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Human rights and solidarity voices are rising in the world with Palestine, coinciding with an unprecedented government disregard for street pressure and demands to stop crime.
While Israeli violations against civilians in Gaza continue amid Western international support for the genocide committed by Israel, the question of the feasibility of international law, which has emerged at this stage as the most controversial expression, is rising.
Humanitarian and human rights calls are intensifying around the world to stop the Israeli massacre in Gaza, while the global human rights movement appears to be facing a real transformation that may threaten to undermine existing international principles, which are sponsored by international humanitarian law and the legal principles regulating armed conflicts.
More than a month after Israel used a strategy of collective punishment and committed the clearest forms of war crimes, as described by international human rights organizations such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, Western governments, led by the United States, still refuse to call for a ceasefire. .
Israeli violations against civilians in Gaza represent one of the clearest precedents in the world for more than 70 years, and they are evidence that the West gives unrestrained support for committing war crimes and crimes against humanity. A leaked secret document, written by the military attaché at the Dutch Embassy in Tel Aviv, revealed that Israel is “deliberately causing widespread destruction of infrastructure and civilian centers” in Gaza. While the diplomatic document leaked by the Dutch newspaper NRC confirmed that the Israeli army is violating the laws of war. However, the Dutch government did not take a different position, but rather, like most European countries, continued to refuse to demand a ceasefire.
Real danger
The Western position does not seem to be linked to the facts as much as there is a collective political will to support Israel and protect it from accountability, which raises the concerns and fears of international human rights organizations, which see these positions as undermining the basic legal principles on which the current international system is based. In a special statement to Al Jazeera Net, Omar Shaker, director of Human Rights Watch in Israel and Palestine, said, “The double standards of Western governments not only harm the civil protection of Palestinians, but also have repercussions at the global level, because they challenge the basic commitment of these countries to international law.” and the rules on which the international system is based.” Shaker pointed out that failure to respect these obligations constitutes a real danger to human rights principles, and undermines the ability of the international community to protect civilians in all parts of the world.
Shaker added that what we are witnessing in the Gaza Strip is an undeniable war crime, noting that his organization documented clear war crimes committed by the Israeli government, such as displacing residents and targeting hospitals and medical facilities, in addition to the indiscriminate use of white phosphorus against densely populated areas. Shaker also noted that “the response of the United States and other Western leaders to the humanitarian crisis in Gaza highlights the double standards by which these governments deal with the conflict.”
In his words, “These governments have correctly condemned attacks in other contexts in Syria and Ukraine, and the Hamas-led attack on October 7, but they have failed to point out the clear war crimes committed by Israel.”
The concern of individuals and institutions working in the field of human rights is increasing in light of the declared Western protection of Israel’s violations against civilians in Gaza. Campaigns to restrict freedom of expression regarding Palestine are intensifying in Europe and the United States in a way that these countries have not recorded in the past. The last month has witnessed arrests and trials of individuals for demonstrating, chanting, or raising slogans that were interpreted in a way that would lead to judicial conviction.
Demonization and smear campaigns
Human rights organizations also face ongoing demonization and defamation campaigns in more than one Western country. In Britain, the human rights and solidarity movement in general faces accusations of anti-Semitism and hatred, the latest of which was made by the sacked Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, who accused all solidarity activists of being “hate demonstrators.” As for Germany, the government has issued strict instructions to consider some solidarity practices and chants as legal crimes, such as wearing the Palestinian keffiyeh in specific places, or chanting “From the sea to the river, Palestine will be free,” under the pretext that it is a call to deny Israel’s right to exist, which Considered anti-Semitic as defined by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA)
In a related context, Anwar Al-Gharbi, Director of the Geneva Center for Democracy and Human Rights, said in his statement to Al-Jazeera Net that what the global human rights movement is witnessing is unprecedented in contemporary history, as the Secretary-General of the United Nations is unable to establish a simple position such as demanding a ceasefire, according to recipe.
Al-Gharbi continued, “Despite this, it is the civil rights system that will produce positive results in light of the intense action by human rights associations and initiatives across the world, to which hundreds of international jurists and lawyers have joined.” The Swiss jurist of Tunisian origin, residing in Geneva, also called for the need to differentiate between the official and ineffective human rights system on the one hand, and the stable and continuing civil rights system on the other hand, which he sees as having a significant future impact.
Human rights initiatives
Al-Gharbi stressed the great importance of the impact of human rights initiatives, especially since there is awareness of the seriousness of what is happening. According to his point of view, “When everyone becomes unable to stop the perpetrator, the feeling will strengthen that everyone is a target, and that the existing justice no longer protects him, and this is what motivated this large outburst from all countries.” Al-Gharbi concludes his speech by saying that “the international situation today, and the inability of the existing international legal system, has strengthened individual initiatives to achieve justice,” pointing to the idea of a boycott that is growing today, including the academic boycott.
The current war on Gaza records the growing public feeling internationally about the decline in legal protection of public freedoms. This prompted a number of employees of international media agencies to resign, as happened with the British channel BBC and the American newspaper The New York Times. In light of developments in the war on Gaza, the phenomenon of protest resignations has increased recently in the West, which indicates the failure of governmental and semi-governmental institutions and entities to adhere to equal standards in respecting freedoms and human rights. In the Netherlands, 12 directors and artists withdrew from the Amsterdam International Documentary Film Festival (IDFA), which is considered the largest festival of its kind in the world. The British newspaper “The Guardian” indicated that the withdrawals came against the backdrop of the festival administration’s condemnation of a Palestinian chant that occurred during the opening session of the activity. Earlier last week, 8 ministers resigned at once from the shadow government led by the opposition British Labor Party, after the latter voted against a draft resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza in the House of Commons.
Informal initiatives in the legal field have increased recently, the most important of which was the initiative of French international lawyer Gilles Devers, who succeeded in gathering what he called an “army of lawyers” from various nationalities in the world. Those responding to Devers’ call reached about 300 international lawyers and jurists. They intend to take their escapes to the International Criminal Court.
Regardless of the feasibility of this movement, human rights activists, such as Anwar Al-Gharbi, believe that it may reflect a decline in faith in the prevailing mechanisms for achieving justice through governments, which may contribute to reshaping the international human rights movement, from seeking justice from the prevailing system to creating it through civil pressure and individual initiatives. .
