Buzzwords and false allegations are Western human rights inversion - opinion

With tragedies abounding, the Western brainwashing machinery is working overtime against Israel.

But Western media outlets, social-media platforms, UN and human rights committees, political leaders and parliamentarians, incited university students, and ignorant show-biz celebrities spout accusations against Israel of genocide, apartheid, starvation, and disproportionate military actions.

Such paragons of humanitarian virtue claim to defend human rights and advocate for Palestinians, but glaringly ignore everyone else and deny the rights to which Israel and its citizens are entitled. They ignore genocidal violence and terror by Palestinian and Islamist fanatics, which is incited by Palestinian leadership and supported, encouraged, and financed by Iran, Qatar, and Turkey.

No less glaring is the fact that the Western world chooses to forget the Hamas massacre on October 7, 2023 – the rape, torture, burning, and butchery of thousands of Israelis and foreigners; the taking of hundreds of hostages; and the use of Hamas’s own civilians as human shields.

What should be a universal moral standard of human rights has become a cynical and transparent political weapon, directed against Israel.

Popular buzzwords – “genocide,” “apartheid,” “colonialism,” “racism,” “starvation,” and “indiscriminate destruction” – are the lingua franca of this propaganda fixation against Israel. They are chanted at demonstrations, repeated in Western parliaments, and echoed in politicized international courts.

The allegation of “genocide” is particularly offensive and contrived. It was coined in 1944 by the Polish-Jewish jurist Raphael Lemkin in response to the Nazi attempt to annihilate the Jews and was criminalized in the 1948 UN Genocide Convention. Today it is cynically repackaged and applied against Israel, most prominently in South Africa’s absurd claims at the International Court of Justice. Thus, a legal instrument intended to punish genocide, as well as a once-respected international court, have been turned into political weapons.

This genocide accusation willfully misinterprets the convention’s definition, while those accusing Israel conveniently ignore explicit genocidal calls to eliminate Israel “from the river to the sea,” which heralded Hamas’s October 7 “Al-Aqsa Flood” attack. No proceedings have been initiated against those inciting or supporting genocide against Israel and the Jewish people.

It resurfaced at the 2001 Durban Racism Conference and continues to fuel campaigns to delegitimize Israel and justify sanctions modeled on those once imposed on South Africa.

This propaganda ignores Israel’s multi-racial, pluralistic democracy, where Arab citizens enjoy constitutional equality, freedom of expression, and full political representation. Israel’s security restrictions on Palestinian movement and access in parts of Judea and Samaria are not racially based, but a legitimate response to ongoing terror and incitement by Hamas and other groups.

Hardships faced by civilians in Gaza stem from the conflict situation – including chaotic handling of aid by international bodies and the systematic commandeering of trucks and cargo by Hamas, which sells supplies at inflated prices in local markets.

A controversial August 2025 study by the UN-affiliated “Famine Review Committee” fueled this narrative, despite being widely criticized and discredited for methodological flaws and data manipulation. Israel enables rapid and unimpeded passage of relief into Gaza, as reflected in UN and World Food Programme statistics on functioning food markets and the availability of humanitarian goods.

Accusations of indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks and destruction by Israel in Gaza, disseminated by the Hamas disinformation machine, are readily amplified by sympathetic politicians and media. In reality, the Jewish state undertakes significant efforts, consistent with international humanitarian law, to warn civilians and remove them from combat areas – even as Hamas deliberately embeds its terror infrastructure and operatives in homes, schools, hospitals, high-rises, and an extensive tunnel network beneath civilian neighborhoods. International law explicitly prohibits such use of human shields. Property used for acts of terror constitutes a legitimate military target.

To fixate on flawed accusations against Israel while ignoring genuine, massive atrocities elsewhere is to repeat ominous historical precedents. This inversion of human-rights values, aimed solely at singling out Israel, should be obvious – but sadly, it is not.