One of the presumptions in international human rights law is that governments have a duty to protect human rights.[1] This is also the widely acknowledged Achilles’ heel of international human rights law. Again and again, we see that human rights are merely one more point of leverage in the too often violent games elites play with each other in their unending competition for control over territory—and the people and resources therein. Because, as we see with my theory of the morality of polarization, what Israel does is good and right simply and solely because Israel is “our” “ally” and what the Palestinians do is evil and wrong simply and solely because they are not.
This is realism theory (also known as realpolitik) in action, in which moral and ethical values are subverted to serve “national” (really a country’s political elites’) interests.
Ishaan Tharoor writes, “Israel is frequently shielded from censure on the international stage by Western powers whose arguments defending Israel get undermined by Israeli officials themselves. And then there’s the deeper sense that many in the West’s political establishment don’t seem to mind the severity of punishment that Israel has meted not just on Hamas, but on Palestinians writ large.”[2] Not to mention that the West, especially the U.S., especially the Joe Biden administration, continue to arm and fund this genocide, even as Israel threatens a wider war which would likely draw in the U.S.[3]
I wish I could even write that the massacre in Gaza is the last acceptable genocide. But, of course, it won’t be. The words “Never Again” are hollow and meaningless, and those who claim to value human life, let alone human rights, are lying bastards.
[1] George Kent, Ending Hunger Worldwide (Boulder, CO: Paradigm, 2011).
[2] Ishaan Tharoor, “Israeli leaders keep saying the quiet part out loud,” Washington Post, August 12, 2024, https://www.washingtonpost.com//world/2024/08/12/israel-gaza-smotrich-starvation-crimes/
[3] Murtaza Hussain, “Israel and Israel Alone Kicked Off This Escalation — In a Bid to Drag U.S. Into War With Iran,” Intercept, April 14, 2024, https://theintercept.com/2024/04/14/israel-iran-drag-us-war-netanyahu-biden/; Simon Tisdall, “Israel has all but declared war in the Middle East – a conflict it cannot hope to win,” Guardian, July 31, 2024, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/jul/31/israel-hamas-iran-ismail-haniyeh-gaza-middle-east