Amnesty International’s campaign against Israeli settlements

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The World Jewish Congress is disconcerted and disheartened by Amnesty International’s newly launched campaign calling on the world’s leading digital tourism companies – Trip Advisor, Expedia, booking.com, and Airbnb – to stop listing in Israeli settlements, and to governments to bring in regulation to prevent these businesses from operating with or in these communities.
“Amnesty International is a serious and respected human rights organization, whose work to stop abuses around the world should never be underrated, but its singular focus on corporate entities doing business in Israeli settlements is gravely misguided and undermining of the organization’s true mandate,” said WJC CEO and Executive Vice President Robert Singer.

“If Amnesty wishes to involve itself in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it should centre its attention on the real human rights abuses ongoing in Palestinian territories, and not attack corporate businesses who strive to bridge divides and build peace through global tourism and interaction,” Singer said.

“Amnesty has expressed its concern that these businesses are profiting from and contributing to what it calls human rights violations caused by the settlements. Let it be reminded that in the Palestinian territories today, convicted terrorists who murder innocent Israeli civilians are awarded handsome salaries for their so-called martyrdom, by the Palestinian Authority. This is profit from terror and human rights abuses, plain and simple,” Singer said.

“Amnesty International would do well to shift its focus and campaign against this atrocious policy and urge corporate entities and governments to halt any funding to the Palestinian Authority that might be used for terror payments, and advocate loudly and clear against the continued incitement and encouragement to terrorism that proliferates in these territories,” he added.

“The World Jewish Congress stands ready and willing to engage with Amnesty International and work together against the real human rights abuses and abusers threatening our world today, and to ensure that the price of unbridled hatred is never forgotten,” Singer said.

The president of the Zionist Federation of New Zealand states: “It is with great disappointment that a mere two days after the world commemorated the International Holocaust Remembrance Day, that Amnesty International would be undertaking an international campaign advocating the boycott of Jewish businesses in Israel.

Amnesty International claims that this is just against “Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories” which for Amnesty includes East Jerusalem and the Jewish Quarter of the Old City.

Amnesty claim that the Settlements are “illegal under international law and are also at the root cause of a vast range of human rights violations suffered by Palestinian communities.” Amnesty International yet again chooses to ignore the complexity of the situation between the Israelis and the Palestinians, they choose to ignore that the legal aspect of the West Bank and the settlements are far from agreed upon by experts in international law, and they continuously ignore the human rights abuse on the Palestinian people by Mahmoud Abbas’s Palestinian Authority (PA) in the West Bank and by Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

Amnesty International continually chooses to look at the situation between the Israelis and the Palestinian Arabs only through Palestinian eyes and only on very rare occasions will hold the PA and Hamas to account.

The call for a boycott of Jewish Israeli businesses so soon after the International Holocaust Remembrance Day reminds us that the last time Jewish businesses were boycotted was in pre-WW2 Germany prior to the Holocaust, which resulted in the murder of 6 million Jewish people.

Amnesty International continually focuses on Israel and the boycott of Israeli goods and businesses in the disputed territories of the West Bank, or Judea and Samaria as it is properly known by.  Yet they ignore disputes in more clear cut areas of occupation such as Turkish occupied Cyprus, Chinese occupied Tibet or Russian occupied Ukraine to name but a few. Amnesty International have also given their support to a One-State solution with respect to Israel-Palestine, a solution that will most likely result in the elimination of the world’s only Jewish State.

Amnesty International’s continual double standards, demonisation and delegitimisation of Israel can only lead to the conclusion that Amnesty International is at best disproportionately biased against Israel and at worst suffer from institutionalised antisemitism. Ultimately, Amnesty International’s position does not contribute to a peaceful resolution to the situation in Israel, but reinforces Palestinian violence and intransigence.”