Human Rights Watch (HRW) Misleading Report on Palestinian Child Labor

Human Rights Watch (HRW) latest report "Ripe For Abuse: Palestinian Child Labor in Israeli Agricultural Settlements in the West Bank" reflects the organization’s obsession with Israel, as well as its sloppy and distorted research.

Illustrated by a  deliberately misleading 2010 photo of a Palestinian child working on a Palestinian farm, widespread exposure in social media have already forced HRW to issue a correction.

Fraudulent cover  from Human Rights Watch Report

Low-Hanging Fruit: Human Rights Watch and Palestinian Child Laborers

UK Media Watch prompts Telegraph correction to misleading photo illustrating HRW child labor report

HRW bias shines through in report on Arab child laborers

Ripe for Exploitation: HRW's Israel Obsession and Allegations of Child Labor

Rife with error,  the report's accompanying publicity video featured  HRW researcher Bill Van Esveld asserting blatant falsehood-  that Palestinian children "have no option to work on Palestinian farms. Most of them don't exist anymore."

Via CAMERA:

But this claim is belied by the facts. The Palestinian date sector has enjoyed significant growth in recent years. According to a report published by Paltrade and the Ministry of National Economy, among others ("The State of Palestine National Export Strategy 2014-2018"):

Palestinian fresh fruit exports have grown at a rate of 52%, compared to global import growth of 21% over the same time period.

The main fruit exports from the State of Palestine are nuts, dates, grapes, strawberries and almonds. The bulk of export growth for the sector has been driven by a rise of exports of dates. Palestinian exports of dates have risen from US$324,000 in 2007 to US$1.2 million in 2010, reflecting an absolute growth of over 250%.

Indeed, Nakheel Palestine for Agricultural Investment, located in the Jordan Valley, "cultivates a total of six Date Palm farms in Jericho, on the Palestinian side of the Jordan Valley, with a total number of 20,000 trees stretched along an area of 3000 Dunums."

CAMERA has asked HRW to correct Van Esveld's erroneous assertions that Palestinian children have no choice but to work in Israeli settlements and that "most" Palestinian farms "don't exist anymore" and to explain why Palestinian children would choose to work in Israeli settlement farms when Palestinian farms are situated nearby.

David Elhayani, head of the Jordan Valley regional council, denied HRW's allegations, and has stated “there were no children among the 6,000 Palestinians" employed by the regional council.

Human Rights Watch, recipient of a $100 million dollar donation by George Soros  has long been accused of  having bigoted agenda against Israel. "Ripe For Abuse: Palestinian Child Labor in Israeli Agricultural Settlements in the West Bank"  is just the latest in a series of biased, and disproportionate attack pieces on Israel.

Human Rights Watch Founder, Robert Bernstein on the Moral Failures of HRW in the Middle east

Robert Bernstein, the 88 year old founder of Human Rights Watch has recently delivered a lecture condemning the organization he had established for moral failures in its treatment of Israel. These are excerpts from the Shirley and Leonard Goldstein Lecture on Human Rights, delivered November 10 at the University of Nebraska at Omaha.

From the Jerusalem Post:

"I know we all believe in free speech.
We believe in equality for women. We believe in tolerance of each other’s religious beliefs and in an open campus. It seems to me that the State of Israel has all the values we just outlined. It is surrounded by 22 Arab states occupying 99 and a half percent of the land in the Middle East and these states do not share these values. Israel, which occupies less than half of one percent, does share these values.

There is a battle about two things: First, the size of the 23rd state, the new Palestinian state, which at present has many of the same values as the other 22 states. Secondly, the claims of many Arab states, Iran and its proxies Hizbullah and Hamas, about the very legitimacy of the State of Israel.

I don’t think human rights organizations alone can solve this mess but I do wonder about the discussions on many campuses, particularly about Israeli abuses, regardless of what you believe about them, and whether they are constructive.

I don’t see how discussions of Israeli abuses can take such precedence over the kind of state that will be next to Israel. That is, not only internally, although human rights advocates should care about that more than they do, but in its foreign policy toward its neighbor Israel.


He describes how HRW shifted its focus from basic freedoms to warfare:

"It seemed to me that if you talked about freedom of speech, the rights of women, an open education and freedom of religion – that there was only one state in the Middle East that was concerned with those issues. In changing the public debate to issues of war, Human Rights Watch and others in what they described as being evenhanded, described Israel far from being an advocate of human rights, but instead as one of its principal offenders. Like many others, I knew little about the laws of war, Geneva Conventions and international law, and in my high regard for Human Rights Watch, I was certainly inclined to believe what Human Rights Watch was reporting.

However, as I saw Human Rights Watch’s attacks on almost every issue become more and more hostile, I wondered if their new focus on war was accurate."


Describing the build up of arms in Gaza and in Lebanon, and the UN's inability or unwillingness to intervene, Bernstein says

"It is hard for human rights organizations to do anything when war starts. Can anything be more threatening to civilian life than the thought of another war in Gaza? Shouldn’t human rights organizations be talking to the Gazans about the wisdom of their government in rearming? Instead, there is a debate about the blockade of Gaza. The debate over the blockade and whether Israel is achieving the right balance in trying to keep Gaza livable while keeping Gaza unprepared for war is too complicated to discuss here. We do know that a ship, coming from Iran and loaded with sophisticated arms, was apprehended by Israel off the coast. Yet, many visit Gaza and call for a complete lifting of the blockade without mentioning arms.

Human Rights Watch believes the blockade is illegal based on their opinion that Israel and not Hamas controls Gaza. If one believes Hamas controls Gaza, a blockade is a legal way of trying to prevent rearmament.

Hamas’s irresponsible use of arms, even to the point of sacrificing its own citizens as a way to build world sympathy, is well known."

More here

More on those "civilians" killed in Gaza

Local peace activist Becky Johnson makes an interesting observation on her blog

Becky writes:

The Israeli Defense Forces just published its verified death list for the 2009 Gaza operation, Operation Cast Lead, in which they dispute previous death tolls issued by Palestinian organizations. The Palestine Center for Human Rights has put the death toll from that conflict at 1417, 926 civilians, 236 "fighters" meaning armed combatants or 65% civilian death toll. Since the IDF spent over 6 months preparing its list, exhaustively cross-checked its lists of known Hamas, Fatah, Islamic Jihad, etc. with their own lists. They monitored funerals in Gaza and took note of which deaths were dubbed "martyrs" for Hamas, and they were able to weed out the approximately 400 or so "natural" deaths which occur each month in Gaza. A final note is that PCHR claims 116 women lost their lives in the conflict, and the IDF claims 49 women perished from the conflict. Even if we take the PCHR's higher number, that means that only 8% of the deaths were women. The IDF figures are even lower at 4%. If the IDF REALLY were bombing civilians indiscriminately as many "Peace" organizations claim, why aren't more of the deaths women?

Great observation Becky. Read more here