Amnesty UK has an annual meeting where they vote on resolutions about various worldwide political issues. Nearly all of them pass with a huge majority, since they don't ask for funding - just vague commitments to "lobby" for the issue.
In 2015, one seemingly routine resolution was put up for vote to condemn antisemitism in the UK and lobby the British government to do more to protect Jews from attacks, which had increased dramatically in the previous year. That was the only resolution that year that was defeated by the Amnesty-UK crowd.
The excuse that Amnesty-UK used to justify not opposing antisemitism was "we can't campaign on everything."
Compare that to a similar 2020 resolution saying "AIUK should campaign against practices which discriminate against Ahmadi Muslims." That one easily passed 748-116.
Amnesty-UK has exhibited double standards against Jews on other occasions. They have a public space that they rent out to nearly all organizations who request it, and they have allowed virulent antisemites to use the space. But when a Jewish umbrella group representing many political opinions wanted to lease it, Amnesty refused to allow it.
In 2012, an Amnesty-UK leader tweeted a joke about Jewish MKs supporting bombing Gaza, even though plenty of non-Jewish MKs supported Israel's actions to stop rocket attacks.
The antisemitism is endemic. Which is why this story from The Independent is not surprising:
Amnesty International UK is “institutionally racist”, “colonialist” and faces bullying problems within its own ranks, a damning inquiry has concluded.Initial findings of Global HPO’s independent inquiry into the charity were published in April but now the scale of the organisation’s issues with race have been laid bare in their final report.Released to Amnesty staff members on Thursday, the 106-page document explains that equality, inclusion and anti-racism are “not embedded into the DNA” of the organisation.“White saviour”, “colonialist”, “middle class” and “privileged” were among the words most used during the testimony and focus groups to discuss Amnesty.Examples of racist incidents that left black and Asian staff uncomfortable include:- Being regularly mistaken for other colleagues with similar skin tone- Negative comments about fasting during Ramadan- Treating black skin, hair and appearance as matters of fascination and touching hair without consent- Rude comments about minority celebrities, politicians or events
The same "white savior" complex that permeates the so-called "human rights community" is closely related to the left wing antisemitism we've seen from Amnesty and Amnesty-UK. The mostly white leadership of Amnesty pretends that Palestinians are "people of color" under attack from white "Jewish supremacists" and as such have no responsibility for their own actions - the same kind of infantilizing of non-white people that this report highlights under the pretense of being anti-racist itself.
In short, groups like Amnesty are the pot that call the kettle black.
Yesterday, the head of Amnesty International Agnes Callamard lashed out against accusations of antisemitism in its report accusing Israel, the most diverse state in the Middle East of "apartheid." She claimed that calling out the obvious double standards and antisemitism in Amnesty are "weaponizing antisemitism."
Just as the previous probes finding that Amnesty-UK is systematically racist were dismissed by its leadership, so are the provable accusations of antisemitism.
Their objections in both cases are the same: we are the leaders in human rights, we are against discrimination, we work hard to hold others accountable for their racism, how dare you accuse us!
But accusations of racism and apartheid against Israel, falsely claiming that it deliberately targets Arab children, are the 21st century equivalent of accusations of Jews deliberately killing Christian children in medieval times.
Accusing those who call out leftist antisemitism as "weaponizing antisemitism" is as offensive as saying that those who document Amnesty-UK's racism are "weaponizing racism."
Groups like Amnesty hide behind the pretense that they fight some kinds of bigotry to justify their own.
Antisemites are racists, and racists are antisemites.
|
Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. Read all about it here! |
|
