Blinded by Hate: Iran Gouges Eyes Out, UN Focuses on Israel

Iran uses judicially mandated torture and capital punishment with impunity, while the United Nations puts the Jewish state under a microscope for defending itself.

By Pesach Benson, United with Israel

Three Iranians have been sentenced to partial blinding under the country’s strict eye-for-an-eye laws.

According to a report in Hamshahri, a Tehran daily picked up by AFP, the three cases — independent of each other — were recently transferred to the Tehran prosecutor’s office to carry out the sentences after courts found the defendants guilty of attacks that left their victims partially blind.

One female convict threw acid at a woman during a dispute in 2011. Another convict assaulted a man with a knife in 2017. The third convict attacked a man with a hunting weapon.

While one would expect the United Nations to prioritize investigations of Iran’s human rights abuses, the international body focuses disproportionately on Israel, the only country whose human rights record is a permanent agenda item for the UN Human Rights Council.

Currently, the UN operates a commission whose sole purpose is vilifying Israel. Miloon Kothari sits on the commission and recently claimed that social media is controlled by Jews, questioning if Israel deserved to have its UN membership revoked. Kothari also accused Israel of practicing “apartheid” and “settler colonialism” against the Palestinians.

In reality, Israel is a pluralistic, democratic society that consistently earns high scores from Freedom House for its policies vis a vis civil liberties and political rights.

While the UN occupies itself with investigations of the only democratic country in the Middle East, Israel, Iran brutalizes its own people.

According to AFP, Iran’s eye-for-an-eye law is applied at the request of the victims or their families, which are reportedly more likely to accept financial compensation from the attackers, also known as “blood money.”

Iran’s strict interpretation of sharia, or Islamic religious law, also punishes thieves by amputating fingers or hands.

On July 27, Iranian authorities used a guillotine machine to amputate the fingers of a convicted thief at a clinic inside Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison, according to a human rights watchdog, which also said that the convict in another judicial amputation in May was not given anesthetic.

Iran defends the practice, saying gouging and amputation fall under the category of gisas, or “retribution in kind.” Tehran also claims that Islamic law’s “eye-for-an-eye” approach deters crime.

But critics say Iran’s corporal punishment is cruel and inhumane.

Another form of corporal punishment, flogging, can be applied for more than 100 offenses in Iran, such as such as adultery, kissing in public, blasphemy, fraud, selling or drinking alcohol, mixed-gender parties, and eating during the month of Ramadan, when Muslims observe a daylight fast.

On several occasions, Iran has also flogged journalists accused of “disseminating lies.”

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