Disregard and contempt for human rights
"In the age of the internet, the underlying data are generally available"
Against the backdrop of a global howl watching horrors unfold that much of the Western world thought not possible after the Second World War, the U.S. State Department yesterday released its annual reports on human rights, as mandated by Congress. The Country Reports on Human Rights Practices inform U.S. policymakers on human rights abuses that can impact U.S. foreign aid, trade agreements, arm sales and asylum cases. Below are some relevant excerpts from how the State Department drafted this year’s reports:
The Country Reports rely on information available from a wide variety of credible sources, including foreign government officials; victims of alleged human rights abuses; academic and congressional studies; and reports from media, international organizations, and nongovernmental organizations..
We minimize the amount of statistical data in the report. In the age of the internet, the underlying data are generally available..
Evaluating the credibility of reports of human rights abuses remains difficult. Most governments and opposition groups deny they commit human rights abuses and occasionally go to great lengths to conceal any wrongdoing..
Many governments that profess to respect human rights may in fact secretly order or tacitly condone abuses. Consequently, the Country Reports look beyond statements of policy or intent to examine reports of what a government did, or did not do, to protect human rights and promote accountability, including the extent to which the government investigated, brought to trial, or punished those responsible for any abuses.
Response to the State Department reports from international human rights groups:
Sarah Yager, Human Rights Watch Washington director:
The State Department’s new human rights report is in many places an exercise of whitewashing and deception.
Entire categories of abuses have been erased, while serious rights violations by allied governments have been papered over.
Amanda Klasing, Amnesty International USA’s national director of government relations and advocacy:
We have criticized past reports when warranted, but have never seen reports quite like this. Never before have the reports gone this far in prioritizing an administration’s political agenda over a consistent and truthful accounting of human rights violations around the world – softening criticism in some countries while ignoring violations in others.
Uzra Zeya, Human Rights First’s President and CEO:
Attacking democratic U.S. allies for so-called free speech violations while seeking to imprison law-abiding college students at home for peaceful expression against U.S. foreign policy exemplify this administration’s destructive and hypocritical approach to human rights.
Israel, case in point:
Just this past weekend, six members of Al Jazeera were killed in a targeted Israeli military strike in Gaza. To date more than 180 journalists have been killed in Gaza since October 2023, compared to less than 20 journalists which have been killed in Ukraine since Russia invaded.
Sara Qudah, the Committee to Protect Journalists Regional Director, responded to these recent killings: “Israel wiped out an entire news crew. It has made no claims that any of the other journalists were terrorists. That’s murder. Plain and simple.”
In the State Department’s Country Reports on Human Rights Practices: Israel, West Bank and Gaza, the official United States’ assessment of “physical attacks, imprisonment, and pressure” towards journalists in the region:
The Union of Journalists in Israel received reports of five journalist detentions and 13 physical attacks by security forces against journalists during the year.
In terms of censorship, the State Department reports, “Israel occasionally ordered the closing of Palestinian radio stations in the West Bank for ‘inciting behavior that could harm public safety or public order’ including support for terrorism.”
Regarding prolonged detention without charges:
Israeli law generally prohibited arbitrary arrest and detention and provided for the right of any person to challenge the lawfulness of their arrest or detention in court for nonsecurity related criminal charges.
Yet the New York Times reported today that Israel has not prosecuted a single person for the Oct. 7 attack:
Several hundred Palestinians have been detained on suspicion of direct involvement, and at least 200 of them remain in custody, according to public records. Israeli military officials have said that at least several dozen Palestinians were arrested in or near Israeli territory around the time of the attack on Oct. 7, 2023.
In addition to those detainees, Israel is holding roughly 2,700 other Palestinians who were rounded up in the Gaza Strip over the 21 months since the attack, according to government data.
Under the section ‘War Crimes, Crimes against Humanity, and Evidence of Acts that May Constitute Genocide, or Conflict-related Abuses,’ the entire State Department analysis:
Terrorist organizations Hamas and Hizballah continue to engage in the indiscriminate targeting of Israeli civilians in violation of the law of armed conflict.
