Concern about Palestinian and Israeli human rights is not a ‘blood libel’, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Türk declares – Op-Ed

The shocking cruelty of the attack launched from Gaza by Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups October 7 has created intense and continuing trauma across Israel. The scale and brutality of the killings; the accounts of torture and sexual violence; the abductions of 250 people – many of them still held captive by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad; some of them small children and vulnerable older people; all refused access to international monitors – all these are appalling.

The horror of that attack is apparent. These are breaches of international humanitarian law. Across the United Nations and the world they have been repeatedly and utterly condemned.

In the three months that have followed, that horror has intensified, inflicted on the people of Gaza through a campaign of overwhelming force that has been tainted by grave breaches of international law.

One percent of the 2.2 million Palestinians in Gaza have been killed, according to the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry including thousands of children and other civilians. A further 2.3 percent of Gazans have been wounded, many of them permanently. The entire civilian population is traumatized. This magnitude of suffering is beyond devastating: it is tragic; unconscionable.

Eighty-five percent of Gaza’s people have been forced to flee as a result of the Israeli Defense Force’s use of wave after wave of explosive weapons with indiscriminate effects in populated residential areas and strikes on civilian infrastructure specifically protected under international humanitarian lawthat serve as shelters for many fleeing civilians, such as hospitals, schools and mosques. There’s also been naval shelling, tank fire, and sniper attacks, amid intense clashes between Israeli forces and Palestinian armed groups.

At the same time, Hamas and Islamic Jihad have continued indiscriminate firing of rockets into Israel, reportedly at times shielding themselves in protected civilian locations which is also a breach of international humanitarian law.

The protection of civilians across the Gaza Strip is, in effect, non-existent, and the toll of unbearable pain and trauma will increase further, as Israel’s intense military operations continue.

Humanitarian aid, which should be pouring into Gaza from every available direction, can only trickle in from Rafah in Egypt; only one Israeli entry-point, Kerem Shalom, is allowed to open – and that, infrequently. Half of Gaza’s people are starving, and people are on average reduced to 1.5 litres of water a day – one-tenth of the minimum requirement in emergency conditions. Sewage systems no longer function, and disease is spreading quickly. The few remaining medical teams must amputate the limbs of wounded children without anaesthetic, and face their probable slow deaths from infection, for lack of medicine.

Repeated requests by my office for access to investigate and document the events of October 7 inside Israel have not received a response. But throughout this crisis, my office has, to the best of its ability, maintained its rigorous and impartial reporting on the impact on human rights – including the human rights of Israelis.

Regrettably, some Israeli officials have responded by trying to discredit human rights concerns, including lately by claiming that they constitute “blood libel” – the most poisonous and murderous form of antisemitism.

Antisemitism is a dangerous scourge and must be countered vigorously. But it is not antisemitic to urge respect for the law, and to condemn its gross violations.

It is not a blood libel to deplore the failure to hold to account Israeli soldiers and armed settlers who have killed hundreds of Palestinians in the West Bank since October 7, or the prolongation of a war whose conduct has raised grave international humanitarian and human rights law concerns.

Political instrumentalization of the very real scourge of antisemitism must end. My office stands for equality. We will continue to insist on the equal rights of Palestinians and Israelis to live in peace, free from the permanent threat of an eruption of extreme violence that is fed by a fortress mentality, severe discrimination and incitement to hatred. The insistence on massive violence against Palestinians, against a backdrop of constant discrimination and humiliation, will not lead to peace – neither in Israel, nor in the wider region, where any spill-over of this war could prove devastating.

I also fear such policies will have an increasingly corrosive impact on Israeli institutions and society. And while these policies do not justify any violence against Israeli civilians, they fail to fulfila fundamental promise made by every state to its people: that it will ensure their enduring safety and security.

The protection and guidance of universal human rights standards are in the vital national interest of every state. They serve as guardrails for the independence and inclusivity of institutions; they contribute to healthy and resilient societies that are free from violence and open to all their members.

To discredit human rights is a disservice to Israel’s people.

I, and my office, will continue to seek to engage with Israel’s government, and its people, to protect and advance human rights, as set out in the international treaties that Israel itself contributed to, and has approved as standards by which its own conduct, as that of others, can – and must – be measured.

This opinion article originally appeared in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz on 10 January 2024