Bit by bit, Israel is effectively shredding the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) to pieces – with obvious abetment and active financial arms injections by all major NATO powers. The Israeli kinetic aggression against Syria, Yemen, and Lebanon, along with continued offensives in Palestinian Authority territories, with the financial and military support of leading NATO nations, lays bare the dark side of geopolitical preferences. This enables Tel Aviv to literally redefine the concept of the right to self-defense.
The Western outrage and expression of support for Israel following Iranian attacks on Israel (October 1) also exposed the hypocrisy of cold-blooded geopolitics, which is blind to nearly 43,000 deaths in Gaza, Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen but alive to the invasion of Israeli sovereignty. Thousands of deaths, mostly of non-combatant women and children, apparently do not qualify to be judged through the prism of the UDHR.
Similar actions by other countries would invariably draw punitive measures such as armed intervention and economic sanctions. Russia is a live example of how the US-led West reacts to violations of a country’s territorial integrity or genocide by a particular group. US interventions in the Balkans, Syria, and East Timor are some examples of US reaction or armed involvement in regional conflicts.
Russia faces all kinds of sanctions for its military incursion into parts of Ukraine. China, too, faced sanctions on account of alleged human rights abuses in Xinjiang, but the genocide of over 43,000 Muslims in the countries mentioned above hardly matters to the backers of the killers.
The multi-pronged deadly kinetic incursions by Israel into all these countries have hardly drawn any meaningful censure from major NATO countries, for whom Hezbollah, Hamas, and Iran are the root cause of the current situation – and not the original sin, i.e., the occupation of Palestinian territories over seven decades ago and the expansion of the Zionist state after the 1967 war. These decades have seen the displacement of millions of Palestinians from their homeland, followed by Jewish settlements in what originally belonged to the Palestinians.
| “Israel is pursuing ethno-racist genocide,” says Iranian Professor Mohammad Marandi, Tehran University. In an interview with Sky News, Professor Mohammad Marandi called Iran’s missile strike on Israel a significant blow, rejecting claims of failure. He described Israel as a “racist, ethno-supremacist colony” and framed the conflict as a 76-year struggle against ethnic cleansing. Marandi warned of a harsher Iranian response to any Israeli retaliation, given Iran’s missile infrastructure, and accused Israel of genocide in Gaza, contrasting Iran’s targeting of military sites with Israel’s actions against civilians. He also dismissed the idea of Iran losing a war, predicting Israel’s defeat unless the U.S. intervenes, which he warned would lead to the destruction of U.S. assets and global economic collapse. Lastly, Marandi called for the end of Western support for what he views as Israeli racism and advocated for equal rights for all people in Palestine, regardless of religion. |
What is UDHR?
Drafted in December 1948, the UDHR sets out fundamental human rights to be universally protected and has inspired, and paved the way for, the adoption of more than seventy human rights treaties.
Its preamble underlines the “recognition of the inherent dignity and the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family as the foundation of freedom, justice, and peace in the world.”
Some of the articles of the UDHR merit mention here when questioning whether any of them are being applied to the state of Israel at all.
- Article 1 of the UDHR declares that “all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.”
- Article 2 entitles “everyone to all the rights and freedoms outlined in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, color, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.”
- Article 3 of the UDHR ensures “the right to life, liberty and security of person” to everyone.
- Article 5 promises that “no one shall be subjected to torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment.”
- Article 7 spells out that “all are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law. All are entitled to equal protection against any discrimination in violation of this Declaration and against any incitement to such discrimination.”
None of the above five articles matter at all to Israel and its big supporters. They are literally watching on with expressions of solidarity as Israel plummets the UDHR, UN resolutions, and the UN Rule of Law index.
We indeed are living in a New World Order defined by geopolitical hypocrisy and a blatant disregard for the objectives set out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This implies only the mighty ones have the right to redefine the concept of self-defense, as well as the universally acknowledged human rights regime.
