Amnesty International in hot seat over 'diplomatic lynch' of Israel

"A new report by Amnesty International UK set to be published on Feb. 1 accuses Israel of 'apartheid] and 'institutionalized and systematic discrimination against Palestinians.'...

Gerald Steinberg, president of NGO Monitor said, 'For 20 years, Amnesty International has been a leader in NGO campaigns to demonize Israel, based on twisting and exploiting the evils of the South African apartheid regime in order to promote hatred. This false and immoral agenda singling out the nation-state of the Jewish people is a major cause of 21st-century antisemitism and is the polar opposite of the universal principles embodied in real human rights. This campaign is also a betrayal of everything that Peter Benenson, the founder of Amnesty, stood for.'

Anne Herzberg, NGO Monitor's legal adviser added: 'Amnesty's report offers nothing new to the discussion. It is simply part of the discriminatory and offensive campaign launched in 2021, by NGOs like HRW and B'Tselem, which is based on invented law and discriminatory tropes from a century's worth of antisemitic propaganda. It is clearly timed to exploit lawfare initiatives at the dictator-run UN Human Rights Council such as the Commission of Inquiry on the 2021 conflict.'...

'There is nothing new in Amnesty's sudden discovery of the word 'apartheid,' in relation to Israel,' said European Jewish Congress president Moshe Kantor. 'They are in lock-step with anti-Israel and antisemitic activists in a coordinated diplomatic lynch against the Jewish state, and the mere concept of Jewish self-determination and collectivity.'

B'nai B'rith International president Seth Riklin and CEO Daniel S. Mariaschin also condemned the report in a statement, saying, 'The reality is that Israeli Arabs sit in Israel's current government and on Israel's Supreme Court. They have the same right to vote as all Israelis. They have their own media. Arabic is an official language of Israel. Amnesty's libelous claim of 'apartheid' is simply baseless.'

The Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, Anti-Defamation League, American Israel Public Affairs Committee, American Jewish Committee, B'nai B'rith International and the Jewish Federations of North America issued a statement rejecting the report, saying it 'presents an unbalanced, inaccurate, and incomplete review and instead inexplicably focuses on one aim: to demonize and delegitimize the Jewish and democratic State of Israel.'..."