When Human Rights Principles Are Abandoned at Zionism’s Altar

In every struggle for human dignity and freedom, certain voices consistently speak out against oppression—except when it is Israel oppressing Palestinians. This selective moral calculus, in which universal human rights suddenly become conditional, exposes a glaring hypocrisy. Nowhere is this more evident than in the discourse surrounding Israel's war in Gaza, where the moral and legal principles upheld in other conflicts are selectively disregarded to justify Israeli and Zionist exceptionalism

The debate is not just about facts; it is about the fundamental inconsistency in how people—particularly those who otherwise champion human rights—respond when the victims are Palestinians, and the perpetrator is Israel. The contradictions expose how Zionism, in its modern form, necessitates a moral blind spot that demands impunity for Israeli actions while vilifying those who dare to apply the same legal and ethical standards to its conduct as they would to any other state.

The Moral Double Standard on Genocide

The word "genocide" carries profound legal and moral weight, and its application is strictly defined under the 1948 Genocide Convention. The convention specifies acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group. The standard is not whether a government claims to be targeting "terrorists" but whether, in reality, its actions exhibit intent to systematically destroy a group.

Israel's war on Gaza meets this threshold, as numerous legal scholars and human rights organizations have pointed out. The systematic targeting of hospitals, the deliberate starvation of civilians through a blockade, the bombing of "safe zones" after civilians were ordered to flee there, the shooting of scores of children execution style in the head, the killing of reporters and health workers, and the explicit statements from Israeli officials about making Gaza "disappear" all point to intent—one of the key elements of genocide. Yet, for some, acknowledging this reality is impossible, because to do so would mean confronting the full moral implications of their ideological commitments.

There is still a choice: to embrace a vision of justice that applies universally, or to cling to an exceptionalism that demands that one people's suffering be acknowledged while another's is erased.

Instead of reckoning with the overwhelming evidence, many deflect with rhetorical maneuvers. Some claim that genocide cannot be occurring because Israel's actions are a response to Hamas' attack on October 7. But self-defense, even if claimed, does not justify the deliberate and disproportionate slaughter of civilians, the destruction of an entire society's infrastructure, and the intentional infliction of conditions that make survival impossible.

Others shift the conversation to casualty counts, suggesting that unless there is evidence that every person killed was a civilian, genocide cannot be occurring. This is an absurd distortion of international law. The intent to destroy a population does not require the murder of every individual, nor does it hinge on whether some of the dead were combatants. The question is whether a group is being targeted as a group—and in Gaza, the reality is unmistakable.

Weaponizing Victimhood, Erasing Palestinian Suffering

A particularly insidious aspect of Zionist exceptionalism is its demand for exclusive victimhood. The suffering of Jews throughout history—especially in the Holocaust—is invoked to justify Israel's actions, yet Palestinians are not permitted to speak of their own suffering in equivalent terms. Any attempt to compare apartheid South Africa's brutality to Israel's treatment of Palestinians is dismissed as "anti-Israel propaganda." Any recognition of the Nakba—the ethnic cleansing of 750,000 Palestinians in 1948—is treated as an attack on Israel's right to exist. And when Palestinians use the language of genocide to describe the systematic destruction of their people, they are accused of exaggeration, even as entire neighborhoods are leveled, families are wiped out, and civilians are starved.

This double standard is not accidental; it is foundational to Zionism's modern ideological framework. By positioning Jewish suffering as unique and beyond historical parallel, Zionist narratives demand unconditional sympathy for Israel while actively erasing Palestinian suffering. In this framework, Palestinians are expected to endure oppression in silence, and any resistance—whether military, political, or even rhetorical—is condemned as terrorism or propaganda.

Exceptionalism and the Refusal to Engage

When confronted with these contradictions, those who defend Israeli policies often claim their critics "don't understand the conflict"—a patronizing assertion that implies that only Zionist perspectives hold legitimacy. They dismiss human rights reports, legal findings, and international consensus as "propaganda," refusing to engage with the evidence because doing so would require acknowledging Israel's culpability.

This intellectual cowardice manifests in another telling way: a readiness to condemn oppression globally—except when it involves Israel. Those who were outspoken against apartheid in South Africa, who championed human rights for Black South Africans, who decried police brutality in the United States, and who condemned the persecution of Sudanese civilians and Uyghurs in China often fall conspicuously silent or become defensive when Israel is the oppressor. Their commitment to justice has an asterisk: "Only when it doesn't challenge Zionism."

This is the core hypocrisy. If apartheid was wrong in South Africa, it is wrong in Israel. If ethnic cleansing was wrong in Bosnia, it is wrong in Palestine. If genocide was wrong in Rwanda, it is wrong in Gaza. There is no principled way to support human rights in one context while excusing their violation in another.

The Consequences of Moral Cowardice

The refusal to confront Zionism's racism and exceptionalism does not just erode the credibility of those who engage in these double standards—it actively enables Israel's impunity. When genocide is denied despite overwhelming evidence, when Palestinian suffering is dismissed as "exaggeration," and when international law is selectively applied, the result is the continued legitimization of crimes against humanity.

The stark reality of this selective conscience becomes even more apparent when considering the sheer scale of atrocities. Since the Gaza war began in October 2023, Israeli forces have killed over 46,000 Palestinians, the vast majority of whom are children, women, and the elderly. Nearly 1,000 Palestinian health workers have been killed, and between 116 and 193 journalists have lost their lives—figures meticulously documented by the Committee to Protect Journalists. Such staggering numbers, which would undoubtedly provoke global outrage if attributed to a geopolitical adversary of the West, are instead met with silence, deflection, or, at best, muted concern. When Palestinian journalists are assassinated, there is no global solidarity movement akin to "Je Suis Charlie." The war crimes in Gaza fail to elicit even a fraction of the performative outrage that has been mustered against far less egregious actions by other states.

This is not a failure of awareness—it is a deliberate and ideological refusal to apply the same human rights standards to allies as to adversaries. It is not that these activists, intellectuals, and liberal media are incapable of identifying war crimes; they simply refuse to acknowledge them when the perpetrators are "one of their own" or enmeshed in Western alliances. Their silence, or at best, their tepid responses, betray an ugly truth: For many in the human rights community, justice is not universal, but contingent on political expediency.

At its core, this selective conscience erodes the credibility of human rights advocacy itself. If principles are only defended when they align with Western strategic interests, then they are not principles at all—they are tools of power, wielded to bludgeon adversaries and protect allies. This moral inconsistency is precisely why human rights discourse has been increasingly met with cynicism in the Global South, where people see through the thin veneer of universalism and recognize it for what it is: a weaponized, politicized, and deeply selective enterprise.

The crisis in Gaza has exposed the stark reality that, for many self-proclaimed defenders of human rights, the value of human life is not universal but conditional. And that, in itself, is an indictment not just of Israel's enablers, but of an entire industry that has long pretended to stand above the fray, when in reality, it is deeply complicit in perpetuating injustice.

History will remember this moment. Just as those who defended South African apartheid were later forced to reckon with their complicity, those who today defend Zionism's brutal repression will eventually face the weight of history's judgment. The question is whether they will continue to evade reality until that moment arrives or whether they will have the courage to confront it now.

There is still a choice: to embrace a vision of justice that applies universally, or to cling to an exceptionalism that demands that one people's suffering be acknowledged while another's is erased. But let there be no illusions—one path leads to justice, the other to complicity. And history does not forget.