Israeli journalist and my friend Yaron London has recently presented me with a challenge. Following my remarks on the US administration's pressure to promote human rights in the region, he wrote: "With the same determination and integrity that characterizes your writing, try to imagine how Israel would behave if human rights organizations did not exist, or if international groups turned a blind eye? What would happen in the occupied territories, the interrogation rooms, prisons, courts, olive groves, and the army?"
Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook and Twitter
I have no difficulty imagining how Israel would behave in such a case.
The United Nations is incapable of ruling credibly and honestly on matters of democracy and human rights. After all, its very composition is undemocratic and its "Human Rights" Council boasts leaders from the most despicable of regimes and individuals obsessed with slandering Israel.
In the past, human rights groups were headed by impressive and fair individuals, such as Ruth Gavison, who was a founding member of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, and Robert Bernstein who founded the Human Rights Watch. Both organizations were useful at the time.
Since then, however, they have been taken hostage by purists, radicals, and individuals who hate Israel and who view the Israel-Palestinian conflict as a one-dimensional "victim vs. the privileged white" situation. Bernstein himself exposed such distortion within the HRW in 2009.
Had these organizations remained open, democratic, and fair with regard to human rights, they could have contributed to society. In the absence of such balance and reliability, their contribution is marginal.
An unbiased examination of some of Israel's most serious human rights incidents shows that the organizations did not contribute majorly to the government addressing and fixing these issues.
In 1956, after the Kafr Qasim massacre, the shame felt by Israel and the condemnation issued by the government did not come about through local or foreign rights groups or international pressure.
Defense Minister Ariel Sharon was ousted in 1983, regardless of external pressure, when he failed to prevent the 1982 Sabra and Shatila massacre, in which the Christian Lebanese Forces slaughtered hundreds of Palestinians.
Shin Bet Security Agency dismissed its heads in 1984 after two Palestinian bus hijackers were executed by members. This was not the result of outside pressure either.
In these and other crucial moments, Israel's democracy operated through public opinion, the legislature, the media, the Knesset, within the framework of checks and balances. None of these prevented and based on human experience, could not prevent, serious deviations from the conduct demanded of a multicultural society. But they did prove that lessons can be learned, culprits punished and wrongdoings condemned. Had human rights organizations been fair in their dealings, they could have contributed to this process as well.
US General Norman Schwarzkopf was asked during the 1991 Gulf War how he would conduct the war without France. "Going to war without France is like going hunting without an accordion," he said. The same is true of Israel and the human rights organization we know today.
Subscribe to Israel Hayom's daily newsletter and never miss our top stories!
