Amnesty feeds the anti-Israel beast
In our current post-truth era, is reality what you say it is? Sadly, it may very well be as people increasingly cheapen language, twist if not ignore or invent facts and abuse history, frequently in the name of some supposedly noble cause. All too often in the process, Jews and Israel pay a price.
Like a mutating virus, this noxious trend takes many forms. One form is Holocaust distortion. When antivaccine activists insist COVID restrictions are similar to the Nazi persecution of Jews, they’re making a false comparison that’s morally repugnant, downplaying the enormity of six million Jews murdered for being Jewish.
Another case in point: apartheid distortion. Comparing Israel to the extreme, institutionalized system of racial, tyrannical persecution of non-whites and segregationist policies that existed in South Africa is a highly misleading, libelous smear of the Jewish state.
For Israel’s enemies, “apartheid” has become the epithet of choice to bash and delegitimize Israel. Facts and history be damned. Earlier this month, in one of the most flagrant, high-profile examples, Amnesty International (AI) released a prejudicial, one-sided 280page report accusing Israel of committing apartheid against the Palestinians.
Talk about distortion. AI presents a skewed perspective, devoid of context, divorced from reality and driven by a political agenda. The report plays fast and loose with facts, omitting important information about the situation on the ground that would contradict its spurious, preordained conclusions. It’s part of the London-based organization’s obsessive focus on Israel, having issued 208 reports on the country since the 1970s.
In sharp contrast, AI has published only 40 reports on North Korea and 61 on Venezuela. What’s at play here?
Last week, to its credit, the Canadian government disavowed AI’s apartheid allegations against Israel, as it did a year ago in response to a similarly deeply flawed report about Israel by Human Rights Watch. “Canada rejects the view that Israel’s actions constitute apartheid,” it said, echoing statements by other like-minded nations, including the U.S., U.K., Ireland, Germany and Australia.
Undermining its credibility, AI’s report uses extreme rhetoric, while advancing venomous falsehoods about Israel, so many that space limitations here won’t allow me to address them specifically beyond the misappropriation of the apartheid term.
To read the report, you’d never know that members of Israel’s non-Jewish minority have equal, legal rights, protected by admirably independent courts, including the Supreme Court, to which Arabs have been appointed as judges.
Likewise, Israeli Arabs serve in the Knesset (Israel’s parliament) and as Israeli diplomats, senior police officers and government spokespeople, compete in national sports leagues and beauty contests and hold executive positions in Israeli companies. Anyone who’s been at an Israeli hospital sees a medical ecosystem with Arab and Jewish doctors and nurses working together to treat Arab and Jewish patients alike. Sound like apartheid in action?
What about Israel’s current government in which the leader of an Arab Islamist party is a minister and kingmaker, who himself rejected AI’s apartheid label for Israel?
AI’s report denies Jews the right to self-determination and self-defence, applies double standards by requiring behaviour not expected of other democratic countries, minimizes Palestinian security threats, and treats Israel, the West Bank and Gaza as a single entity.
Most concerningly, it will do nothing to advance prospects for peace between Israel and Palestinians, nor facilitate a two-state road ahead. Quite the opposite, as it will harden Ramallah’s entrenchment not to negotiate a solution to the conflict with Jerusalem.
In feeding the anti-Israeli beast, what’s AI’s motivation? What’s its goal when it comes to the world’s only Jewish state? What’s its purpose in echoing other dubious reports by those leading the anti-Israel frenzy? Beats me.
It’s unfortunate I need to state the obvious — like all countries, Israel is far from perfect. But for all its rough edges, when you consider the hostile, despotic region where it’s situated, it’s a near-miracle Israel has been able to sustain the Middle East’s only democracy — and a robust one at that — for which it should be lauded instead of loathed. MICHAEL LEVITT, A TORONTO-BASED
Undermining its credibility, the Amnesty International report uses extreme rhetoric, while advancing venomous falsehoods about Israel