AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.

We end today’s show with a discussion of Human Rights Watch and the Palestinian right of return. Earlier this week, the two-person Israel-Palestine team at Human Rights Watch announced they’re resigning, after HRW’s new leadership blocked a report which called Israel’s denial of Palestinian refugees the right of return a crime against humanity. The team had interviewed 53 refugees in camps across Jordan, Syria and Lebanon for the stalled report, connecting the expulsions of Palestinians in 1948 all the way to the present moment. Omar Shakir, who headed the team for nearly a decade, and assistant researcher Milena Ansari, in separate resignation letters, suggested the decision to pull the report just before its scheduled publication came from a fear of political backlash.

In an email to staff last week, Human Rights Watch’s new executive director insisted the disagreement was not over the Palestinian right of return. In a statement sent to _Jewish Currents and The Guardian, Human Rights Watch said, quote, “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’s high standards. For that reason, the publication of the report was paused pending further analysis and research,” unquote.

For more, we’re joined by two guests. Joining us from Amman, Jordan, Omar Shakir, just resigned as the Israel-Palestine director at Human Rights Watch. And we’re joined by Kenneth Roth, former executive director of Human Rights Watch. He’s author of Righting Wrongs: Three Decades on the Front Lines Battling Abusive Governments.

We welcome you both back to Democracy Now! We know you’ve worked together for a long time, when Ken was head of Human Rights Watch, and, Omar, you were head of the Israel-Palestine Division. But you differ on that report right now. Omar, I’d like you to start off by saying what you were presenting in this report and why you feel HRW blocked it.

OMAR SHAKIR: This report was assessing the Israeli government’s denial of the right of return on Palestinian refugees. It was coming in the context, of course, of the mass ethnic cleansing and forced displacement of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. The idea here was to connect the erasure of camps in Gaza with the emptying of camps in the West Bank, with the attacks on UNRWA and the long-standing denial of return, and to take stock at this moment, where many Palestinians speak of a second Nakba, to understand the lessons of the first one, because the legal architecture of denial of return was not built in 1948. It was built in 1949 to 1952.

So, we wrote a report and went through the normal Human Rights Watch process. It was signed off by all the relevant departments, including the legal department. It was put on the website, back end of the website. It was translated to multiple languages. External partners were briefed. And on the eve of its release, our new executive director pulled the report. He provided nothing in writing to explain that decision. And to this date, nothing has been put in writing. And I’ve done dozens of reports like this, and I’ve never seen anything like this in the organization’s history.

But my engagement with senior staffers made very clear that, really, the overriding concern here was a concern of being seen as challenging a political preference, with no basis in international law, the idea of maintaining the Jewishness of the Israeli state, one, of course, forged through ethnic cleansing and maintained through apartheid. And in this case, that concern trumped calling for the fundamental rights of Palestinians to return to their home. And ultimately, after giving a decade for this organization, I did not feel I could continue to do so when I’ve lost faith in our new leadership’s fidelity to the integrity of what we do best, which is to publish the facts that we document and consistently apply the law.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: So, Omar, what you’re saying then is that what Human Rights Watch is saying, that, quote, “Various staff members expressed concern with the report during the review,” but that it took the arrival of the new executive director to exert the leadership — what were some — were there concerns expressed by other staff previous to your completion of the report?

OMAR SHAKIR: Look, any report that Human Rights Watch issues, there’s going to be concerns raised by different people. But at Human Rights Watch, there’s a deference to expertise. And in this case, the report spent seven months in review. It was signed off on by the Middle East Division, by all experts in their expertise, the Women’s Rights Division, the Children’s Rights Division, the Refugee Rights Division, the International Justice Division, and the legal office and the program office, and it was set for release. And that was over a seven-month process.

So, were there concerns raised during this time? Yeah. I mean, the program reviewer, when he signed off on the report, said, “It’s a fantastic report. The law is clear. It works well in this format.” His one concern was how we can better prepare ourselves to address detractors saying that we’re calling to end the Jewish state. And then, when it went through legal review again, they said, “This is the correct law.” We’ve applied it before, including in the context of the Chagos Islands in 2023. And the report was signed off on, and it was slated for release, and we briefed external partners, until new leadership came in. And, of course, these other concerns bubbled to the surface. And the report was pulled without anything being put in writing.

