On July 17, 2006, Human Rights Watch issued a document entitled “Questions and Answers on Hostilities Between Israel and Hezbollah” with the stated purpose of “provid[ing] analytic guidance for those who are examining the fighting as well as for the parties to the conflict and those with the capacity to influence them.”

The piece purports to be a neutral guide setting out the legal rules governing the current hostilities in Lebanon. However, the authors’ distorted views of the underlying facts, selective omission of crucial legal issues, and insistent characterization of Hezbollah and Israel as the primary legal actors — with the attendant implied denial of legal responsibility of Lebanon, Syria, and Iran to end their support for Hezbollah — all mislead readers and betray the bias of the piece. This is a consistent pattern followed by HRW in activities related to the Middle East.

The most outstanding example of HRW’s approach is provided by its question “What is Hezbollah’s status in relation to the conflict?” and the answer:

“Hezbollah is an organized political Islamist group based in Lebanon, with a military arm and a civilian arm, and is represented in the Lebanese parliament and government. As such a group, and as a party to the conflict with Israel, it is bound to conduct hostilities in compliance with customary international humanitarian law and common Article 3.”

This description completely omits several legally important facts about Hezbollah. International law precedents such as decisions of the International Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia make it clear that militias like Hezbollah, given de facto authority by the government of Lebanon (in which Hezbollah has ministerial representation) and acting on behalf of Lebanon, are bound to follow the legal commitments of the state of Lebanon, which extend well beyond common Article 3 and customary law. Moreover, Lebanon itself has the legal responsibility to ensure that Hezbollah abide by international humanitarian law and other bodies of international law.

Furthermore, under Security Council resolution 1373, adopted under Chapter VII of the U.N. Charter, Lebanon is legally required to take a host of actions against international terrorist groups. Hezbollah is a group that has deliberately targeted and murdered civilians in Israel, Argentina, and elsewhere in order to intimidate the population of Israel, and thereby clearly falls into the definition of an international terrorist group. Lebanon is therefore required to end even passive support of Hezbollah; freeze Hezbollah funds; suppress Hezbollah recruitment; eliminate the supply of weapons to Hezbollah; deny safe haven to all Hezbollah persons who finance, plan, support, or commit terrorist acts and bring all such persons to justice; and prevent Lebanese territory being used for the commission of such acts. Similarly, Syria and Iran are forbidden to supply arms to Hezbollah, supply funding or supply safe haven. Shockingly, the only reference to legal obligations related to terrorism in HRW’s document is an accusation that the “logic” of alleged Israeli actions “opens the door to … terrorism,” followed by a warning to Israel (!) that “international humanitarian law explicitly prohibits attacks of which the primary purpose is to intimidate or instill terror in the civilian population.”

Additionally, under article 1 of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, Lebanon and all other signatories of the Convention are required to prevent further killings of Jews by Hezbollah and punish Hezbollah for past killings. Article 2 of the Convention defines genocide as killings committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group, as such. Hezbollah has expressed its intent to destroy Jews as such a number of times, as reported, for example, by Badih Chayban in the October 23, 2002 Lebanese Daily Star, where Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah, was quoted as saying “if they (Jews) all gather in Israel, it will save us the trouble of going after them worldwide.” Each incident in which Jews are killed by Hezbollah is therefore an act of genocide, which countries like Lebanon and Israel (as signatories to the Convention) are legally required to punish and prevent. HRW makes no mention of the parties’ legal duties under the Convention.

