Joe Stork

Joe Stork (1942 or 1943 – October 23, 2024) was an American political activist who wrote on the Middle East. He became Deputy Director for Middle East and North Africa at Human Rights Watch.

Life and career

Stork gained an M.A. in International Affairs/Middle East Studies from Columbia University. He co-founded the Middle East Research & Information Project (MERIP) in 1971 and was chief editor of its flagship publication, the Middle East Report, until 1995. Stork served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Turkey. "He presently serves as chair of the Middle East Studies Association's Committee on Academic Freedom and sits on the advisory committees of the American Friends Service Committee, Foreign Policy in Focus and the Iraq Revenue Watch project of the Open Society Institute."

Stork joined Human Rights Watch in 1996. His involvement with MERIP and anti-Israel activism before joining HRW have made him the object of criticism. Maariv reported that Stork was a "radical leftist" in the 1970s. According to Maariv's report, Stork wrote an article praising the Munich massacre and attended an anti-Zionist conference hosted by Saddam Hussein in 1976. Kenneth Roth, executive director of HRW, defended Stork by saying that these events took place thirty years earlier, and he later became a staunch critic of Hussein.

Stork died on October 23, 2024, at the age of 81.

Books and other publications

• Erased in a Moment: Suicide Bombing Attacks Against Israeli Civilians, Human Rights Watch, 2002. ISBN 1-56432-280-7
• (with Joel Beinin, eds.) Political Islam: A Reader, I.B. Tauris, 1996. ISBN 978-1860640988
• (with Joel Beinin, eds.) Political Islam: Essays from "Middle East Report", University of California Press, 1996. ISBN 978-0520204485
• Middle East Oil and the Energy Crisis, Monthly Review Press, 1975