The Hypocrisy of Hypocrisy

There is one clear and simple truth in Iddo Netanyahu’s article, ‘On Hypocrisy and Shallowness’ (Maariv, Feb 6, 2026): hypocrisy indeed exists within the international human rights discourse. There are many in the West who demonstrate en masse for Palestinians while remaining silent in the face of the brutal, prolonged, and murderous oppression in Iran. This is not a profound insight; it is a trivial observation that has been repeated countless times. The problem begins the moment this observation is presented as a unilateral indictment – one that positions the writer, and the political camp from which he hails, outside the circle of criticism. This is where hypocrisy reveals itself in its purest form.

When addressing hypocrisy, one cannot ignore the blatant contradiction between a sudden concern for the rights of Iranian citizens and the systematic violation of Palestinian rights by the State of Israel. This is not ‘progressive’ criticism plucked from thin air, but rather well-documented facts: settler violence is a daily occurrence, and pogroms by ‘hilltop youth’ in Palestinian villages have become routine. These actions are not merely met with a lack of condemnation; on the contrary, they are carried out with the tacit consent, and sometimes explicit support, of ministers, Knesset members, and limp law enforcement mechanisms. Those who turn a blind eye to this reality while crying out for human rights in Iran are not critics of hypocrisy – they are the embodiment of it.

Furthermore, Netanyahu’s claims are more than just moral hypocrisy; they represent a cynical use of human rights as a propaganda tool. In his eyes, human rights are not a universal value, but a rhetorical weapon drawn only when it serves an attack on the ‘progressive West’ or justifies government actions. To him, the Palestinian – much like the Iranian – is not a human being with inherent rights, but a function in an argument. When a Palestinian’s rights are violated by Jews, they evaporate. When an Iranian’s rights are violated by an anti-Israel regime, they become a moral banner. This is not a principled moral stance; it is a transparent and contemptible manipulation.

Yet, here lies the deeper and more severe contradiction, the one that completely voids Iddo Netanyahu’s article of any ethical validity: anyone who speaks in the name of human rights and universal morality while remaining silent – or worse, justifying – the systematic incitement to violence within Israeli society itself, forfeits the right to be heard. In recent years, an orchestrated, violent, and unrestrained ‘poison machine’ has been operating in Israel, targeting private citizens, protesters, bereaved families, families of hostages, reservists, and academics. Attempts to run over protesters, calls for murder, public humiliation, and the systematic vilification of legitimate civil protest – these are not marginal mishaps; they are the direct result of a political discourse that has transformed violence into a political tool.

And who stands at the center of this discourse? Not marginal leftist activists, but the Prime Minister himself – the writer’s own brother. When Iddo Netanyahu chooses to position himself as a global moralist without saying a single word about the incitement, violence, and de-legitimization led by the current Israeli leadership against its own citizens, he is not just a hypocrite – he is a collaborator. This silence is not neutral; it is a political position.

This leads to a difficult but necessary question: does Iddo Netanyahu possess the moral standing to speak about human rights at all? I do not mean in the legal sense, but in the ethical one. One who does not condemn the violation of human rights in his own home, who is not appalled by the transformation of civil protest into a legitimate target for violence, who is not shocked by the vilification of hostages’ families in the name of ‘national loyalty’ – such a person does not critique hypocrisy; he symbolizes it.

Netanyahu’s article is not an indictment of the ‘progressive Left’; it is intended to serve as a self-exoneration. It seeks to say: ‘They are hypocrites, therefore we are permitted’. Permitted to harm, permitted to silence, permitted to exercise unrestrained power against any enemy or dissenter. This is a dangerous, if not distorted, logic, because it does not concern itself with human rights at all, but rather with the ‘comparison of evils’.

Indeed, there is hypocrisy in the global progressive discourse. But there is also an Israeli hypocrisy, deeper and far more dangerous, because it occurs where we hold direct responsibility. Anyone who seriously wishes to speak of morality must begin in their own home: in the West Bank, on the streets of Tel-Aviv and Jerusalem, and in the media studios where violence is crudely used against citizens in the name of ‘patriotism’, or more accurately, the ‘stability of the coalition’.

If one is to engage with hypocrisy, one must first look inward. As the Hebrew proverb goes: ‘Adorn yourself first, then adorn others’.