Another example of bias may be found in HRW’s insinuation that Israel is not permitted to target the Beirut airport because, according to HRW, it is “at best debatable” that the Beirut airport “constitutes a station for the transport of arms and infrastructure used by Hezbollah” and a possible means of transporting kidnapped Israeli soldiers to another country. Contrary to HRW’s suggestion, it is indisputable — except perhaps by HRW — that Hezbollah has no capability within Lebanon for fashioning weapons such as Katyusha rockets, Raad and Zilzal longer-range missiles, and anti-ship Silkworm missiles that have been used in the fighting of the last few weeks. Since this weaponry cannot be spontaneously generated, the airport is without doubt an important potential way station for transport of war materiel and also hostages. Indeed, Western (including Israeli) intelligence suggests that the airport has already been used in the past for such purposes. If HRW has any contrary evidence, or even any ability to obtain contrary evidence, HRW has yet to identify it. Airports and other ports of entry, as well as other means of transportation like roads and bridges are well-recognized in customary international law as legitimate targets in war.

Further bias may be seen in the selection of issues. Eight questions are posed regarding Israeli military activity, and seven of the eight answers provided by HRW imply Israeli wrongdoing, often without legal or factual basis. By contrast, only three questions regard Hezbollah activity, with only one of HRW’s answers directly acknowledging Hezbollah wrongdoing. HRW treats superficially Hezbollah’s repeated violations of the laws of war in targeting civilians, using indiscriminate weaponry designed to needlessly enhance suffering, threatening the civilian population, using civilian shields and the like. Indeed, while Hezbollah’s use of civilian shields and deliberate placement of military assets in civilian areas are gross violations of the laws of war, HRW refers to such acts only in passing.

HRW amplifies the image of Israeli wrongdoing by speculating as to the existence of improper Israeli motives and then sternly warning Israel against the speculated thought. HRW engages in no similar speculation regarding Hezbollah motives. Thus, for example, HRW speculates that the “real, unstated reason for Israel’s attack on the airport may be precisely to impose a cost on Lebanese civilians.”

Similarly, HRW issues a number of warnings about possible future actions of the parties that might constitute war crimes — such as a possible Israeli failure to permit free passage of food or medical supplies. Here again, HRW’s speculations are limited to imagined future Israeli wrongdoing, rather than imagined future Hezbollah wrongdoing.

Numerous sections of the piece mislead. Consider, for instance, HRW’s discussion of the illegality of Hezbollah’s cross-border attack on July 12 against an Israeli patrol (killing eight) and kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers. HRW asks “was Hezbollah’s capture of Israeli soldiers lawful?” and answers “[t]he targeting and capture of enemy soldiers is allowed under international humanitarian law[; h]owever captured combatants must in all circumstances be treated humanely.”

This answer is extremely deceptive. It is true that this one of the few Hezbollah attacks that actually abides by the “distinction” rule in international humanitarian law that requires that military actions be aimed at military rather than civilian targets. However, the rule of “distinction” is not the only relevant rule of international law. International laws of war forbid Hezbollah and other Lebanese-Iranian militias from violating Israeli sovereignty with a military attack unless justified by factors not available in this case to Hezbollah (such as self-defense). Thus, a complete answer would say that this attack was probably a crime of aggression, although it is one of the few Hezbollah attacks that is not, in addition, a violation of the legal rules of distinction.

HRW buries Hezbollah’s crime of aggression under jargon in a different place in the document where it alludes obliquely to the illegality of the attack, equally obliquely suggests (contrary to international law) that Israel has no right to self-defense and concludes, bizarrely, that “[i]n accordance with its institutional mandate, Human Rights Watch maintains a position of strict neutrality on these issues of jus ad bellum because we find it the best way to promote our primary goal of encouraging both sides in the course of the conflict to respect international humanitarian law”

Crimes of aggression are serious violations of the law of war that were prosecuted at Nuremburg, and are prosecutable under a number of international legal instruments today. How HRW fulfills its institutional mandate or promotes respect for the law by whitewashing Hezbollah’s crimes of aggression — and by hiding Lebanon’s, Syria’s, and Iran’s legal responsibilities, diminishing other Hezbollah war crimes, and amplifying imagined Israeli wrongdoing — is not clear.

Mr. Bell is a law professor at Bar Ilan University and a visiting professor at Fordham University Law School. This piece originally appeared at www.ngo-monitor.org.

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