Human Rights Hypocrisy
Israel My Glory In Depth is a new video interview series that explores the author’s motivation in writing their article.For decades, human rights organizations counted antisemitism among the world’s great wrongs. But a significant plot twist has taken place. Today, many of those groups not only tolerate hatred of the Jewish people; they promulgate it.
Consider the LGBTQ+ groups supporting the Palestinian cause. In many Muslim nations, as well as the Muslim-dominated Palestinian territories, authorities condemn; criminalize; and, on occasion, even execute practitioners of homosexuality.
Yet, LGBTQ+ activists defend the Palestinians’ Jew-hatred. They displayed banners and wore T-shirts emblazoned with “Queers for Palestine” at anti-Israel rallies and on social media following Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack on the Jewish state.
In an editorial for the online magazine Quillette, Armin Navabi explained the reasoning behind this absurd phenomenon. “Leftists in English-speaking nations tend to see Palestinians (including Hamas) as an oppressed, brown victim class,” he said, “whose freedom-fighting ‘resistance’ against their oppressive, white, US-backed colonizers in Israel is a righteous cause with which to stand in solidarity.”
Many feminists proudly advocate this “righteous cause.” Claiming to ally with the marginalized, they should be quick to support Israel, a nation forged in part by strong women. Unfortunately, many feminist groups remain silent when the victims of sexual violence are Jewish and the assaulters, Palestinian.
The United Nations group UN Women bills itself as “a global champion for women and girls” that is “dedicated to gender equality and the empowerment of women.” In the wake of the October 7 attack, it was “deeply alarmed by the devastating impact on civilians including women and girls.”
However, its concern was reserved for women and girls in Gaza alone. Though it boasts of “supporting Palestinian women since 1997 to achieve their social, economic, and political rights,” it originally said nothing about Hamas kidnapping, raping, beheading, and burning Jewish women. It took nearly two months before it condemned “the brutal attacks by Hamas on Israel.” UN Women’s silence led activist Danielle Ofek to start a campaign called #MeToo_Unless_Ur_A_Jew, aimed at exposing the group’s antisemitism.
In an open letter titled “Feminists For a Free Palestine. Stop the Genocide. End the Occupation,” more than 1,000 feminist scholars expressed their opposition to “colonialism and genocide” and “the killing, maiming, kidnapping, and imprisonment of children.”
Yet, their vitriol is not aimed at Hamas, which massacres Jews; calls for a genocide of the Jewish people; and kills, maims, kidnaps, and imprisons Jewish children. It’s aimed at Israel.
The scholars’ letter states, “We will not be silent when the bells of genocide ring. Silence is complicity.” But when those bells ring “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” calling for the genocide of Jews, these activists are silent.
Then, there’s the case of the presidents of Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the University of Pennsylvania. When asked at a congressional hearing whether calls for genocide against the Jewish people violated their respective schools’ codes of conduct, they said it depended on context.
Such blatant hypocrisy discourages us. Normalized antisemitism demonstrates that we live in a broken, sinful world (Rom. 1:18–32).
But there is coming a day when “ten men from every language of the nations shall grasp the sleeve of a Jewish man, saying, ‘Let us go with you, for we have heard that God is with you’” (Zech. 8:23). Then, Jewish people will be “the head and not the tail” (Dt. 28:13); and the nations that once persecuted them will follow them in worship—a wonderful plot twist.
