Roth, however, volunteers a test of his organization's reliability when it comes to the Arab-Israeli conflict, namely Human Rights Watch's behavior at the UN's infamous "anti-racism" conference held in Durban, South Africa shortly before 9/11. If the organization's actions were assailable there, he says, it would make "it easy to reject the objectivity of Human Rights Watch reports on Israeli conduct

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As a representative of the IAJLJ, I was a member of the caucus of international human rights nongovernmental organizations. Human Rights Watch, along with others such as Amnesty International and the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights (renamed Human Rights First), was also a member of this caucus. Together we had a right to vote on the final NGO document, and hours before the last session gathered together to discuss our position.

The draft included egregious statements equating Zionism with racism, and alleging that Israel is an "apartheid" state guilty of "genocide and ethnic cleansing designed to ensure a Jewish state."

As we arrived at our meeting the chief Durban representative of Human Rights Watch, advocacy director Reed Brody, publicly announced that as a representative of a Jewish group I was unwelcome and could not attend. The views of a Jewish organization, he explained, would not be objective and the decision on how to vote had to be taken in our absence. Not a single one of the other international NGOs objected.

THE HUMAN Rights Watch role at Durban? To inhibit Jewish lawyers and jurists from being fairly represented or defended