Sunday, July 09, 2023
Elder of Ziyon
Reminder: Everyone has the right to freedom of expression
Really?
Because on more than one occasion, Amnesty showed exactly how little it cares about freedom of expression.
Amnesty provides various spaces for rent in its London offices. There are no policies listed on its webpage saying who is allowed to rent their space. Yet in 2018, months after the Jewish Leadership Council made arrangements to rent out space for a debate on UN policy towards Israel, and only days before the planned event, Amnesty canceled the rental agreement and refused to allow the debate to take place.
Their reason? “We reserve the right to withhold permission for our building to be used by organisations whose work runs directly counter to our own. The presence of UN Watch is of significant concern and they have been active in the promotion of the event. We have partners and colleagues – both Israeli and Palestinian – working on the ground and this does put some of their working relationships at risk." They also told the JLC that they did not think it was appropriate to allow speakers who support Jews living in Judea and Samaria while Amnesty campaigns a boycott of "settlement goods."
This means that Amnesty will only rent their space to those whom they do not have any political disagreements with. Which includes antisemitism, since Amnesty-UK did rent their space to an organization that featured a speaker who justified and praised the terror attack murdering Israeli children in the Mercaz Harav yeshiva massacre.
And it is not only Amnesty-UK that only rents out its public spaces to those it agrees with. In 2014, when the Columbia University branch of Amnesty invited Alan Dershowitz to speak, Amnesty International told them to cancel the event, which they did.
Which proves that it isn't that Amnesty opposes pro-settlement speech - but any kind of Zionist speech.
Similarly, Amnesty - so opposed to Zionist speech - has never condemned explicit Arab antisemitism and incitement to terrorism against Jews. This is even though Amnesty admits that incitement and hate speech is not covered by freedom of expression.
This is about as hypocritical as it gets.
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