AhlulBayt News Agency (ABNA): The new Israeli crimes and brutal airstrikes against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip these days mark a new test for the Western human rights advocacy claims. Over the past few months, Biden administration officials repeatedly talked about China’s violation against the rights of the Muslim minority in its Xinjiang province, but when it comes to Palestine, the White House is turning a blind eye and even describes as "self defense" the atrocious indiscriminate bombardment of the civilians in the Palestinian enclave.
Such a behavior by the West has a decades-long past record. Even in the new developments in West Asia and North Africa regions in the years that followed the 2011 popular uprisings, such double standards have been glaringly tangible. For example, the Western officials ignore the humanitarian catastrophes and crimes of the Saudi regime against the innocent Yemeni civilians, but they follow the developments in Libya seriously and closely. They also close their eyes to the Indian oppression over the Kashmiri Muslims, while following the Xinhua situation. But why do the Western countries adopt such double standards? Two essential issues should be taken into account.
Geopolitical and political interests before ethics and human rights
Undoubtedly, one of the reasons for the international community's different view of human rights in a place like Gaza and other parts is their geopolitical position and political interests. Essentially, the human rights are elements of political ethics and international principles, devised to defend the popular rights and dignity. But this is pretty much abused in today's world, with the Western states in today's anarchist world order going against their liberal claims and slogans and adopting double standards in their definition of the human rights. Whenever and wherever their interests require, they advocate the human rights and even use them as a legitimate attack platform against the rivals. The US and EU's current support to the Israeli regime discredits all of human rights claims of the West, especially their claims about cooperation with the Muslim countries. To put it differently, today the geopolitical and political interests are winning over the ethics and human rights.
Over the past decades, defending the security and existence of the Israeli regime has become a matter of prestige for the US and Europe and a major strategy, to an extent that the critics of this policy are severely repressed or marginalized and thus are excluded from freedom of expression principle. In such a situation, the oppressed people of Palestine, on the one hand, fall victim to the covetousness and crimes of the Israelis, and on the other hand, fall victim to the silence and covert support of the West for Tel Aviv.
Encouraged by the Western backing, the Israelis never take into consideration any of the Security Council resolutions, or even the basic principles of war and have always massacred the civilians as a pressure tactic and a way of ethnic cleaning of the Palestinians. Even now, while the majority of the world countries have criticized and condemned the actions of Tel Aviv, the Western politicians remain unwavering in their armed, financial, and political support to the Israelis.
Western media considerably reverse the Gaza realities
The key feature of the new centennial is the pervasion of the technology and communication devices in the human life. In fact, the new age, as the age of communication, has minimized to the lowest degree possible the geographical boundaries and time intervals for the humans to communicate. Thanks to this development, now we cannot talk about a development falling out of coverage. One of main functions of the media is related to their potentials to be used against the ethical and human values. Because as much as the media are utilized by the academic circles, politicians, and think tanks, they can be abused by the unethical and inhumane circles. The media can, turning their eyes to the unethical values, reverse the reality or in other words "concoct" their alternative truth version of a crisis somewhere in the world.
Media in the new age are truth concoction instruments. This is clear from their double-standard function and bias in the revolutionary developments of the West Asia and North Africa after 2011. Libyan crisis, for example, has been given attention by the West for the African country's geopolitical significance. On the opposite side stands Yemen where the Saudi aggression has caused one of the century's most tragic humanitarian catastrophes but remains in news blackout.
This approach is adopted in the ongoing Israeli war on Gaza. Such Western broadcasters as BBC, CNN, Fox New, The Guardian, and France 24 never waver in reversing the Gaza war truth. They paint as sabotage and vandalism, and thus wrong, the Palestinian self-defense in the face of the Israeli aggression while war crimes of the Israeli military are narrated legitimate and justified.
The fact is that if it was not for the Western media and intelligence cover, the Israelis could never dare committing such shocking crimes, or they had collapsed immediately. The Western media, extensively under Zionist lobbying circles' influence, are accomplice to the Israeli crimes. Actually, any criticism against the Israeli crimes without actions are crafted to mislead internal and international public opinion.
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