China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi attends the 14th EAST Asia Summit Foreign Ministers’ Meeting in the 57th ASEAN Foreign Ministers’ Meeting at the National Convention Center, in Vientiane, Laos July 27, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Chalinee Thirasupa/File Photo

JNS.org – Two recent developments suggest that a concerted effort is underway to reframe the international human-rights architecture that emerged from World War II, by shifting the focus away from freedom of conscience to “economic, social and cultural rights,” and by redefining what is meant by the term “genocide.” These shifts may well herald a new era that will see authoritarian states like China and Iran hauling liberal democratic nations before the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court with allegations of systemic human-rights abuse, with Israel especially—as a democratic state surrounded by foes seeking its elimination—serving as a convenient and frequent target.

The United Nations co-hosted a human-rights conference last week with the Chinese regime in the city of Huangzhou. The idea of China as a beacon of human rights is, of course, more worthy of a headline in a satirical magazine than as a serious proposition, but the very fact that a regime that received a 9/100 “Not Free” rating in the most recent Freedom House global survey can be taken at face value is a disturbing sign of how far international institutions have strayed from an agenda that stresses democratic, accountable institutions and individual freedom as the bedrock of any human-rights regimen.

In his speech to the conference, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi emphasized that China had made great strides in its pursuit of “economic, social and cultural rights,” effectively excluding from consideration those areas on which Beijing was criticized by Freedom House: the ubiquitous presence of the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in the daily lives of citizens, the absence of a free media and the expunging of civil society—those groups and associations that function free of state interference. Wang was enthusiastically backed up in this assertion by Volker Turk, the Austrian diplomat who heads the UN’s Human Rights Council, a body that has spearheaded some of the loudest and most outlandish accusations against Israel over the past year, and which still retains an annual agenda item focused on supposed abuses by Israel and no other state.

The underlying concept here is that human rights should be grounded in “state development,” realized through rising salaries, anti-poverty initiatives and state-provided housing. Theoretically, it’s perfectly possible for a state to make progress on these goals while denying its citizens basic civil and political rights. China has now elevated this approach into a state doctrine, leaning on other states, particularly in the developing world, to follow suit.

The eminent historian of ideas Isaiah Berlin proposed a critically important distinction between “negative liberty” and “positive liberty.” Negative liberty accents the right of individuals to live free from state interference in matters of conscience, assembly and life choices. Positive liberty subordinates the individual to the state, presenting freedom as the right of the state as an independent collectivity to set developmental goals whereby living standards rise—though there is no guarantee of that—in exchange for women and men submitting to its authority in those decisions that, in liberal democratic states, would be theirs alone.

One might reasonably argue that the ideal state fuses elements of both negative and positive liberty so that individuals can exercise freedom of religion while receiving a state-subsidized education. But that’s not what China has done. Instead, over the last couple of decades, China’s ruling Communists have lifted the great majority of the population out of poverty while becoming more repressive politically to the point of brutally punishing entire minorities, like the mainly Muslim Uyghurs in the northwest, with the goal of homogenizing what is an ethnically and religiously diverse population.

The US State Department, among others, has described China’s persecution of the Uyghurs as a “genocide,” but any mention of their plight, which includes more than 1 million Uyghurs interned in concentration camps, was absent from the U.N.-sponsored parley in Huangzhou. At the same time, the understanding of the term “genocide” that has prevailed since the Genocide Convention came into force in 1951 is now under threat, which potentially means that states like China, which commit this crime, will escape scrutiny, while those that do not, like Israel, will find themselves in the dock.

