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Paula Kweskin is a human rights lawyer and filmmaker. She’s the founder and director of the non-profit women’s rights organization, The 49%.
Every day, thousands of people in northern Israel are under fire from incoming rockets, missiles and drones from Hezbollah in Lebanon. Over the past few months, these attacks have indiscriminately killed several people, injured dozens and forced tens of thousands to evacuate their homes.
But such scenes aren’t confined to the villages and cities of northern Israel — home to Jews, Muslims, Christians and Druze, and just a 90-minute drive from my house. Such violence and threats targeting civilians have become increasingly common across the world, as tyrannical regimes are emboldened to act with impunity and most of the world — including powerful Western democracies and international institutions like the U.N. — watch.
But while human rights activists and Western government officials rightfully express shock over starving children in Gaza and the death of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny in prison, there are also quieter reports that go unnoticed. Reports about the executions of dissidents in Iran, Russia’s war in Ukraine going into its third year and Israeli civilians regularly under rocketfire from Hamas and Hezbollah.
It’s vital that anyone concerned about human rights connects the dots here: All of these unspeakable actions and unbearable situations stem, at least partly, from Iran and Russia — and increasingly, the two are working together.
Whether through Hamas in Gaza and the West Bank, Hezbollah in Lebanon or militias in Sudan, these two powers aren’t supporting freedom fighters but the spread of extreme ideologies, autocracy and suppression of basic universal freedoms. They seek to control resources and stamp out democracy. And unless human rights activists understand this, we’ll never make progress.
Hamas clearly had both financial and tactical support from Iran to carry out its Oct. 7 attacks. They killed about 1,200 people in Israel, mainly civilians, and kidnapped more than 250 others to Gaza — around 130 hostages still remain there. Iran also funds and trains Hezbollah in Lebanon, as well as the armed Houthi militias in Yemen, who continue to threaten a major global shipping route with attacks on ships in the Red Sea. Russia, too, supports Hamas diplomatically and by promoting online propaganda.
As Iran and Russia strengthen ties, Iran has also sent Russia drones, long-range missiles and other weapons, while Russia has provided the Sudanese paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) group with weapons in their fight against the Sudanese army. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken assessed RSF actions in Sudan as war crimes, leaving millions displaced, women and girls raped, and ethnic minorities systematically murdered.
Russia, Iran and the countries hosting the movements they support all have egregious human rights records against their own citizens, with dissidents, women and minorities suffering the most. They all disregard human rights and the rule of law.
They persecute and kill wantonly; from Navalny to the hanging of dissidents in Iran, to the Palestinians killed by Hamas on suspicion of working with Israeli security forces or to everyday Gazan civilians used as human shields. Houthi forces fighting a civil war in Yemen regularly target schools, mosques and other civilian infrastructure with missiles. And Hezbollah regularly harasses, intimidates and uses violence against those it views as opponents in Lebanon.
These are all grave signs of the sort of world that Russia and Iran, through their support of proxies and allied terror groups, want to create beyond their borders.
Unfortunately, a few of the countries closest to these threats — including Ukraine and Israel — have often been fighting them on their own, sometimes facing criticism from other democracies.
In the case of Israel, especially, critics oppose actions against Hamas and Hezbollah, often in the name of human rights. It’s crucial we care about civilian lives in Gaza and Lebanon endangered by military actions. But it’s also critical we understand, as Palestinian human rights activist Bassem Eid recently wrote, that these terrorist organizations bear much of the responsibility for the suffering of Palestinians.
“It is the Palestinian-Arab nationalist movement that has betrayed the Palestinian people and consistently opposed peace,” Eid noted. And “unfortunately, the views of these antisemitic Palestinian political heads often overshadow the voices of real Palestinians who yearn for peace.”
Those who truly care about human rights need to change their approach, and call out autocratic regimes — like Iran and Russia — and their support for terrorism. This is what’s really wreaking havoc and suffering in Gaza, Israel, Ukraine, Lebanon, Sudan, Russia, Iran and too many other places across the world.
We also need to pressure Western governments and the U.N. to take decisive action. This includes leveraging more sanctions, expelling the embassies of Russia and Iran, and supporting Israel and Ukraine as they fight this global threat on the front lines. In addition, human rights advocates need to make more effort to amplify the voices of those suffering in Russia, Iran and under the grip of those regimes’ proxies and allies in Gaza, Yemen, Sudan and Lebanon.
But more than anything, as advocates, we need to stop looking away from the real perpetrators. This only gives the general public and Western governments more of an excuse to ignore them.
Over a decade ago, I produced a documentary that showed a woman, accused of immodest dress, being forced into a police car in Iran. It’s a difficult scene to watch, and I understand why people want to look away. But the same regime that forced this woman into that police car is now expanding its reach — look no further than the horrifying video footage from Oct. 7, as Hamas militants force terrified girls and women onto motorcycles and into vehicles, raping, abusing and kidnapping them to Gaza.
As these regimes continue to carry out human rights abuses globally, with impunity, we must do everything to stop them. We cannot keep looking away.
CORRECTION: This article was updated to correct a typo in Antony Blinken’s name.
