Kenneth Roth
Overview
Kenneth Roth [Ken Roth] has defended the Hamas terror group, spread hatred of Israel and opposed the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of anti-Semitism. Roth has also promoted the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement.As of May 2023, Roth’s LinkedIn page said he had worked at Human Rights Watch (HRW) from 1987 to 2022, including from 1993 to 2022 as its executive director.
HRW has long been accused of harboring an anti-Israel bias and an outsized focus on Israel in comparison to other countries.
In 2021, Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government (HKS) offered Roth a fellowship at its Carr Center for Human Rights Policy. However, the fellowship was later blocked by the school’s dean Douglas Elmendorf due to Roth’s “anti-Israel bias.” In January 2023, the school reportedly reversed its decision.
Roth received a JD from Yale University (Yale)’s Law School in 1980.
As of May 2023, Roth’s LinkedIn said he was located in New York, New York. However, as of the same date, Roth’s Twitter said he was located in “New York and Geneva.”
Defending Hamas
On July 10, 2014, Roth tweeted: “Retroactively calling family home of Hamas militant a command center doesn’t justify#Israel attacking it…”Roth wrote his tweet during Israel’s Operation Protective Edge (OPE) against Hamas.
Israel commenced OPE in July 2014 to stop rocket fire targeting Israeli civilians and to destroy Hamas attack tunnels.
On July 11, 2014, Roth tweeted: “Alleged Hamas militant sleeping/living in family home doesn’t make it a ‘command & control center’ as #Israel claims…”
On July 24, 2014, during OPE, Roth tweeted: “‘I saw no evidence during my week in Gaza of Israel’s accusation that Hamas uses Palestinians as human shields…’”
Throughout the summer of 2014, during Israel’s Operation Protective Edge (OPE), Hamas used civilian infrastructure for military purposes, which included homes, schools, hospitals and mosques.
Hatred of Israel
On January 16, 2023, Roth tweeted: “When antisemitism surges around a peak of Israeli government abuses, Israeli partisans howl if anyone points it out…”On January 8, 2023, Roth tweeted: “The entire point of human rights advocacy is to shame governments for their repression. We try to evoke ‘repulsion and disgust.’ But Israel’s see-no-evil supporters claim that such shaming is a sign of antisemitism, cheapening a dangerous threat.”
On November 27, 2022, Roth tweeted: “Israel’s punitive blockade of Gaza is far far broader than needed to combat violent attacks. It is a form of collective punishment against the people of Gaza (not just Hamas)...”
The United Nations approved [pp. 39–41] the Israeli-Egyptian blockade of Gaza in 2011 as a security measure to stop Hamas from acquiring sophisticated rockets. Multiple flotillas have attempted to breach the blockade, with at least one flotilla initiating a violent confrontation with Israeli forces.
On May 21, 2022, Roth tweeted: “While German police should respond to and punish acts of violence, including incitement to violence and antisemitic acts, they should seek to regulate, not ban, demonstrations, yet the police just barred Palestinian Nakba Day protests. No justification…”
The term “Nakba” is generally translated as “catastrophe” in Arabic, referring to the outcome of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. It is a term often used to delegitimize the creation of the State of Israel by defining it as a catastrophe.
On October 29, 2021, Roth tweeted: “The Israeli government’s false designation of six Palestinian rights groups as ‘terrorists’ suggests fear about their reporting on its oppressive practices which increasingly are recognized as apartheid…”
On June 11, 2021, Roth tweeted: “The Palestinian families in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of occupied East Jerusalem fear that as soon as the world stops watching, they will be evicted from the homes under Israel’s discriminatory laws that epitomize its apartheid rule there…”
In May 2021, Palestinian violence erupted in anticipation of an Israel High Court ruling on eviction proceedings concerning over 70 Palestinian tenants illegally residing in Jewish-owned properties in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah.
On June 7, 2021, Roth tweeted: “Silwan is the other occupied East Jerusalem neighborhood where the Israeli government’s discriminatory apartheid laws play out…”
Jewish ownership claims to lands in Silwan, a Jerusalem neighborhood also known as Shiloach, have been frequently met with Palestinian violence against Israelis who sought to reclaim their property rights.
On May 17, 2021, Roth tweeted: “‘Israeli police officers entered the Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem [and]... cut the cables to the loudspeakers that broadcast prayers to the faithful… Israeli officials were concerned that the prayers would drown it out’ a speech below by Israel’s president…”
Incitement surrounding Al-Aqsa and Sheikh Jarrah were leading factors in Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) terrorists firing over 4,300 rockets from Gaza at Israeli population centers from May 10 to 21, 2021. In response to rocket attacks from Gaza, Israel launched “Operation Guardian of the Walls (OGW),” striking military targets in the terrorist-controlled enclave.
