Aryeh Neier, an American human rights activist, was born in Nazi Germany, and he and his Jewish family escaped to the United States. He co-founded Human Rights Watch and is a former director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and president of the Open Society Foundations. He recently wrote an article entitled “Is Israel Committing Genocide?” for the New York Review of Books, in which he concluded that the answer is indeed “yes.”
He was interviewed on CNN on May 26, where he recounted his initial conviction that Israel was acting in self-defense, although in an over-the-top manner. Over time, as he saw that Israel was denying the supply of humanitarian assistance, he came to change his mind and considers the obstruction of humanitarian supplies to be an ongoing act of genocide. The destruction of farms, the killing of aid workers, the attacks on UNRWA (which had succeeded in getting some countries to end funding), the acceptance, if not encouragement, of Israeli settlers to destroy humanitarian supplies—these show a disregard for human life. Claims of anti-Semitism must not be used to insulate Israel from adherence to standards demanded of all nations, he said.
