Human rights are a strange thing, especially when they fall into the hands of the fundamentalist Left. That is because the Left has its own ideas regarding what constitutes human rights.
For example, the Left has long argued that humans have an entitlement to have all their basic needs provided for free by the government when people themselves do not feel in the mood to work and earn income to buy them. Then there is the right of convicted murderers and rapists to be kept alive in cushy prisons and not executed, because execution violates their rights. Then there is the human right of gay folks to get "married". And of course we do not want to forget about the right of women to abort a 10 month old fetus. Nor the human right of all ethnic minorities to equal homogeneous representation in absolutely everything. And we sure do not want to forget about the human rights of red squirrels and nice snails!
Leftist deconstruction of human rights gets really mind-boggling, of course, when it comes to the Middle East. Murderers who organize mass atrocities and suicide bombings have the human right to never be targeted for assassination. It goes without saying that the Left's notions of human rights never extend to Jewish civilians, and Jewish children definitely should not have the human right to ride buses and go to school without being murdered. The Palestinians have the human right to shell Israeli civilian homes, because Israel is an occupier. They also have the right to murder any Jew who steps into lands they claim. The Hizbollah has the human right to shell northern Israel, because Israel did not hand over to the Hizbollah a portion of the Golan Heights that the Syrians claim is theirs.
This week, Israel's Arab "human rights" lobby is demanding "national rights for Arabs in Israel" - you guessed it, as a human right. By national rights, they essentially mean national independence. In the same way that Taiwan has national rights inside China, I guess. One of the main groups pushing this "human rights" agenda is Adallah (www.adalah.org). Betselem, Israel's human rights watchdog that does not think Jewish civilians have any human rights that should be defended, has big well-funded ads in the press this week denouncing Israel building West Bank security roads on which Palestinian are prohibited from traveling. The fact that Palestinians murder Jews when they ride on these roads is irrelevant. It would never occur to Betselem to call on Palestinians to stop murdering Jews so that such security roads closed to Palestinians would not be needed.
The best known Israeli leftist "human rights groups" are precisely the same ones who have never agreed that Jews have a human right to defend themselves or their children or their country. They have never really acknowledged Jews having any human rights at all. When they say human rights, it is nothing more than a code word for endorsing the Arab fascist agenda. They have never had much interest in abuses of the human rights of Arabs by Arab regimes nor by the PLO's Reichlet. Among the worst leftist extremist anti-Jewish groups dressing themselves up as "human rights watchdogs" are Betselem, which has never met a terrorist it thinks should be condemned or prosecuted, Checkpoint Watch, devoted to forcing Israel to remove all its security checkpoints, so that it will be so much easier for Palestinian suicide bombers to mass murder Jews, and the above-mentioned Adallah, an "Arab human rights" group that is little more than a front group for the PLO.
With International Human Rights Day and all, the Likud is desperately trying to show how eager it is to merge with Yossi Beilin and the Meretz Marxists.
Think I am joshing you? This past week, one of the senior Likud Knesset Members, Michael Eitan, a guy once considered a serious contender for party leadership and incorrectly thought (by me) to be a man of principle, proposed in the parliament that Israel's Knesset now set up a "parliamentary committee" on human rights, whose soul purpose will be to assist the far-leftist anti-Jewish "human rights groups" around to lobby for their agenda in the country. And the three specific "human rights groups" mentioned in the Likud proposal are Betselem, Checkpoint Watch and Adallah. Apparently, the association for the human rights of al-Qaeda and the Union for Pension Rights for Gestapo Officers will not necessarily be put in touch with committee members.
For example, the Left has long argued that humans have an entitlement to have all their basic needs provided for free by the government when people themselves do not feel in the mood to work and earn income to buy them. Then there is the right of convicted murderers and rapists to be kept alive in cushy prisons and not executed, because execution violates their rights. Then there is the human right of gay folks to get "married". And of course we do not want to forget about the right of women to abort a 10 month old fetus. Nor the human right of all ethnic minorities to equal homogeneous representation in absolutely everything. And we sure do not want to forget about the human rights of red squirrels and nice snails!
Leftist deconstruction of human rights gets really mind-boggling, of course, when it comes to the Middle East. Murderers who organize mass atrocities and suicide bombings have the human right to never be targeted for assassination. It goes without saying that the Left's notions of human rights never extend to Jewish civilians, and Jewish children definitely should not have the human right to ride buses and go to school without being murdered. The Palestinians have the human right to shell Israeli civilian homes, because Israel is an occupier. They also have the right to murder any Jew who steps into lands they claim. The Hizbollah has the human right to shell northern Israel, because Israel did not hand over to the Hizbollah a portion of the Golan Heights that the Syrians claim is theirs.
This week, Israel's Arab "human rights" lobby is demanding "national rights for Arabs in Israel" - you guessed it, as a human right. By national rights, they essentially mean national independence. In the same way that Taiwan has national rights inside China, I guess. One of the main groups pushing this "human rights" agenda is Adallah (www.adalah.org). Betselem, Israel's human rights watchdog that does not think Jewish civilians have any human rights that should be defended, has big well-funded ads in the press this week denouncing Israel building West Bank security roads on which Palestinian are prohibited from traveling. The fact that Palestinians murder Jews when they ride on these roads is irrelevant. It would never occur to Betselem to call on Palestinians to stop murdering Jews so that such security roads closed to Palestinians would not be needed.
The best known Israeli leftist "human rights groups" are precisely the same ones who have never agreed that Jews have a human right to defend themselves or their children or their country. They have never really acknowledged Jews having any human rights at all. When they say human rights, it is nothing more than a code word for endorsing the Arab fascist agenda. They have never had much interest in abuses of the human rights of Arabs by Arab regimes nor by the PLO's Reichlet. Among the worst leftist extremist anti-Jewish groups dressing themselves up as "human rights watchdogs" are Betselem, which has never met a terrorist it thinks should be condemned or prosecuted, Checkpoint Watch, devoted to forcing Israel to remove all its security checkpoints, so that it will be so much easier for Palestinian suicide bombers to mass murder Jews, and the above-mentioned Adallah, an "Arab human rights" group that is little more than a front group for the PLO.
With International Human Rights Day and all, the Likud is desperately trying to show how eager it is to merge with Yossi Beilin and the Meretz Marxists.
Think I am joshing you? This past week, one of the senior Likud Knesset Members, Michael Eitan, a guy once considered a serious contender for party leadership and incorrectly thought (by me) to be a man of principle, proposed in the parliament that Israel's Knesset now set up a "parliamentary committee" on human rights, whose soul purpose will be to assist the far-leftist anti-Jewish "human rights groups" around to lobby for their agenda in the country. And the three specific "human rights groups" mentioned in the Likud proposal are Betselem, Checkpoint Watch and Adallah. Apparently, the association for the human rights of al-Qaeda and the Union for Pension Rights for Gestapo Officers will not necessarily be put in touch with committee members.