Amnesty International has published a biased report falsely accusing Israel, the only functioning democracy in the Middle East, of being an “apartheid” state.
Amnesty, an organization with a history of anti-Israel activism, released a 300-page report on February 1, labeling the Jewish State as a “regime of oppression and domination of the Palestinian population for the benefit of Jewish Israelis.”
The Jerusalem-based watchdog NGO Monitor, one of the first to review the Amnesty report, concluded that the group is weaponizing the “publication to call on the international community to adopt and implement anti-Israel BDS and lawfare.”
On Monday, the NGO Monitor published a detailed review exposing the flaws and inaccuracies in Amnesty’s report (read the full review here):
The publication breaks no new ground and is not meaningfully different from the discredited Human Rights Watch (HRW) and B’Tselem reports from 2021 – yet Amnesty says they took over four years to produce it.
Like many previous NGO publications, Amnesty’s report manipulates and distorts international law, Israeli policy, and events on the ground, as well as denies the Jewish people their right to sovereign equality and self-determination.
Thus, Amnesty’s report can be considered antisemitic according to the IHRA definition of antisemitism, which notes that: “Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.”
Likewise, Amnesty’s report criminalizes Israeli laws and practices designed to safeguard Jewish identity – such as the Law of Return – which are enshrined under international law and parallel the practices of many nation-states.
In these attacks, Israeli policies are artificially framed as attempts to preserve “Jewish domination” – an antisemitic trope and refrain throughout the publication. Amnesty’s overarching argument is that everything Israel does is nefarious, whether it promotes peace or Palestinian self-detemination, improves the lives of Palestinians or minority groups in Israel, or if mandated by international law.
The Israeli government blasted the so-called human rights group for compiling a report littered with terrorist propaganda and antisemitic lies to smear a democracy governed by the rule of law (surrounded by belligerent rogue regimes and military dictatorships). “The report consolidates and recycles lies, inconsistencies, and unfounded assertions that originate from well-known anti-Israeli hate organizations, all with the aim of reselling damaged goods in new packaging,” the Israeli government said in a statement. “Repeating the same lies of hate organizations over and over does not make the lies reality, but rather makes Amnesty illegitimate.”
“Amnesty is not a human rights organization, but just another radical organization that echoes propaganda with no serious examination,” Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid said, responding to the report. “Five minutes of serious factchecking were enough to know that the facts that appeared in the report published this week were a delusion divorced from reality,” he added.
Many leading Jewish organizations criticized Amnesty for another anti-Israel report riddled with antisemitic tropes. The umbrella organization, Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, dismissed the document:
We vehemently reject the biased and one-sided report on Israel scheduled to be released February 1 by Amnesty International-UK that presents an unbalanced, inaccurate, and incomplete review and instead inexplicably focuses on one aim: to demonize and delegitimize the Jewish and democratic State of Israel.
This libelous document resorts to baseless ‘apartheid’ accusations against Israel, among other distortions. In so doing, the report commits a double injustice: It fuels those antisemites around the world who seek to undermine the only Jewish country on earth, while simultaneously cheapening and downplaying the horrific suffering that was a result of apartheid in South Africa. The apartheid system practiced by South Africa was characterized by tyranny, segregation and dehumanization established both in law and practice; this has no equivalence to a vibrant democracy where all citizens have rights and representation in the national legislature.
The New York-based civil rights group Anti-Defamation League (ADL) also condemned the anti-Israel report:
We have reviewed Amnesty International UK’s upcoming report on Israel and strongly condemn it as an effort to demonize Israel and undermine its legitimacy as a Jewish and democratic state. In an environment of rising anti-Jewish hate, this type of report is not only inaccurate but also irresponsible and likely will lead to intensified antisemitism around the world.
This new report goes beyond criticizing Israeli policies and actions to painting Israel’s very creation as illegitimate, immoral, and faulted. Amnesty International’s allegations that Israel’s crimes go back to the sin of its creation in 1948, serve to present the Jewish and democratic state as singularly illegitimate at its foundational roots. Such a hateful characterization not only delegitimizes the Israeli state enterprise and the Jewish right to self-determination in its historic homeland, but also undermines the vision of a mutually negotiated solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that will provide security, dignity, and self-determination to both peoples.
Several noted Arab-Israelis slammed the report, which bears no resemblance to the reality on the ground.
Jerusalem-based Arab-Israeli rights activist, Bassem Eid, was among those who criticized Amnesty for the report. In his latest blog post published in the Times of Israel, he called Israel “the best place to be an Arab.” Eid noted that “Israel’s Arabs have been integrating into society and live in every corner of the country. Israel’s Arabs enjoy the same freedoms as their Jewish neighbors.”
Mohammad Kabiya, a prominent pro-Israel activist and a reservist in the Israeli Air Force, responded to the report:
Arab and other monitories have been a significant beneficiary of the laws and institutions established by the Jewish state. Fourteen Arab and Druze have been elected as Knesset lawmakers in the current Israeli parliament. Many Arabs have served with distinction in civil service, judiciary, and military. Israeli Arab women, too, have distinguished themselves in various fields: acting as Knesset members, educators, soldiers, and diplomats. “Among Israeli Arab studying for their bachelor’s degree, women account for 72% of the total,” the Israeli newspaper Haaretz noted in June 2017.
The data released by Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) in December 2021 showed that the Arab Christian women were the best educated female demographic group in the Jewish State. “The proportion of women among the Christian students was higher than the women’s proportion among the total number of students in all degrees and particularly in advanced degrees: 64.1% and 53.2%, respectively, of those studying for a PhD, and 72.9% and 63.8%, respectively, of those studying for a master’s degree,” the report found.
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