[News] What makes Amnesty's apartheid report different?

[Anti-Imperialist News]

electronicintifada.net
<https://electronicintifada.net/content/what-makes-amnestys-apartheid-report-different/34771>
What
makes Amnesty's apartheid report different?

Maureen Clare Murphy
<https://electronicintifada.net/people/maureen-clare-murphy> - 3 February
2022
------------------------------

A Palestinian youth places a flag on Israel’s wall during a demonstration
in the West Bank village of Bilin in February 2014.
ActiveStills

What makes Amnesty International’s new report
<https://www.amnestyusa.org/endapartheid/#resources> determining that
Israel practices the crime of apartheid against Palestinians any different
from those that came before it?

Certainly, Israel’s “hysterical” reaction – (in the words
<https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium.HIGHLIGHT-hysterical-response-to-amnesty-s-apartheid-report-is-a-typical-hasbara-fail-1.10581770>
of one *Haaretz* headline) – to the Amnesty study is notably different from
its relatively understated response to similar reports recently issued by
B’Tselem
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/top-israeli-rights-group-breaks-apartheid-taboo>,
a human rights group in Israel, and the New York-based Human Rights Watch
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/hrw-israel-commits-crimes-apartheid-and-persecution>
.

Palestinian human rights groups like Al-Haq
<https://www.alhaq.org/advocacy/18174.html>, Adalah
<https://www.adalah.org/uploads/oldfiles/newsletter/ara/apr08/hafradah.pdf>
and Al Mezan <http://mezan.org/en/uploads/files/16381763051929.pdf> have
been advancing an apartheid framework for far longer
<https://www.alhaq.org/advocacy/6953.html> and the reports from the
above-mentioned Israeli and international groups build on their work.

Amnesty, Human Rights Watch and B’Tselem examined Israel’s system of
control throughout historic Palestine that privileges Israeli Jews and
marginalizes Palestinians and violates their rights by varying degrees,
largely depending on where they live.

And in contrast to the analyses published by Palestinian groups, those
three reports, welcomed as groundbreaking and paradigm-shifting, fall short
of placing Israel’s system of apartheid in the context of
settler-colonialism. (A keyword search of Amnesty’s report yields three
results for the terms “colonialism” and “colonial” – found in the titles of
works cited in the footnotes.)

Amnesty repeatedly stresses Israel’s “intent to maintain this system of
oppression and domination” without making the explicit point that apartheid
is a means towards the end of settler colonization: removing Palestinians
from the land so that they may be replaced with foreign settlers.

The rights group does state that “since its establishment in 1948, Israel
has pursued an explicit policy of establishing and maintaining a Jewish
demographic hegemony and maximizing its control over land to benefit Jewish
Israelis while minimizing the number of Palestinians and restricting their
rights and obstructing their ability to challenge this dispossession.”

Credit where credit’s due: Amnesty blasts away Israel’s foundational
mythology, acknowledging that it was racist from the beginning – a
departure from the typical liberal attitude that Israel strayed from its
ideals somewhere along the way.

Amnesty even points out that “many elements of Israel’s repressive military
system in the OPT [West Bank and Gaza] originate in Israel’s 18-year-long
military rule over Palestinian citizens of Israel,” beginning in 1948, “and
that the dispossession of Palestinians in Israel continues today.”

Amnesty also acknowledges that “in 1948, Jewish individuals and
institutions owned around 6.5 percent of Mandate Palestine, while
Palestinians owned about 90 percent of the privately owned land there,”
referring to all of historic Palestine prior to the establishment of the
state of Israel.

“Within just over 70 years the situation has been reversed,” the group adds.

And that is Israel’s aim – the “system of oppression and domination”
stressed by Amnesty is the means by which it has usurped Palestinian land
for the benefit of foreign settlers.

After all, Zionist settlers didn’t come to Palestine from Europe for the
purpose of dominating and oppressing Palestinians; they came with the
intent of colonizing their land.

As the Jerusalem Legal Aid and Human Rights Center, a Palestinian group,
states <https://twitter.com/AdvocacyJlac/status/1488598954388434956>, “any
recognition of Israel as an apartheid state should be situated within the
context of its settler-colonial regime.”

