What Has Roth Wrought?

Human Rights Watch's executive director, Ken Roth, included this in a recent op-ed in Foreign Policy in Focus:

Israel is understandably frustrated by the difficulty of fighting Hamas, an urban-based armed group that indiscriminately attacks Israeli civilians. But the kind of asymmetric warfare that typifies combat with terrorist and other armed groups is nothing new. It was widespread at the time of the adoption of the Geneva Conventions in 1949, as illustrated by the militant Zionist group Irgun’s fight against the British colonial rule of what was then Palestine.

Of course, Roth could have mentioned Arab terrorists who operated for three years, in an urban and also countryside fashion, against unarmed Jews in the Palestine Mandate during 1936-1939 as well as against the British. The British reduced one-third of Jaffa to rubble in response.

Here's one testimony:

In 1936, at the height of the Rebellion, the old city was the hideout of armed rebels and its alleys were formidable. The British...moved in with a huge force and dynamited a Y shaped passage, linking the harbor to an opening towards Clock Square. Then they bulldozed the rubble to make a swift passage for armored cars. This surgical act of urban clearing was captured in its razor sharpness in three photographs shot from the air (you can see them in Sarah-Graham Brown's social history of Mandate Palestine).

Another:

The biggest single act of destruction occurred in Jaffa on June 16, 1936, when large gelignite charges were used to cut long pathways through the old city, destroying 220–240 buildings and rendering up to 6,000 Arabs homeless.

Roth wouldn't mention Arab 'militants'. They, almost exclusively, targeted - as they still do - civilians. From their first organized political attacks in Jerusalem in 1920, in Jaffa in 1921 and then throughout the country in 1929, and especially against the Jews of Hebron.

In fact, mentioning them would provide solid background for comprehending the Hamas and Fatah. Almost 90 years of anti-Jewish terror. But that would undermine the 'humanness' of the Arab terrorists. I do not think Roth is keen on doing that.

That terror of Arabs sought out the unarmed, the young, the old, the women, the undefended. And that is quite unlike those Irgunists and members of Lechi who exclusively targeted government officials, army officers and policemen. Yes, and quite unlike the current parellel Roth and friends seek to draw between Israel and "illegal international law" acts.

Roth



never seems to refer to himself as Jewish but rather writes of "his family's experience in Germany" or ignores his family completely.

I presume he is, perhaps, uncomfortable with his Jewish ancestry (unless, of course, he isn't Jewish).

Nevertheless, his targeting of Israel would seem to display some sort of behavior that is odd.