In March 2025, the Atlantic published the "The Double Standard in the Human Rights World," an extensive article that showed how major human-rights organizations—especially Amnesty, HRW, and MSF—had drifted from their stated principles of impartiality and universalism and become stridently and disproportionately focused on Israel, often using activist framing, downplaying Hamas’s crimes, and adopting narratives that treat Israeli suffering as politically inconvenient. It also described how this has created internal fractures, including alienation of Jewish staff and longtime human-rights advocates, and how credibility is damaged when groups repeat misinformation. Following the claimed methodology of "human rights" organizations themselves, it included extensive reporting, and first-person insider testimony.

The response of the organizations themselves? Denial, silence, and zero follow-up or internal concern related to the issues raised. In fact, senior staff - including Paul O'Brien, Executive Director of Amnesty International USA, encouraged colleagues to bury the piece: "I ask that you please refrain from engaging on social media around this, and I suggest that you do not share the article further, to reduce amplification." He expressed sympathy not for those whose experiences were outlined in the piece, but those "who may feel impacted by this piece" and "on the receiving end of this kind of story."