Former Human Rights Watch executive director Kenneth Roth in New York City on August 24, 2022. Photo by ANGELA WEISS/AFP via Getty Images

He’s been called the “godfather of human rights.” After the organization he led accused Israel of apartheid, he nearly lost an appointment at Harvard.

Now Kenneth Roth, who served as executive director of Human Rights Watch for nearly three decades, is speaking out against Israel’s critics.

Well, kind of. Roth said in an interview that while Israel’s actions in Gaza raise serious humanitarian concerns, “the left discredits itself if it becomes an apologist for Hamas slaughtering civilians.”

Roth, who oversaw Human Rights Watch when it became the first major human rights group to use the word “apartheid” in characterizing the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, was initially blocked from a fellowship at Harvard Kennedy School because of his anti-Israel stances. After a public backlash around free speech, Harvard reversed its stance and now Roth is a senior fellow at the Kennedy School’s Carr Center for Human Rights Policy as well as a visiting professor at Princeton.

I spoke with him about the state of human rights in Israel and Gaza and the range of American political responses to the war. Our conversation has been edited for clarity and length.

How do you evaluate Israel’s response to the Hamas terror attack that killed 1,400 people in Israel and kidnapped an estimated 222, in the context of international human rights law?

Under international humanitarian law, Hamas committed a horrendous war crime. They blatantly violated everything that the Geneva Conventions and Protocol stand for: deliberately killing civilians, taking civilians hostage and firing rockets indiscriminately into civilian-populated areas. Israel has every right to respond militarily and target Hamas combatants. 

But Israel, too, is bound by international humanitarian law. The fundamental premise of humanitarian law is that war crimes by one side do not justify war crimes by the other side. The duty to comply with humanitarian law is absolute and is not premised on reciprocity. 

It’s essential that Israel do everything it can to spare civilian life. That means not simply refraining from targeting civilians, but also refraining from firing indiscriminately into civilian-populated areas because there might be some Hamas targets within that. Israel is also prohibited from hitting a military target if the civilian harm would be disproportionate.

International humanitarian law also requires allowing civilians in need access to humanitarian aid. There’s no question that the people of Gaza are in need. The Israeli siege — their blockage of food, water, fuel and electricity — clearly violates that legal responsibility. 

The other concern about this evacuation warning is based on history. In 2006, during the Israeli military conflict with Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Israeli army also issued a warning to civilians to evacuate southern Lebanon. But the problem is that they treated everybody who remained as if they were Hezbollah and attacked many of them. This is a clear violation of humanitarian law: The failure to heed a warning does not turn a civilian into a combatant who can be targeted.

How can Israel balance its imperatives to defeat Hamas and keep Israelis safe, while safeguarding the human rights of Palestinians, especially given Hamas’ use of human shields? 

There’s no question that sometimes Hamas uses civilians as human shields. Other times, it fires from populated areas — not deliberately using people as shields, but nonetheless endangering them. That fact does not absolve the Israeli military from the duty to spare civilians. 

Every time the Israeli military attacks, it still has to abide by humanitarian law. It’s legally wrong to say, “Hamas is using civilians as human shields. Therefore, anything goes.” That’s not what humanitarian law requires.

Many people have asked me: “What is Israel supposed to do? How can they defend themselves?”

Israel has a right to respond militarily to the horrible Hamas attack. But the right to respond militarily does not mean carte blanche. The civilian population of Gaza had nothing to do with the hostages and has no capacity to control this situation.

Sixteen congressional Democrats have signed a resolution calling for a cease-fire in Israel. Do you favor a cease-fire, and how would you respond to Israelis who expect military action in response to the terrorist attack? 

I don’t think anybody’s quarreling with the right of the Israeli military to respond to the Hamas attack. But Israel needs to allow humanitarian aid to the Palestinian civilian population. First, that means opening up the Rafah crossing with Egypt so humanitarian aid can come in. Second, civilians have to be able to receive that aid safely. This doesn’t necessarily require an overall cease-fire.

Can you see a pragmatic long-term path to peace and a two-state solution?

Even before this latest conflict, the two-state solution was dead. I took an interesting tour with Breaking the Silence (the human rights group composed of IDF veterans) and saw a quasi-aerial view of the West Bank. By the time you consider the settlements, the outposts and the bypass roads, what you’re left with is a Swiss cheese of Palestinian enclaves, but nothing that would allow a contiguous, viable state. 

