Amnesty International report on Israel’s apartheid challenges world to speak truth to power

Palestine

On February 1st, 2022 Amnesty International released a report titled, “Apartheid Against Palestinians is a Cruel System of Domination and a Crime Against Humanity”. Amnesty’s report declares, says Agnes Callamard, Amnesty Intl’s Secretary General, “Whether they live in Gaza, East Jerusalem and the rest of the West Bank, or Israel itself, Palestinians are treated as an inferior racial group and systematically deprived of their rights. We (Amnesty) find that Israel’s cruel policies of segregation, dispossession and exclusion across all territories under its control clearly amount to Apartheid. The International community has an obligation to act.” (news/2022/02/apartheid-against-palestinians-a-cruel-system-of-domination-and-a-crime-against-humanity). Following the Amnesty report’s release, its urgence for accountability was met by Israel’s rejection of the report’s conclusions.

Following on the heels of Amnesty International’s blockbuster report, the highly-respected reporter Gideon Levy wrote in Israel’s newspaper Haaretz an article titled, “Challenge to Israel’s Supporters: Tell Me What’s Untrue in Amnesty Report on Israel” (Haaretz, 2/03/2022). Gideon Levy asks, “Was Israel not founded on an explicit policy of maintaining Jewish demographic hegemony, while reducing the number of Palestinians within its boundaries? Yes or No? True or False? Does this policy not exist to this day? Yes or No? True or False? Does Israel not maintain a regime of oppressions and control of Palestinians in Israel and the occupied territories for the benefit of Israeli Jews? Yes or No? True or False? Do the rules of engagement with Palestinians not reflect a policy of shoot to kill, or at least to maim? Yes or No? True or False? Are the evictions of Palestinians from their homes and the denial of construction permits not part of Israeli’s policy? Yes or No? True or False? *(To read the article in full go to: (http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/premium.HIGHLIGHT-tell-me-what-s-untrue-in-amnesty-s-report-on-isreal-1.10587114).

Mondoweiss (mondoweiss.net), an independent website devoted to informing readers about development’s in Israel/Palestine and related US foreign policy, generally unavailable through the mainstream media regarding the struggles of Palestinian human rights, acknowledges that Jewish voices are too often prioritized in discussions concerning Palestinians and seeks to challenge that dynamic by bringing a universalist focus to an issue like the Amnesty Apartheid Report that is commonly dominated by pro-Israel corporate media platforms.
Following the release of the Amnesty Report, Mondoweiss noted that the New York Times often relies on Amnesty International’s much respected reporting on international issues such as Israel’s apartheidism. Yet after two days of the NYTimes ignoring such an important breaking news, Mondoweiss wondered what the explanation was for the NYTimes inexcusable reticence? It noted that the Times has a large staff, including several reporter who are on the scene in Israel/Palestine, and began to wonder if the Times was hoping, maybe unconsciously, to let the Amnesty report simmer down, thus lessening its impact? Especially when papers like Haaretz already had prominently published some 5 articles with a range of views. Mondoweiss further added the observation that “Aeshel Pfeffer, a regular columnist is a liberal Zionist, but his thrust is that the Israeli government’s campaign to discredit Amnesty International “is hysterical, particularly the charge that the report is antisemitic.”

Mondoweiss adds, “Whatever the legitimate claims that 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. (See: http://mondoweiss.net/2022/92/the-nytimes-respects-amnesty-international-so-wthe-apartheid-report).

Meanwhile, Zionists have begun to hurl pro and con salvos at one another, Mordechai Kremnitzer, an Israeli attorney living in Israel branded Amnesty’s report “an extremely pretentious document”. Kremnitzer facetiously argues that Israel, like the United States has done with its coloured peoples, has also eliminated much of its institutional racism.

His claims, though, fly in the face of the fact that the Israel Supreme Court has previously backed the use of torture against Palestinian activists, Or that Abdul-Khaliq, the sone of the Palestinian activists Iyed Burnai, was kidnaped and imprisoned ever since without charge while only months away from his high school graduation. Or how two-faced Israel’s “Fake Justice” is for Palestinians where Israel’s High Court has already determined there is no legal obstacle preventing Israeli’s from demolishing Palestinian homes in the West Bank that the court deemed were “unlawful”. Such legal decisions in Israel have had far-reaching implications for the human rights of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians; including their right to independently subsist, make a living, manage their own lives without any restrictions from the outside.

For Israel, its USA partners-in-crime, and their allies throughout the world to continue to deny their gross human violations against their own or other peoples basic human rights, and ignore Amnesty International’s Apartheid report, they will only show themselves up to be the unmitigated two-faced liars that they are.

From this point forward in time neither white supremacists or Zionists alike can any longer, in truthfulness and honesty, justify their apartheid systems based upon the institutionalized, prolonged racist oppression of millions of innocent men, women and children, Palestinian or otherwise.

Like the little boy in the fable who dares to declare the Emperor is wearing no clothes, Amnesty International has now thrown down the gauntlet, collectively, to the United Nations and all its member states to act upon its report and declare to the world that Israel’s form of apartheid has no place in any future world of legal justice and democratic rule, and furthermore proclaim that any world leader that attempts to try to do so will ultimately only end up on the wrong side of history and the scrapheap of failed nations.

Jerome Irwin is a Canadian-American freelance writer and author of the book, “The Wild Gentle Ones; A Turtle Island Odyssey” (www.turtle-island-odyssey.com), a spiritual odyssey among the native peoples of North America that has led to numerous articles pertaining to: Ireland’s Fenian Movement; native peoples Dakota Access Pipeline Resistance Movement; AIPAC, Israel & the U.S. Congress anti-BDS Movement; the historic Battle for Palestine & Siege of Gaza, as well as; the many violations constantly being waged by industrial-corporate-military-propaganda interests against the World’s Indigenous Soul. Irwin’s long ago experiences as a Volunteer in Service to America, continue to inspire and inform Irwin of so many on-going problems of environmental degradation and unsustainability caused by a host of environmental-ecological-spiritual-political issues that exist between the conflicting world philosophies of indigenous and non-indigenous peoples that he attempts to pass on to others through his writings.
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