Great interview with Kenneth Roth | We need to talk about Israel (with nuance)

“War crimes on one side do not justify war crimes on the other side. »

Criticizing the actions of the Israeli government has always been tricky. In the wake of the massacre perpetrated by Hamas, this is even more true.

We saw this last week when Justin Trudeau refused to say whether the total siege imposed on Gaza was contrary to international humanitarian law.

Kenneth Roth always called a spade a spade.

For this Princeton University professor, who was head of the Human Rights Watch organization for nearly 30 years, any truth is good to speak when it comes to defending human rights.

Even on Israeli-Palestinian issues.

There were many questions burning on my lips since the barbaric terrorist attack by Hamas in Israel, followed by the brutal reprisals by the government of Benjamin Netanyahu in Gaza.

When I learned last week that Kenneth Roth was visiting Montreal, I didn’t have to wonder for long who I was going to ask.

I knew that with him, I would be entitled to a nuanced analysis. And I was convinced that he would speak frankly.

This is also what he did on the controversy surrounding Justin Trudeau’s silence.

Kenneth Roth believes that the Prime Minister was wrong not to comment on this issue. For his part, he answers it very clearly.

“As the International Committee of the Red Cross says: parties to conflict must enable and facilitate the rapid and unhindered passage of humanitarian aid to civilians in need,” he explains.

And to add:

Kenneth Roth was in Montreal as part of an event on the invasion of Ukraine organized by the Montreal Institute for the Study of Genocide and Human Rights at Concordia University. Normal. He has been described in the United States as “the godfather” of the human rights movement.

I also knew that he has unfailing integrity and that he has never been afraid to denounce the excesses of the Israeli government.

Even at the beginning of the year, Harvard University refused to grant him a research grant. He was criticized for being too critical of the Israeli government. After a protest movement within the establishment, it reversed its decision.

I asked this human rights defender to help me understand what is currently happening in the Middle East. As I expected, I was treated to a nuanced analysis.

“Let’s start by stating that there is no justification for war crimes. So what Hamas did, which was deliberately killing hundreds of civilians, kidnapping about 150, and indiscriminately firing rockets into heavily populated areas, all amounted to war crimes. Although we can give a context to this, we cannot and should not justify it,” he replied straight away.

However, he was not finished.

“Why was Hamas driven to such an inhumane and, probably in some ways, suicidal act, because it knew what it would cause? This is an act of desperation, as there has been no progress in Israeli-Palestinian relations for years, if not decades. The Oslo process is dead. The only people talking about the peace process are Western politicians, because they seek to avoid describing how Israelis treat Palestinians. The two-state solution has been killed by relentless settlement expansion,” he added.

When Kenneth Roth was head of the Human Rights Watch organization, it published a report which included a word that must be used with caution: apartheid.

“We were very explicit in saying that this was not a comparison with South Africa, but that we were applying international law. The crime of apartheid is defined in two treaties. One is the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of Apartheid and the other is the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, which defines apartheid as one of the crimes against humanity,” emphasizes -he.

So much for context, then.

Kenneth Roth is equally nuanced when it comes to describing the ongoing operation in Israel, carried out in retaliation for the bloody attacks by Hamas.

“If Israel would just retaliate against Hamas, that would be acceptable. Israel has every right to respond militarily to this enormous military attack, he said. The problem is that even if launching military operations is justified, it doesn’t give you carte blanche in how you carry them out. You have to respect international humanitarian law, and it’s obvious from the start that Israel doesn’t do that. »

In this sense, criticizing the content of the Israeli response is legitimate.

And necessary.

“Israel is in retaliation mode and seems to have forgotten that war crimes on one side do not justify war crimes on the other,” laments Kenneth Roth.

I wanted to talk to him about a comparison that has often been made over the past week between the Hamas terrorist attacks of October 7 and those committed in the United States on September 11, 2001.

In my humble opinion, the comparison holds water. But I quickly became concerned about the parallel, because for several years I covered American blunders as part of Washington’s response to Al-Qaeda attacks.

“I think you’re absolutely right,” he replies. The George W. Bush administration reacted to 9/11 in an abusive manner. She tortured suspects, detained them indefinitely without trial at Guantánamo, invaded Iraq and behaved abusively there, he recalls. All this caused the United States to lose its moral superiority. The world has gone from sympathy to indignation towards them. »

Kenneth Roth explains to me that he himself published a column in the British daily The Guardian on this subject. He argues that the way Washington reacted in 2001 should serve as an example to Israel of what not to do.

The definitive answer to this question should not take long.

And if the Israeli government continues to ignore international humanitarian law, it will face, Kenneth Roth predicts, “global condemnation.” Especially since the number of civilians killed during the Israeli response risks greatly exceeding the number of victims of the horrors of Hamas.”