And I should note again that that happened in late November. For the next six weeks, I tried very much to engage. And they eventually later said, “Well, we have some concern about the legal framing.” So we offered numerous ways forward that would address the stated legal concerns, including to base the finding on a different crime against humanity, which is transparently clear. And they said, no, that this did not address the concern around advocacy, which had been communicated to me by the chief advocacy officer before as being about the Jewish state, and therefore, they wouldn’t even allow edits to be made for the report and to be put back in review. I was told, “You either narrow the determination,” in a way that has no basis in fact or law, “or the report’s not coming out.” So I tendered my resignation.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to bring Ken Roth into this conversation. Omar, your resignation comes as HRW’s new executive director, Philippe Bolopion, begins his tenure. Well, the former executive director of Human Rights Watch, Ken Roth, has rejected your claims of politically motivated censorship. He’s been quoted in The Guardian, in The New York Times, in Jewish Currents. He said, quote, that you tried “to fast-talk through the review system at a time of leadership transition an extreme interpretation of the law that was indefensible.” But, Ken Roth, you’ve just arrived in Pakistan right now. Can you explain why you are critical of the report, you who have approved so many of Omar Shakir’s reports?

KENNETH ROTH: Yes, Amy. Good to be here. And it’s odd being here, because usually I’m lambasted for being too critical of Israel.

But, you know, my first principle in dealing with issues of Israel and Palestine is to be scrupulously accurate in applying the facts and the law. And to be honest, you know, if I were still executive director, this report would never have gotten past me. You know, I was always an integral part of the review process. I worked with Omar extensively. The apartheid report that Omar initially drafted, you know, when it came to me, it was utterly unpublishable. And I had to go through three detailed edits before we put out a report that was very strong and that was unimpeachable. The Israeli government didn’t know what to do with it. We strengthened the report by making sure that we accurately applied the law on the facts. And that’s just not the case here.

I mean, the issue here is actually not the right to return. Human Rights Watch has endorsed the right to return for three decades. The issue is whether you call the denial of the right to return a crime against humanity. And that’s a brand-new theory. There is one case on this point vaguely by the International Criminal Court in the case of the Rohingya. And it said two things of note. I mean, one is that they can return to their country — didn’t even specify an area. And so, you know, it’s unclear — and the report, I don’t think, even addresses this. You know, what is the relevant country here? Is it Palestine or Israel? But more to the point, in the case of the Rohingya, there was extreme suffering. They are not recognized as refugees. They’re denied the right to formally work. They can’t educate their children in the Bangladeshi system. So, this is severe. And the court said, in that context, you might rise to the great suffering requirement before you can call a right to return a crime against humanity.

Now, can you say that here for the 6 million Palestinian refugees? I mean, you know, many are citizens in Jordan. They’re leading ordinary lives. You know, some are in the United States. Is somebody in Detroit, you know, still suffering so greatly that it’s a crime against humanity not to let them return? I mean, I happen to be in Lahore, Pakistan, right now. You know, at the same time as the Nakba took place of the Palestinians in 1948, here there were 400,000 Hindus and Sikhs who were forcibly expelled. I mean, people would laugh at me if I said it was a crime against humanity that Pakistan is not letting them return now, you know, 70-some years later. So, you know, this is a complicated issue.

So, when Philippe Bolopion came in — I mean, Omar did benefit from this leadership gap. When he came in and played the role that I would have played, he said, “This can’t go forward. You can’t possibly put forward a report like this, which is just so shoddy in terms of applying the complicated sets of facts to this brand-new legal theory. It’s got to go back to the drawing board and be approved,” which is exactly what I would have done. So, you know, to say that this is some big censorship thing is crazy. I mean, it would have been a nonissue if I was there, because I would have still been part of the review process. When Philippe arrives and does the same thing, suddenly Omar, you know, wants to fall on his sword and pretend that this is like some great censorship disaster. It isn’t. The aim here is to put out a report that’s defensible.

AMY GOODMAN: You’re both lawyers. Omar Shakir, your response?

OMAR SHAKIR: Look, I mean, Ken is overlooking the fact that Human Rights Watch, in the context of the Chagos Islands in 2023, set out very clearly that denial of return amounts to a crime against humanity. So, if what Ken is saying is accurate, that the legal theory is unsupported and untested, Human Rights Watch should do something it’s never done in its history, which is to retract that report. It’s a matter of consistency for us. If in that report we laid out a legal theory, it has to be applied here.

