest of the decision on December 1.<\/p>\n

On January 20, five days after Shakir\u2019s and Ansari\u2019s resignations, the MENA division, where Shakir worked, held an all-staff meeting to discuss the decision. Over 300 staff members were on the call, expressing anger about leadership bypassing their normal process. \u201cWe are losing the organization we love and are so passionate about,\u201d read one message sent in the collective chat.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur work in the MENA region will be severely undermined when and if this crisis goes public,\u201d another read. \u201cNot me and no one will be able to defend the organization.\u201d<\/p>\n

Two days later, Bolopion held a \u201ctown hall\u201d to discuss the decision, though staffers were only given around 10 minutes at the end of the call to ask questions or make comments. The chat option was deactivated.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe pipeline is not sacred,\u201d Bolopion told staff in the meeting, referring to HRW\u2019s internal review process.<\/p>\n

Bolopion, who took the helm at HRW in November, said he did not want to start out his tenure with a situation like this. \u201cMy personal opinion was that I had concern with this legal finding, but I rely on the advice of the more senior people on the team and those who have the legal expertise to make that determination,\u201d he said, according to a recording obtained by Drop Site. \u201cThere were disagreements if the facts supported the conclusions in a way that was rigorous enough.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bolopion clarified for the staff that the concern was not that Palestinians have a right to return, which is HRW policy, but whether or not the denial of the right of return amounted to a crime against humanity for 1948 and 1967 refugees. \u201cI\u2019m not a lawyer, but that\u2019s what the talk of the disagreements was,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

He said he didn\u2019t feel \u201ca sense of urgency\u201d in publishing the report. \u201cThere was no immediate advocacy hook, so the benefits of waiting for me outweighed by far the risk of putting the report out,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Bolopion subsequently announced that HRW would hire a law firm, Jenner & Block, to carry out a review of their processes.<\/p>\n

\u201cReports which identify serious crimes or involve novel legal analysis require strong support and internal alignment before publication. That was not the case with this report,\u201d Bolopion wrote in the January email to staff following the town hall.<\/p>\n

A staffer at HRW\u2014who wished to remain anonymous for fear of retribution and who has been at HRW for over a decade\u2014said that the blocking of this report marks a \u201cwatershed moment\u201d for the organization and sets a troublesome precedent.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not just that the report was pulled, it\u2019s that nobody could get a clear answer why, for months,\u201d they said, requesting anonymity for fear of reprisal in the workplace. \u201cMaybe the leadership feared repercussions and think they spiked this report for the good of the organization.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Screenshots of questions asked in the Q&A section of the town hall.<\/p>\n

Another staffer, also granted anonymity, said the halt of the report has been demoralizing to staff. \u201cThis is coming after seven years of decay at HRW,\u201d referring to changes in leadership, mass layoffs, and an overall increase in bureaucracy in the organization. \u201cStaff input is sidelined or actively put out,\u201d the staffer said.<\/p>\n

Ken Roth, the former executive director of the organization, came out in defense of Bolopion on Tuesday, saying<\/a> Bolopion was right to block the report. \u201cThe new HRW director was right to suspend a report using a novel & unsupported legal theory to contend that denying the right to return to a locale is a crime against humanity,\u201d Roth posted on X. \u201cIt had been rushed through the review process during a leadership transition.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shakir held a virtual farewell call attended by over 130 people on Monday. HRW\u2019s former MENA Director Sarah Leah Whitson hired Shakir in 2016 and was his supervisor until she left the organization in 2020. She is now the Executive Director of Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN).<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have once again run into Human Rights Watch\u2019s systemic \u2018Israel Exception,\u2019 with work critical of Israel subjected to exceptional review and arbitrary processes that no other country work faces,\u201d Whitson told Drop Site. \u201cThe internal struggles necessary to produce it have been uniquely punishing and uniquely painful to the staff involved.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIsrael\/Palestine has been the litmus test for every major institution,\u201d Shakir wrote in his final email at HRW. \u201cAnd there\u2019s a thing about \u2018Palestine exceptionalism\u2019\u2014it often opens the door to other unprincipled compromises.\u201d<\/p>\n

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