Amnesty also refrains from examining and discussing Zionism, Israel’s racist
state ideology
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/nora-barrows-friedman/video-why-anti-zionism-not-anti-semitism>
around which its settler-colonialism project is organized.

As Adalah-NY, an advocacy group based in the US, asked
<https://twitter.com/AdalahJustice/status/1488962928762048520> Amnesty on
Wednesday, “Is it possible to end apartheid without ending the Zionist
settler colonial project?”

While we at JLAC welcome the fact that leading international human rights
organizations speaking out against Israel’s apartheid regime holistically,
we think that any recognition of Israel as an apartheid state should be
situated within the context of its settler-colonial regime.
— JLAC Advocacy (@AdvocacyJlac) February 1, 2022
<https://twitter.com/AdvocacyJlac/status/1488598954388434956?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw>

Good to see @amnesty <https://twitter.com/amnesty?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw> join
@hrw <https://twitter.com/hrw?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw> & @btselem
<https://twitter.com/btselem?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw> declaring Israel an
apartheid state.

Important, but the apartheid frame must include recognition of Israel &
Zionism as settler colonialism & racial projects. Otherwise the question of
Palestine will be reduced to one of liberal equality
— Lana Tatour (@Lana_Tatour) January 31, 2022
<https://twitter.com/Lana_Tatour/status/1488280326048985089?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw>

Groundwork for accountability

Despite these critical shortcomings, Amnesty’s study lays a solid
groundwork for holding Israel accountable within the flawed framework of
international law
<https://electronicintifada.net/content/could-icc-try-palestinians-while-israel-gets-away-murder/33896>
and makes forceful recommendations towards that end.

Amnesty joins Palestinian groups urging the International Criminal Court to
“investigate the commission of the crime of apartheid” and for its
prosecutor to “consider the applicability of the crime against humanity of
apartheid within its current formal investigation” in the West Bank and
Gaza Strip.

Given that the ICC doesn’t have territorial jurisdiction in Israel, Amnesty
calls on the UN Security Council to either refer “the entire situation to
the ICC” or establish “an international tribunal to try alleged
perpetrators” of the crime against humanity of apartheid.

Amnesty adds that the Security Council “must also impose targeted
sanctions, such as asset freezes, against Israeli officials most implicated
… and a comprehensive arms embargo on Israel.”

Reiterating its “longstanding call” on states to suspend all forms of
military assistance and weapons sales to Israel, Amnesty also calls on
Palestinian authorities to “ensure that any type of dealings with Israel,
primarily through security coordination, do not contribute to maintaining
the system of apartheid against Palestinians” in the West Bank and Gaza.

Amnesty also states that Israel must recognize Palestinian refugees’ right
of return and provide Palestinian victims “full reparations,” including
“restitution for all properties acquired on a racial basis.”

A notable strength of Amnesty's report is its inclusion of Palestinians in
the Diaspora and recognition that Israel's system and crimes of Apartheid
denies Palestinian refugees and in the Diaspora human rights, rights to
land and property, and importantly, the Right of Return.
— Samer Abdelnour (@SamerAbdelnour) February 1, 2022
<https://twitter.com/SamerAbdelnour/status/1488641998894649352?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw>

These demands by Amnesty, which claims to be the world’s largest human
rights organization, go much further than those made by Human Rights Watch
and B’Tselem.

This goes some way toward explaining why Israel and its proxies and
apologists
<https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/.premium-u-s-jewish-groups-slam-amnesty-s-israeli-apartheid-report-1.10579147>
attempted to pressure Amnesty to pull its report ahead of publication and,
having failed to achieve that, are now resorting to the usual baseless
accusations of anti-Semitism.

This is how the "Israel" debate in the US works. @amnesty
<https://twitter.com/amnesty?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw> writes detailed report
about the lived experience of Palestinians. @ADL
<https://twitter.com/ADL?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw>--which has no expertise or
genuine interest in conditions on the ground for Palestinians--turns
conversation to antisemitism https://t.co/bjjo61oy5D https://t.co/80lzKPPMy6
— Peter Beinart (@PeterBeinart) January 31, 2022
<https://twitter.com/PeterBeinart/status/1488223798763663361?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw>

Making this into a debate about antisemitism is a deliberate distraction.
But it won't make the facts of extreme systemic discrimination as described
in the report go away. The only way to stop the world from criticizing our
policies is to change our policies.
— Breaking the Silence (@BtSIsrael) February 1, 2022
<https://twitter.com/BtSIsrael/status/1488482879101444098?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw>

Yair Lapid, Israel’s foreign minister, attempted to discredit Amnesty’s
report by saying <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YhbiQQ6Xt6c> it “echoes
propaganda” and “the same lies shared by terrorist organizations,”
referring to prominent Palestinian groups recently declared illegal
<https://electronicintifada.net/content/israel-declares-war-palestinian-rights-groups/34166>
by Israel.