Zero mention of mass starvation and killings of Palestinians at aid distribution sites.
And just yesterday, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned Israel about real concerns regarding alleged sexual violence committed by their armed forces such as “genital violence, prolonged forced nudity of captives, and abusive and degrading strip searches aimed at humiliation and interrogation.”
Clearly the State Department in crafting its Country Report on Human Rights Practices: Israel, West Bank and Gaza chose not to source credible information from a multitude of media outlets, international human rights organizations, its European Allies or the United Nations. Yet many Country Reports, including those for Cambodia, Brazil and Samoa, do specifically report on ‘Acts of Antisemitism and Antisemitic Incitement.’
Congressional perspective
In the official Congressional report on U.S. foreign aid to Israel since October 7, 2023:
Israel is the largest cumulative recipient of U.S. foreign assistance since World War II. Successive Administrations, working with Congress, have provided Israel with assistance reflective of robust domestic U.S. support for Israel and its security; shared strategic goals in the Middle East; and historical ties dating from U.S. support for the creation of Israel in 1948. To date, the United States has provided Israel $174 billion (current, or non-inflation-adjusted, dollars) in bilateral assistance and missile defense funding.
That report cites the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, which states “no security assistance may be provided to any country the government of which engages in a consistent pattern of gross violations of internationally recognized human rights.”
Released at the end of May 2025, the congressional report did acknowledge:
Over the past few years, some Members of Congress have become more openly critical of U.S. military aid to Israel and have focused more on issues of Palestinian human rights. This trend has accelerated since the Hamas-led attacks of October 7, 2023 and the ensuing war in Gaza, with its associated humanitarian crisis. At the same time, many other Members of Congress have continued to voice support of continued U.S. support for Israel. Congressional majorities have continued to vote consistently in favor of U.S. military aid to Israel through the appropriations process, though some Members have expressed opposition to unconditional U.S. security assistance by, for example, more frequently voting for resolutions of disapproval aimed at halting certain U.S. arms sales to Israel.
Disregard and contempt for human rights
Throughout the Country Reports, the State Department (permanently?) jeopardized America’s voice on human rights by valuing ideology instead of integrity.
El Salvador, notorious in recent months for accepting Venezuelan immigrants into their mega-prison from the US regardless of whether crimes were committed, was described as having “no credible reports of significant human rights abuses.” In fact, the US State Department actually described the government of the self proclaimed ‘coolest dictator in the world’ as having taken “credible steps to identify and punish officials who committed human rights abuses.”
Brazil, on the other hand, was called out for a declining human rights situation due in no small part for “restricting access to online content deemed to ‘undermine democracy,’ disproportionately suppressing the speech of supporters of former president Jair Bolsonaro as well as journalists and elected politicians, often in secret proceedings that lacked due process guarantees.”
Though many Country Reports do continue to call out nations, friendly or otherwise, for human rights abuses (e.g. Qatar despite gifting President Trump a $400 million private jet), selectively misrepresenting certain nations sullies the credibility of the reports as a whole. When asked by reporters yesterday about the perception of ‘watered-down’ reports, State Department Spokesperson Tammy Bruce said:
It does look different. It is a different approach. Philosophically the American people voted in an approach that Donald Trump had described to them. And this happens again with every administration during the transition year when it comes to what matters to them and how they’re going to project their own point of view while also still making sure that Americans see the nature of what is happening around the world cause it’s an important issue.
Americans have seen the nature of what is happening around the world; millions of them expect their government to see it too.
The foundation of international human rights, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights drafted by the United Nations after World War II, “represents the universal recognition that basic rights and fundamental freedoms are inherent to all human beings, inalienable and equally applicable to everyone.”
With immigrants and Palestinians being deported and “resettled” in far-off nations, recorded atrocities being dismissed as fake news and government accountability determined on a case-by-case basis, human rights deeply venerated after fascism was defeated will need to be redefined by a future American generation when they are forced to revoke modern authoritarianism.