Gaza Genocide Lays Bare West’s ‘Lies’ About Its Human Rights Claims: Activist
The world marks December 10 as Human Rights Day as the Israeli attacks against the besieged Gaza Strip over the past two months have killed at least 17,000 Palestinians, most of them women and children.
Rights activists from around the world have already staged protests to pressure their political leaders to distance themselves from Israel and voice support for Palestinians. Meanwhile, activists have urged international bodies like the United Nations to intervene and stop the crimes that the Israeli regime is committing before the world’s eyes.
Speaking to IQNA in an interview, Head of the London-based Islamic Human Rights Commission (IHRC) Massoud Shajareh also raised similar concerns.
“What are the international bodies Like the UN or OIC or Arab League or International Criminal Court doing?” he asked, replying, “Nothing.”
He said that these structures are either “incompetent” or “not fit for the purpose that they were created for.”
“We are seeing this at the time that we are sleepwalking into fascism,” warned the activist.
He noted that an “overwhelming majority” of people across the world saying “enough is enough”, however, the leadership is actually “doing exactly the opposite.”
The West is instead “giving bombs” to Israel “so innocent civilians will be destroyed,” he lamented.
The staggering loss of lives in Gaza comes as the theme for Human Rights Day 2023 is "Dignity, Freedom, and Justice for All"; three crucial elements that Palestinians have been deprived of in the past seven decades after Zionists occupied their lands.
In one of the latest supports for Israel, the United States blocked a UN Security Council resolution that sought a halt to Israeli attacks on Gaza amid the devastating humanitarian situation in the territory.
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Shajareh says the day is a good opportunity to “evaluate what is happening and which direction the world is going vis-a-vis human rights.”
Describing the events in Gaza as the “most barbaric genocide of our lifetime unleashing in front of our eyes,” the activist said that Palestinians are being “deliberately targeted.”
“We are hearing politicians of Zionist illegal occupiers saying very clearly that their aim and objective is to kill as many people as possible; they are saying very clearly that they don't value the life of Palestinians in the same way as any other human being,” he added.
He slammed the inaction of international bodies and countries that only talk about human rights, noting that instead of rushing to help Palestinians they are “sending arms … to enable the Zionist occupier regime to kill most effectively, to kill more people, to destroy more lives.”
He said the world is facing a “horrifying dilemma” as there are questions concerning whether the UN and other institutions are “dead”, or that the “humanity is here in the dark or under question.”
“Can we say we are civilized societies with a world order?” he asked before pointing to the “hypocrisy” of some countries in comparing what is going on in Gaza to what is happening in Ukraine.
“The hypocrisy of what the West has done in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria; the lies that we've been told that they are concerned about human rights, human beings, for the women around the world, for women in Afghanistan, for women in Syria, for women in Lebanon, for women in Iran and on and on,” he said, stressing, “Really who believes these lies anymore?”
Ordinary people rising up
Shajareh noted that despite all the pressures from political leaders, be it in the US or elsewhere, to silence people, “ordinary citizens have shown and exposed these dictatorships.”
“They are not democracy; if they were democracy they would follow the wishes of their majority people,” he said, adding that “these dictatorships are giving arms to [Israel to] commit genocide when there's no excuse for it.”
They cannot use the excuse of national interest for providing arms to an aggressor, he said, adding, “There's no natural interest to kill innocent Palestinian children.”
They are helping the regime because of their political careers, he said. “There's no difference between Biden and some dictator somewhere in Africa or Asia. There's no difference between them. Let them not fool you for a moment.”
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Ordinary people, the activist maintained, across the world have risen up because “they're seeing in reality that these leaderships and these international institutions are not fit for purpose.”
People have found out that the way forward is through “boycotting” and “putting pressure” on political leaders not through international bodies, he said.
“The way forward is ordinary people coming into streets and forcing their political structure and using boycotting and other means at their disposal to actually bring justice … the fact that humanity on ordinary average people is awakening to this reality itself is something to celebrate.”
The international law “gives the right to those who are occupied to stand up and resist with all means at their disposal,” he said, adding that standing up against occupiers is the right that is “morally” given to everyone.
“There is no other way; it's up to the international community on the grassroots and is up to resistance in the region to rise against this brutal illegal apartheid occupation and get rid of it … [so that] Muslims, Jews, Christians and everyone else could start putting the lives together on the start creating a structure that they could live in peace and harmony,” he added.