In its latest report on Israel and the Palestinians, which falsely depicted Israel’s war against the Hamas rapists and killers in the Gaza Strip as a war of extermination directed at all Palestinians, Amnesty International complained that the Genocide Convention was inadequate, claiming that it doesn’t account for the fact that states can invoke national security to mask their genocidal intentions. That argument has now been taken up by the Republic of Ireland, which has become a veritable cauldron of anti-Zionist antisemitism in the 14 months since the Hamas-led atrocities in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

Announcing Dublin’s decision to support the specious case against Israel brought by South Africa to the International Court of Justice, Irish Foreign Minister Micheál Martin advocated for a revision of the legal understanding of genocide, arguing that “a very narrow interpretation of what constitutes genocide leads to a culture of impunity in which the protection of civilians is minimized.” Put another way, if your enemy is a terrorist organization that deliberately hides its weapons and its fighters among civilians, you risk being accused of genocide if you deploy your military in response to their attacks. Were the mass murderer Yahya Sinwar, who met his fate at the hands of the Israel Defense Forces in Gaza, still alive, there is little doubt that he would regard that evolution of understanding as among the greatest of his achievements.

The Jewish experience of antisemitism has been described as a pattern that progresses from “you have no right to live among us as Jews” to “you have no right to live among us,” and ultimately, to “you have no right to live.” That same pattern can, more or less, be applied to the cases of genocide since World War II. In Rwanda in 1994, for example, the largely defenseless Tutsis were the subjects of all sorts of demonic conspiracy theories depicting them as “cockroaches” as the period of mass killing during the summer months of that year approached.

Were such a genocide to repeat itself now, its practitioners would be well advised to depict themselves as a state authority pursuing the laudable goal of collective social development, criticizing the existing Genocide Convention as a product of Western imperialist thinking about human rights that allows countries like Israel—and, by extension, the United States and other nations with democratic constitutions that limit the various powers of the state—to escape the charge. And yet, as we hurtle towards this outcome, our own leaders remain excruciatingly silent on the fundamental threat this approach poses to our liberties and our values.

The post Turning Human Rights Upside Down first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

Israeli troops during counterterrorism activity in Tulkarem, northwestern Samaria, September 2024. Photo: IDF.

JNS.org – The Israel Defense Forces and the Defense Ministry must soon make significant decisions about the future structure and capabilities of the military, prompted by lessons learned from the war it has fought since Oct. 7, 2023, and the changing threat landscape.

In the coming months, the IDF will have to propose a multi-year force-building plan, which needs to receive government budgetary commitment to be implemented, to replace the previous plan, Momentum, which began in 2020 and continued until the war broke out.

Momentum helped establish a network-centered war machine, in which IDF branches cooperated to quickly detect and fire on enemy targets. Momentum argued that seizing enemy territory isn’t the most important thing, placing the emphasis instead on destroying enemy capabilities.

Eado Hecht, a senior research fellow at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies and an analyst specializing in military theory and military history, told JNS there are several lessons for the IDF to learn from the war.

“Starting about 30 years ago, the IDF adopted an incorrect theory of future wars based on an incorrect appraisal of the direction of international politics in general and in the Middle East in particular,” Hecht said.

This mistaken assessment was a local version of “the end of history fallacy,” he added, the expectation that major wars and conflicts were a relic of history. Instead, the expectation was that modern technology and revolutions in warfare would enable Israel to make do “with only counter-guerilla, counter-terrorism capabilities,” and that hi-tech intelligence and air force capabilities would be sufficient to defeat any threat.

This theory led the IDF to downgrade its ground forces, Hecht noted, leading to a huge reduction in size, in which units were canceled and tens of thousands of personnel discharged from service, alongside the removal of a wide variety of weapon types from use. “Fields of knowledge necessary to conducting massed ground maneuvers were erased from training regimens,” he said.

“The first lesson of this war is that what became derogatorily known as ‘the old-type wars’ were not old or gone—they still exist and still require the same type of forces they did then and the same type of military theories, doctrine and training they did then. The IDF needs to relearn and rebuild its capability and competence in conducting massed ground forces maneuvers,” said Hecht.

“The second major lesson of the war is that the IDF had reduced its size to a point where it was barely capable of doing what was needed, in fact less than what was needed,” he said.

Two-front wars

While in the 1967 Six-Day War and the 1973 Yom Kippur War, the IDF was able to carry out defensive and offensive operations on two fronts simultaneously, against armies stronger than Hamas and Hezbollah, in the current Swords of Iron war, the IDF could defend on two fronts but only conduct offensive actions on one front at a time, Hecht said. Even on one front, the IDF had to act sequentially rather than simultaneously attack enemy forces across the board.

