Book Review: Righting Wrongs: Three Decades on the Front Lines Battling Abusive Governments

Abstract

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[Excerpts]

As Executive Director of Human Rights Watch (HRW) for almost three decades, Kenneth Roth led the transformation of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) into a powerful industry, parallel to the transformation of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights and associated institutions into selective advocacy instruments, applied particularly against Israel. As a result, Roth is a very controversial figure—embraced by postcolonialist anti-Zionist ideologues and pilloried by their opponents.

In this lengthy recounting (325 pages of text and 323 endnotes), Roth presents his case and counters the criticism. The book is carefully manicured and packaged, highlighting the author’s accomplishments in fundraising, public relations, and political marketing, while also systematically omitting key events and details that contradict his version. The book’s fifteen chapters cover Roth’s advocacy as well as that of HRW across the globe, including Russia, China, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Hungary, Poland, Rwanda, and the United States, and at the UN as well. Notably, there is no chapter on Iran and very few examples relating to Tehran’s record as one of the world’s most repressive and aggressive regimes. This is entirely consistent with a postcolonial agenda that minimizes emphasis on Iran. While a brief chapter on Syria presents the responses of Roth and HRW to the Assad regime’s brutal attacks against rebel strongholds following the 2011 uprising, it stands in contrast to the very limited attention given to Syrian repression in the previous two decades.

Most of the chapters are chronological compilations, making for slow reading with numerous diversions and repetitions. Indeed, this is more of a reference work for libraries than an insightful and fluid autobiography. The pages are filled with details of Roth’s extensive globetrotting (always in economy class, he insists), lectures to various dignitaries and officials, and snarky dismissals of opponents—“trolls … who see their role as going after anyone who criticizes their favorite government. Supporters of the Israeli government are by far the worst” (p. 39). On HRW founder Robert Bernstein’s 2009 essay in The New York Times—“Rights Watchdog, Lost in the Mideast”—denouncing the organization’s focus on attacking democracies and turning Israel into a “pariah state,” Roth blames a conspiracy led by “a small group of right-wing New Yorkers [who] wanted to stop our criticism of Israel” and sought “to discredit our criticism of Israeli repression” (pp. 190–91). For the record, Bernstein and other board members asked the author of this review, as well as other non-New Yorkers not necessarily with right-wing political proclivities, to discuss these issues. Bernstein told us that the appointment of Roth was “one of my biggest mistakes.” The exodus of donors who followed Bernstein created a major crisis, but HRW was rescued when George Soros pledged to contribute $10 million annually.