That’s Privilege…

To me, the ongoing ability for Israel and the US to seemingly act with impunity in their violation of peoples’ most basic human rights, well, it tells me many things.

Two of them are:

It's privilege, not "Human Rights."

What if what the global minority (that's us in "the West" by the way) have been calling "Human Rights" is actually just privilege.

See, if human rights don't apply to all people, equally, regardless of the wonderfully diverse characteristics that define each of us, how then can we claim that we are a rights-based society?

And all the evidence shows us that "rights" don't actually apply to everyone equally, both internally and externally - just read anything from Human Rights Watch or Amnesty International.

Rather, perhaps what we all think are our rights are just privileges that benefit the people that society chooses are worthy of them.

If so, that scares me for several reasons.

A recent example (of many) is the alleged treatment by the State of Israel towards humanitarians on Gaza bound flotillas. They have alleged significant human rights abuses. If those abuses are found to be true, they seem to me to have been perpetrated simply because of a difference in ideology: “You think differently to me, therefore you have no rights.”

Differences in ideology. 

Differences in skin colour.

Differences in sexuality.

Differences in gender.

Differences in religion.

Differences in class, caste, or wealth-status.

Differences to the interests of the prevailing order.

Those seem to be the factors that determine which people deserve access to human rights, and the individuals and groups of people that do not.

I say "access to" because I firmly believe those rights are inherent to each human.

Which brings me to my second observation.

We have a fight ahead.

Because while privilege is a hell of a drug, it's also a death warrant for both the oppressed and the oppressor.

If we want a world where a human being’s worth is determined by simply being human, rather than by how valuable they are to prevailing oppressive structures of power and privilege.

If we want things to change, well…

Buckle up.

Organise.

Write.

Speak out.

Protest.

Keep developing that critical consciousness.

Transform realities.

Fight.