Lebanese-American scholar As’ad Abu Khalil was reported on his Angry Arab News Service blog that insiders at Human Rights Watch are “reporting to me that discussions are being held at the HIGHEST LEVEL on how to report on the Israeli attacks on Gaza without displeasing the Pro-Israeli donors.”

HRW is the U.S.-brand of Amnesty International, but functions as an independent organization. As a group partly dedicated to monitoring the actions of warring parties, HRW has a solemn duty to report unlawful actions in the field of war.

Naturally, the state of Israel is a constant violator as can be seen in the most recent onslaught against Gaza. But in America criticism of any Israeli police is often meet with strong and swift denunciations Israel was a tireless and very well-organized lobby in the U.S.

During the Israel-Hezbollah war, HRW did its job. It reported on Israel’s and Hezbollah’s transgressions. But the balanced reported came under attack. The organization was denounced as anti-Israel and even anti-Semitic. Its director, Ken Roth, is a Jew who’s father escaped Nazi Germany and his mother the pogroms in Poland. But that wasn’t enough of a shield. High-profile individuals in the Jewish community, such as Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz, lashed out at HRW for daring to note that Israel was committing unlawful practices in the Lebanese battlefield.

The neo-conservative weekly, The Weekly Standard, devoted a cover article to documenting HRW’s supposed bias against Israel.

Some individuals did come to the defense of HRW, defending their reporting and criticizing critics, wrote Los Angeles Times op-ed writer Rosa Brooks:

“Publish something sharply critical of Israeli government policies and you’ll find out. If you’re lucky, you’ll merely discover that you’ve been uninvited to some dinner parties. If you’re less lucky, you’ll be the subject of an all-out attack by neoconservative pundits and accused of rabid anti-Semitism. ... But what’s most troubling about the vitriol directed at Roth and his organization isn’t that it’s savage, unfounded and fantastical. What’s most troubling is that it’s typical. Typical, that is, of what anyone rash enough to criticize Israel can expect to encounter. In the United States today, it just isn’t possible to have a civil debate about Israel, because any serious criticism of its policies is instantly countered with charges of anti-Semitism. Think Israel’s tactics against Hezbollah were too heavy-handed, or that Israel hasn’t always been wholly fair to the Palestinians, or that the United States should reconsider its unquestioning financial and military support for Israel? Shhh: Don’t voice those sentiments unless you want to be called an anti-Semite — and probably a terrorist sympathizer to boot.”

But the fact that such an institution came under such vocal criticism has worried officials at HRW that if if continued to be perceived, fairly or unfairly, as hostile to Israel, then it would lose many wealthy Jewish contributors.

In doing its duty, HRW must also balance the views of many of its supports. A testament to how delicate one must step in criticizing Israel in America.