The UN Must Help Calm The French Riots By Condemning Israel

by Ken Roth, former Director, Human Rights Watch

New York, July 12 – The pictures out of Paris and other locales in La Republique Française spark profound concern among all defenders of human rights. The scenes of mayhem in response to a police shooting recall some of the darkest moments of recent years, but fortunately the human rights community has a robust arsenal of go-to measures to react to such disturbing developments, honed through decades of standing at the front lines of the campaign for almost everyone’s right to live in dignity and security: international resolutions denouncing the Jewish State.

A significant number of human rights activists from my former organization and allied NGOs – Amnesty International and Btselem foremost among them – understand the crucial need to warn against enforcement excesses against the protesters; that message forms the bread and butter of human rights discourse when events such as these develop. They, and we, also realize that the cause of human rights suffers unless it centers the plight of Palestinians – and that, therefore, the only appropriate response to the riots in France and their suppression must involve condemnation of Israel.

At the very least, critique of the French response – which should of course consume the bulk of our concern; any depredations of the rioters deserve no more than token criticism; these are Muslims, after all, whom our NGOs may not criticize – must make explicit the parallel with, if not the dependence on, the unfortunate dynamic in Israel-Palestine.

In this respect, our NGO networks have performed well. Any mention of the rioters vandalizing a Holocaust memorial and calling for another Holocaust, they only mention among a flood of other reports humanizing, justifying, and supporting the rioters – if they mention it at all. Amnesty, after all, voted not to include antisemitism as an issue of concern; who can blame them for ignoring it? Funding from dictatorships might dry up if too many people other than Jews (or their US proxies) star in human rights NGO opprobrium.

Resolution of the French situation may well prove critical to the stability of the country, to Europe as a whole, and to global affairs – but that pales in comparison with how it affects, or even merely reflects, Palestine and the ongoing dispossession of Palestinians. Trust the human rights community to shrug at whatever resolution, if any, emerges from the French situation. We have much bigger gefilte fish to fry.

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