“If Israel wasn’t a Jewish state, no one at Amnesty would dare make such a
claim against it,” Lapid added.

In its report, Amnesty observes that “Palestinian organizations and human
rights defenders who have been leading anti-apartheid advocacy and
campaigning efforts have faced Israeli repression for years as punishment
for their work.”

While Israel brands Palestinian human rights groups as “terrorist
organizations,” it subjects “Israeli organizations denouncing apartheid to
smears and delegitimization campaigns,” Amnesty adds.

Israel may find that such tactics when employed against the world’s largest
human rights organization may not convince anyone beyond its choir.

Its attempt to “get ahead of the story,” reportedly spearheaded by Naftali
Bennett, Israel’s prime minister, along with Lapid, by preemptively
attacking the Amnesty report has only served to reinforce the association
of Israel with apartheid.

It also ensured “that the report got a lot more exposure than it would
otherwise receive,” as one *Haaretz* columnist observes
<https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium.HIGHLIGHT-hysterical-response-to-amnesty-s-apartheid-report-is-a-typical-hasbara-fail-1.10581770>
.
Mainstreaming the apartheid framework

There is another key difference between the Amnesty report on apartheid and
those that came before it.

Amnesty International is a campaigning organization with millions of
members and supporters who, the group says
<https://www.amnesty.org/en/get-involved/join/>, “strengthen our calls for
justice.”

Amnesty has supplemented its report with a 90-minute online course
<https://academy.amnesty.org/learn/course/external/view/elearning/239/deconstructing-israels-apartheid-against-palestinians>
titled “Deconstructing Israel’s apartheid against Palestinians.”

It also produced a 15-minute mini-documentary available on YouTube that
breaks down the question of whether Israel practices apartheid for a mass
audience:

So far Amnesty’s action items only include sending a polite letter
<https://www.amnesty.org/en/petition/demolish-apartheid-not-palestinian-homes-petition/>
to Naftali Bennett, Israel’s prime minister, opposing home demolitions and
expulsions – hardly inspiring stuff.

Amnesty’s US chapter meanwhile has made bizarre disclaimers distancing
itself
<https://www.amnestyusa.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/020121_End-Apartheid-Action-Toolkit.pdf>
from the Palestinian-led boycott, divestment and sanctions
<https://electronicintifada.net/tags/bds> movement and even stated that the
organization doesn’t take a stance on the occupation itself, instead
focusing on Israel’s obligations, “as the occupying power, under
international law.”

Does Amnesty oppose Israel’s military occupation of Palestine? Amnesty
hasn’t taken a position on occupation. Our focus has been on the Israeli
government’s obligations, as the occupying power, under international law,
but Amnesty has taken no position on the occupation itself.
— Amnesty International USA (@amnestyusa) February 1, 2022
<https://twitter.com/amnestyusa/status/1488519451976810499?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw>

Meanwhile, its chapter in Germany has distanced itself
<https://www.972mag.com/amnesty-germany-apartheid-report/> from the report
and stated that “the Germany section of Amnesty will not plan or carry out
any activities in relation to this report” because of the legacy of the
Holocaust and ongoing anti-Semitism in the country.

It is not the first time that Amnesty has limited its solidarity in ways
that are enduringly shameful
<https://www.amnesty.org.uk/nelson-mandela-and-amnesty-international>.

not so fun fact, neither Human Rights Watch nor Amnesty took a position on
the Iraq war and Amnesty for years refused to label Nelson Mandela a
Prisoner of Conscience because he wouldn’t categorically denounce violence
(a thing that often works to achieve political outcomes)
https://t.co/RVCEgqx5mK
— Adam H. Johnson (@adamjohnsonNYC) February 2, 2022
<https://twitter.com/adamjohnsonNYC/status/1488664829309374465?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw>

Both Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch are based in imperialist
countries and were founded in the context of the Cold War, largely focusing
on advocating for the rights of individuals in communist Eastern Europe.