On May 16, 2021, Roth tweeted: “Behind the current conflict are the daily humiliations that Palestinians face under Israeli occupation -- e.g., in East Jerusalem, the heavy-handed police actions at Damascus Gate and the Al Aqsa mosque, and the discriminatory evictions from Sheikh Jarrah.”
On July 6, 2019, Roth tweeted: “The Israeli Defense Ministry has been scouring local archives and removing troves of historic documents ‘to conceal proof of the Nakba…’”
On August 6, 2014, during OPE, Roth gave an interview to Democracy Now! where he alleged that “Israel itself is committing the war crimes that I outlined: you know, deliberately targeting civilian structures; in some cases, deliberately targeting civilians…”
Opposing the IHRA Definition of Anti-Semitism
On January 23, 2023, Roth tweeted: “Some partisan defenders of the Israeli government try to portray criticism of its apartheid as antisemitism. That speaks to the susceptibility of @TheIHRA definition to manipulation. Apartheid is a fair legal description of the facts of Israeli repression.”On April 18, 2021, Roth tweeted: “The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance ‘working’ definition tries to equate antisemitism with much criticism of Israel and its abusive treatment of Palestinians…”
Promoting BDS
The United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) blacklist, published in February 2020, is a list of 112 companies that are purported to have ties with Israeli settlements. The list includes major Israeli and American companies such as Tripadvisor, Airbnb, Expedia, Delta, General Mills and Booking.com.
On December 3, 2018, Roth tweeted: “US VP Pence is wrong. @Airbnb's withdrawal from the settlements isn't ‘BDS’ because it's not boycotting Israel (indeed, it promotes Tel Aviv); it's just withdrawing from the illegal and discriminatory West Bank settlements…”
Roth embedded in his tweet an infographic created by the anti-Israel website Visualizing Palestine, titled: “BED & BREAKFAST ON STOLEN LAND. HOW AIRBNB BENEFITS FROM ISRAELI RIGHTS ABUSES.”
On November 30, 2018, then-U.S. vice president Mike Pence said [00:14:22]: “In the wake of Airbnb’s decision to ban Jewish homes in Jerusalem and the West Bank, we made it clear, the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement is wrong and it has no place in the free enterprise of the United States of America.”
On November 22, 2018, Roth tweeted: “It's not anti-Semitism for @Airbnb to want nothing more to do with filling ‘the pockets of a handful of vacation profiteers on stolen land, trading in stolen goods’--the Israeli settlements.”
BDS
The Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement was founded by Omar Barghouti in 2005 to challenge “international support for Israeli apartheid and settler-colonialism.” BDS is an allegedly “Palestinian-led movement,” although leading BDS activists have admitted [00:01:01] this is not true.
One of the demands of BDS includes [point 3] what is generally known as the “right of return,” a demand discredited as a way to eliminate Israel. Barghouti said the “right of return” is a means to “end Israel’s existence as a Jewish state.”
Barghouti has said that BDS “aims to turn Israel into a pariah state, as South Africa once was.”
In his activism, Barghouti has also said [00:05:55] regarding Israel: “Definitely, most definitely, we oppose a Jewish state in any part of Palestine. No…rational Palestinian, not a sellout Palestinian, will ever accept a Jewish state in Palestine.”
The movement has been linked to numerous terrorist organizations and received a public endorsement from Hamas in 2017.
BDS initiatives include calling on institutions and individuals to divest from Israeli-affiliated companies, promoting academic and cultural boycotts of Israel, and organizing anti-Israel rallies, protests and campaigns.
The movement’s most notable achievement has been the infiltration of university campuses through lobbying for “BDS resolutions.” In these cases, student governments and student groups, backed by their own anti-Israel members and affiliates, have proposed resolutions on some form of boycott of, or divestment from, Israel and Israeli-affiliated entities.
Boycott resolutions, although non-binding, have been passed by student governments on numerous North American campuses.
BDS activity is often aggressive and disruptive. It has been noted that universities that pass BDS resolutions see a marked increase in anti-Semitic incidents on campus. On one campus, when the student government debated a BDS resolution, reports emerged of violent threats against those opposing it.
Social Media and Weblinks
Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/kenroth.55Twitter:https://twitter.com/KenRoth
LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/kenneth-roth-97645a7
Website:https://www.hrw.org/about/people/kenneth-roth
- Status:
- Professional
- University:
- Yale
- Organizations:
- HRW
- Related Profiles:
- Last Modified:
- 05/04/2026
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