UPDATE
In response to a complaint from HonestReporting, The Independent has edited the story to make it clear that African migrants are not being forcibly deported to Rwanda. (Text in bold has been added to the story.)
The study, published on Monday, says the African migrants are being sent to Uganda, which Israel has an agreement with. A similar agreement with Rwanda recently collapsed.
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Uganda has repeatedly denied the existence of an agreement for the reception of deportees. In April, the Israeli Government admitted that Rwanda refused to accept further deportations but Amnesty reported that, at the time of publication of its report, “voluntary” transfers to Uganda continued.
A reference to migrants being sent to Rwanda has also been removed from the paragraph featured in HonestReporting’s post below.
The Independent has pointed out that while the word “cruel” is not used in the Amnesty report, it is used in Amnesty’s press release. HonestReporting acknowledges that The Independent was therefore justified in using that word in its story.
It’s difficult to argue that the issue of African migrants in Israel has been addressed properly by the Israeli government. From the failure to process asylum claims to the breakdown of agreements with the UN and third countries, it’s been nothing short of a mess.
So no surprise that Amnesty International, an organization with a long history of one-sided activism against Israel, has published a report taking Israel to task for its treatment of African asylum seekers. And no surprise that The Independent, an obsessively keen follower of anything remotely critical of Israel, has covered the story.
Strangely, however, there is no hyperlink anywhere in the story to the full Amnesty report. Otherwise, Independent readers might take a look at the report for themselves.
Were they to do so, they might realize that, while The Independent’s headline claims that Amnesty labeled Israel’s policies as ‘cruel and unlawful,’ the Amnesty report itself never refers to these policies using the word ‘cruel.’ This is The Independent’s description, not Amnesty’s.
Readers might also notice some of the important information and context that has been left out of The Independent’s story.
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The Independent claims that the Amnesty study “says the African migrants are being sent to Rwanda and Uganda.”
Except they aren’t currently being sent to either country.
A section in the Amnesty report is titled “The “Agreement” With Rwanda and its Demise.” It says:
On 2 April 2018, Prime Minister Netanyahu announced that the plan to deport asylum-seekers to a “third country” had to be scrapped when “it became clear that the third country did not meet the [required] conditions” and that it “did not withstand the pressure.”
Later in the Amnesty report we read in relation to the Israeli government’s breakdown of arrangements with the UN and Uganda as well as ongoing legal entanglements:
On 24 April, in the framework of a separate petition against the detention and deportation of asylum-seekers, the government admitted to the Court that its plan to forcibly deport African asylum-seekers had fallen through; and stated that it would therefore stop holding pre-deportation hearings and annul all previous decisions on the deportations.
Ultimately, The Independent’s story cherry picks the worst charges that Amnesty throws at Israel while omitting any information that would demonstrate how the migrant issue has been a source of significant debate and legal action within Israel.
Even the Amnesty report lays out the Israeli government’s legal difficulties in implementing its policies in the face of Israel’s High Court.
The Independent states at the end of its story that it has contacted the Embassy of Israel in London for comment. This in no way justifies the journalist’s failure to include important context and information that may have added some nuance to the story, particularly as some of this was available in the very Amnesty report that The Independent was writing about.
But then, why bother if your primary goal is to cater to an audience of readers who, thanks to The Independent, already believe that Israel is a racist human rights violator?