The points that Ken make are actually not the arguments that Human Rights Watch has made. They have made arguments saying, “Well, you know, the factual research could be much stronger,” because everything that Ken laid out regarding the harm of the Rohingya in Myanmar, you have with Palestinians. Let’s remember, you have generations of refugees, you know, fathers and grandfathers, that live their life as refugees, that don’t have the right to work, that don’t have citizenship, that face restrictions on all aspects of their everyday life. And it stems, at root, from the fact that the Israeli government denies them the right to return to their homeland, disconnects them, severs them, the anguish of being disconnected from your land. And by the way, we heard these testimonies from Palestinians in Gaza who are now in Egypt, who wanted to return amid a genocide, to their land, to their streets, to their neighborhoods. Imagine that pain over the course of many, many generations. That anguish clearly meets the threshold of a crime against humanity.

And let’s remember, I mean, Ken hasn’t read the report. We wouldn’t even cite Ken’s testimony in a report, because it’s all secondhand, and it’s not based on having seen the report directly. Here, the difference between when Ken was executive director is he would read a report, he would make comments, we would have a back-and-forth like we had here, and we would arrive at a good place. In this particular case, you know, Philippe came in. He made a decision. Nothing was put in writing. There was no chance to directly engage. We offered to make edits to address any concerns, including to base it on a separate crime against humanity of persecution, which is straightforward — severe abuse of fundamental rights with a discriminatory intent. Right of return is fundamental. It’s severe. It’s multiple generations. And it’s discriminatory. Jewish citizens of other countries can go to Israel and become citizens. And we were told nothing about the law at that point. The only argument was the advocacy concerns.

And that’s really the key point here, Amy. Human Rights Watch’s credibility is we release our reports no matter what they are. We did it on October 7th, even though there wasn’t a really good advocacy strategy, because the leaders that carried out those attacks, the crimes against humanity, were being killed. We released a report on Al-Ahli Hospital in November 2023 where there was no advocacy strategy, and it wasn’t determinative. We released my report on the Rabaa massacre in Egypt, even though it shut our office down in Egypt, because the principal thing to do is you publish the research when it’s ready. But in this case, Human Rights Watch was unwilling to do so. And it comes, at its core, because the right of return remains this third rail even among progressive human rights institutions. This was the first report in Human Rights Watch’s history that looks holistically at the plight of Palestinian refugees. And it’s the first time that a decision like this is made to shelve a report on its eve because of concerns about pragmatism. And simply, I couldn’t continue when I felt these decisions were not being rooted in our normal methodology, and we’re letting certain voices and certain political preference trump fundamental rights.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Ken Roth, I’m wondering if you could respond, but also if you could talk about what kind of pressure Human Rights Watch has been under from Israel in prior reports that you’ve produced.

KENNETH ROTH: Yeah, well, I mean, I should say that, I mean, you know, Human Rights Watch is always under pressure for whatever we say on Israel. That’s just par for the course. I mean, I have an entire chapter in my book on this. You just live with it. It doesn’t really matter. You know, Human Rights Watch, as I noted, has always endorsed the right to return, so, you know, there’s no greater pressure on us now. I don’t think anybody even knew this report was coming, so there was zero pressure on this report.

You know, what Omar is outlining, though, is precisely why Philippe was right to send this back to the drawing board, because, you know, some Palestinian refugees may indeed have this great suffering required for it to be a crime against humanity, but a lot of them clearly don’t. And that, from my understanding, is not the nuance that the report introduced, to suggest that all 6 million Palestinian refugees get to go back to Israel, you know, that they’re all suffering so severely that this is a crime against humanity if they don’t. Or separately, you know, could the crime against humanity be satisfied by going to Palestine, you know, the West Bank or Gaza, rather than Israel? I mean, I don’t know. But these are the kinds of complexities that need to be addressed, rather than just rush through a 33-page report, which just is not long enough, is not detailed enough, doesn’t have enough research to get into these complexities to make a compelling case. That’s why I never would have allowed this report to get through the review process.

AMY GOODMAN: We just have — 

KENNETH ROTH: And it shouldn’t be approved.

AMY GOODMAN: We just have 20 seconds. Omar Shakir, from Amman, your final comment?

OMAR SHAKIR: Look, I think it says something very clear that two former Human Rights Watch staffers are having a discussion about the integrity of the work and the future of the organization. Where is Philippe Bolopion?

AMY GOODMAN: Well, Omar Shakir, I want to thank you very much for being with us. Omar has just resigned as Israel-Palestine director at Human Rights Watch after HRW blocked a report which called Israel’s denial of the right of return for Palestinians a crime against humanity. And Kenneth Roth, former executive director of Human Rights Watch.

That does it for our show. On Monday, February 23rd, Democracy Now! will be celebrating our 30th anniversary at Riverside Church with Angela Davis, Naomi Klein, Maria Ressa, Michael Stipe, Wynton Marsalis and many others. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González. We hope to see you there. Go to democracynow.org for information.