On October 7, 2023, Hamas carried out the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. Families were burned alive in their homes. Children were murdered in front of their parents. Women were raped and mutilated. Elderly civilians were dragged into Gaza as hostages. The perpetrators filmed their crimes and proudly shared the videos with the world.

In the days that followed, one might have expected the global human rights movement to respond with unmistakable moral clarity. Instead, within hours, protests appeared across Western campuses condemning Israel rather than the terrorists who had carried out the attack.

That inversion revealed something deeply troubling about the modern human rights ecosystem.

Across the world today, atrocities of staggering scale unfold with comparatively little attention. Sudan’s civil war has produced mass killings and famine. China’s repression of the Uyghur Muslim population includes mass detention and cultural destruction. Christian communities across parts of Nigeria and the Sahel face relentless attacks from jihadist groups. The Yazidi genocide carried out by ISIS remains one of the clearest cases of ethnic extermination in the 21st century.  Most recently, the Druze of Syria have faced mass killings, torture and displacement.

Yet when the subject becomes Israel, the machinery of global activism mobilizes with remarkable speed and intensity — often advancing accusations of genocide that collapse under serious scrutiny.

The pattern reveals a striking distortion: genuine atrocities receive limited attention, while fabricated accusations against Israel dominate the conversation.

Over time, I have come to see that most actors in the global human rights discourse fall into three distinct groups: the hypocrites who drive the narrative, the useful idiots who unknowingly amplify it, and the honest brokers who genuinely care about universal human rights but are often drowned out by the noise.

The first group consists of those who know exactly what they are doing.

For these actors, the language of human rights has become a political instrument rather than a universal moral framework. Their activism is not driven by the scale of suffering or the severity of abuses but by an ideological fixation on Israel and, more broadly, on the Jewish people.

Their influence can be seen in institutions such as the United Nations Human Rights Council and large advocacy organizations like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, which devote extraordinary attention to Israel while real atrocities elsewhere receive comparatively little scrutiny.

Consider Iran. The Islamic Republic is among the most oppressive regimes in the world. It brutally suppresses dissent, persecutes women, and sponsors terrorist movements across the Middle East. In January 2026, Iranians once again rose up against the regime in massive demonstrations demanding freedom and basic rights. The regime responded with brutal force. Human rights groups estimate that roughly 35,000 protesters were killed or disappeared during the crackdown.

Yet Western campuses did not erupt with massive protest movements demanding the fall of the Iranian regime. There were no sprawling encampments insisting on freedom for Iranian women. There were no global demonstrations accusing Tehran of genocide.

But when Israel defends itself against Hamas, the same activists suddenly discover limitless moral urgency.  This is not universal human rights advocacy. It is selective morality — and in many cases, deliberate distortion.

The second group is far larger and, in many ways, more tragic.

These are individuals who sincerely believe they are standing for justice but are operating with incomplete or distorted information. They include professors, students, journalists, activists, citizens, and politicians who rely on the credibility of established institutions to shape their understanding of global events.

If organizations branded as human rights defenders publish reports condemning Israel, many assume those reports must reflect objective reality. Few pause to ask why those same institutions devote vastly less attention to atrocities elsewhere or why authoritarian regimes responsible for massive repression often escape comparable scrutiny.

In this way, narratives constructed by the first group spread widely through the second. People who believe they are defending human rights end up reinforcing a distorted moral framework in which Israel is uniquely condemned while real human rights abuses receive marginal attention.

The result is not merely political bias. It is a profound erosion of moral clarity.

The third group, unfortunately, is the smallest but also the most important.

These are individuals who genuinely believe in universal human rights and are willing to apply those principles consistently. They are open to evidence, willing to challenge prevailing narratives, and capable of recognizing complexity rather than reducing global conflicts to slogans.

When they examine the full reality of the Middle East, they see that Israel is a vibrant democracy confronting adversaries who openly celebrate terrorism and the destruction of the Jewish state. They also recognize that the same extremist ideologies threatening Israel often threaten minority communities, democratic institutions, and pluralistic societies around the world.

For those who truly believe in universal human rights, these connections cannot be ignored.

Reclaiming Universal Human Rights

The tragedy of the current moment is not simply that Israel is criticized. Democracies should always be subject to scrutiny. The tragedy is that the principles of human rights are now applied so selectively that the concept itself risks losing credibility.

When real atrocities are largely ignored while invented ones dominate the conversation, the issue is no longer human rights. It is obsession. And obsession is the enemy of truth.

Truth cannot survive where real atrocities are ignored and invented ones are amplified.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)