Please listen to this webinar.
Tuesday, May 4, 2021, 2:00 pm (ET)
A Briefing on New Human Rights Watch Report on Israeli Violations
of Palestinian Rights
with Omar Shakir and Eric Goldstein
A new report by Human Rights Watch on Israeli violations of Palestinian rights is ruffling feathers in Israel and beyond. The comprehensive report, “A Threshold Crossed,” is based on years of documenting violations of Palestinian human rights, to state, controversially, that “Israeli authorities methodically privilege Jewish Israelis and discriminate against Palestinians” in order to maintain “Jewish Israeli control over demographics, political power, and land.” The report contends that these violations “are so severe that they amount to the crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution.”
To better understand how the world’s leading human rights organization has reached such harsh conclusions, APN hosted a webinar with Human Rights Watch’s Israel and Palestine Director, Omar Shakir, and Eric Goldstein, Director of Human Rights Watch's Middle East and North Africa division.
Omar Shakir, Israel and Palestine Director at Human Rights Watch, investigates human rights abuses in Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza. Prior to his current role, he was a Bertha Fellow at the Center for Constitutional Rights, where he focused on US counterterrorism policies, including legal representation of Guantanamo detainees. As the 2013-14 Arthur R. and Barbara D. Finberg Fellow at Human Rights Watch, he investigated human rights violations in Egypt, including the Rab’a massacre, one of the largest killings of protesters in a single day. A former Fulbright Scholar in Syria, Omar holds a JD from Stanford Law School, where he co-authored a report on the civilian consequences of US drone strikes in Pakistan as a part of the International Human Rights & Conflict Resolution Clinic, an MA in Arab Studies from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Affairs, and a BA in International Relations from Stanford. He speaks English and Arabic.
Eric Goldstein, acting Executive Director of Human Rights Watch's Middle East and North Africa division, is an expert on Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco and Western Sahara. He has conducted research missions to these and other regions of the Middle East since the 1980s, writing numerous reports for Human Rights Watch and publishing articles in news media and academic journals. He has taught courses on human rights at Princeton and Georgetown universities. Before joining Human Rights Watch, Goldstein worked at the Committee to Protect Journalists. He holds a bachelor’s degree from Harvard University and a master’s in international affairs from Columbia University.