There is nothing more sinister than hijacking morally-sound agendas for immoral purposes. 

For decades now, anti-Israel activism has so hijacked human rights to delegitimize Israel. This campaign, energized by the World Conference Against Racism, held in Durban, South Africa in 2001, succeeded despite the fact that the charge of “Israeli apartheid” lacked any real evidence.  

A week or so ago, in “IDF Culture of Impunity,” I exposed Europe’s new propaganda campaign against Israel, which focuses on alleged IDF mistreatment of Palestinian women. “Gender sensitivity,” I wrote there, “goes a long way nowadays, especially when it pertains to Palestinian women.” As it was with the hijacking of human rights for sinister purposes, so it is now with “MeToo.” A perfectly legitimate moral goal is now being appropriated in order to paint the State of Israel as a kind of sex-offender and child-molester.

A picture surfaced today on social media demonstrating that this campaign has been well under way for at least a year. Already in August 2017, Member of Knesset Bezalel Smotrich (Jewish Home) was urging his followers to share a reposted photo originally uploaded by Swedish activists who presented it as proof that Israel abuses women.

Unfortunately for the Swedes, however, Smotrich recognized the poor Palestinian women being dragged by the soldier as the niece of one of his friends. This photo, he wrote, “was taken at the evacuation of the [Jewish-owned] ‘House of Peace’ in Hebron and the redhead being dragged in the picture,” Smotrich revealed, “is a Jewish settler … the niece of an acquaintance of mine.”

As the recent death of one Gaza baby shows, exposing such lies makes no difference. Consider this headline from the New York Times: “A Child of Gaza Dies. A symbol Is Born. The Arguing Begins.” The paper doesn’t even try to hide its bias as it frames the mother and dead baby in a pieta scene meant to leave the reader with absolutely no doubt that the supposed villains (Israel) are “Christ-killers.”

And now, would it make any difference that Israel has discovered that 8-month-old Layla Ghadour didn’t die from acrid gas (and what was she doing in a violent event to begin with?), but rather from a heart disease, and that Hamas paid $2,200 for the family to blame Israel for her death? Those who concoct such stories and those who eagerly consume them don’t care for such inconveniences like the truth. Their only interest is in justifying their hate.