Arshad Mahmood Awan
The Crisis of Moral Clarity: When Human Rights Organizations Fail Gaza The genocide unfolding in Gaza has revealed a profound moral failure that extends far beyond the complicity of Western governments. While these states have predictably defended Israel with unwavering determination despite its documented atrocities against the Palestinian people, a more troubling development has emerged: the collapse of moral courage among institutions specifically established to defend human rights regardless of political convenience. The systematic destruction of Gaza and the mass killing of its civilian population should have been a moment of absolute clarity for human rights organizations. Instead, it has exposed how deeply institutional cowardice has infected bodies that claim to stand for universal principles.
Western governments have performed exactly as one might expect from powers invested in maintaining a particular geopolitical order. They have defended Israeli actions with remarkable consistency even as evidence of genocide mounted daily. Their rhetorical gymnastics and diplomatic maneuvering to shield Israel from accountability followed predictable patterns of state behavior when core strategic interests align with atrocity. The moral bankruptcy of these governmental positions was always evident to those willing to see. Governments calculate their positions based on alliances, economic interests, and power dynamics. Their hypocrisy, while deplorable, operates according to the cold logic of state interest.
The failure of independent human rights organizations represents something far more corrosive to the cause of justice. These institutions exist precisely because governmental actors cannot be trusted to uphold universal principles when those principles conflict with national interests. Human rights groups derive their authority and legitimacy from their independence, from their willingness to name violations wherever they occur, from their commitment to applying consistent standards regardless of the political power of perpetrators. When these organizations abandon this foundational principle, they destroy the very basis of their credibility and purpose.
The departure of Omar Shakir from Human Rights Watch illuminates this institutional failure with stark clarity. Shakir served as the organization’s Israel-Palestine director, a position requiring both expertise and courage given the intensity of pressure that surrounds any criticism of Israeli policies. His resignation came after HRW blocked publication of a report documenting that Israel’s denial of Palestinian right of return constitutes a crime against humanity. This suppression was apparently motivated by fear of backlash, by concern that stating documented legal facts would provoke powerful reactions from pro-Israel advocacy networks and potentially jeopardize organizational interests.
The substance of the blocked report addresses a fundamental injustice at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Palestinian right of return concerns the millions of Arabs and their descendants who were ethnically cleansed from their homeland during the Nakba and subsequent conflicts. International law recognizes the right of refugees to return to their homes. Israel’s categorical denial of this right, enforced through military power and discriminatory legislation, perpetuates the original crime of displacement. Characterizing this denial as a crime against humanity represents not inflammatory rhetoric but sober legal analysis grounded in international humanitarian law. That Human Rights Watch would suppress such analysis reveals organizational priorities fundamentally at odds with human rights advocacy.
HRW defended its decision with bureaucratic language about complexity and the need for additional analysis. These explanations follow a familiar pattern of institutional rationalization. Complex issues always require thorough analysis. Additional research can always be justified. But when complexity becomes a perpetual excuse for inaction, when analysis becomes a method of indefinite delay, these procedural justifications expose themselves as mechanisms of evasion. The timing of this suppression, during a period when Israel was conducting what numerous legal scholars and genocide experts characterize as genocidal violence against Gaza, strips away any pretense of good faith from such explanations.
The Gaza conflict has functioned as a moral litmus test, revealing the actual commitments of institutions and individuals who claim dedication to human rights. Hundreds of thousands of people in Western cities demonstrated genuine moral courage by taking to the streets to condemn their governments’ complicity in mass slaughter. These ordinary citizens understood what their leaders refused to acknowledge: that silence in the face of genocide makes one complicit in genocide. Their governments responded to these expressions of moral clarity by intensifying their defense of Israeli actions or offering empty gestures of concern while continuing material and diplomatic support for the violence.
The Muslim world’s failure to act decisively until October’s partial ceasefire represents another dimension of this moral collapse. Governments claiming to represent Islamic values and Arab solidarity watched for months as Gaza’s population faced systematic destruction. Their eventual minimal responses came too late for the tens of thousands already killed, for the children buried under rubble, for the families obliterated in their homes. This inaction demonstrated that strategic calculations and fear of confronting Western power override proclaimed principles across the geopolitical spectrum.
When human rights organizations practice self-censorship to avoid offending powerful lobbies, they abandon their essential function. The entire point of such bodies is to name uncomfortable truths that powerful actors wish to suppress. If these institutions calibrate their work according to political acceptability rather than documented facts, they become indistinguishable from the governmental bodies they supposedly hold accountable. The work loses its impact because it loses its credibility, its independence, its moral authority.
The larger Western human rights ecosystem operates according to a deeply corrupted double standard. Abuses attributed to geopolitical adversaries receive amplification and sustained attention regardless of the quality of evidence. Meanwhile, abuses committed by allies and partners disappear into carefully maintained silence or receive minimal acknowledgment stripped of meaningful consequences. This selective application of human rights principles transforms universal values into weapons of geopolitical competition. It ensures that human rights discourse serves power rather than constraining it.
The suffering of Gaza must be documented completely and acknowledged fully. The world must confront the reality of what occurred there, not as abstract tragedy but as concrete crime with identifiable perpetrators and enablers. Only through such confrontation can any meaningful commitment to preventing future atrocities emerge. When institutions tasked with this documentation fail in their duty, when they subordinate truth to political convenience, they ensure that such atrocities will occur again. The phrase “never again” becomes hollow repetition rather than binding commitment when those with the responsibility to document and prevent genocide choose silence instead.
