Two Human Rights Watch (HRW) employees who make up the organization’s entire Israel and Palestine team are stepping down from their positions after leadership blocked a report that deems Israel’s denial of Palestinian refugees the right of return a “crime against humanity”.

In separate resignation letters obtained by Jewish Currents and the Guardian, Omar Shakir, who has headed the team for nearly the last decade, and Milena Ansari, the team’s assistant researcher, said leadership’s decision to pull the report broke from HRW’s customary approval processes and was evidence that the organization was putting fear of political backlash over a commitment to international law.

Concerns about reputational damage were voiced by Tom Porteous, HRW’s acting program director at the time. He wrote Shakir that the report was well-argued, but “the question is how we are going to deploy this argument in our advocacy without this coming off as HRW rejecting the state of Israel and without it undermining our credibility as a neutral, impartial monitor of events.”