Human Rights Watch Relied on Terror-Tied Researchers To Produce Reports on 'Israel and Palestine,' Watchdog Report Finds
Human Rights Watch, an anti-Israel nonprofit funded by George Soros and the Ford Foundation, relied on staffers linked to Islamist terrorist groups to produce research on "Israel and Palestine," according to a new watchdog report.
One HRW staff researcher on "Israel and Palestine" issues, Milena Ansari, worked for an Israeli-designated terrorist group associated with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the report from Israeli watchdog NGO Monitor found. HRW also relied on a Lebanese researcher prominently quoted in one of its recent reports, Mahdi Sadeq, who is an open supporter of Hezbollah and works for an organization tied to the terror group.
The news comes as left-leaning U.S. foundations—including Soros’s Open Society Foundations, the Ford Foundation, and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund—pour millions of dollars into HRW, which in turn produces reports that often accuse Israel of war crimes. Anti-Israel lawmakers on the left, including Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.) and Rashida Tlaib (D., Mich.), routinely cite those reports.
NGO Monitor said HRW’s reliance on Ansar and Sadeq is the latest indication of the group's extreme bias against Israel.
"HRW ‘reports’ continue the 25-year practice of citing propagandists and terror affiliates as expert sources," NGO Monitor president Gerald Steinberg told the Washington Free Beacon.
"Mahdi Sadeq is a clear Hezbollah supporter, and Milena Ansari worked with an NGO linked to the PFLP terror organization before employment at HRW. HRW's false accusations against Israel have exploited the facade of research to push an agenda of demonization."
The NGO Monitor report, shared with the Free Beacon, details those terror ties.
Milena Ansari, who serves as HRW’s "Israel and Palestine Assistant Researcher," previously worked as the international advocacy officer for the Palestinian nonprofit Addameer from April 2021 until November 2023, according to the report.
The Israeli Defense Ministry designated Addameer as a terrorist organization in 2021, saying it "operates as an arm" for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
While working at Addameer, Ansari repeatedly expressed support for terrorists. She called for the "right of the Palestinian people to resist this ongoing [Israeli] occupation with whatever means provided for them" during a podcast interview in 2022.
She also campaigned against Israel’s deportation of Salah Hamouri, a PFLP terrorist convicted in a plot to assassinate Israel’s chief rabbi in 2005. Hamouri, whom Israel released from prison as part of a deal to free hostage Gilad Shalit from Hamas captivity in 2011, went on to work as a field researcher for Addameer. Israel deported Hamouri to France in 2022.
"With Allah’s grace, he feels well, and as we know the prisoners, despite all the injustice they suffer, they still have a fierce spirit of resistance within them," said Ansari in a statement denouncing Israel’s deportation of Hamouri in 2022.
"By deporting Salah, [Israel] thinks that it will silence him and that he will see the beauty of France and forget about the suffering of Palestine, but I am convinced that this will not come to be," she said in another interview.
HRW’s research also relied on information from Sadeq, the executive director of the Nabatieh Emergency Rescue Service Association who has posted online about his "love" for slain Hezbollah terror chief Hassan Nasrallah. HRW prominently quoted Sadeq in a report last month that accused Israel of destroying "vast swathes of critical civilian infrastructure and public services, preventing tens of thousands of Lebanese from returning to their homes."
The HRW report—which dismissed Hezbollah’s rocket attacks and use of civilian infrastructure for terrorist activity as unsubstantiated Israeli claims—said Israel’s actions were part of a "series of apparent war crimes and unlawful attacks by the Israeli military, including apparently deliberate attacks on journalists, peacekeepers, medics, and civilian objects."
HRW quoted its interviews with Sadeq in the report. "For the last three days, we haven’t been able to find anything to eat here," Sadeq told HRW. "Stores and restaurants are gone, banks are gone, food stores are all gone, all pharmacies are gone."
HRW noted that Sadeq leads the Nabatieh Emergency Rescue Service Association and reported that he was calling for donations to community service groups.
The Nabatieh Emergency Rescue Service Association operates under the Husseini Club, according to Arabic news reports cited by NGO Monitor. The club regularly hosts meetings with Hezbollah leaders and has published statements celebrating the Oct. 7 attacks and praising the "hero resistance fighters, from the respected [military] wings of Amal and Hezbollah," according to NGO Monitor.
Sadeq frequently voices support for Hezbollah and terrorists on Facebook, NGO Monitor reported. After Nasrallah was killed, Sadeq posted a photo of the terror chief next to a broken-heart emoji, and wrote: "I had no idea that my love for you penetrates me this deep. My blessings be upon you, our master."
He also posted a photo of a terrorist firing a rocket-propelled grenade alongside an image of a Nabatieh Emergency Rescue Service Association aid worker, saying they "express all the meanings of the holiday" of Eid al-Adha.
"It is you who express all the meanings of the holiday. Sacrifice, answering the call, purity, and pursuit in the name of the nation’s dignity. May your Eid be blessed," wrote Sadeq.
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