Robert Bernstein, the founder of Human Rights Watch, one of the world’s leading human rights organisations, accused the New York-based group of anti-Israeli bias yesterday.

Mr Bernstein turned on the organisation he created in 1978 in a New York Times opinion piece questioning the group’s work in the Middle East.

“As the founder of Human Rights Watch, its active chairman for 20 years and now founding chairman emeritus, I must do something that I never anticipated: I must publicly join the group’s critics,” he wrote.

“Human Rights Watch had as its original mission to pry open closed societies, advocate basic freedoms and support dissenters. But recently it has been issuing reports on the Israeli-Arab conflict that are helping those who wish to turn Israel into a pariah state.”

Mr Bernstein’s defection comes amid a worldwide row over a UN report by South African judge Richard Goldstone, a former Human Rights Watch board member, accusing Israel of war crimes in the Gaza War.

Moves are under way at the United Nations in New York for the 192-nation General Assembly to ask the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court to investigate the alleged abuses, even though only the 15-nation Security Council has the power to refer cases for prosecution.

Human Rights Watch has battled charges of anti-Israeli bias for many years. The Israeli Government said last month that the group had sunk to a “new low” when it emerged that the its senior military analyst was an avid collector of Nazi memorabilia. Human Rights Watch suspended Marc Garlasco, an American, who said his hobby was inspired by a German grandfather who had been conscripted into Hitler’s Army.

The pro-Israeli blog Mere Rhetoric cited internet postings by Mr Garlasco under the pseudonym “Flak88” including one that read: “That is so cool! The leather SS jacket makes my blood go cold it is so COOL!” Mr Garlasco, a former Pentagon official and self-described “military geek,” helped investigate and write a report on Israel’s use of white phosphorus in the Gaza War.

Mr Bernstein, the former president and chief executive of publisher Random House, said the group risked losing credibility. “Human Rights Watch has lost critical perspective on a conflict in which Israel has been repeatedly attacked by Hamas and Hezbollah, organisations that go after Israeli citizens and use their own people as human shields,” he wrote. “These groups are supported by the Government of Iran, which has openly declared its intention not just to destroy Israel but to murder Jews everywhere. This incitement to genocide is a violation of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

“Leaders of Human Rights Watch know that Hamas and Hezbollah chose to wage war from densely populated areas, deliberately transforming neighbourhoods into battlefields. They know that more and better arms are flowing into both Gaza and Lebanon and are poised to strike again. And they know that this militancy continues to deprive Palestinians of any chance for the peaceful and productive life they deserve. Yet Israel, the repeated victim of aggression, faces the brunt of Human Rights Watch’s criticism.”

Human Rights Watch last night rejected Mr Bernstein’s criticism, insisting that its scrutiny on Israel represents only “a tiny fraction” of its work. The group said Mr Bernstein had brought his concerns to an April meeting of its board, which unanimously rejected his view that the organisation should only report on closed societies.

“Human Rights Watch stands fully behind the work we have done on Israel and around the world,” the group said.

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