The above is a recording and below is a transcript of an interview recorded on 24 July 2025 when Middle East Eye (MEE) spoke to Kenneth Roth, often dubbed the “godfather of human rights”. He was the executive director of Human Rights Watch from 1993 to 2022. His book Righting Wrongs: Three Decades on the Front Lines Battling Abusive Government was published in February 2025.

MEE is an independent online news organisation that aims to be the primary portal of Middle East news. It has its own YouTube channel and a video of the interview can be seen here.

Transcript of the interview

MEE: Kenneth Roth, thank you so much for joining us. Welcome to MEE Live.

KR: My pleasure to be with you.

MEE: I want to begin with the immediacy of what is happening on the ground in Gaza, the starvation, the ongoing killing of people, queuing for aid day in and day out. When you look at what is happening today and the international response to it, what do you see?

KR: Well, first, I think we have to look at, you know, what is Israel trying to do here? I mean, this is clear genocide. You know, this is, you know, foremost creating conditions of misery on the ground that are so unsuitable to life that, you know, the aim of the far right government under Netanyahu is to drive out the Palestinians, you know, to kill enough of them, to create sufficient starvation, to create sufficient suffering for those who are surviving, you know, to even kill people who are lining up for food, ultimately with the aim of persuading Egypt to take them in.

And this is a callous strategy. It’s genocide for the purpose of ethnic cleansing. And we have to just be candid about what’s going on here.

The international response has been broad outrage, even from a country like Germany, which historically has been very deferential to Israel. But Chancellor Merz was saying, this is appalling what’s happening. The big problem remains Trump. And I think Netanyahu has resolved that even if the rest of the world is against him, so long as Trump is with him, so long as Trump continues to supply the military aid and the arms to commit this genocide, Netanyahu will continue.

So, you know, that’s really the issue. And that’s, you know, the backdrop for these attacks on international justice, because, you know, what is happening is so blatantly criminal. This is one important response from the international community, which is to prosecute the offenders.

But Netanyahu and Trump are trying to shut the door on that. Now, Trump, as a legal matter, is guilty of aiding and abetting genocide, as well as massive war crimes and crimes against humanity. He could be prosecuted for that. Do I think that the International Criminal Court is about to do that? No. But there is this theoretical liability, similar to what happened to the former Liberian President Charles Taylor, who supplied arms to this awful rebel group, the Revolutionary United Front in Sierra Leone, and is serving a 20-year prison sentence in the British prison, you know, because of that aiding and abetting of war crimes.

So there is international precedent for this. Obviously, you know, Trump is a much more powerful figure than Charles Taylor. But there is a, you know, blatant criminality here, which I think is part of why Trump is so eager to go after the International Criminal Court. Although ironically, when he threatens the court, when he imposes sanctions, when he basically tries to inappropriately twist its arm for just doing its job, he is committing the crime of obstructing justice, which under Article 70 of the Rome Statute, the International Criminal Court’s leading treaty, that itself is a crime. He could be charged for that.

So he’s on thin ice. I think he’s counting on just being a policy figure, and the court wouldn’t dare go after him. But you never know. And what he is doing, this effort to undermine this independent institution of justice that is just trying to stop the bloodshed in Gaza and hold the perpetrators responsible, it’s outrageous what Trump is doing. And we have to recognize that and continue to push him to stop, but also recognize that he could actually be criminally liable.

MEE: Now, speaking of the International Criminal Court, last week we broke a story about threats that were made to the ICC prosecutor Karim Khan from one of his own colleagues, British-Israeli ICC lawyer Nicholas Kaufman, who told Khan that if he didn’t drop the arrest warrants against Israel’s leaders, and if he attempted to go further and pursue more charges against more Israeli leaders, then he and the court would be destroyed. What do you make of these kinds of threats against one of the most high-profile legal figures in the world?

KR: Well, first, to put this in perspective, this is not the first time that the Israeli government has delivered threats to Karim Khan or to his predecessor, Fatou Bensouda, the prior ICC chief prosecutor. In those cases, Mossad was actively monitoring communications, and Fatou Bensouda herself received very direct threats by Mossad officials. So, you know, this is pattern at this stage. And the fact that Netanyahu would try to deliver a message through a British-Israeli lawyer is a continuation of that effort to manipulate and obstruct justice. I mean, this should be another count on the charge sheet. The court has been going slowly. I mean, the court has charged Netanyahu and Gallant, the former Israeli defense minister, with their starvation and deprivation strategy. These are war crimes.

