Submitted by ADAM, Oct 27, 2006 08:41

Its great to see human rights organizationsn like HRW being more carefully scrutinized, and calling them on it when they make mistakes. HRW uses a lot of its resources, from what I can judge, a disproportionate amount (ie, disproportionate to the distribution of HR abuses). However, Mr. Dershowitz makes two errors, both fallacies, in this piece: first, an argument from ignorance ("How could Human Rights Watch have suppressed this evidence from so many different sources? The only reasonable explanation is that they wanted there to be no evidence of Hezbollah's tactic of hiding behind civilians. So they cooked the books to make it come out that way."), and second, and this one is more subtle and hence reasonably disputable, he insists that HRW no longer deserves the support of "real human rights advocates". This is, in my opinion, too hasty and too extreme, for HRW is a major HR advocate in a sea of HR abuses. If it goes, who shall take its place? What would the replacement miss in the meantime? I think that having HRW shore itself up is on the whole a better option.

Sincerely yours, Adam

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