The United Nations General Assembly in December authorized an open-ended Commission of Inquiry (COI) into Israel’s relations with the Palestinians that was initially proposed in the aftermath of the 11-day Hamas-initiated conflict. The probe — the first ever to have an “ongoing” mandate — is set to be led by former UN human rights chief (2008-2014) and South African judge Navi Pillay, who is on record accusing Israel of “enforced segregation of people on racial lines.”
Moreover, Pillay expressed support for the BDS movement, which according to its leaders strives to put an end to the Jewish state in its entirety. As HonestReporting recently detailed, the COI essentially has been granted the power to act as judge and jury — and, if historical precedent is any indication, its seemingly preordained sentence will entail Israel being branded an “apartheid” state.
And, as Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ Jonathan Schanzer noted last week, Amnesty has provided the UN with an arrow for its quiver.
The NGO on February 1 released a report that charged Israel with maintaining a “cruel system of apartheid” since the country’s creation in 1948. Amnesty accused Israeli governments of striving for over seven decades to establish “Jewish domination and control over specific areas of strategic importance,” while treating Palestinians and Israeli Arabs as “inferior non-Jewish racial group[s].”
In our extensive analysis of the report, we explained how Amnesty had to resort to formulating a totally new definition of what it calls “the crime of apartheid” in order to place Israel in the docket.
Nevertheless, following the document’s publication, Amnesty called on the US government to support its conclusions. In a press release, the organization urged members of Congress to “use the full power of their office” to call for a “thorough review of US security aid to Israeli forces.”
In response, most lawmakers and officials rejected the NGO’s “research,” which, mind you, included one of the group’s key members spending a mere three days on the ground in Israel.
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Within hours of the report’s release, US State Department Spokesman Ned Price stated: “We reject the view that Israel’s actions constitute apartheid. […] When speaking about Israel… we think that it is important as the world’s only Jewish state that the Jewish people must not be denied their right to self-determination, and we must ensure there isn’t a double standard being applied.”
For his part, US Ambassador to Israel Tom Nides called Amnesty International’s accusation “absurd.”
As of Monday, 16 bipartisan members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee had issued statements denouncing Amnesty’s libel. Over two-thirds of them charged the organization with fueling antisemitism. Committee Chairman Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-NY) on Twitter argued that Amnesty “only emboldens those who organize tirelessly to eliminate the Jewish State.”
Ilhan Omar (D-MN) was the only member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee to back the apartheid claim, retweeting several posts in support of the group.
These aren’t only harmful policy recommendations, but Amnesty International appears to be going out of its way to lobby countries to end their support for Israel. I don’t support that, nor do the bulk of my constituents, nor does this Congress.
— Rep. Gregory Meeks (@RepGregoryMeeks) February 2, 2022
Related Reading: Amnesty International Creates New Definition of ‘Apartheid’ to Call For ‘Dismantling’ of Israel
Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-NY), co-chair of the House Republican Israel Caucus, used even harsher language, tweeting that “these lies peddled by [A]mnesty do nothing but incite hatred, antisemitism, and violence.”
In addition, the governments of, among others, Australia, the United Kingdom, Germany, Austria and the Czech Republic all rejected Amnesty’s “apartheid” conclusion.
On the flip side, the report was welcomed by US-designated terror groups Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). Hamas made stark that it “views with great appreciation and respect the efforts of Amnesty International in issuing this professional report,” while the PFLP called for erasing the Jewish state from what it termed “our entire Arab Palestinian land” — that is, all the territory between the Jordan River and Mediterranean Sea.
The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance working definition of antisemitism, widely accepted by governments worldwide, lists as an example of Jew-hatred, “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.”
Notably, Amnesty felt compelled to warn its followers not to use the report as “justification for committing antisemitic acts of hatred and violence.”
Meanwhile, an HonestReporting review of Amnesty’s main Twitter accounts — @Amnesty, @AmnestyUSA and @AmnestyUK — seemingly lays bare the organization’s obsessive focus on Israel. Between February 1, the date of publication of its report on Israel, and February 6, Amnesty posted 132 tweets about alleged wrongdoings by Jerusalem.
The three Twitter accounts together included only 13 tweets about every other human rights issue in the world. This, as the Winter Olympics kicked off in Beijing on February 4.
The US government in January 2021 concluded that the Chinese government is committing genocide against the Uighurs and other mainly Muslim peoples.
Secretary of State Anthony Blinken soon thereafter agreed with the genocide designation.
Yet, Amnesty during the same six-day period we surveyed published only six tweets criticizing Beijing’s human rights record.
The NGO did not post a single tweet about Russia’s potential military invasion of Ukraine, opting to ignore warnings that such an intervention could lead to the death of 50,000 civilians, as well as cause a refugee crisis.
However, the US and other nations have not fallen for Amnesty’s lies about Israel.
It’s time for UN officials ostensibly tasked with “investigating” alleged Israeli crimes against the Palestinians to follow suit.
Otherwise, they are effectively signaling that their “probe” is nothing more than a kangaroo court that exists to render a predetermined verdict.
Related Reading: ‘Apartheid’ Myth: The Improper Use of False and Misleading Claims Regarding Israel
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