But the court has not yet even charged any Israeli official for the indiscriminate bombardment in Gaza, for the attacks that cause enormously disproportionate harm to civilians, for the repeated killing of civilians who just show up and try to get food because they’re starving. None of that has been charged yet. So the court is really behind on what should be one of its foremost priorities, to bring justice to a situation that’s absolutely abysmal.

And now we have to add to that list that it has not yet charged anybody for these blatant attempts to obstruct justice.

MEE: And the case that it had against the Israeli leadership really primarily focused on this idea of using starvation as a weapon of war. And yet, despite the issue, the worst warrants being issued, it hasn’t seemed to change much in the way that Israel has conducted itself in Gaza. Many people will look to these international bodies as the only kind of line of defense against these sorts of crimes, certainly the line of defense to prevent genocide from happening in the 21st century. Why do you think these institutions have failed so far to stem the war crimes that we’re seeing before our very eyes?

KR: Well, I think we have to recognize that international courts don’t have police forces. They don’t have militaries. They depend on governments to enforce their orders. So the courts have been doing the right thing for the most part. The governments have not been following through. So with the International Court of Justice, the genocide case that South Africa brought against Israel, the court has issued a number of provisional rulings basically trying to prevent genocide. Israel has ignored them. And there have been some consequences from Europe, but not the critical consequences needed from the United States. So the slaughter continues.

The same with the International Criminal Court. I’m disappointed that the starvation charges that have already been issued against Netanyahu and Galland have not diminished the starvation strategy. This has been central to Israel’s strategy ever since. But there again, when the response from Trump is rather to say, oh, this is horrible, don’t commit this crime, but rather

I’m going to attack the court for having the audacity to describe what you’ve done and appropriately charge it criminally. In those circumstances, when the major, largest benefactor by far is saying, don’t worry about this, we’re going to try to kill the court, Netanyahu doesn’t worry about it. So I wouldn’t blame the court. I would blame the governments that fail to uphold the actions of the court, legitimate as they are. And the lead government that is failing in that respect is the US government under Trump.

MEE: You have written extensively in recent months, and certainly you’ve covered this in your book, Writing Wrongs, about the use of shame as a tactic in human rights advocacy. What do you think is preventing human rights voices such as yourself from really being able to get through to people in the halls of power and changing the tactics that they’re using or the positions that they are choosing to uphold?

KR: Well, I mean, one of the points that I make in the book, Writing Wrongs, is that putting pressure on governments through shaming, through trying to deprive them of access to international benefits they want, it’s not necessarily a quick process. It’s a gradual process. You can’t just snap your finger and it’s done.

And so if I look at what has been the consequence of all this effort to publicize and to try to stop the genocide in Gaza, it has had a very significant effect on international views of Israel. Israel’s reputation in the world has plummeted. And you see this not only obviously in the Middle East, obviously in Africa and Asia, also in Europe. And European governments that have been steadfast allies are now backing away from Israel. What’s interesting is you see it in the United States, too, where not only among Democrats, but also among a growing number of Republicans, they are outraged by what Israel is doing. American Jews say, not in my name. What is he doing?

And so I do think that this shaming process by, you know, the results of spotlighting and publicizing these atrocities is making a difference. And Israel cannot over the long term afford to be indifferent to this. I mean, right now they figure, oh, we’ve got Trump in our pocket. You know, we may be losing American public opinion, but we’ll just stick with Trump and he’s, you know, a one man show.

But Trump is fickle. We know already that Trump cares really only about himself. And if he feels that his unconditional support for Israel is costing him his popularity, if he feels that it’s going to deprive him of the possibility of getting a Nobel Peace Prize, which he covets, he could change at a dime. This is a guy who doesn’t stand for anything other than himself.

And so, you know, for Israel to have its entire strategy premised on ongoing support for Trump is not smart. And I think we have to look at the shaming process in that light. It is a process. It’s not a quick thing.

It is, I think, making a difference at this stage, not sufficient yet to turn Trump, and as a result, not sufficient yet to turn Netanyahu. But I think we’re much closer to that moment than we have been because the world is horrified by what Israel is doing in Gaza.

MEE: We saw this week Belgian authorities arresting two Israeli soldiers on accusations that they were complicit or could have been complicit in war crimes in Gaza. And this was prompted by independent human rights organizers, including the Hind Rajab Foundation. What do you make of these kinds of efforts to go after individuals on European turfs away from the ICC and the ICJ?

KR: Oh, I think that these efforts to use what’s known as universal jurisdiction in national courts are very important. Because first of all, the International Court of Justice is not a criminal court. It’s a civil court. It’s to resolve disputes between governments. And so that will decide whether Israel is committing genocide. Nobody will be prosecuted there because it’s not a criminal court. It’s the International Criminal Court that handles prosecutions.