Their narrow frameworks and founding ideologies have put them in opposition
to anti-colonial liberation struggles and the violence those necessitate
because, as Nelson Mandela put it
<https://www.ebb-magazine.com/essays/the-palestinians-inalienable-right-to-resist>,
“it is the oppressor who defines the nature of the struggle, and the
oppressed is often left no recourse but to use methods that mirror those of
the oppressor.”

These fundamental contradictions mean that Western human rights groups will
always take compromised, if not harmful
<https://electronicintifada.net/content/could-icc-try-palestinians-while-israel-gets-away-murder/33896>,
positions concerning Palestinian liberation, with Human Rights Watch recently
suggesting
<https://electronicintifada.net/content/how-human-rights-watch-favors-israel/33721>
a moral equivalence between the violence used by Israel against besieged
Palestinians in Gaza and that of Palestinian resistance against it.

But Amnesty’s educational materials, including a lengthy Q & A
<https://www.amnestyusa.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Israel-Report-Public-QA-1.pdf>,
will help prepare grassroots campaigners to respond to Israel’s apologists
who seek to deflect criticism of the state’s practices by attacking the
messenger.

After all, as one astute observer put it on Twitter
<https://twitter.com/JoeJSaltarelli/status/1488895191515901956>, that is
the only arrow in the quiver of those committed to maintaining Israel’s
apartheid rule and the situation of impunity.

Israel’s defenders responding predictably to @amnesty
<https://twitter.com/amnesty?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw> report characterizing
Israel’s oppression of Palestinians as apartheid crime against humanity: no
refutation of assembled facts or plan to remedy them, only (false)
accusations of antisemitism. It’s the only quiver in the bow.
— Joseph Saltarelli (@JoeJSaltarelli) February 2, 2022
<https://twitter.com/JoeJSaltarelli/status/1488895191515901956?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw>

Amnesty’s report is a strong indicator that an analysis beyond the 1967
occupation of the West Bank and Gaza is becoming mainstream.

Meanwhile, Israel and its proxies and abettors in the US Congress
<https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/u-s-state-department-rejects-amnesty-s-apartheid-claims-against-israel-1.10583830>
and State Department
<https://www.reuters.com/world/amnesty-accuses-israel-enforcing-apartheid-palestinians-2022-02-01/>
trot out tired talking points while ignoring the substance of Amnesty’s
findings.

(By contrast, a few members
<https://twitter.com/BettyMcCollum04/status/1488639936249180166> of
Congress belonging to the Democratic Party are publicly supportive
<https://twitter.com/RepRashida/status/1488973923320487943> of Amnesty’s
findings, with Cori Bush calling
<https://twitter.com/RepCori/status/1488977261684477956> for an end to “US
taxpayer support for this violence.”)

But like UN and EU officials forever droning on about their commitment to
the nonexistent peace process towards a two-state solution, those parroting
these Israel lobby talking points so detached from reality appear
increasingly ridiculous.

These clowns have had YEARS to come up with a single other talking point
and still have nothing.

Human rights orgs have been in the field for decades, painstakingly
documenting every detail of the reality on the ground, and AIPAC's still
droning on about "bastion of democracy." pic.twitter.com/YIXrNumPLs
<https://t.co/YIXrNumPLs>
— Simone Zimmerman 🔥 (@simonerzim) January 31, 2022
<https://twitter.com/simonerzim/status/1488289421325656070?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw>

The visceral reaction to international orgs coalescing around acknowledging
what Palestinians have been saying for decades is rooted in one of Israel’s
greatest fears: that the world might start finally listening to—and this
time believing—Palestinians.
— Abdallah Fayyad (@abdallah_fayyad) February 1, 2022
<https://twitter.com/abdallah_fayyad/status/1488596958159810563?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw>

State Department spokesperson sounded awfully defensive here when called
out on the hypocrisy of the US frequently endorsing Amnesty
reports...except for its findings on Israel. https://t.co/m0BKKONNhN
— Josh Ruebner (@joshruebner) February 2, 2022
<https://twitter.com/joshruebner/status/1488853682187874315?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw>

Israel fears UN report

While rejecting the term “apartheid” and attacking Amnesty, Israel and its
proxies and supporters have their eyes on an even bigger threat to Israeli
impunity.

