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Turning Human Rights Upside Down
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.
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US Clamps Sanctions on Israel-bashing UN Rights Monitor Albanese
Francesca Albanese, UN special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories, attends a side event during the Human Rights Council at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, March 26, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Denis Balibouse
The Trump administration has imposed sweeping sanctions against Francesca Albanese, the United Nations Special Rapporteur for the Occupied Palestinian Territories, citing the UN official’s lengthy record of singling out Israel for condemnation.
In a post on X, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced the sanctions under a February executive order targeting those who “prompt International Criminal Court (ICC) action against U.S. and Israeli officials, companies, and executives.” He accused Albanese of waging “political and economic warfare” against both nations and asserted that “such efforts will no longer be tolerated.”
“Today I am imposing sanctions on UN Human Rights Council Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese for her illegitimate and shameful efforts to prompt [International Criminal Court] action against U.S. and Israeli officials, companies, and executives,” Rubio announced on X/Twitter.
“Albanese’s campaign of political and economic warfare against the United States and Israel will no longer be tolerated,” declared the Trump administration’s top foreign affairs official. “We will always stand by our partners in their right to self-defense.”
Rubio concluded: “The United States will continue to take whatever actions we deem necessary to respond to lawfare and protect our sovereignty and that of our allies.”
The decision to impose sanctions on Albanese marks an escalation in the ongoing feud between the White House and the United Nations over Israel. The Trump administration has repeatedly accused the UN and Albanese of unfairly targeting Israel and mischaracterizing the Jewish state’s conduct in Gaza.
Albanese, an Italian lawyer and academic, has held the position of UN special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories since 2022. The position authorizes her to monitor and report on alleged “human rights violations” by Israel against Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.
Last week, Albanese issued a scathing report accusing companies of helping Israel maintain a so-called “genocide economy.” She called on the companies to cut off economic ties with Israel and warned that they might be guilty of “complicity” in the so-called “genocide” in Gaza.
Critics of Albanese have long accused her of exhibiting an excessive anti-Israel bias, calling into question her fairness and neutrality.
Albanese has an extensive history of using her role at the UN to denigrate Israel and seemingly rationalize Hamas’ attacks on the Jewish state.
In the months following the Palestinian terrorist group’s atrocities across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, Albanese accused the Jewish state of perpetrating a “genocide” against the Palestinian people in revenge for the attacks and circulated a widely derided and heavily disputed report alleging that 186,000 people had been killed in the Gaza war as a result of Israeli actions.
The action comes as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visits Washington, where he has received a warm reception from the Trump administration. Netanyahu has been meeting with US officials to discuss next steps in the ongoing Gaza military operation.
Gideon Sa’ar, Minister of Foreign Affairs for Israel, commended the Rubio announcement with his own post on X/Twitter, exclaiming: “A clear message. Time for the UN to pay attention!”
The post US Clamps Sanctions on Israel-bashing UN Rights Monitor Albanese first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Hardball: Trump Administration Reports Harvard to Accreditor Over Antisemitism Allegations
US President Donald Trump speaks during a Cabinet meeting at the White House in Washington, DC, July 8, 2025. Photo: Kevin Lamarque via Reuters Connect.
The Trump administration escalated its showdown against Harvard University on Wednesday, reporting the institution to its accreditor for alleged civil rights violations resulting from its weak response to reports of antisemitic bullying, discrimination, and harassment following Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 massacre across southern Israel.
The US Department of Education (DOE) announced the action on Wednesday. Citing Harvard’s admitted failure to treat antisemitism as seriously as it treated others forms of hatred in the past, the DOE called on the New England Commission of Higher Education to review and, potentially, revoke its accreditation — a designation which qualifies Harvard for federal funding and attests to the quality of the educational services its provides.
“Accrediting bodies play a significant role in preserving academic integrity and a campus culture conducive to truth seeking and learning,” said Secretary of Education Linda McMahon. “Part of that is ensuring students are safe on campus and abiding by federal laws that guarantee educational opportunities to all students. By allowing anti-Semitic harassment and discrimination to persist unchecked on its campus, Harvard University has failed in its obligation to students, educators, and American taxpayers.”
The DOE, McMahon added, “expects the New England Commission of Higher Education to enforce its policies and practices, and to keep the Department fully informed of its efforts to ensure that Harvard is in compliance with federal law and accreditor standards.”
As previously reported by The Algemeiner, Harvard’s Presidential Task Force on Combating Antisemitism has acknowledged that the university administration’s handling of campus antisemitism fell well below its obligations under both Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and its own nondiscrimination policies.
In a 300-plus-page report, the task force compiled a comprehensive record of antisemitic incidents on Harvard’s campus in recent years — from the Harvard Palestine Solidarity Committee’s endorsement of the Oct. 7 terrorist atrocities to an anti-Zionist faculty group’s sharing an antisemitic cartoon depicting Jews as murderers of people of color. The report identified Harvard’s past refusal to afford Jews the same protections against discrimination enjoyed by other minority groups as a key source of its problem.
Coming several weeks after President Donald Trump ordered the freeze of $2.26 billion in federal research grants and contracts for Harvard, the task force report found it was “clear” that antisemitism and anti-Israel bias have been fomented, practiced, and tolerated not only at Harvard but also within academia more widely.”
