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This is too late. Yet, happy moment.
Human Rights Watch’s Frankenstein moment.
The watchdog I once worked for rewarded divisive, aggressive tactics — especially when aimed at Israel. Now the forces it nurtured have turned on it.
Danielle Haas. Feb 10, 2026.
There’s a moment in Frankenstein when Victor, the young scientist who creates the novel’s monster, finally understands what he has done — the creature he assembled and failed to restrain is no longer wandering the world. It is coming for him.
Human Rights Watch is living through its own version of that reckoning — and it has only itself to blame.
In an extraordinary rupture last week, Omar Shakir — a former BDS activist who became HRW’s Israel-Palestine director — broke with the organization after a decade at the center of its most sweeping legal accusations against Israel.
Shakir was a driving force in HRW’s role as the first major US organization to brand Israel an apartheid state in 2021, and to accuse it of genocide four years later. His latest push was to have the organization declare that by denying Palestinian refugees and their descendants a “right of return,” Israel is committing “crimes against humanity.” A draft report was underway.
When HRW paused the document “pending further analysis and research,” Shakir went scorched earth. He resigned, along with an assistant researcher, in a made-for-media exit. Accusing his former employer of placing fear of political backlash above a commitment to international law, he declared he had “lost my faith” in the integrity of HRW’s work and in its “commitment to principled reporting on the facts and application of the law.”
He even took a swipe at Ken Roth, HRW’s former leader and his one-time mentor, after Roth publicly branded the report “utterly unpublishable” and said its novel legal theory lacked sufficient support in law.
Some 200 current and former human rights researchers reportedly signed a letter criticizing HRW’s leadership over its handling of the shelved report and Shakir’s resignation.
Dramatic, for sure. Predictable, entirely.
Shakir’s tactics were not deviations. They were the logical outcome of habits the institution had long tolerated — even rewarded — when they advanced approved narratives. Over time, small permissions sent a clear signal: toxic behavior was acceptable, limits were flexible, standards negotiable.
I saw those habits take hold firsthand.
In 2019 and 2021, I raised concerns with multiple senior staff members about what I saw as a growing “lack of proportionality, context, and balance” in work. I warned that internal discourse was drifting away from HRW’s stated values and that published work “in structure, content, and tone does not meet basic standards of balance and professionalism.” There was no meaningful response.
By 2022, resistance to internal scrutiny was more explicit. The Israel-Palestine chapter of the World Report — HRW’s global review of abuses that I oversaw — became a battleground.
One exchange involved the trial of Mohammed al-Halabi, a World Vision employee. The draft described the proceedings as a “mockery of due process.” But it did not mention the charges against him — that he was accused of funneling money to Hamas. When I asked Shakir to note the charges, as per normal standards of balance, he declined, saying, “The charges are wild.”
In emails sent over my head, Shakir said my review “smacked of being selective.”
A manager reminded him that I reviewed all chapters, including his, and backed my position: “We should never mention a case without mentioning what the charges are. If we think the charges are not credible, we should explain why.” It was a relief — but rare.
For the most part, managers placated, ignored, and excused. “This has been mostly instructive as to how things appear to work with Omar and who calls the shots,” I wrote to a manager after several bruising rounds with Shakir. “Three of us raised issues, including yourself, and in a call to me, you said various elements that remain are not acceptable. And yet you totally back down.”
Accommodation often reflected ideological alignment. But it also sometimes reflected quiet capitulation by an older guard increasingly overwhelmed by strident activist tactics. Watching them try to restrain the shift was like watching Canute try to hold back the tide. “I’m torn between saying the future is clear and I’m not part of it — and taking a stand,” one told me. “It depends how much energy I have on any given day.”
Whatever energy did exist proved insufficient; an increasingly divisive, outraged, aggressive way of doing business continued to gain ground. Foreshadowing last week’s petition signed by 200 staff, Shakir played a key role in rallying some 120 employees after October 7 to pressure senior managers to include references to Israeli “apartheid” in a press release about hostages.
“Argumentation” and “balance” were giving way to “messaging” and “narrative” — increasingly amplified by a new, under-the-radar partner: celebrities.
In the days after October 7, staff referenced talks with “Disney,” “top-tier celebrities,” and the “Hadid sisters” — American-Palestinian influencers Gigi and Bella Hadid, whose rhetoric since has included very familiar language: Israeli “apartheid,” colonialism, and ethnic cleansing.
Human Rights Watch’s own methodology holds that while individuals commit abuses, responsibility ultimately rests with the institutions that enable, direct, or fail to restrain them.
Its public fallout with Shakir is a lesson for institutions that believe they can harness ideology and activism — even when doing so strains their own standards — without those same forces eventually turning inward and coming for them too.
