THIS week is International Human Rights Week. It was designated such by the United Nations to honour the signing of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights on December 10 1948. At the heart of the document is a commitment to the dignity of every human being, irrespective of their place of birth or their status. Whether born in a manger or born in a palace, every human being must carry the same worth. Or so, after the Second World War of mass genocide and murderous intent, the global community decided.
76 years later a nation state indicted at the International Criminal Court for active and current genocide bombs its way into another nation state. By joining with so-called Syrian 'rebels' Israel has made for itself another centre of influence in the Middle East. The rebels are a hotch-potch cadre of ISIS and Al Qaeda. The media is fixated on telling us that the Syrian people have been liberated from the dictatorship of Assad. It is a helluva 'Road to Damascus' interpretation for Israel’s genocidal government, ISIS and Al Quada to be called liberators.
Is that how we now frame human rights? We determine that this person is a bad guy – and the Syrian government was no upholder of human rights – so therefore anyone who deposes them is a good guy?
That was the thinking that allowed Soviet troops to rape their way from Moscow to Berlin. That allowed British bombers to drop phosphorus on children in Dresden and the United States to drop two atomic bombs, annihilating two full cities in Japan. It was 'the greater good', which swerved accountability at the time, but was really the winning of a war, and the victors claiming the morality and its framing.
However, 76 years later and we are in theory more advanced in our thinking. We are meant to understand what the principle of the universality of human rights should mean. If you are a civilian in Gaza, however, you may well question if international law has any strength or force when the Prime Minister of your oppressor, who is determined to wipe you, your family and your country off the face of the Earth, can be feted as a liberator in Syria four weeks later.
Or maybe you won't question at all because you will recognise the abhorrent double standards and the bare-faced truth that the Western media and establishment support Israel, irrespective of Palestinian lives, international law or any shade of what might be called human rights. And ultimately they collectively do see your annihilation as the greater good. In 2024.
Maybe in December 2034, after the wars and horrors that are yet to come – and they are coming – there will be some hand-wringing in the United Nations. Maybe there will be a wall or monument somewhere to remember the lives of children and civilians that have been spent in this murderous time. Maybe it will even be mentioned in a future International Human Rights Week if the United Nations and the idea of human rights law survive this time. Maybe. But what use is it?
As a Pope prays beside at the baby Jesus swaddled in a keffiyeh to try to prick the world’s conscience, we are asked to believe in the West’s greater good. It is an affront to our collective intelligence.
