MOST Western governments have staunchly defended Israel on the world stage, even as it was committing genocide in Gaza, while doing little of substance to protect the people of the occupied territory. However, independent human rights groups are expected to have greater moral clarity by calling out abuses regardless of the perpetrator. Sadly, some rights bodies based in the West have also chosen to tread carefully, so as not to offend Israel. For example, Omar Shakir, the former Israel-Palestine director at Human Rights Watch, has left the organisation after he said it had blocked a report fearing a potential backlash over its criticism of Israel. The spiked document had reportedly mentioned that Tel Aviv’s denial of the Palestinian right of return — allowing Arabs and their descendants ethnically cleansed by the Zionists during the Nakba to come back to their homeland — was a “crime against humanity”. Mr Shakir says he has lost faith in the organisation. HRW has defended the move by saying the report’s release was delayed due to its “complexity” and that more time was required “to conduct additional … analysis”.

The Gaza conflict has exposed the hypocrisy of many of those who claimed to have stood for fundamental rights. As hundreds of thousands of brave people in Western cities marched to condemn the complicity of their governments in the slaughter, Western states either redoubled their defence of Israel, or shed crocodile tears for the people of Gaza. The Muslim world, meanwhile, did next to nothing until last October’s ceasefire partially halted the bloodbath. However, if human rights defenders resort to self-censorship in order to please powerful lobbies, then their work will lose its impact. In the larger Western ecosystem, abuses, real and imagined, of geopolitical adversaries are amplified, while those of friends and allies are brushed under the carpet. The full extent of Gaza’s suffering must be highlighted so that the world pledges that never again will such atrocities occur.

Published in Dawn, February 15th, 2026