But as we’ve discussed, it’s proceeding very slowly. It’s issued charges only against two people for one kind of crime and nothing else. So the ICC needs to be supplemented. And one way to do that is for national prosecutors using universal jurisdiction to go after offenders themselves. Now, I’m happy if a low-level person is pursued, but that’s not the heart of the matter.

Low-level people are not committing these crimes on their own. These are orders from above. And I’d be much happier if we saw something like what France has done with respect to Bashar al-Assad, the deposed Syrian president, where they’ve charged him because he was the one who was orchestrating the mass atrocities in Syria.

Why are not European courts using universal jurisdiction going after Netanyahu or Israel Katz, the current defense minister, or other senior generals who are the ones who are ordering these atrocities? Yes, go after the low-level soldier, but that does not begin to be enough.

MEE: You mentioned the conversations, the changing conversations that are happening in Jewish communities in the United States and elsewhere in Europe. And you’ve spoken before about your own Jewish roots and how it informs the work that you do. You are the son of a German Jewish refugee. You write about the memory of the Holocaust and how it was instructive in your upbringing. How did this shape your understanding of human rights?

KR: Well, I mean, I grew up, as you mentioned, my father fled Nazi Germany as a 12-year-old boy in July 1938. And so I grew up with Hitler stories. I grew up with a very deep awareness of what it was like for a young Jewish boy to live under the Nazis and to have all the fears that you can imagine. So that is a big part of what pushed me to devote my career to defending human rights.

Now, the lesson that I took from the Holocaust is that people will never be secure unless human rights standards for everybody are solidified, enforced, and respected.

But the Netanyahu government has taken the opposite lesson. They say that the term never again means we can do whatever we want, commit any mass atrocity we want in the name of self-protection, in the name of self-defense. That is the wrong lesson from the Holocaust. That rips up the basic standards that are essential for protecting Jews and everybody else. So it is a very short-sighted approach, one that is to some extent shared by the German government, but the German government is even moving away from that.

And I think it’s important to stress that, you know, this is not the appropriate response to the Holocaust. You know, you don’t respond to genocide by committing a genocide. The right response is to uphold the human rights standards that would have made the Holocaust unthinkable and that we hope will prevent further mass atrocities in the future. That is the opposite of the approach that the Israeli government is taking today.

MEE: And how do you feel about the way that the Holocaust is invoked by Israeli leaders to sometimes to try and evade criticism for their actions?

KR: Well, the Israeli government uses the Holocaust as a halo, basically. We were the victims, and we, the Jewish people, were victims of genocide. How could we possibly commit genocide? That’s utterly illogical. One has nothing to do with the other. And indeed, if anything, it’s using that halo effect makes it more likely that the Israeli government commits mass atrocities, because it’s not upholding the human rights standards that you know, should be the appropriate response to the Holocaust. It’s instead saying, you know, bad stuff has happened to our predecessors. We’re going to do bad stuff today to prevent other stuff from happening. You know, and that’s just completely wrong. It’s utterly short-sighted and it needs to be rejected.

MEE: And finally, when you hear people look at Gaza and feeling a sense of utter hopelessness and misery and feeling as if the very frameworks of humanitarian law and international human rights have failed to bring about justice in the world today, what do you say to them about, you know, our commitment to human rights as a species, and whether this is still the path that we should be committing to in our day and age?

KR: Well, obviously, you know, what’s happening in Gaza is appalling. You know, it’s difficult to watch day to day. So I don’t want to minimize the plight of the Palestinian people in Gaza at all. What I describe in the book, though, is how adherence to human rights standards, effort to defend them through shaming, through international pressure, often works. Not always, but often. And these are standards that are key to protecting people, you know, not just from mass slaughter in times of war, but also just to basic fairness in their day-to-day lives, you know, access to healthcare and food and, you know, housing and the like.

My book is a positive book in that it is filled with examples of how human rights pressure has made people’s lives better. I think that human rights do respect people’s desires around the world. The task, the challenge, is one of enforcement. And that’s not easy, because there is no international police force. There is no international court system that really can just snap its finger and get things done.

You’re dependent on governments to enforce those standards. And governments are fickle. Governments are inconsistent. Governments are self-serving. So this is the challenge. And in my book, I describe ways that we successfully press governments to do the right thing, despite their inclination to do the wrong thing. And that’s why I view the book, Writing Wrongs, as a positive book. It sort of is a guideline for how you can enforce the standards. But I don’t pretend that it always works. And I don’t pretend that it’s easy. And Gaza is a very discouraging example of how so far it is not adequate.

MEE: Kenneth Roth, we really appreciate your time. Thank you so much.

KR: Thank you.