December 10 - International Human Rights Day
All Out to Speak With One Voice: Stop Israel's Genocide of Palestinians! Stop Israel!
National Day of Action, Ottawa, November 25, 2023
Every year on December 10, the countries of the world commemorate the day in 1948 when the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This year, on December 10, let us go all out to speak with one voice: Stop Israel's Genocide of Palestinians! Stop Israel! Let us together once again demand that Israel's occupation of the Gaza Strip and West Bank be ended immediately, that the crimes of the settlers be ended immediately, that the crimes of the Israeli government and Defense Forces and imprisonment of Palestinians be ended immediately and that Israel be held responsible for its barbaric crimes against the Palestinian people. Let us together demand that all necessary measures be taken to stop them immediately. The UN Security Council must demand an immediate and permanent ceasefire and take every available measure to hold Israel and its accomplices responsible for the unconscionable crimes Israel is committing against humanity.
The
world cannot carry on helplessly witnessing what Israel is doing
and
the slaughter and suffering of the Palestinian people. The
Government
of Canada refuses to take the most elementary measure of calling
for a
permanent ceasefire in Gaza, proffering every excuse and apology
for
its crimes
when, in fact, Israel deserves to be thrown out of the United
Nations
as unworthy of the statehood conferred on it in 1948. The demand
must
be to see Israel reconstituted on a modern democratic basis
while the
sovereign rights of the state of Palestine must be provided with
a
guarantee.
Human rights are not "values" that need to be adapted to local cultures and identities. Respecting human rights is not a political choice but a legal obligation. They are commitments with a universal scope, principles of law guaranteed by solemn declarations or legally binding treaties.
The days are long gone when a state -- whether constituted on a non-secular basis or on a secular basis -- can proclaim itself democratic when it discriminates on the basis of religion in deciding citizenship. Israel continues to grant immediate citizenship to anyone of Jewish ancestry and they justify it on the outmoded basis of a need for a place where Jews can come to avoid discrimination and victimization like the Nazi genocide. The world accepts that every human person should find safe haven wherever they live but it does not accept that in the name of providing safe haven for people of Jewish ancestry, Israel can dispossess, criminalize and deprive Palestinians of all the rights which belong to them by virtue of being Palestinian and by virtue of being human.
At a minimum, as a condition of continued membership in the United Nations, Israel should withdraw its forces to the pre-1967 boundaries and cease attacks on Palestinian territories done through confiscation of land for settlements, destruction of the means of livelihood, military control, arbitrary detention and massacres.
The formal inception of Human Rights Day dates from 1950, after the General Assembly passed Resolution 423 (V) inviting all States and interested organizations to adopt December 10 of each year as Human Rights Day. Far from it being a day when the U.S. and its partners, including Canada, try to cover up the crimes they are committing and overseeing all over the world, the peoples of the world are striving with all their might and main to make it mean something by ensuring there is a way to guarantee that the decisions of the General Assembly are implemented. Throwing Israel out of the UN and demanding it be reconstituted on a modern democratic basis in accord with its founding resolution and world standards, as a condition for membership in the UN, not those of an apartheid state, is a place to start.
The
General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights with
48 states in favour and eight abstentions. At that time it was
proclaimed as a "common standard of achievement for all peoples
and all
nations" towards which individuals and societies should strive
"by
progressive
measures, national and international, to secure their universal
and
effective recognition and observance."
The Declaration with its broad range of political, civil, social, cultural and economic rights is not a binding document. Nonetheless it gave rise to more than 60 human rights instruments which together constitute an international standard of human rights. Ways must be found by the majority of UN member states to make sure the so-called rules-based international order imposed by the U.S. and its partners in crime, including Canada, is no longer able to smash the general consent of all United Nations Member States on the basic Human Rights laid down in the Declaration and make a mockery of rights by virtue of being human.
On the occasion of 75th anniversary of the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and Annual International Human Rights Day: All Out to Speak With One Voice: Stop Israel's Genocide of Palestinians! Stop Israel!
All Out to Uphold the
Human Rights of the Palestinian People,
Their Right to Be and Their Right of Return!
This article was published in
Volume 53 Number 29 - December 2023
Article Link:
https://cpcml.ca/Tmlm2023/Articles/MS53291.HTM
Website: www.cpcml.ca Email: editor@cpcml.ca