[3] Watching the attack via satellite form a room in the Pentagon, Garlasco threw his arms in the air and shouted: "I just blew up Chemical Ali!"
[3] Garlasco left his Pentagon job in 2003 two weeks after the failed attack[5] to take a position as senior military analyst at Human Rights Watch.
"[7] After leaving the Pentagon, Garlasco joined Human Rights Watch as a senior military analyst; his task was to document laws-of-war violations and other atrocities committed during significant conflicts around the world.
In an interview he gave for The Washington Post Garlasco described the transition from targeter to human rights advocate: "I had been a part of it, so it was a lot harder than I thought it would be.
[8][9] Garlasco and colleagues focused on the main fighting areas in the Tigris and Euphrates river valleys where civilian deaths had been reported, visiting ten cities in total.
[11][12] The report documented what it described as a "pattern of illegal demolitions" by the IDF in Rafah, a refugee camp and city at the southern end of the Gaza Strip on the border with Egypt where sixteen thousand people lost their homes after the Israeli government approved a plan to expand the de facto "buffer zone" in May 2004.
[19] Garlasco has attracted some criticism for his reporting, with the Ottawa Citizen, for example, suggesting in an editorial that he "has made a career of painting Israel as a criminal state".
[20] Garlasco appeared as an expert in the documentary film No End in Sight, which examined in detail some of the key decisions made by the US military and the Pentagon in the early days after the invasion of Iraq.
"[24] Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu's policy director commented that Human Rights Watch's employment of "a man who trades and collects Nazi memorabilia" as its senior military expert is a "new low".
HRW later issued an official statement that the accusation against Garlasco "is demonstrably false and fits into a campaign to deflect attention from Human Rights Watch's rigorous and detailed reporting on violations of international human rights and humanitarian law by the Israeli government," adding that Garlasco "has never held or expressed Nazi or anti-Semitic views".
[28] HRW associate director Carroll Bogert accused The Guardian of "repeat[ing] defamatory nonsense unworthy of [the] newspaper," adding that "[t]he allegations of pro-Nazi sympathies are part of a larger campaign to smear non-governmental organisations which criticise the Israel Defense Forces' conduct of the Gaza offensive".
[29] Iain Levine, the watchdog's programme director responded by saying that "The Israeli government is trying to eliminate the space for legitimate criticism of the conduct of the IDF, and this is the latest salvo in that campaign".
[30] In what has been described by Ed Pilkington of The Guardian as an "abrupt change of tact" (sic) for Human Rights Watch,[30] Garlasco was "suspended with pay" from HRW pending an investigation.
[32] Critics of Human Rights Watch have suggested that Garlasco's enthusiasm for Nazi-era badges and uniforms goes beyond historical interest and raises questions Nazi sympathy or anti-Semitism.
"[19] Antony Lerman, former director of the Institute for Jewish Policy Research, wrote that Human Rights Watch failed to see Garlasco's hobby "could be used to discredit his role as author of highly critical reports of Israel's military conduct in Gaza".
[34] Yaron Ezrahi, a professor of Political Science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, said he did not believe that Mr. Garlasco's interest in memorabilia could support allegations of "premeditated bias," though he indicated it may hurt Human Rights Watch's credibility, and that the revelations had "armed the right-wing fanatics" who try to "demonize" anybody who questions the effects of Israeli military operations.
[35] In Nazi scandal hits human rights group, Katie Engelhart in Maclean's magazine reported that "For HRW, the timing of the exposé could not be worse.
The group has thrown its weight behind the UN-sponsored Goldstone report, which accuses both Israel and the Palestinians of committing war crimes in the Gaza strip earlier this year.
[36] According to The New York Times, HRW Middle East advisory committee member Helena Cobban questioned on her blog whether Garlasco's military collecting activities were "something an employer like Human Rights Watch ought to be worried about?
[22] NGO Monitor head Gerald M. Steinberg, a professor of Political Science at Bar Ilan University, argued that Human Rights Watch's response to the matter was "too little, too late".
[37] Cobban says in suspending Garlasco Human Rights Watch is now "in a better position to take part in the public discussion in this country on what our government should be doing with regard to the Goldstone report".