Israelis are outraged at the International Red Cross for refusing to deliver badly needed medications to Israelis being held in Hamas captivity, and for telling the families of hostages that they should consider “the Palestinian side.” This comes after UN Women took almost two months to condemn the massacre and mass rapes that took place on October 7. As an Israeli, I cannot fathom why the West holds one standard for Israel and another for the Palestinians.
If Israel ever denied urgently needed medications to Palestinian terrorists being held in Israeli prisons, the International Red Cross would not hesitate to condemn. But when Palestinian terrorists deprive Israeli hostages of essential medication, they are silent and beg us to “consider the Palestinian side.” What exactly should we consider? When Yezidi women and girls were sexually enslaved by the brutal ISIS fighters, the UN was not silent, but when Israeli women and girls are raped and mutilated, it took UN Women forever to say anything, and when they finally did, it came across as too little, too late.
Sadly, UN Women and the International Red Cross are far from being the only ones employing double standards in the West. The website of Human Rights Watch, which includes a page devoted to women’s rights, recently condemned Israel and accused it of war crimes for accidentally killing a Reuters journalist and injuring six other journalists in an airstrike in Lebanon, but had nothing to say about the mass rapes that occurred on October 7. The same can be said for Amnesty International. The National Organization for Women only last week condemned “rape as a weapon of war,” but refrained from mentioning the role of Hamas in raping women en masse on October 7.
How the world can turn a blind eye to the present plight of the Israeli hostages and the people massacred, raped, and mutilated on October 7 boggles the mind, especially after the rise of the Me Too Movement. Apparently, it is Me Too unless you are a Jew. In a recent display by the Israeli mission to the United Nations, the New York Times reported that Yael Richert, a chief superintendent with the Israel Police, noted: “Everything was an apocalypse of corpses. Girls without any clothes on. Without tops. Without underwear. People cut in half. Butchered. Some were beheaded. There were girls with a broken pelvis due to repetitive rapes. Their legs were spread wide apart, in a split.”
Another survivor of the Rave Massacre noted: “They laid a woman down and I understood they were raping her. He was basically shifting her around and passing her to another person. She stood on her feet, she was bleeding from her back. He’s pulling her hair. She’s not dressed, and he cuts off her breast, throws it on the road and they are playing with it.” Yet the West despite hearing all of this testimony remains silent, while condemning Israel for air strikes on Gaza.
Pictures of the participants of the Nova party who were murdered and kidnapped by the terrorist organization Hamas on October 7, 2023 are displayed at the site of the Nova music festival massacre, in Re’im, near the Israeli-Gaza border, November 28, 2023 (credit: YONATAN SINDEL/FLASH90)
Jews are not the only objects of a Western double standard
Unfortunately, Jews are not the only people that the West employs a double standard for. It appears that all too often the West likes to abandon their allies, while helping their enemies. Among the hostages were Americans, Thais, Bedouins and citizens of other countries, yet this did not change the way the West related to the October 7 massacre. The same can also be said for Azerbaijan.
Recently, Azerbaijan and Armenia have made great strides towards signing a peace agreement, with the leaders of both countries announcing a joint statement and their intention to release prisoners on both sides. However, despite this great accomplishment, far too many in the West continue to condemn Azerbaijan, who is a staunch ally of both America and Israel. In fact, Human Rights Watch, the very organization that calls for boycotts of Israel and ignores the mass rapes of October 7, has launched a campaign against Azerbaijan for “alleged corruption.” Meanwhile, HRW is silent about the corruption of the Hamas terror organization, which is stealing humanitarian aid from the Gazans and delivering it to their terrorists. HRW is also silent about how Hamas murdered Muslim Arabs on October 7.
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Meanwhile, as Azerbaijan comes closer to making peace with Armenia, 60 US Senators pressed US President Biden to increase security aid for Armenia, but not also for Azerbaijan. In fact, the US Senate not too long ago even passed a resolution calling for the US to cut off aid to Azerbaijan. Now, one must ponder, if the US wants to strengthen the peace between Armenia and Azerbaijan, should they not invest in peace-building initiatives for both countries, instead of cutting off aid to Azerbaijan while seeking to increase security aid for Armenia? Would not such behavior run counter to the prospects for peace between both countries? The anti-Azerbaijan lobby in America is actively working to sabotage the peace between both peoples. In other words, Azerbaijan gets the Israel treatment in the US, even though it was Azerbaijani soldiers who worked with Turkey in order to assure the safe evacuation of Americans from Afghanistan. America does not appreciate their friends, they only support their enemies.
The time has come for a change of discourse in the US. The time has come for America to stand with its allies and to stand strong against its enemies. The time has come for Me Too to also include Jews. The time has come for the world to recognize the human rights of the Jewish people and its allies, and to fight against massacres, sexual violence, and torture. The time has come to say enough is enough. The bigotry and double standards must end here.
The writer is a Middle East scholar and commentator on the region.
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