“The IDF will have to again increase the size of its ground forces. The answers to the questions ‘How much does it need?’ given the size and character of the future threats, and ‘How much can it expand?’ given the size of Israel’s manpower pool and economy, create a difficult tension that will have to be resolved gradually over the coming years,” said Hecht.

“In my opinion, the IDF needs three more maneuver divisions—but raising them will be very difficult, especially in regard to acquiring the necessary amount of equipment,” he added.

Hecht said that a third lesson is “the need to rebuild the reserves component of the army. The IDF not only reduced their numbers but also deliberately reduced their training—compelling it to retrain many units before employing them because people no longer remembered their skills.”

He highlighted the importance of traditional weaponry, saying the “fourth major lesson is that the weapons of old are still important. During the war, nobody asked for more keyboards and fancy equipment, everybody wanted more tanks, more artillery and more [armored] bulldozers. Some new tools are very useful—especially small drones and quadcopters—and every unit should have them, but they do not change the fundamentals of ground combat. They are an extra capability; they do not replace the veteran capabilities that were reduced because the IDF believed they were no longer needed.”

Finally, he said, Israel will have to adapt to the need to conduct long wars, which require large forces and large ammunition stockpiles, as well as spare parts, accompanied by enhanced wartime production to reduce the dependence on United States aid.

Hecht added that the IDF proved itself highly capable of conducting focused, powerful air-to-ground campaigns, as well as special operations and counter-guerilla operations, but that these do not replace the need for traditional massed ground operations.

Lengthen mandatory service?

On Dec. 5, Army Radio reported that the IDF would be purchasing some 15,000 quadcopters, enlarging its Combat Engineering Corps and creating new infantry units that would have access to advanced armored personnel carriers. In addition, female field observation soldiers will be armed with personal firearms, as part of changes to the ground forces, and observation posts will be moved away from border areas, following lessons learned from the Oct. 7 surprise assault by Hamas.

The IDF is also seeking to lengthen mandatory service to 36 months for most male soldiers to boost personnel numbers. The report said the ground forces have been conducting force build-up processes already during the war over the past year, aimed at creating a larger and better-equipped ground army.

On Nov. 25, the Prime Minister’s Office, Ministry of Defense and Ministry of Finance announced in a joint statement that the Ministerial Procurement Committee approved billions of shekels in procurement and force-building projects for the IDF.

The acquisitions were made in line with the recommendations of the Nagel Committee, which was established in August 2024 to provide consultations on the security budget and the future of Israeli military force building. The committee approved several acquisitions, including the Reshef project—the next navy corvette—as well as the acquisition of hundreds of Joint Light Tactical Vehicles (JLTVs).

The post IDF Relearning the Basics While Modernizing for Future Threats first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

A general view shows the plaza of the Western Wall in Jerusalem, amid the coronavirus pandemic, May 6, 2020. Photo: Reuters / Ronen Zvulun.

JNS.org – In just a few weeks, the Jewish people will celebrate Chanukah, commemorating the end of the Greek occupation of Jerusalem and the restoration of Jewish sovereignty to Jerusalem. The Maccabees lit a menorah, and as we know, though there was only enough oil for one night, the menorah stayed lit for seven more nights nights.

That menorah was located on the Temple Mount, the holiest site in Judaism, below which stands the Western Wall. Those who claim that Judaism has nothing to do with Zionism or claim that the Jewish people are not the indigenous people of Israel epitomize antisemitic rejection of documented Jewish history in Israel and the Jewish celebration of Chanukah.

The Palestinian Liberation Organization, which decades later would become the Palestinian Authority, was formed in 1964—three years before Israel’s victory in the Six-Day War and the start of the so-called Israeli “occupation” of Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria. Article 24 of the PLO’s original “National Covenant” states: “This organization does not exercise any regional sovereignty over the West Bank in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, on the Gaza Strip or the Himmah Area. Its activities will be on the national popular level in the liberation, organizational, political and financial fields.”

