[Opinion] How human rights are weaponised against Israel
[Excerpts]
Within hours of the Hamas atrocities of October 7, 2023, the leaders of major institutions claiming to promote the moral principles of human rights and international humanitarian law issued statements for major news platforms and posted texts on social media. The condemnations from these powerful non-governmental organisations (NGOs) were directed not at Hamas but Israel – already then, before the IDF response in Gaza began, with accusations of “war crimes”, and “apartheid”, and, for some, genocide and starvation. If Hamas slaughter and the Israeli victims were mentioned, these were cursory and designed as tokens.
In the months that followed, these accusations were amplified continuously in campaigns led by the NGO industry’s global powers – Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch (HRW), Oxfam, Doctors without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières – MSF), etc. and their UN-based allies – particularly the Human Rights Council’s “Special Rapporteur” on Palestine, Francesca Albanese. On every available platform, they repeated the demonisation that was promoted decades earlier in the UN and peaked with the 1975 “Zionism is racism” resolution led by the Soviet bloc and the Arab League. Following the end of the Cold War and the USSR’s subsequent dissolution, this legacy was revived in the UN- and NGO-led Durban conference, held in 2001 under the false premise of anti-racism. In this highly orchestrated venue, representatives of 1,500 NGOs adopted a plan of action that called for the complete international isolation of Israel as an apartheid and genocidal state.