Israel accuses Amnesty UK of publishing ‘false, biased, and antisemitic’ report
The State of Israel “absolutely rejects all the false allegations” that appear in the report that Amnesty is expected to publish on Tuesday, the Foreign Ministry stated.
In publishing this false report, Amnesty UK “uses double standards and demonization in order to delegitimize Israel. These are the exact components from which modern anti-Semitism is made,” the Foreign Ministry charged.
The yet to be published accuses Israel of conducting an apartheid regime and other evils and wrongdoing, as it has done in its previous reports.
The report further “denies the State of Israel’s right to exist as the nation-state of the Jewish people. Its extremist language and distortion of historical context were designed to demonize Israel and pour fuel onto the fire of anti-Semitism,” the statement further states.
Levelling harsh allegations against Amnesty, the Israeli statement says that “a few days after International Holocaust Remembrance Day, we once again learn that antisemitism is not just a part of history, but unfortunately, is also part of today’s reality. Amnesty’s report effectively serves as a green light for the perpetrators and others to harm not only Israel but Jews around the world.”
“The State of Israel is a strong and vibrant democracy that grants all its citizens equal rights, regardless of religion or race. The State of Israel was established as the national home of the Jewish people with broad international support, in light of the lessons of the Holocaust.” However, Amnesty “criticizes the very existence of the State of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people, and effectively denies its right to exist at all.”
The Foreign Ministry pointed out that “it is not surprising” that this report is being published by the British branch of Amnesty International, and under the auspices of the organization’s Secretary-General Dr Agnès Callamard, as this branch “is notorious for being corrupted by racism and xenophobia, and the organization’s Secretary-General has previously accused Israel – with no basis or evidence – of murdering Arafat. It is not surprising that it took Amnesty eight years to back down from this serious and baseless accusation.”
Israel called on Amnesty to “withdraw from the report. This is a report which would be preferable not to publish at all, given that it does not respect those who truly value and are trying to protect human rights.”
Foreign Minister Yair Lapid stated that Amnesty “was once an esteemed organization that we all respected. Today, it is the exact opposite. It is not a human rights organization, but just another radical organization that echoes propaganda with no serious examination.”
“Instead of seeking facts, Amnesty quotes lies spread by terrorist organizations. Five minutes of serious fact-checking were enough to know that the facts that appeared in the report were a delusion divorced from reality. Israel is not perfect, but it is a democracy committed to international law and open to scrutiny, with a free press and strong Supreme Court.”
He noted that Amnesty does not call Syria an apartheid state, “a country whose government murdered half a million of its own citizens, nor Iran or any other corrupt and murderous regime in Africa or Latin America.”
“I hate to use the argument that if Israel were not a Jewish state, nobody in Amnesty would dare argue against it, but in this case, there is no other possibility,” said Lapid.
In Australia, Jeremy Leibler, president of the Zionist Federation of Australia, said: “This is an appalling report that should be rejected by everyone who seeks Israeli–Palestinian peace. It makes a mockery of both objectivity and the victims of Apartheid South Africa, who suffered under an evil regime that bears absolutely no resemblance to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.
At its core, the Amnesty report is not about Palestinian rights or the occupation, it’s about Israel’s existence. Given Amnesty calls for an end to the Jewish majority of Israel, the inescapable conclusion is that Amnesty has come to the position that Jews, alone in the world, may not exercise the right to self-determination.
The report is a one-sided attack on Israel, where the conclusion of ‘apartheid’ was predetermined, and aspects of the conflict were selected on the basis that they could be made to fit that conclusion. If they couldn’t be twisted or decontextualised in a way to fit the apartheid lie, they were ignored.
In creating such a report, Amnesty will fuel the antisemitic attempts to hold Israel to a standard not applied to any other country and will further motivate those who enact violence against Israelis and Jews around the world.
The full participation of Palestinian citizens of Israel is ignored or downplayed in the report. That Israel’s governing coalition has an Arab party, that there are Arab cabinet members, Arab High Court justices and more are all ignored by Amnesty, because they are unfortunate truths that would prove the lie of Amnesty’s claims.
Ironically, the report is released as Israel’s President is in the United Arab Emirates. The Arab world is turning its back on conflict and forging peace with Israel, but Amnesty appears intent on stoking the flames of Israel hatred, justifying violence against Israel and making Israeli–Palestinian peace more difficult to achieve.
What is tragic is that such an important organisation has allowed itself to be manipulated by key members who are much more interested in pursuing their ideological hatred of Israel than they are of pursuing human rights.
All people of good conscience and who wish for genuine Israeli–Palestinian peace should reject this report and call for Amnesty to withdraw it.”
TPS/J-Wire
