Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-rcrh6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-23T05:34:44.643Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

7 - “Good Words Have Become the Servants of Evil Masters”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 November 2020

Nathan A. Kurz
Affiliation:
Birkbeck College, University of London
Get access

Summary

This chapter examines how the onset of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip after 1967 impacted Jewish internationalism. Soviet and Arab diplomats created biased UN committees to investigate Israeli human rights abuses in the territories and waged wars of delegitimization against Israel throughout international organizations. By the time the UN declared Zionism was a form of racial discrimination in 1975, Jewish internationalists dismissed the forum as a new progenitor of antisemitism and a poisoned partner for international human rights. This politicization finally forced them to begin thinking about what human rights beyond law and institutions might look like. But even they tried to broaden their activity beyond the UN, they found the Palestinian question dogged them everywhere they turned. Finally, the chapter argues that while Israel was central to politicized processes within the UN, it was irrelevant and marginal to the expansion of human rights outside international forums in the 1970s. Jewish professionals cared about Israel’s human rights record, but most human rights activists did not – at least not until the First Intifada in 1987 began to cement Israel as the chief enemy of the human rights movement, long after Jews had left its vanguard.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×