According to an Israeli foreign ministry cable seen by the publication
*Axios*
<https://www.axios.com/israel-discredit-un-human-rights-probe-gaza-palestinians-951e3799-2f2b-4c1f-ad3c-5a8a15aa7ac9.html>,
Israel has planned a campaign attempting to discredit a permanent UN
commission of inquiry into Israel’s violations of Palestinian rights in all
the territory under its control.

The UN Human Rights Council narrowly passed a resolution establishing that
commission of inquiry last May
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/un-probe-israeli-repression-against-palestinians-whole>
following Israel’s 11-day attack on Gaza during which Palestinians rose up
throughout their homeland.

Palestinian groups have long called on states “to address the root causes
of Israel’s settler colonialism and apartheid imposed over the Palestinian
people as a whole,” as Al-Haq said
<https://www.alhaq.org/advocacy/18432.html> ahead of the vote.

The commission of inquiry undertaken by three independent human rights
experts tapped by the Human Rights Council is expected to deliver its
findings in June.

*Axios* reported last week that Israeli officials are “highly concerned
that the commission’s report will refer to Israel as an ‘apartheid state.’”

The publication adds that “the Biden administration doesn’t support the
inquiry
<https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-will-oppose-un-human-rights-councils-disproportionate-attention-israel-state-2021-10-14/>
and played a central role in cutting its funding by 25 percent in UN budget
negotiations.”

A bipartisan grouping of 42 members of Congress has meanwhile called on
<https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/.premium-bipartisan-group-of-42-u-s-lawmakers-urges-blinken-to-halt-un-commission-on-israel-1.10571077>
the US secretary of state to “lead an effort to end the outrageous and
unjust permanent commission of inquiry.”

But Israel apparently fears that this intervention may not be enough.

*Haaretz* reported
<https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-israeli-officials-fear-un-will-adopt-apartheid-narrative-this-year-1.10583624>
this week that unnamed “senior Israeli officials” are concerned that the UN
“may soon accept the narrative that Israel is an ‘apartheid state,’ issuing
a serious blow to Israel’s status on the international stage.”

A UN consensus around Israeli apartheid “could lead to Israel’s exclusion
from various international events, including sports competitions or
cultural events,” the paper adds.

In other words, Israeli officials are afraid that the state will be treated
as a global pariah as South Africa was before the fall of apartheid in that
country.

The steering committee of the Palestinian-led boycott, divestment and
sanctions movement – inspired by the global campaign that helped bring
apartheid to an end in South Africa – argues
<https://bdsmovement.net/sites/default/files/UN-Question%20of%20Israeli%20apartheid_22-9-2020.pdf>
that “investigation of Israeli apartheid by the UN and its members are
necessary steps for achieving freedom, justice and equality for the
Palestinian people.”

That committee urges formerly colonized states to reprise “the leading role
they assumed in the UN for the eradication of apartheid in Southern Africa.”

Human Rights Watch
<https://www.hrw.org/news/2021/05/19/how-un-can-help-end-israeli-apartheid-and-persecution>
has called for the appointment of a global UN envoy for the crimes of
persecution and apartheid.

Amnesty states that the UN General Assembly “should reestablish the Special
Committee against Apartheid, which was originally established in November
1962, to focus on all situations … where the serious human rights violation
and crime against humanity of apartheid are being committed.”

These moves would have implications beyond the Palestinian cause within the
UN system, where “bullying and political pressure have prevented the study
and debate, let alone punishment, of Israeli apartheid,” according to the
BDS movement steering committee.

Ultimately, Amnesty’s study may not be fundamentally different from those
that came before.

But the context in which it appears – as international consensus coalesces
around recognizing Israeli apartheid, an International Criminal Court
investigation
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/icc-launches-palestine-war-crimes-probe>
is underway and amid Israeli spyware blowback
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/tamara-nassar/israels-cyberwarfare-industry-had-bad-year>
– suggests that a new chapter in the global struggle for Palestinian
freedom may have begun.

*Maureen Clare Murphy is senior editor of The Electronic Intifada.*
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