Sometimes, members of a non-governmental organization raise an anti-Israel argument so extreme that it confounds the group’s own leadership. That happened earlier this month, when Human Rights Watch (HRW) shelved a report produced by its internal staff.

Two members of HRW’s “Israel/Palestine” team resigned when the NGO’s executive director and his colleagues rejected the far-reaching thesis of the team’s report, titled “Our Souls Are in the Houses We Left Behind.”

HRW’s former executive director was so disturbed by the report that he called the anti-Israel analysis “indefensible.” The officers paused the publication, despite the advice of their legal department, a protest letter signed by 200 employees, and the group’s past sweeping accusations of Israeli genocide and apartheid.

The Our Souls report essentially told the following tale: Israel ethnically cleansed Palestinians from Mandatory Palestine in the 1947-1948 Arab-Israeli War. The Palestinian refugees acquired a “right of return” to their pre-war homes through the 1948 UN General Assembly Resolution 194(III). By refusing to repatriate the refugees, Israel deprived them of their right of return. That illegal deprivation continues to this day. And the ongoing nature of the malfeasance constitutes a “crime against humanity” under the 1998 Rome Statute.

Every step in the Our Souls legal journey is groundless.

There was no policy of ethnic cleansing of Arabs in the Arab-Israeli War. The overwhelming majority of Arabs who relocated during the Arab-initiated war did so due to wartime dangers, not ethnic cleansing. Although Zionist commanders displaced some Arabs by force of military order, those were lawful acts of self-defense against the Arab invasion. By contrast, the Arab invaders who displaced Jews during the war had no justification of self-defense. After the war, the world community adopted the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention. The treaty prohibited “forcible transfers and deportations” but preserved the right of self-defense and said nothing about ethnic cleansing.

Most Arabs who left their homes during the Arab-Israeli War did not leave Mandatory Palestine and therefore did not become refugees. They were “internally displaced persons” not subject to any legally binding protection. Among the two populations — refugees and internally displaced persons — few are still alive.

The post-war UN relief agency created to serve Palestinians labeled them and their descendants “refugees.” But that self-styled moniker lacked any legal significance under the global refugee treaty, called the 1951 Refugee Convention. The uprooted Palestinians and their descendants enjoyed no higher legal status than the uprooted Jews and their offspring. And no other refugee group in the history of the world has had a “right of return” that extends generations.

UN Resolution 194(III) did not create any refugee right of return. The document was a non-binding compromise proposal, which the Arab states violently rejected because they refused to “live at peace” with Israel. For years after the war ended, Arab terrorists continued to infiltrate Israel and attack civilians. Any Palestinian wish for “return” today is subject to negotiation of the “refugee” issue in the Israeli-Palestinian Oslo Accords of the 1990s. Meanwhile, Israel already has millions of Arab citizens and permanent residents.

Where there is no right of return or deprivation of any related right, there can be no ongoing “crime against humanity.” Such a crime is defined a “widespread or systemic attack” comparable to murder, enslavement or torture. It applies to atrocities like Hamas’ October 7, 2023, invasion of Israel but not disputes over refugee rights.

The Our Souls concoction of grievances ignores overriding international norms. By letting approximately 6.4 million Palestinians “return” to Israel, a country of only 10 million, the report would demographically abolish the Jewish state in violation of UN Charter Article 2, which prohibits any threat to “the political independence” of a state. The proposed population transfer would also violate Israel’s sovereign powers of immigration, property ownership, and national security. Moreover, the scheme would breach the “refugee” provision of the Oslo Accords. And finally, the implicit denial of Israel’s right to exist would be antisemitic, according to the internationally recognized “IHRA” definition of antisemitism.

The Our Souls scandal was not HRW’s first implosion over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In 2009, the organization’s own founder wrote a scathing condemnation of the NGO’s discriminatory animus towards Israel. In 2023, an HRW senior editor resigned, saying the group’s anti-Israel bias “shattered professionalism.”

Other NGOs have faced similar upheavals. Four members of the board of Amnesty International Israel resigned when the parent organization declared that Israel committed genocide in the Gaza war. The CEO of Oxfam Great Britain, a vocal critic of Israel, recently resigned and sued the charity, claiming it had improperly accused Israel of genocide and maintained a “toxic antisemitic culture.”

NGOs like HRW, Amnesty International, and Oxfam have no judicial authority or superior legal wisdom. They are interest groups posing as neutral arbiters of law. As they keep spreading their extreme anti-Israel indoctrination, their hostility spirals to delusional extremes. No wonder they sometimes antagonize each other.

Joel M. Margolis is the legal commentator of the American Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists, U.S. affiliate of the International Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists. He is the author of The Israeli-Palestinian Legal War.