Amnesty's report on Israeli 'apartheid' causes strong reactions

By John Solomou
Nicosia [Cyprus], February 7 : An Amnesty International report released last week stating that the Israeli state governed Palestinians in "a system of oppression and domination which met the international definition of apartheid", caused a strong reaction from many sides, which accused Amnesty International of "antisemitism".
Amnesty's 280 - page long report examines cases of discrimination against Arabs within Israel, the blockade of the Gaza Strip, the denial of the rights of citizenship, and the de facto annexation of parts of the West Bank, where Jewish settlers keep creating new settlements.
Additionally, the report looks into the forcible relocation of people, the expropriation of Palestinian land, extrajudicial killings, and the forcible relocation of people.
Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid attacked the Amnesty report even before it was published. The Israeli government which, in some mysterious way had obtained an early copy of Amnesty International's report, immediately condemned it as "antisemitic," but it neglected to disproof the points raised in the report. It stressed, however, that the methodology of the Report was biased.
Lapid said: "Israel is not perfect, but it is a democracy committed to international law and open to scrutiny." The government of Israel rejects the allegation of "apartheid", pointing to Israeli Arab citizens who have full rights.
It should be noted that that was not the first time human rights organizations had described Israel's actions as "apartheid". In January 2021 human rights group B'Tselem - The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories - labeled Israel an "apartheid regime," sparking a fierce controversy by using a term that Israeli leaders have vehemently rejected.
Three months later, Human Rights Watch (HRW) in its own report titled: "A Threshold Crossed" assessed whether specific acts and policies carried out by Israeli authorities amounted to the crimes of apartheid and persecution as defined under international law.
At that time, Israel's Foreign Ministry called the HRW report a "propaganda pamphlet" and added that it has "no connection to facts or reality on the ground. The fictional claims that HRW concocted are both preposterous and false."
Reacting to Amnesty International report, US State Department Spokesman Ned Price last week said: "I reject the view that Israel's actions constitute apartheid. The State Department's own reports have never used such terminology."
Many members of the US Senate and the House of Representatives including the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (Dem) Bob Menendez, expressed outrage. Menendez said: "This outrageous accusation belies history, facts, and common sense. This report diminishes the very real apartheid that brutalized Black South Africans for decades. "
For his part, House Foreign Affairs Sub Committee on the Middle East (Rep) Ted Deutch said Amnesty's report was "full of the same mischaracterizations, the same false accusations and the same biased language that have been hurled at Israel and its advocates for decades."
It is remarkable that while on almost all the issues before the US Congress, Republicans and Democrats fail to agree on anything, there was a bipartisan consensus in condemning Amnesty International's claim that Israel is committing the crime of apartheid against the Palestinians.
As was expected, Palestinians welcomed the report as recognition of "apartheid's victims and called for sanctions to be imposed on Israel like those imposed on South Africa.
Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Ishtayyeh described the report as "one of the most professional and transparent international reports" on Israel's violations of Palestinian rights".
The Hamas Islamic movement, which rules Gaza, said in a statement that Amnesty's report "is an essential part of the international legal efforts that seek to deliver justice for the Palestinian people."
German Foreign Ministry spokesperson Christopher Burger speaking at a press conference said: "We reject expressions like apartheid or a one-sided focusing of criticism on Israel. That is not helpful to solving the conflict in the Middle East."
Burger added that the Foreign Ministry continued to oppose Israeli settlement in the occupied Palestinian territories and that Berlin remained in favor of a two-state solution in the Middle East conflict.
The Central Council of Jews in Germany labeled Amnesty's report "antisemitic" and called on Amnesty International's German chapter to distance itself from it.
Responding to the chorus of condemnation of the "apartheid" characterization, Amnesty International's Secretary-General, Agnes Callamard, categorically rejected the claims of antisemitism, saying that they are "baseless attacks" that are "nothing more than a desperate attempt to evade scrutiny."
She made it clear that "Amnesty recognizes the state of Israel and denounces antisemitism." The report does not compare Israel to apartheid South Africa, but it says it was evaluating Israel's policies based on international conventions.
Callamard repeated that Amnesty found that "Israel's cruel policies of segregation, dispossession, and exclusion across all territories under its control clearly amount to apartheid."
As Amnesty International is one of the most respected international human rights organizations, with more than 10 million people in over 150 countries, dedicated to ending abuses of human rights, its findings should have been carefully examined by the Israeli government and given a detailed answer, not rejected in a wholesale manner as antisemitic.
Anshel Pfeffer, senior columnist of Israeli newspaper Haaretz, writing on the Israeli reaction to the Amnesty report pointed out: "Whatever the legitimate claims Israel has against the report, this all-out attack on Amnesty, rather than arguing about the report on its merits, is basically a declaration of war on the entire human rights community. It will convince no one but the already convinced. And as usual in such cases, it is more about pandering to domestic political constituencies.