I was left with the sad conclusion that the relentless settlement expansion pursued by various Israeli governments (not just Netanyahu) has pretty much killed a two-state solution. I think that is why more and more observers have begun to call the situation a one-state reality between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River. That’s just all that’s left. 

Given that reality, one has to ask, “What is life like under that one-state reality?” The conclusion that every serious human rights group that has looked at the issue has arrived at is that this is apartheid. The answer to apartheid is equal rights. 

Human Rights Watch has not prescribed the details of what an equal rights regime would look like. There are many possible permutations as to who governs where. But the current state of affairs, where you have millions of Palestinians living under completely unequal and oppressive circumstances, is an unjust and unsustainable solution.

Last week at Harvard, the Palestine Solidarity Committee and 34 other student groups released a statement in which they held “the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence.” The statement was widely criticized for failing to condemn the Hamas massacre. As a Harvard affiliate, what is your perspective?

I would not have signed on to that statement. I think it’s not a fair portrayal of reality. You cannot blame Hamas’ slaughter of civilians on Israel. It’s possible to talk about context, motivations and why there would be anger, but none of that excuses the deliberate slaughter of civilians. 

The problem arose when the Harvard administration felt the need to condemn that statement, and I think that was a mistake. I don’t think university administrations should get into the business of denouncing statements by students or faculty on the campus.

Universities these days are pressured to take positions on many political issues, but they should refrain. They will inevitably be selective: Why are they commenting on Israel-Palestine and not on the Chinese government’s persecution of the Uyghurs, or the Ethiopian government’s slaughter of Tigrayans, or the latest round of ethnic cleansing in Darfur? 

These issues are not the business of university administrations; they shouldn’t get into this realm. By doing so, they end up undermining academic freedom. They are inevitably pushed by donors to denounce — if not curtail — statements by students and faculty members that the donors disagree with.

The New York Times has reported that over a dozen major donors at colleges including the University of Pennsylvania, New York University, Stanford and Cornell are pressuring administrations to support Israel and condemn Hamas. Are you concerned about these dynamics between universities and donors?

Yes. But it’s the universities’ own fault for getting into this business. If universities were to respond and say, “we don’t comment on events in the world. We defend academic freedom,” then the donors would have nothing to say. A donor could still say, “I don’t care about academic freedom. I just want you to speak on my favorite topic.” But then they don’t belong as a donor to the university. 

I faced this when I ran Human Rights Watch. There were certain donors who would say, “Will you take this position on my favorite issue? Then here’s my money.” And my answer was: “I don’t want your money. We uphold human rights principles at Human Rights Watch and we’re not going to allow donors to influence an objective principle.”

There’s an argument that the left — I’m thinking of the Democratic Socialists of America in particular — has really undermined their credibility by failing to strongly condemn Hamas. Do you think the left can criticize Israel without being antisemitic?

I’m not referring to how any particular left-wing group responded to recent events and I’m not sure I followed all of them closely. But the left discredits itself if it becomes an apologist for Hamas slaughtering civilians. There’s no excuse for that. It’s an odd conception of what it means to be progressive to not see that.

There’s an element of the left whose top priority is not human rights, but rather being anti-imperialist: just opposing the U.S. government or any close U.S. allies such as Israel. Prioritizing that over the defense of human rights and basic life is wrong.

On the question of antisemitism, clearly some criticism of the conduct of the Israeli government is antisemitic. But certain defenders of the Israeli government have a tendency to try to silence legitimate criticism of the conduct of the Israeli government conduct by accusing the critics of being antisemitic. I’ve faced this myself. I’ve been accused of being antisemitic and being a Jew hater, which is ridiculous. 

We have to be frank here: Antisemitism is a scourge that harms Jews around the world. But when charges of antisemitism are seen as just a way to deflect and silence criticism of the Israeli government’s conduct, the result is that people stopped taking antisemitism seriously. It cheapens the concept of antisemitism to be just another tool to defend the Israeli government’s abuse. 

The effect may somewhat strengthen the reputation of the Israeli government by discrediting a handful of critics, but it weakens protection for Jews around the world. 

To contact the author, email [email protected].

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