In other words, the PLO, at its inception, gave up any claims to Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, as well as Gaza, because Jordan controlled eastern Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, and Egypt controlled Gaza. All the PLO cared about was destroying the small Jewish State of Israel in its 1949 borders.

The Jewish people’s claim to Israel is based upon the fact that God gave the land to the Jews, as the Torah makes clear when God spoke to Abraham and told him to travel to Israel, and again when God told Moses and the Jewish people after leaving Egyptian slavery to journey to Israel. A famous biblical commentator, the Chizkuni, wrote hundreds of years ago that Noah owned the world at the end of the flood, and he gave the land of Israel to his son Shem, who then gave it to his descendant, the forefather of the Jewish people, Abraham. Another famous commentator, the Maharal of Prague, said that the seven nations in the land when the Jews left Egypt were all invaders and had no right to the land of Israel. The Bible even records the purchases of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem by King David, the Cave of the Patriarchs and Matriarchs, Machpela in Hebron by Abraham and Joseph’s Tomb by Jacob in Shechem (modern-day Nablus).

The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism makes it clear that those who oppose the existence of Israel are antisemitic. King David made Jerusalem the capital of Israel more than 3,000 years ago, and the two Jewish Temples were located on the Temple Mount, the last one having been destroyed by the Romans 2,000 years ago.

The Jews never gave up their rights to Israel. Even under Ottoman Turkish rule, when there was limited ability for Jews to return to their homeland, a 1906 Baedeker travel guide listed the population of Jerusalem as consisting of 40,000 Jews, 13,000 Christians and 7,000 Muslims. The international community agreed to the Jewish right to the Land of Israel and a right of return for Jews to Israel at San Remo in 1920, in a unanimous League of Nations Resolution in 1922 and in the Anglo-American Treaty that was ratified by the U.S. Senate and signed by President Calvin Coolidge in 1925. Article 80 in the U.N. Charter affirmed the binding nature of the League of Nations decisions.

Palestinian Arab rioting in Hebron in 1929 massacred 67 Jews, and the subsequent massacres of more than 500 Jews between 1936 and 1938 led to the British White Paper, which restricted Jewish immigration while allowing Arab immigration. A bipartisan majority of 15 members of the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee at the time declared in a public letter that the British White Paper violated the Anglo-American Treaty. It also meant that the Jews of Europe had no place to go to escape Hitler. The result was six million Jewish deaths.

The Holocaust had nothing to do with the establishment of the State of Israel, if anything, there was greater world support for Israel before the Holocaust, when U.S. presidents Wilson, Teddy Roosevelt, Harding, Coolidge and Hoover were all counted among those who supported the establishment of a Jewish state. The United Nations reiterated their support for a Jewish state in U.N. Resolution 181 in November 1947, and the Arab world rejected a two-state solution of an Arab state alongside a Jewish state. Israel only came into existence in a fight for its survival without a single ally, as President Harry Truman would not provide arms to Israel, and only Czechoslovakia sold arms to Israel. The Jewish state had to smuggle arms from America. President Lyndon Johnson would not even assist Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War and only supplied Israel with military arms after Israel was successful in the war.

Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and the former head of the Israeli Shin Bet, Ami Ayalon, recently stated that if they had grown up as Palestinian Arabs they would have become terrorists. We actually know someone who grew up as a Palestinian Arab terrorist and who came to the belief that this was wrong—Mosab Hassan Yousef, the son of a Hamas leader, Sheikh Hassan Yousef. Mosab Hassan Yousef is an eloquent defender of the Jewish right to Israel. He has shown that it does not matter what kind of family someone grows up in when there is a clear objective case of right and wrong. It is difficult to grow up among evil people as he has done and change one’s ways, yet he has done so. Barak and Ayalon, however, still fail to see the objective Jewish right to Israel.

May we incorporate in our Chanukah celebrations the acknowledgment of the miracle of the restoration, after 2,000 years, of Jewish sovereignty once again over Jerusalem.

The post Denying Jewish Sovereignty of Israel is Antisemitic first appeared on Algemeiner.com.