In contrast to the UN secretary-general and the International Committee of the Red Cross, the head of Human Rights Watch is refusing to unequivocally condemn Thursday’s kidnapping of Israeli teenagers, emphasizing instead that they attended school in an “illegal settlement,” and demanding that his critics first condemn an unrelated event from a month ago, the alleged IDF killing of masked rock-throwers.
After repeated appeals from Twitter users for HRW Executive Director Kenneth Roth to end his silence on the abductions, Roth finally responded with this carefully-constructed tweet: “Attending school at illegal settlement doesn’t legitimize apparent kidnapping of Israel teens. They should be freed.”
Attending school at illegal settlement doesn't legitimize apparent kidnapping of #Israel teens. They should be freed http://t.co/EO1jeWh8Ht
— Kenneth Roth (@KenRoth) June 14, 2014
But why would Roth even bother to mention that the youths — two of them aged 16 — studied in an “illegal settlement”? Continue reading ‘Why HRW’s Ken Roth won’t condemn the kidnapping of Israeli children’