The West, the self-proclaimed defender of human rights, is deaf to the screams of mothers and the groans of innocent wounded in Palestine, focused as it is on sanctioning Russia for its alleged human rights violations in Ukraine.
On top of the flagrant hypocrisy, the West has produced online tourism websites touting tours to illegal Israeli settlements whose inhabitants have been perpetrating vicious attacks against Palestinians in nearby towns and camps.
Mark Dummett, Amnesty International’s Business and Human Rights researcher, explains that major tourism sites like Airbnb, TripAdvisor, Expedia and Booking.com are fuelling human rights violations against Palestinians by promoting accommodation and activities in Israeli settlements regarded as illegal by the international community, including Israel’s staunchest supporter, Washington.
Even a segment of Israeli public opinion has called for dismantling them. Moreover, as AI observes, “the transfer of Israeli civilians to these settlements is illegal under international law. In fact, it is a war crime according to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.”
Yet, for example, TripAdvisor had no compunction about advertising tours to Susiya, a historic village occupied in 1967. The occupying power expelled 300 Palestinian families from that village, demolished their homes without paying a penny in compensation, and forced them to live in camps outside their village where they are victims of constant harassment by the people who stole their land.
Moreover, the settlers are now managing the heritage site that was once the Palestinians’ village, profiting from tourists that come that way thanks to the online tourism giants.
The callousness has reached a point where one online firm advertised training courses with Israeli soldiers, despite the crimes the Israeli forces have committed against the people they occupy.
Companies engaged in businesses in the illegal settlements are profiting from and contributing to systemic human rights violations against Palestinians by the settlers, the Israeli army, and the occupying power.
Surely this applies to companies promoting such businesses as well, which should give us pause for thought.
Should we, as Arabs, continue to deal with such companies?
* A version of this article appears in print in the 27 July, 2023 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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