Why would Amnesty International pay any attention to the views of American Jewry when instead it can listen to the “gut” feeling of its USA Executive Director Paul O’Brien who recently announced his colon was telling him Jews in the United States do not really support Israel?
Speaking at the Women’s National Democratic Club, O’Brien confidently dismissed the results of a 2020 poll that found 80% of American Jews consider themselves proponents of Israel:
I actually don’t believe that to be true. I believe my gut tells me that what Jewish people in this country want is to know that there’s a sanctuary that is a safe and sustainable place that the Jews, the Jewish people can call home.”
O’Brien then used his incendiary supposition to claim, therefore, there is really no right for Israel to remain at all, stating it “shouldn’t exist as a Jewish state.”
One must wonder whether he has ever called for the dismantling of any other country – Muslim, Christian, Buddhist, or otherwise – that has protected its distinctive religious and cultural identity.
For example, data shows there are currently 56 members of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, which is an alliance of countries where “Islam plays a significant role,” while the World Population Review counts at least 20 nations where Christianity is the official state religion.
In comments reported by the Jewish Insider, O’Brien also patronizingly lectured the audience on how Jews can be convinced the termination of their homeland is “principled and fair”:
I think they can be convinced over time that the key to sustainability is to adhere to what I see as core Jewish values, which are to be principled and fair and just in creating that [safe] space…. [But] we are opposed to the idea – and this, I think, is an existential part of the debate – that Israel should be preserved as a state for the Jewish people.”
And in spite of the wealth of evidence to the contrary, O’Brien bizarrely claimed that Amnesty actually “takes no political views on any question, including the right of the State of Israel to survive.”
As HonestReporting has documented in detail, though, Amnesty does appear to have a problem with the very existence of the Jewish state.
Just last month, the NGO released a widely-publicized report accusing Israel of maintaining a “cruel system of apartheid” since the country’s creation in 1948.
The 280-page document titled, “Israel’s Apartheid Against Palestinians. Cruel System of Domination and Crime Against Humanity,” concluded with a call to “dismantle” what Amnesty refers to as Jerusalem’s “system of oppression and domination,” and to allow millions of descendants of Palestinian refugees to “return” to Israel, which would effectively end the Jewish-self determination O’Brien at one point claimed to promote.
In addition to thoroughly debunking the libelous apartheid myth – including pointing out how Amnesty had resorted to formulating an entirely new definition of the term to support its conclusion – we drew attention to how despite Amnesty ostensibly being a “global movement,” it appears to have something of an obsession when it comes to Israel.
An HonestReporting review of Amnesty’s main Twitter accounts — @Amnesty, @AmnestyUSA and @AmnestyUK — starkly revealed the organization’s fanatical focus on Israel. Between February 1, the date of publication of its “apartheid” report on Israel, and February 6, Amnesty posted 132 tweets about alleged wrongdoings by Jerusalem.
This, compared to just 13 tweets during the same period about every other human rights issue in the world.
The Amnesty report, which included O’Brien conducting a full three days of “research” on the ground in Israel, was followed up by a recommendation from Amnesty that United States members of Congress “use the full power of their office” to call for a “thorough review of US security aid to Israeli forces.”
In any event, most US lawmakers and officials dismissed Amnesty’s shambolic “findings”, with US State Department spokesman Ned Price saying his government rejects the view Israel is an apartheid state while suggesting the NGO was guilty of applying a “double standard.”
Applying such a double standard while denying Israel’s right to exist meets the IHRA’s widely adopted working definition of Jew-hatred.
O’Brien’s not-so-cloaked call for the eradication of the Jewish state did not go unnoticed, with limited media coverage appearing to have prompted him to allege his remarks were “misreported” and that he was actually making reference to “Amnesty’s concerns with [Israel’s] 2018 Nation State law.”
I’ve had a look at the transcript of the @WNDC meeting that has been misreported. What I said to the Jewish Insider journalist was to reference Amnesty’s concerns with the 2018 Nation State law….”
— Paul O’Brien (@dpaulobrien) March 12, 2022
As an ironic aside, while that piece of legislation enshrined into law various Jewish elements of the one and only Jewish state, American-Israeli writer David Hazony observed that its enactment was the result of attempts by critics of Zionism to strip the country of “any connection to Jewish history, peoplehood, or symbolism” – seemingly, the very behavior Amnesty is guilty of.
The latest comments from O’Brien, one of the senior members in Amnesty, clearly indicate what many have long argued: the NGO has a serious issue with a Jewish state in any shape or form.
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Photo Credit: Ralph Alswang Photographer
