The Guardian and Jewish Currents reported on February 3, 2025, on the dismissal of two Human Rights Watch (HRW) staff members, who together comprised the organization’s entire Israel and Palestine team. They resigned after HRW leadership blocked a section of a 33-page report that called Israel’s denial of the right of return to Palestinian refugees a “crime against humanity.”

The report is titled “‘Our Souls Are in the Homes We Left’: Israel’s Denial of Palestinians’ Right to Return and Crimes Against Humanity.” 

The project began in January 2025. It was intended as a follow-up to a November 2024 report focusing on the internal displacement of Palestinians in Gaza. Inspired by the interviews in this report, it was decided to include not only the experiences of Palestinians recently expelled from Gaza and the West Bank by Israeli military forces, but also those of some Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, Jordan, and Syria who were originally expelled by Israeli forces in 1948 and 1967.

The authors concluded that the denial of the right of return to these refugees falls under the crime against humanity known as “other inhuman acts.”

Under the Rome Statute, which established the International Criminal Court (ICC) in 1998, this designation was intended to address serious abuses that are similar in nature to other crimes that intentionally cause “great suffering”—for example, apartheid or extermination—but do not fit neatly into those legal categories.

In separate resignation letters, Omar Shakir, a US citizen who led the team for nearly a decade, and Milena Ansari, an assistant researcher, argued that HRW management’s decision to suspend the report “pending further analysis and investigation” demonstrated that the organization prioritized fear of political backlash over its commitment to international law.

“I have lost faith in the........

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