by Meryl Yourish
Iranians are being murdered in the streets. The sister of Shirin Ebadi, the 2003 Nobel peace laureate who is not currently in Iran, was arrested and imprisoned apparently for the crime of being Shirin's sister. The Iranians are beating protesters, hanging protesters, torturing protesters, and have been doing so since last year. And the world's outrage this month is focused on—Israel. At Human Rights Watch, the last comment on Iran was Dec. 10th, where there is an article titled "Iran: Stop harassing Shirin Ebadi." There is nothing to date about the current wave of protests, beatings, and murders.
The UN website is concentrating on Gaza. And Gaza. And Gaza. And Gaza. Four news releases in the last week on Gaza. How many on Iran? You're kidding, right? Because the last one was over a month ago, and it was about Iran's nuclear violations.
To its credit, Amnesty International is calling on Iran to stop killing its protestors. In fact, Amnesty has several calls for Iran to stop abusing its own people.
UN SecGen Ban Ki-Moon is "deeply concerned" about Gaza, but is apparently quite unconcerned about Iran, as there is no statement whatsoever regarding the current uprising. As for the worldwide protests agaist Iran cracking down on its populace's human rights, well—there are none. Crickets, and all that.
Remember this, the next time you read about the worldwide outrage over human rights in the occupied territories. Not that I expect anything to change. But we do get to point out that there is a double standard in the world regarding Israel, and the rest of the world. But not to worry, as I also always point out: It only happens on days that end with a "y."
Meryl Yourish
Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.
2 comments:
The shame that most of the world's battles have roots in the Muslim nations seems to be ignored worldwide. Israel is criticized even for its self defense--which all nations have the right and duty to protect itself and its citizens. We ignore Islamic radical behavior at our peril.
An excellent point! My only worry is that the way the article is written, one could easily read it as implicitly noting parallels between Israel's actions and Iran's. I believe you make no such point, as no such parallel exists. As you write, the UN applies a massive double standard that singles out Israel no matter what the circumstances, and it is only in perpetuating this racism that any comparison is made between Israel and Iran.
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