Amnesty International falsely accuses Israel of conducting 'apartheid'

The United Kingdom division of Amnesty International released a report on Tuesday accusing the Jewish state of Israel of executing an "apartheid" within its pre-1967 borders and in the West Bank. This latest move is doubling down on a pattern of ongoing criticism of Israel. Amnesty International is a long-time critic of the Jewish state.

Anti-Israel and antisemitic activists and politicians regularly use the word "apartheid" to smear the Jewish state in order to delegitimize the country by equating it with South Africa’s former regime.

The only other country that Amnesty International has accused of apartheid policies is Myanmar. Not China, Iran or Syria, which have all sought to eradicate their minority populations with Iran also pledging to destroy the Jewish state.

In the report, Amnesty also ignores the terrorist group Hamas’ call for a Jewish genocide and the eradication of the Jewish state. The report fails to ask the group to commit to ceasing rocket attacks on civilian targets in Israel and denounces Israel’s defense against the attacks.

Amnesty’s report also mostly ignores the Holocaust, except when mentioning Israel’s 1952 offer of citizenship to any Jew who wanted it. The report also fails to mention the hundreds of thousands of Jews expelled from Arab countries. The report ignores history and falsely claims that Israel was founded as an "apartheid" state, rather than with broad international support as a refuge for Jews following the Holocaust.

The report ignores that the Jews who settled the land had to fight against Arab militias and armies whose leaders promised to push them into the sea.

The report attempts to paint the Oslo Accords as if they were intended to subjugate Palestinians and ignored that the accords were a massive concession by Israel to recognize a Palestinian state within its own borders and trade land for peace.

The report also ignores that Israel is a democracy that provides more rights and freedoms to its Arab citizens and Palestinians than any other state in the region. Arabs vote, hold seats in the Knesset, and an Arab is currently a cabinet minister. Neighboring Arab countries have refused to even accept the Palestinians into their own populations.

Palestinians in the West Bank could have their own state if they had accepted concessions offered by Israel in the 1990s and again in 2000. However, their leaders such as Yassir Arafat, rejected the overtures of peace.

Amnesty will also be calling on the United Nations to sanction Israel, and the International Criminal Court to investigate and hold Israelis criminally responsible for war crimes. The United Nations Human Rights Council has already created a permanent commission of inquiry to investigate claims of human rights abuses in the West Bank and Gaza.

Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid confirmed the report's release and said, "Amnesty was once an esteemed organization that we all respected. Today, it is the exact opposite." He added that "Five minutes of serious fact checking were enough to know that the facts that appeared in the report published this week were a delusion divorced from reality."

The Israeli Foreign Ministry also slammed the report saying, "The State of Israel absolutely rejects all the false allegations that appear in the report that Amnesty is expected to publish tomorrow."

The Foreign Ministry went on to urge Amnesty International to "withdraw the report," which is scheduled to be unveiled by Amnesty’s Secretary General Dr Agnès Callamard in a press conference at the St. George’s Hotel in Jerusalem Tuesday.

The Amnesty report follows a Human Rights Watch report released over the summer which also falsely accused Israel of practicing "apartheid" in the West Bank.

Jewish communities around the world have been warned of an increase in antisemitic and anti-Zionist incidents as a result of the report, including property damage, potential violence, and other acts of antisemitism, particularly by "...individuals who may see the sentiment surrounding the report as a call to action." Additionally, there are fears that an increase in antisemitic rhetoric could act as a flashpoint to inspire violent extremists to target Jewish communities.