Human rights are not universal — they do not apply to Jews or Israelis because it is not strategically useful to self-proclaimed human rights arbiters who have monopolized and abused these principles for their political agendas.
If this was not abundantly clear up until now, it was clarified painfully on Thursday morning as the major international human rights organizations held their tongues as four slain Israeli hostages, including two babies, were repatriated in a macabre Hamas propaganda ceremony.
From the capture of the elderly Oded Lifshitz and Shiri, Ariel, and Kfir Bibas by Gazan hordes during the October 7 Massacre, until the exhibition of their alleged remains on stage in a propaganda exercise, international human rights NGOs held their silent vigil of complicity.
Amnesty International used the last 15 months to produce reports accusing Israel of every crime it could think of, but for 500 days the organization that was founded to free political prisoners said nothing of the Bibas family members as they were held in captivity. They said nothing on social media as the alleged remains of four hostages were paraded before jeering and cheering Gazan civilians.
Human Rights Watch did nothing but watch on Thursday, with no statement being made about the indignities of the hostages being used to threaten those that still remained in terrorist captivity. The abuse of the Bibas family was mentioned in a July report, but this token attention appeared to be the sole exception.
Save the Children International, which claims to ensure children are protected around the world, has not once taken a stand against the precedent for using children as hostages to ransom the release of murderers. It has not once mentioned the Bibas children on its website or social media.
The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), supposedly “for every child,” mentioned the Bibas children once in passing during Deputy Executive Director Ted Chaiban’s September briefing, and in one October 7 anniversary X post.
The United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner has been silent on the Bibas family, and while on Tuesday published a statement regarding Hamas’s degrading public displays of captives, it equated the hostages to that of imprisoned and detained terrorists.
“International humanitarian law prohibits ‘outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment.’ Parading hostages as trophies of war, in a propaganda spectacle, clearly violates this rule. It is also distressing to their families,” said the organization’s supposed experts, including Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories Francesca Albanese.
Ever ready to comment on any perceived or allegation of abuse by Israeli forces, Albanese, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk, and his office were quiet on Thursday morning as Hamas presented coffins as war trophies.
The International Committee of the Red Cross failed to visit Lifshitz and the Bibas family for 500 days, seeing them for the first time Thursday in propaganda emblazoned coffins. Relegated to a ride-sharing service ordered by Hamas commanders, the ICRC meekly protested degrading treatment in a Wednesday statement, but participated in the pageantry of death all the same.
A ridiculous double standard
Even if these organizations release their necessary lip service hours or days later out of shame, it is already too late. The comparison of their response to Thursday to that of the constant and zealous manner in which human rights organizations attack Israel with claims of genocide, or apartheid, or whatever new term they have invented as the weekly bludgeon, demonstrates a ridiculous double standard.
That is, the Thursday response to the Hamas ceremony would be indicative of a double standard, if it were not made so obvious that the standard never existed.
If universal principles are only invoked when suitable, then they are not a standard for the treatment of people, they are a weapon used to pursue one’s political agenda.
Even on October 7, as Israel was still repelling Hamas attacks and trying to defuse its rocket and mortar fire, NGOs urged Israeli restraint by invoking human rights. At every leg of the war, such human rights organizations pressured Israel for ceasefires, to not address the immediate threats of Gazan terrorist organizations, to not seek justice against those that raped and murdered their way through southern Israel.
Invoking the sacred words “human rights” about dubious crises, these groups demanded humanitarian pauses and aid that gave succor to Gazan militants by allowing them to reorganize and resupply. Every few years, these terrorist groups survived the wars they instigated to fight against Israel another day thanks to the cruel mercy and overbearing nagging of human rights organizations — ultimately leading to the October 7 that orange-haired children were ripped from their Nir Oz home.
Human rights activists likely remained silent on Thursday morning because they believed bringing attention to people celebrating dead babies would “manufacture consent” among the international community to take a hard stance against Hamas and its ilk.
Intentional or not, the human rights regime has facilitated the Hamas agenda and hindered those that seek to stop them. In their complicity with the Hamas agenda they have made human rights irrelevant.
As surely as Gazan terrorist groups are the ones who ultimately bear responsibility for the deaths of the four hostages, so too are human rights organizations responsible for putting human rights in a coffin next to them.
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