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Wednesday, April 22, 2015

Amnesty-UK's outrageous justification for rejecting resolution fighting antisemitism

Yesterday I posted about how Amnesty International members voted at their annual general meeting against a resolution calling on Britain to fight antisemitic attacks.

The Coalition Against Anti-Semitism in Europe tweeted to Amnesty-UK asking for comment. Here was their shameful response:




Here are the resolutions, outside of internal governance topics, that easily passed in the meeting:
  • Amnesty International’s stance on Abortion: Pro - Choice 
  • Addressing impunity in Guatemala 
  • Violations of the rights of Colombian activists including trade union leader Huber Ballesteros 
  • The United Kingdom: Rendition and Torture 
  • Asylum detention in the UK -AIUK will undertake research into the wrongful detention of torture and trafficking victims in British detention
2014 resolutions all passed as well, including:
  • Sex Work - Decriminalisation
  • Garment workers in Asian countries 
  • Guantanamo 
  • Guatemala 
  • Sri Lanka Human Rights
Their mission statement says:


But, hey, you can't campaign on everything.

You can, however, campaign on everything except antisemitism. 

This is a neat inversion on the answer that latent antisemites give for choosing to condemn only Israel for things that every nation does - "You've got to start somewhere. " Just like the Jewish state is always the first, last and only one to be condemned by so many, so is Jew-hatred the first, last and only human rights issue that cannot be tackled because of so many other issues worldwide.