Analyzing Amnesty’s Antisemitic Apartheid Attack
On February 1, Amnesty International published yet another volume in the litany of copy-paste NGO reports that label Israel as an “apartheid” state. 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 the embargoed draft sent to journalists, Amnesty wrote, “This system of Apartheid originated with the creation of Israel in May 1948 and has been build and maintained for decades” – meaning that Israel is inherently illegitimate. Following extensive public criticism of its antisemitism before the report’s publication, Amnesty changed this particular line to read, “This system of apartheid has been built and maintained over decades”; however, the original language remains in materials posted by some Amnesty branches.
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. In service of this paradigm, Amnesty – often illogically – ignores or downplays the material differences between Israeli policy toward Palestinians living in Gaza, those living in the West Bank, and the country’s own Arab citizens.
Likewise, Amnesty sees the two-state formula prescribed by the Oslo Accords as part of an apartheid regime. The Accords themselves, in Amnesty’s analysis, are a tool of apartheid despite their being mutually agreed to by the PLO and Israel, and witnessed by the international community.
Consistent with its ongoing advocacy, Amnesty utilizes this publication to call on the international community to adopt and implement anti-Israel BDS and lawfare. The report’s release is timed to bolster a forthcoming March 2022 report from UN Special Rapporteur Michael Lynk that will advance similar allegations, and influence the UN Human Rights Council’s Commission of Inquiry into “all underlying root causes of recurrent tensions … and protratction of conflict, including systematic discrimination and repression based on national, ethnic, racial, or religious identity.”
The following analysis highlights some of the fundamental flaws in Amnesty’s publication:
Conclusion
Every aspect of the Amnesty International version of the apartheid campaign reflects its political agenda of exploiting tragedy to delegitimize Jewish sovereign equality and self- determination. Essentially, Amnesty demands the elimination of the Jewish State, and justifies doing so by perverting international law, misrepresenting Israeli laws and practices, and presenting an apologetic view of the murder of Israelis by Palestinian terrorists.
In other words, exactly what you would expect from an organization that thrives on a culture of anti-Israel delegitimization and demonization and has been marred by antisemitic incidents.