The university is now suing the federal government over the funding halt.
President Trump has spoken scathingly of Harvard, calling it, for example, an “Anti-Semitic, Far Left Institute … with students being accepted from all over the world that want to rip our Country apart” in an April post to his Truth Social platform.
In recent weeks, however, both Trump and McMahon had commended Harvard’s constructive response in negotiations over reforms the administration has asked it to implement as a precondition for restoring federal funds. The requested reforms include hiring more conservative faculty, shuttering diversity, equity, and inclusion [DEI] programs, and slashing the size of administrative offices tangential to the university’s central educational mission.
The administration has since changed its tone in the wake of a report by The Harvard Crimson that interim Harvard President Alan Garber has said “behind closed doors” that he has no intention of doing anything that would make Harvard more palatable to conservatives.
Earlier this month, the Trump administration’s Joint Task Force to Combat Antisemitism issued Harvard a formal “notice of violation” of civil rights law. Charging that Harvard willfully exposed Jewish students to a flood of racist and antisemitic abuse both in and outside of the classroom, it threatened to strip whatever remains of Harvard’s federal funding.
“Failure to institute adequate changes immediately will result in the loss of all federal financial resources and continue to affect Harvard’s relationship with the federal government,” wrote the federal officials comprising the multiagency Task Force. “Harvard may of course continue to operate free of federal privileges, and perhaps such an opportunity will spur a commitment to excellence that will help Harvard thrive once again.”
In Wednesday’s announcement, US Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said Harvard’s conduct “forfeits the legitimacy that accreditation is designed to uphold.”
“HHS and Department of Education will actively hold Harvard accountable through sustained oversight until it restores public trust and ensures a campus free of discrimination,” he said.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post Hardball: Trump Administration Reports Harvard to Accreditor Over Antisemitism Allegations first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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IDF Strikes Hezbollah Sites in South Lebanon as Terror Group Pushes to Rebuild Amid US Disarmament Talks
IDF operating in southern Lebanon. Photo: IDF Spokesperson
Israeli forces uncovered and destroyed Hezbollah weapons caches in southern Lebanon on Wednesday, as a new report indicated that despite ongoing U.S.-led efforts to secure a disarmament deal, the Iran-backed group is making repeated, largely concealed attempts to rebuild its military presence in the area.
Troops carried out several operations targeting Hezbollah infrastructure in southern Lebanon on Wednesday morning, destroying weapons depots, explosives and multibarrel launchers concealed in forested terrain, the IDF said, in violation of the November ceasefire, which requires Hezbollah to withdraw its forces 20 miles from the Israeli border.
A new report released this week by the Alma Research and Education Center found that Hezbollah is focused on rebuilding in three areas: operational deployment, weapons acquisition, and financial recovery.
“Hezbollah didn’t give up its resistance narrative and motivation,” Alma’s director, Lt. Col. (Res.) Sarit Zehavi, told The Algemeiner.
“It wants to rebuild its capabilities and infrastructures, whether it’s the villages that will be used as human shields or the military infrastructure in South Lebanon and in Lebanon in general.”
According to Zehavi, Hezbollah is attempting to return Radwan fighters to positions south of the Litani River as part of a wider plan to restore its elite forces to operational readiness. The IDF on Monday killed Radwan commander Ali Abd al-Hassan Haidar in a targeted strike. The action came hours after US Special Envoy for Syria Thomas Barrack met with Lebanese President Joseph Aoun, Prime Minister Nawaf Salam and Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri in Beirut to discuss a long-term deal that would include an Israeli withdrawal and complete disarmament of Hezbollah.
Barrack described the Lebanese response to the proposal as positive. Later, he issued a blunt warning to Hezbollah in response to a vow by the terror group’s leader, Naim Qassem, not to lay down its arms. “If they mess with us anywhere in the world, they will have a serious problem with us,” Barrack said in an interview with Lebanese news network LBCI. “They don’t want that.”
Zehavi said it was premature to predict the outcome of the diplomatic efforts. She warned that the challenge of disarming Hezbollah remains enormous and emphasized that the Lebanese Armed Forces have not demonstrated the capability or willingness to confront the group.
“It’s too soon to be optimistic or pessimistic,” she said, noting that no firm commitments have emerged from the Beirut talks.
Hezbollah’s efforts to smuggle and manufacture weapons have been complicated by both Israeli strikes and the regional realignment over recent months. While Israeli strikes have disrupted many supply routes, according to Zehavi, Syrian authorities have intercepted far more Hezbollah-bound weapons than the Lebanese Army, which claims to have uncovered 500 arms caches but has provided no evidence.
The financial front marks the third aspect of Hezbollah’s rebuilding effort. Last week, the group halted cash payments to Shiite civilians whose homes were damaged in the war, citing liquidity problems. Zehavi attributed the shortfall to disruptions in Iran’s funding networks — an outcome of the 12-day war against the regime in Tehran — and said the constraints would likely hamper Hezbollah’s ability to compensate its base and sustain operations.
“I hope they will continue to have problems with the cash flow, that way it will be very difficult for them to recover,” she said.
The post IDF Strikes Hezbollah Sites in South Lebanon as Terror Group Pushes to Rebuild Amid US Disarmament Talks first appeared on Algemeiner.com.