Human Rights Watch’s Frankenstein moment.
The watchdog I once worked for rewarded divisive, aggressive tactics — especially when aimed at Israel. Now the forces it nurtured have turned on it.
Danielle Haas. Feb 10, 2026.
There’s a moment in Frankenstein when Victor, the young scientist who creates the novel’s monster, finally understands what he has done — the creature he assembled and failed to restrain is no longer wandering the world. It is coming for him.
Human Rights Watch is living through its own version of that reckoning — and it has only itself to blame.
In an extraordinary rupture last week, Omar Shakir — a former BDS activist who became HRW’s Israel-Palestine director — broke with the organization after a decade at the center of its most sweeping legal accusations against Israel.
Shakir was a driving force in HRW’s role as the first major US organization to brand Israel an apartheid state in 2021, and to accuse it of genocide four years later. His latest push was to have the organization declare that by denying Palestinian refugees and their descendants a “right of return,” Israel is committing “crimes against humanity.” A draft report was underway.
When HRW paused the document “pending further analysis and research,” Shakir went scorched earth. He resigned, along with an assistant researcher, in a made-for-media exit. Accusing his former employer of placing fear of political backlash above a commitment to international law, he declared he had “lost my faith” in the integrity of HRW’s work and in its “commitment to principled reporting on the facts and application of the law.”
He even took a swipe at Ken Roth, HRW’s former leader and his one-time mentor, after Roth publicly branded the report “utterly unpublishable” and said its novel legal theory lacked sufficient support in law.
Some 200 current and former human rights researchers reportedly signed a letter criticizing HRW’s leadership over its handling of the shelved report and Shakir’s resignation.
Dramatic, for sure. Predictable, entirely.
Shakir’s tactics were not deviations. They were the logical outcome of habits the institution had long tolerated — even rewarded — when they advanced approved narratives. Over time, small permissions sent a clear signal: toxic behavior was acceptable, limits were flexible, standards negotiable.
I saw those habits take hold firsthand.
In 2019 and 2021, I raised concerns with multiple senior staff members about what I saw as a growing “lack of proportionality, context, and balance” in work. I warned that internal discourse was drifting away from HRW’s stated values and that published work “in structure, content, and tone does not meet basic standards of balance and professionalism.” There was no meaningful response.
By 2022, resistance to internal scrutiny was more explicit. The Israel-Palestine chapter of the World Report — HRW’s global review of abuses that I oversaw — became a battleground.
One exchange involved the trial of Mohammed al-Halabi, a World Vision employee. The draft described the proceedings as a “mockery of due process.” But it did not mention the charges against him — that he was accused of funneling money to Hamas. When I asked Shakir to note the charges, as per normal standards of balance, he declined, saying, “The charges are wild.”
In emails sent over my head, Shakir said my review “smacked of being selective.”
A manager reminded him that I reviewed all chapters, including his, and backed my position: “We should never mention a case without mentioning what the charges are. If we think the charges are not credible, we should explain why.” It was a relief — but rare.
For the most part, managers placated, ignored, and excused. “This has been mostly instructive as to how things appear to work with Omar and who calls the shots,” I wrote to a manager after several bruising rounds with Shakir. “Three of us raised issues, including yourself, and in a call to me, you said various elements that remain are not acceptable. And yet you totally back down.”
Accommodation often reflected ideological alignment. But it also sometimes reflected quiet capitulation by an older guard increasingly overwhelmed by strident activist tactics. Watching them try to restrain the shift was like watching Canute try to hold back the tide. “I’m torn between saying the future is clear and I’m not part of it — and taking a stand,” one told me. “It depends how much energy I have on any given day.”
Whatever energy did exist proved insufficient; an increasingly divisive, outraged, aggressive way of doing business continued to gain ground. Foreshadowing last week’s petition signed by 200 staff, Shakir played a key role in rallying some 120 employees after October 7 to pressure senior managers to include references to Israeli “apartheid” in a press release about hostages.
“Argumentation” and “balance” were giving way to “messaging” and “narrative” — increasingly amplified by a new, under-the-radar partner: celebrities.
In the days after October 7, staff referenced talks with “Disney,” “top-tier celebrities,” and the “Hadid sisters” — American-Palestinian influencers Gigi and Bella Hadid, whose rhetoric since has included very familiar language: Israeli “apartheid,” colonialism, and ethnic cleansing.
Human Rights Watch’s own methodology holds that while individuals commit abuses, responsibility ultimately rests with the institutions that enable, direct, or fail to restrain them.
Its public fallout with Shakir is a lesson for institutions that believe they can harness ideology and activism — even when doing so strains their own standards — without those same forces eventually turning inward and coming for them too.
