Nancy Pelosi, speaker of the United States House of Representatives, recently visited Malaysia, but it's her subsequent visit to Taiwan that created more excitement because of China's opposition to it.
Chinese leader Xi Jinping went to the extent of telling US President Joe Biden: "Those who play with fire will perish by it."
But Pelosi wasn't deterred and landed in Taipei on Aug 2.
There, she gave a speech pledging that American commitment to support and preserve democracy in Taiwan and elsewhere remains "ironclad".
The pledge may appear to be strong and principled.
In reality, it exposes her hypocrisy.
After all, she used the exact word when describing US support for Israel, a country that ignores democratic values, and engages in ethnic cleansing and apartheid crimes.
The fact that Israel is committing apartheid is evident from its Nation-State Bill passed by the Israeli Knesset in 2018, stating:
ISRAEL is a national homeland for Jews only, where it fulfils the natural, cultural, religious and historical Jewish right to self-determination;
ISRAEL'S right to exercise national self-determination applies only to Jews; and,
THE general policy of Israel is that Jewish settlements in the West Bank, considered illegal by the international community, are regarded as valuable national assets by Israel.
Israel will, therefore, continue to increase settlements in blatant disregard for international law.
The bill proves that Israel is not interested in giving equal rights to Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank or in Palestine.
A recent United Nations Commission of Inquiry investigating violations in the Occupied Territory, including East Jerusalem, determined in its report that Israel is responsible for severe human rights violations against Palestinians.
The latest attacks in Gaza by Israel since Friday is further proof with 31 Palestinians killed, including six children, and 275 people wounded.
Reports by authoritative organisations — including The Economic and Social Commission for West Asia (ESCWA), B'Tselem, Human Rights Watch (HRW) and Amnesty International — said Israel is committing the crime of apartheid against Palestinians.
In 2017, ESCWA, a body under the United Nations, released a report saying Israel is a racist state implementing an apartheid regime in the form of racial discrimination against Palestinians.
In January 2021, B'Tselem, an Israeli human rights organisation, released a report stating that Israel is an "apartheid regime" that cannot claim to be a democracy when it's still occupying Palestinian territories.
In April 2021, HRW released a report titled A Threshold Crossed, denouncing Israel for committing apartheid crimes.
Last Feb 1, Amnesty, in its report titled Israel's Apartheid Against Palestinians: A Cruel System of Domination and a Crime Against Humanity, stated that Israel must be held accountable for perpetrating crimes of apartheid against Palestinians.
The report details how Israel enforces a system of oppression and domination against Palestinians in Israel, the Occupied Territories or displaced refugees in other countries.
Israel's apartheid policies and practices deserve to be categorised as crimes against humanity as enshrined in the 1973 Apartheid Convention, which defines apartheid as "inhumane acts committed for the purpose of creating and maintaining domination by one racial group of people over another racial group and oppress them systematically".
Malaysia and South Africa are among the countries that have acknowledged this matter.
In a recent speech, Naledi Pandor, South Africa's international relations and cooperation minister, said there is now global awareness that Israel is committing crimes of apartheid and persecution against Palestinians.
Her speech hopefully will make the international community, especially Americans, realise that Israel has murdered thousands of Palestinians, jailed tens of thousands, demolished hundreds of thousands of Palestinian homes and confiscated tens of thousands of hectares of Palestinian lands.
However, despite those crimes, when Pelosi visited Israel in February this year, she said American support for Israel remains "ironclad", the exact term she used to express US support for Taiwan.
The truth is, as long as the US continues its blind support for Israeli crimes against humanity, it is not in any position to lecture anybody about human rights and democracy.
Pelosi's thousands of kilometres trip to Asia is nothing more than a blatant display of her own hypocrisy.
The writer is director, Hashim Sani Centre for Palestine Studies, Universiti Malaya, and chairman, Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Malaysia
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect those of the New Straits Times