Rochelle Terman is a Ph.D. Candidate in Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley. Her research examines the consequences of global human rights shaming campaigns, especially around women’s rights in the Muslim World and she is a member of WLUML’s Advisory Council.
With the crisis in the Mideast escalating, I keep hearing the argument that Israel is being “singled out” for its human rights violations. Some people assert that human rights activists and the international community are disproportionately – and unjustifiably – focusing their attention on the Jewish state. They are “ignoring” human rights violations elsewhere — Myanmar, Uzbekistan, Chad, wherever — in order to unfairly vilify Israel. This bias, the argument usually goes, is motivated by anti-Semitism.
