The ministry said that Amnesty UK was “notorious for being corrupted by racism and xenophobia, and the organization’s secretary-general has previously accused Israel – with no basis or evidence – of murdering Arafat. It is not surprising that it took Amnesty eight years to back down from this serious and baseless accusation.” Writes Hugh Fitzgerald
The Amnesty report that has just appeared, the one that is so much in the news because it labels Israel an “apartheid” state, employing “a system of oppression and domination against the Palestinian people wherever it has control over their rights,” is truly a grotesque affair. The Amnesty report accuses Israel of “massive seizures of Palestinian land and property, unlawful killings, forcible transfer, drastic movement restrictions, and the denial of nationality and citizenship to Palestinians are all components of a system which amounts to apartheid.”
Israel branded the report as “false, biased, and antisemitic” and accused the organization of endangering the safety of Jews around the world. “Amnesty’s report effectively serves as a green light… to harm not only Israel, but Jews around the world,” read a statement Monday from the Foreign Ministry spokesman’s office.
The statement said that the organization “uses double standards and demonization in order to delegitimize Israel. These are the exact components from which modern antisemitism is made.”
“Its extremist language and distortion of historical context were designed to demonize Israel and pour fuel onto the fire of antisemitism,” it said.
The ministry said that Amnesty UK was “notorious for being corrupted by racism and xenophobia, and the organization’s secretary-general has previously accused Israel – with no basis or evidence – of murdering Arafat. It is not surprising that it took Amnesty eight years to back down from this serious and baseless accusation.”
Amnesty UK (which prepared the report) knew that Israel would be displeased, but it did not foresee the dismissive responses from other countries.
“We reject the view that Israel’s actions constitute apartheid,” State Department spokesman Ned Price said Tuesday. “We don’t offer our own public comprehensive evaluations of reports, but we certainly reject the label that has been attached to this when speaking about Israel.”
Senator Robert Menendez, Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was outraged: “I am deeply disturbed by Amnesty International’s report calling Israel an ‘apartheid state’. This outrageous accusation belies history, facts, and common sense. Israel remains the only democracy in a region of autocrats, and human rights abusers; one that values human rights, individual liberty and where protest, dissent and civil society are vibrant. By identifying Israel’s very establishment as the foundation for this accusation, Amnesty International has joined a growing chorus of vicious voices intent on denying Israel’s right to exist through slander, misinformation, and ignoring that both Israelis and Palestinians are responsible for their own fates.”
Other members of Congress, on both sides of the aisle, added their own denunciations.
Among the Republican critics were Senator Jim Risch of Oklahoma, Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, Senator James Lankford of Oklahoma, Representative Lee Zeldin of New York, Representative Elise Stefanik of New York, Representative Joe Wilson of South Carolina, Representative Jason Smith of Missouri, Representative Fred Upton of Michigan, Representative David Kustoff of Tennessee, Representative Tim Walberg of Michigan and Representative Mario Diaz-Balart of Florida.
Democrats who sounded off against Amnesty included Senator Bob Menendez of New Jersey, Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida, Representative Brad Schneider of Illinois, Representative Lois Frankel of Florida, Representative Elaine Luria of Virginia, Representative Kathy Manning of North Carolina, Representative Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey, Representative Dean Phillips of Minnesota, Representative Brad Sherman of California, Representative Jake Auchincloss of Massachusetts and Representative Ritchie Torres of New York.
The American ambassador to Israel, Thomas Nides, described the Amnesty report as “absurd.”
Other countries were also appalled.
The German Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Christopher Burger, said at a press conference: “We reject expressions like apartheid or a one-sided focusing of criticism on Israel. That is not helpful to solving the conflict in the Middle East.” Individual politicians, including members of the left-wing Green Party, called Amnesty’s report a travesty. The president of the German-Israeli Society (DIG), Uwe Becker, demanded that Amnesty give back its Nobel Peace Prize.
“The outrageous claims that Amnesty International made in the so-called ‘Israel report’ that it published today, expose the organization as definitively and undoubtedly antisemitic,” he said, according to a tweet on Wednesday from the DIG.
The Australian PM, Scott Morrison, when asked directly about the report’s findings, and whether his government would condemn Israel over the matter, said Australia – together with the US – had been among “the closest and strongest friends of Israel.” “No country is perfect,” Morrison said. “There are criticisms made of all countries, but I can assure you that Australia and my government, in particular, will remain a staunch friend of Israel.” No condemnation, despite a plea to Morrison from Amnesty to do so.
The U.K. similarly rejected the Amnesty report claiming that Israel was guilty of apartheid.
“We do not agree with the use of this terminology,” a spokesperson for the UK’s Foreign and Commonwealth Development Office told The Times of Israel.
“Any judgment on whether serious crimes under international law have occurred is a matter for judicial decision, rather than for governments or non-judicial bodies.”
Canada has not issued a formal response to the Amnesty report, but last year Canada’s foreign affairs minister “categorically” rejected the apartheid label. And even before Justin Trudeau was elected prime minister, he tweeted that discussion of Israeli apartheid “has no place on Canadian campuses.” I don’t think Canadian officials will find themselves reconsidering their previous dismissal of the “apartheid” charge that Amnesty International now wants the world to believe of the Jewish state.
Meanwhile, where are all those governments that Amnesty hoped would hail its report? Instead of praise, Amnesty’s report has been widely criticized. So far, the American, British, and German and Australian governments have joined Israel in rejecting the charge of “apartheid.” Not a single country has defended the report. The Secretary-General of Amnesty International, Agnes Callamard (who once accused Israel of murdering Arafat), clearly rattled by the negative response, in an interview to MSN said that she thought “a momentum [against Israel] is building up, and I hope that there will be a tipping point” against Israel. She’s whistling in the dark. Every day brings fresh news of another major country that has rejected Amnesty’s claim about Israeli “apartheid.” Because of the hallucinatory nature of the charges in the report, there may well be a “tipping point,” but it will not be in opinions ranged against Israel, as Agnes Callamard fondly hopes. There will, rather, be a tipping point in how the Western countries view Amnesty International, the onlie begetter of this appalling report, so dishonest, so malignant, and so antisemitic that this NGO will have a hard time ever again being taken seriously when it presumes to report on Israel and its enemies.
