I just read this piece in Haaretz, an Israeli nationalist paper, about the unsettling of the settlements and the seeing conflict between human rights and the national interest.
The article says that evicting people from their homes is a gross violation of human rights:
"Other than bodily harm, such as murder or rape, it is hard to imagine many acts more brutal, more injurious to human dignity and human rights, than uprooting thousands of people from their homes and destroying the houses and communities that they lovingly built over the course of many years."
This is true, but, like so many things, it is very much dependent on the context. There aren't many people outside Mugabe's regime who would believe that the evictions in Zimbabwe were not a massive and grotesque violation of human rights (There are some harrowing pictures and horrifying stats here). The situation in Israel is very different.
To begin with the settlements are ILLEGAL under international law. Seriously, can that be any more clear? Everyone of the settlers evicted was living on land forcibly removed from the people who had the misfortune to be living there at the time. Those people have been pushed into tiny settlements no better than refugee camps with no possibility of recourse.
Is anyone thinking about their human rights? The US, Israel's largest financial supporter and best friend on the UN Security Council, will never let a resolution condemning Israeli action pass. Apparently the US has used its veto power more than any other country (since 1990 - Russia still has the edge on total numbers of vetoes, thanks mainly to the Cold War period, when both sides were rather veto happy) and the majority of these have been in support of Israel.
I can agree with the statement that evicting people from their homes is an abuse of human rights, but when compared to the situation in Zimbabwe one can hardly call the eviction of the settlements an act "brutal [and] injurious to human dignity and human rights".
Seriously, get some perspective.
In fact, if we were to look at the situation in Israel from a simplistic utilitarian perspective of the better act being the one that results in the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people, then the evictions in Israel are completely justified, while those in Zimbabwe remain (and would do so under pretty much any moral or ethical philosophy) a gross and outrageous violation of human rights.
One test of how much of a violation of human rights the eviction of the settlers in Israel represents is to ask how many international human rights groups have spoken out in support of the settlers. The answer: None. The fact that every human rights group on the planet has something to say about the situation in Zimbabwe graphically illustrates the difference in the two cases.
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