Guest Post: Israel is committing many human rights abuses against Palestinians, and I can say so without being “woke”

A guest post by Lucy Rogers:

As I have written elsewhere, the bias and unfairness of postmodernism (which is what “wokeness” is, although I prefer not to use the term in public discourse) in relation to the Palestine/ Israel conflict does enormous damage to the credibility of the Palestinian cause in the eyes of Israel’s supporters in the West. This is for multiple reasons, among them that reports of Israeli human rights abuses are not believed. I for one do not believe a word that (for example) Amnesty International has to say about Israel.

Another damaging consequence however is that anyone who does say anything about Palestinian mistreatment is assumed to be “virtue signalling”. I want to preface this article therefore with the caveat that I am truly not posturing here. If I wanted to be liked I would just publish this article in (say) The Dominion Post, who would in turn refuse to publish any criticism I made of Hamas. (That is not speculation: the Post published Max Harris’ article praising Hezbollah for its “social services”, and refused to publish my response.)

In fact, that is one of the main points I want to make in this article. It is possible to criticise much of what Israel does from a place of sincerity, and in fact it is critically important not to allow the intellectual dishonesty of the likes of Max Harris to harden us to genuine Israeli human rights abuses. I say that as someone who has protested the Max Harrises of this world weekly over many months precisely because of their hypocrisy and disingenuousness. 

But the truth is that Israel is committing human rights abuses against Palestinians. There is a lot to cover and I hope perhaps to write a subsequent post or posts about other matters whether on Kiwiblog or for Liam Hehir, however I shall focus exclusively today on drawing attention to settler violence in the West Bank so as not to risk trying to cover too much ground.

I think that Palestinian Christian and peace activist Ihab Hassan, who is deeply critical of Hamas and regularly condemns antisemitism, is a trustworthy source. He reports that settlers are stealing land and killing Palestinian civilians all over the West Bank. Here are some examples, all of which date to 2025 alone:

This is with the full complicity and support of the Israeli army. On 18 January 2025 Israel’s defence minister, Israel Katz, ordered the release of every Israeli settler held in administrative detention (who only numbered six anyway) for violent crimes against Palestinians: https://www.timesofisrael.com/katz-says-settlers-in-administrative-detention-to-go-free-ties-it-to-palestinian-release/ That means that there are currently zero settlers held in administrative detention by Israel as punishment for killing civilians and other atrocities directed at Palestinians.

According to a Palestinian man I met while counterprotesting in Auckland, these kinds of attacks have been happening weekly since Donald Trump moved the US embassy to Jerusalem in 2018, which emboldened the settlers. He says that settler violence is radicalising Palestinians and forcing them to support Hamas, because the Palestinian Authority cannot or will not stop the settlers and Palestinians think they have no other option. In other words, the examples I have provided are only a tiny handful of the overall number of settler attacks, which could number in the thousands.

I add in closing that while the focus of this article has been on settler violence rather than the actions of the IDF per se, I was horrified when Ihab Hassan reported today that three Palestinian civilians were abducted by the Israeli army in the West Bank, brutally tortured and beaten for nine hours, then abandoned on the roadside between Nablus and Ramallah blindfolded and bound. Hassan professes firsthand knowledge of these matters and says that the people in question had done nothing to provoke this. The footage is here: 

https://twitter.com/IhabHassane/status/1885832023270363569

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