Jewish Press: President Joe Biden is about to nominate the former Washington director of Human Rights Watch, Sarah Margon as the State Department’s assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights, and labor, Foreign Policy reported Thursday (Biden Looks to Progressive for Key Human Rights Post).
“For thus says the Lord of hosts: “He sent Me after glory, to the nations which plunder you; for he who touches you touches the apple of His eye.” Zechariah 2:8 KJV
Margon is an outspoken critic of authoritarian allies of the United States, most notably Egypt and Saudi Arabia, and has had a testy relationship with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government as well.
In May 2019, Margon mobilized 17 Democratic lawmakers who wrote Netanyahu asking that he halt the deportation of Omar Shakir, a US citizen and director of the Human Rights Watch office for Israel and the Palestinian territories. Margon told the Washington Post at the time that “taking a stronger or more vocal stance on Omar’s likely deportation would run up against their policy of having no daylight between the Trump administration and prime minister Netanyahu,” and added: “It’s unfortunate because in doing that, they are really allowing the growing democratic deficit to go forward without comment.”
In November 2019, Israel’s High Court of Justice finally ruled that Shakir’s work permit not be renewed and that he should be deported from Israel, because he is a long-standing Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) activist and his role at HRW had been to advance BDS and related anti-Israel campaigns.
